Why?

Their laptops are unfortunately all OEM Compals. The desktops they make themselves, but the laptops aren't there yet.

So interestingly enough, the Pangolin is the first laptop model I am aware of from System76 that isn't an outright Clevo chassis (via Sager). I don't know all the facts but I did find this interesting reddit comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/10a3lqj/comment/j...

Which suggests there are pretty major changes to how they have previously done laptops:

1) The manufacturer is Emdoor(?) instead of Clevo. (I have never personally heard of Emdoor)

2) Final assembly is done in-house @ System76 instead of via Sager. That is assembly for Pangolin is done in Denver at the same place the Theelios desktops and Launch keyboards are made.

While not necessarily all in-house yet, both of these changes are a pretty massive difference so as a former owner of several System76 laptops, I am curious how much better the Pangolin is.

Edit: So after doing some googling, it seems like Emdoor is a Chinese manufacturer out of Shenzen (https://www.emdoordigi.com/about.html?category_id=0). Personally, not sure moving from a Taiwanese manufacturer to a Chinese one is actually a good thing...but still curious none-the-less.

> Personally, not sure moving from a Taiwanese manufacturer to a Chinese one is actually a good thing...but still curious none-the-less.

As somebody working in a related space, _any_ diversification is a good thing simply because it forces System76 to redesign its processes to become less Clevo-specific.

Once you start, you're going to have a hard time to find an ODM that's willing to teach you the ropes _and_ accept that you're not a single-ODM shop _and_ deal with whatever fancies S76 brings up, so that limits options. (Any of these mean that S76 will be a high-maintenance customer for Emdoor, and these three more than compound in that way)

I can't overemphasize how big of a step this is.

It depends on how much impact they can have with the design. IF they can have more impact on the Emdoor design, its a good idea.

* * *

Their Thelio desktops are quite nice. What about the Meerkat?

Then perhaps you might be interested in Purism laptops.

s/Compal/Clevo/

I've got a Lemur Pro and wouldn't recommend it.

They rebadge (mostly) Clevo laptops, which isn't inherently a problem. The value add is supposed to be in the QA/software side of things to ensure the devices work well with Linux (so far, so good).

Well, my Lemur Pro 10 suffered from multiple different bugs in their half-baked Coreboot firmware. They ripped out the default BIOS to replace it with a more open alternative (laudable!) but the process resulted in bugs that prevented sleep and caused the UEFI boot order to be reset at various times.

They shouldn't have shipped a device with bugs like this, but I was left waiting over a year to get both fixed. On a generic box which I've supposedly paid extra for the support!

Compare this to my Dell XPS13, which shipped with Linux on it too, and never had any such issues.

I admire their objectives, but the reality of the System76 experience is severely lacking compared to the ideal.