Are system76 computers worth the extra money?

[spswitzer]

No fear of that as I don't use windows LOL, but you're right. I've found that installing other distro's to be remarkably painless on my Macs. I'm really leaning to ordering the Galago with Ubuntu installed, as it's what I'm running on two of my Macs, and go from there.

[jlh68]

YES. I am on my second System76 computer. My first is the Lemur5 a laptop with a good sized screen, and I am still urnning Ubuntu16.04LTS on it. Will be going to 18.04LTS later this month, in preparation for 20.04.1LTS. My new laptop is the DarterPro. I am running POP!-OS 18.04LTS on it. Both have been good laptops. The Lemur5 goes for ever on a battery charge, the DarterPro is slightly less but still very good.
The DarterPro is a polished unit in an aluminium case. It is a lot lighter than the Lemur, and it does not have an optical drive. It does have a bunch of ports: 1XUSB2, 2XUSB3,1XUSB3C thunderbolt, 1XHdmi, 1XVGA, 1 combo earphone digital auto out, 1 microphone, i SD card slot. I have had a couple of problems with the DarterPro, they were individual ones not universal across the product. System76 has made good on the warranty twice now, and that alone is worth the price. They have also helped via email with their customer support. Because of that in some cases I have figured out stuff and helped them to know their product better. Before I have had Toshiba, Acer laptops and netbooks.

I hope the above will help in anyone's decision.

[stephanie-s]

I think they are worth the money, not to mention their great support staff. I recently purchased their Galago Pro 14". However, I'm in Canada and after adding the coversion from US to Cdn $, then adding sales tax it did add to the price. That being said, what I like about it is how much the user can repair/replace on it. Ram, drives, wifi modules, fan, key board to mention a few. There's even an empty drive bay to install additional storage. The basic specs for my machine are:

Galago Pro

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit)
14" Matte FHD 1080p Matte FHD Display
Intel® UHD Graphics
4.2 GHz i5-10210U (1.6 up to 4.2 GHz - 6 MB Cache - 4 Cores - 8 Threads
8 GB Single Channel DDR4 at 2666 MHz (1x8GB) - upto 32 GB
250 GB NVMe Seq Read: 3,500 MB/s, Seq Write: 2,300 MB/s
No Additional Storage
United States QWERTY Keyboard
WiFi up to 867 Mbps + Bluetooth 5
1 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty
1 Year Canada warranty two way ground shipping coverage

[Shibblet]

Let's talk about cheese.

Kraft cheese is good cheese... it's not too expensive, and it tastes good.
Tillamook cheese is better cheese. It costs more than Kraft, and tastes better.
Then there are artisan style cheeses, they cost a lot more, and taste a lot better.

Dell, is a Kraft Cheese
HP is a Tillamook Cheese
System76 is what I would call and "artisan" style cheese.

[poorguy]

If you got the money and that's what you want than get and then you will know for sure.

In my case no way would I ever spend that mount of money for any computer.

Plain and simple I'm cheap.

If you want it go for it.

[mastablasta]

it's not just system76, but others as well. they sell linux machines/laptops but the price is so much higher than from HP or Lenovo. i understand that if you don't have the volume, you can't have lower price at the same quality. however, just last week i read about interesting linux preloaded laptop review, specs were nothing special. it performed well, did the job... the price was at the bottom and it was almost 100 % higher than the similar build by HP. i though it will end with 100 EUR higher price but no. so i am not sure what the deal is here. i mean the review offered no justification for a price so high (it was just under 1000 EUR for the basic model).

similarly here with System76 - as i understand they buy the laptops and then brand them. they don't actually make their own, though they do offer customisation. so it's a resale business with extra service. this kind of thing would mean that they could have 10% or 20% higher price than the original shell. they add the value in a way with service. the question is does the added service make the product itself better or could one go to the source and save money on service. for a company that would not make sense. but for private customer this would be a cost saving thing to do.

of course all this could change if they start building their own device.

[sdsurfer]

of course all this could change if they start building their own device.

Yes, the hardware is from China, especially the laptops. But they are doing much more than just rebranding, and are moving more and more to making their own equipment. Just last week they bought a new milling machine for making their own keyboards, laptops, and tooling.
https://www.facebook.com/system76/ph...60052360382729

Then there's the tech they put into thermals of a Thelio. This will be my next desktop, once I get over some other home projects.
https://blog.system76.com/post/61813...ets-of-thelios

[poorguy]

Then there's the tech they put into thermals of a Thelio. This will be my next desktop, once I get over some other home projects.
https://blog.system76.com/post/618130916327456768/keeping-cool-with-thelio-the-secrets-of-thelios

They appear to be a quality built product or at least the desktop in the link you posted.

Man they are just so expensive though for my computer needs however they look nice.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

If I had problems with other more mainstream brands with drivers and such, I would say yes due to the near perfect usability with Linux. But these days that has become almost a non issue. In the last 5 years I've had my hands on at least 15-20 computers / laptops that I have cleaned up for others, including some new machines I kept for myself and upgraded with current parts. I can only remember a single instance where the touchpad didn't work on a laptop and I had to sort that out. 15-20 is a small sample size, but for my money it isn't much of a statistical blip, more of an anomaly.

[CatKiller]

You can install a complete Linux OS in about twenty minutes. I don't see the value in worrying about whether it is pre-installed.

If you buy a computer with Windows on, it's saying that you want people to sell computers that work with Windows. If you buy a computer with Linux on, it's saying that you want people to sell computers that work with Linux. We can install Linux ourselves, and troubleshoot for ourselves, and cope without official support, but we shouldn't have to.