They sell re-branded clevos with marginal build quality. Some models have been unusably defecitve. I wish they were the Linux-laptop company that many hackers dream about, but they just aren't.

I agree they aren't the dream company, but I do think they are helping us all. Here's a good response from them regarding the Clevo rebranding:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...

Yet as usual, the clarity is provided by responses that got downvote-bombed.

There was another comment on another threat that said that, although they do buy Clevos, the cheaper ones Clevos sells aren't up to the same specs. They also order really specific hardware for their branded laptops that have known working drivers. Either that or they work on getting the correct binary blobs working and merged into the official linux-firmware package.

Things like getting newer drivers working (and contributing that openly back to the community) plus getting ME disabled are some pretty big value added. If they had a 4k model I might be more interested.

System76 employee here! We do have a number of HiDPI models.

Galago Pro (https://system76.com/laptops/galago) is probably our most popular, and its resolution is 3200×1800—not technically 4K, but the right resolution for that small of display.

Oryx Pro usually has a 4K HiDPI option, but it looks like it's currently sold out. Our WS models also have 4K options, but they're pretty specialized machines.

Things may have changed in the last year or so, but plenty of System 76 Clevos have been notorious for problems in the past. I'd be interested in knowing that things have improved significantly because I'll probably be upgrading to a new laptop around the middle of next year.

For me probably the biggest issue is that they usually have mediocre keyboards and sometimes they even have keyboards that drop keystrokes. It seems like every model they release should have a top-notch keyboard because their target market is mostly developers.

I'm pretty happy with my Dell XPS laptop with Linux.

Me too. I'm running the Dell Precision 5520 right now and I've been pretty happy. Tho, deviating from the stock OS (Ubuntu 16.04) is not a very easy path. For that reason I may go back to System76 for my next buy.

What does stock ubuntu provide that other linux distros do not, and why would going with System76 solve this?

I have a 5520 too, but one I got via the outlet store, and which came with Windows 10, not Ubuntu. I've since partitioned it and have Arch running on it too. Was completely painless, and everything works. Which distro are you having issues with, and what are the issues?

This already exists, https://fwupd.org/ It is strange they don't mention this and use it.

fwupd updated my Logitech "Unifying" receiver firmware :-) And Dell uses it to provide updates of some of their laptops and servers.

It's disappointing System76 can't just use LVFS and fwupd like all the other vendors: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendorlist

You're missing a bit of disclosure here.