> I wonder if that's working for them as a core selling point. Does having an open firmware really steer people into buying one of these laptops?

I can only speak for myself, but I was thinking of getting a Galago Pro around a month and a half ago, and got cold feet because it wasn't quite as open as I wanted it to be. I ended up waiting because I don't need a new dev laptop yet.

This announcement has cemented that I'm going to get one, although I'm going to wait for a bit to let their first users of the new firmware work out the bugs. ;) System76 has a really good reputation for QA, so I'm sure it will be a quick process.

It's my impression that System76 is genuinely committed to free (libre) software, but have pragmatically balanced that with a commitment to creating a high-quality product. As other have said, I want a plug and play Linux experience. Ideally it would be completely libre, but none of the completely libre options out there are good enough (particularly, with hardware integration) for me to justify the loss in productivity. This is a good almost-completely-libre option which fits my needs.

Both the Adder and the Serval are available with 4K displays (The Adder also being OLED). System76 has been providing Linux-friendly laptops for well over a decade, and we take pride in offering the highest-possible performance available in a Linux-ready package.

The entire company here is pretty well focused on making everything open, because we believe it truly makes a better product. Many of our customers agree with this philosophy, and so for them this kind of thing is definitely a selling point. For people who are less focused on it, it might not be, but it's definitely never a bad thing.

I got a Gazelle a few days ago, mainly because I didn't want to have to troubleshoot anything when I get it. I wanted a plug and play linux experience, and this is it.

That's a fair point. I tried running Ubuntu & Arch on my macbook and was horrified to find that you have to set up and the fan regulation yourself or else the thing will just cook itself.

Not to mention the fun you'll have setting up the wifi and the especially good luck getting multi-touch support work just right.

I installed Arch on a Macbook and couldn't get Ethernet working, but I managed to get wifi up. I do not miss it

I used a system76 gazelle professional during part of college. Ran Arch on it. Probably 2 years or so. 15". It was really solid. I think I bought it in 2013? The only drawback was the battery life. 45 mins tops, and the battery itself only lasted 2-3 years. I replaced it twice, once right before I gave it to my sister, and once for her after she'd had it for a similar period of time. I used it as a desktop replacement, so it was plugged in a good deal of the time. The specs were great, screen was great, etc. I still have it plugged in on a shelf in my homelab to use for random testing stuff (got it back from my sister eventually).

I only replaced it because I decided I wanted to go the "ultrabook" route and have an i5-xxxxU processor but get 12+ hours of battery life. I got a T440s, and ran linux on it, ofc.

I've had trouble with uefi on my laptop with Linux so for me openboot is a pretty strong selling point. I lost power in the middle of an update once as it was updating the kernel and boot certificates. When I powered my laptop back on it wouldn't boot at all. It wouldn't even get back to the grub screen. At that point I'd uninstalled windows and had to fuck around in the secureboot settings manually following some obscure instructions I found online. Luckily it worked but it was not fun.

Eh why would you use Ubuntu in a Virtualbox on a MAC for Webdev? Considering browser support, wouldn’t Mac be the safer choice to match potential user systems and browsers, and Windows in a VM or browser stack if you really need it? Are you really using an editor that isn’t supported well on Mac? Privacy aside, I would never switch to Linux for my desktop GUI, and I’m a command line *nix hacker at heart. Aside from hundreds of unsupported apps, I just don’t like the way other operating systems look. I heard it has to do with font licensing..