did they need to build all that?
I'm all for them doing something new, especially integrated tiling support. But it seems they have taken on way too much for a small company.
As an owner of a System76 laptop I'm really conflicted on this stuff.
On the one hand, I'm glad to see developer attention given to the Linux desktop. I use and like GNOME well enough, but it's great to see competition and innovation.
On the other... I guess when I buy System76, I'm effectively paying a markup to subsidize development of these side projects (I'll never use pop_OS for example).
As somebody who's looking to just buy a computer, it makes justifying the expense of System76 a little more difficult. There are other Clevo rebadgers, after all.
There isn't a fixed number of Linux users. Your economic model for this is misguided.
System76 seems to want to sell to engineers, researchers and data scientists. The competition here is a MacBook with the typical Unix ecosystem or a Windows laptop with WSL.
So this allows them to take control of the total user experience and increase their customer base.
Their target audience is people who want and need a Unix based environment, are power users, but don't want to play around too much.
So this investment is intended to sell more laptops. I think they have a fair shot at making this pay for itself and they have a small but reasonable opportunity to grow exponentially and become a player of a seriously different size.
I would assume people on HN could appreciate the ambition.
