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rickcarlinotoday at 2:10 AM2 repliesview on HN

I’m not endorsing the device. It might be mediocre, and the company might be too. What I like is the direction. Most of the criticism in this thread focuses on the marketing, but that’s actually the part I find interesting: it’s explicitly aimed at Linux-centric desktop users without pretending to be “just like Windows” or trying to hide the fact that it’s Linux.

Plenty of people are frustrated with the current Windows ecosystem (Microsoft account login really bothers me for a lot of reasons). The market usually responds with one of two things: a Windows laptop you can convert into a Linux machine, or a Linux machine that tries very hard not to act like one. This is at least purporting to be neither (maybe they are full of shit, who knows). It’s trying to sell a finished, opinionated product for power users on Linux. Even if this particular device ends up turning into the next juicero/Rabbit R100, I’m glad to see someone treating that segment as worth designing for.

So yeah computer vendors, go ahead and do this more I like the vibes here even if I have no intention on buying right now.


Replies

voidUpdatetoday at 2:33 PM

> "a Windows laptop you can convert into a Linux machine, or a Linux machine that tries very hard not to act like one"

You can buy computers with nothing installed on them if you want, and computer is computer (for the most part), so you can run whatever you want on it. I think the linux space is generally too fragmented into all the different distros to offer a "linux laptop", because people will wonder why it's not shipping with their favourite flavour of penguin

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wmftoday at 2:33 AM

The philosophy does sound good but the implementation appears to be skin deep. It's just not enough.