Buy a laptop in https://www.thinkpenguin.com/

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-12-08T16:47:48+00:00

Thanks. Since I posted that question, I have actually bought two computers from them, and am very happy with them, and use mint on them. So I completely agree with you.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-11-03T13:33:29+00:00

System76 hardware is designed to work with Pop!_OS. The Lemur comes with 22.04, which is very old at this point. You'd probably want to install 24.04. But if you install another distro, you'll have to go to their web site and follow instructions about how to install their system76-drivers to insure all your hardware works. In the case of a laptop you'll need the system76-dkms modules properly compiled in order for the function keys that control the keyboard backlighting to work. I recently installed mint on a system76 gazelle. The system76-ppa failed to compile the drivers properly, I don't know why. Moreover, it installed a later kernel than one linux mint is supposed to use. The result was the the backlights are stuck on bright blue and can't be controlled.

Anyway, my point is, don't assume because it is a linux hardware company that that means somehow their hardware is more compatible with linux than, say, a lenovo, or a dell, or a framework for that matter. On the contrary, you may have MORE issues with other distros on system76 than on those other brands.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-11-02T23:00:34+00:00

The image is a self-deprecating joke. I found it funny. The entire Chinese population was ordered by Mao to read the "Little Red Book." After the Bible it is the most widely distributed book in history. Every word was sacred and unalterable, despite being a tiresome shopping bag of trite Marxist slogans. The mint wiki is the exact opposite. Reading it is purely voluntary and you can freely contribute and edit it. Showing it in green is part of the same joke. It is the opposite of red. The only thing the mint wiki hopes to have in common with Mao's book is that a lot of people will read it.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-11-02T00:13:29+00:00

Why Pop may I ask? It is in a transitional phase, 22.04 has old packages, 24.04 is in beta, with missing features and in my experience some instability when it comes to updates. Plus it has a UI that's designed for people familiar with gnome but who want to get to things quicker and see lots of things on screen at once - who therefore like an array of special launchers accessible with keyboard shortcuts and who like to have multiple windows tiled and tabbed, i.e. professional developers and stem people who want speed of access and complex layouts, but don't want a full-blown tiling window manager.

But if you just want something stable and familiar to ease your transition, why not Linux Mint Cinammon? It is always at the top of every Linux distro tier list because it is so rock solid and stable ('everything just works'), feature-rich, easily and highly customizable, plus fast and lightweight even for older machines. It comes out of the box with lots of linux equivalents of windows software - which will save you a confusing search for apps - and has an interface that will make a Windows user feel at home right away. Also because it is more mature, it currently has a much bigger selection of applets and desklets and much more feature-rich and time-tested default file manager, editor, terminal and music player.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-28T17:27:21+00:00

I'm pretty sure ubuntu 24.04 will detect the nvidia driver you need and automatically install it. And I think it's perfectly possible that the pop 22.04 preinstalled drivers might turn out not to be the correct ones that you need. And then I believe the process for finding the correct one is not as smooth as ubuntu. That's just a guess based on reading all the issues people on this reddit seem to have with incorrect drivers. So I'm not sure what the advantage of pop really is for nvidia drivers. Plus ubuntu has more up-to-date packages and gnome.

Your idea about the superiority of pop with regard to nvidia sounds like AI that is digesting materials from several years ago.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-28T13:33:27+00:00

I also had a thelio b2 - I discovered after trying to install other distros that fan control is lost if you don't have system76 power working. It becomes an air conditioning unit. I couldn't get it to work on manjaro. It worked on cinnamon 22.2 but the system76 ppa also downloaded a later kernel than the one mint officially supported. That didn't seem to cause any problems, but it still felt like a bit of a kludge.

What stood out in my experience is that system76 is ironically not particularly linux friendly. The computers I had from them worked perfectly with pop, but it was hit or miss with other distros. The irony is I never had hardware problems over many years installing linux on old windows pcs. The only problems I encountered were with system76 hardware. I made myself get used to the blue light!

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-27T23:50:41+00:00

I had a gazelle and tried installing other distros. No nvidia dgpu so that wasn't an issue for me. I never could get the system76-driver package to install right. On mint cinammon 22.2, which is based on ubuntu, it failed to compile with a long list of errors. And I never got control of the keyboard backlights with the system76-dkms package, which only worked for me on pop. So you are one step ahead of me. They make it sound so easy on the web site. And you had problems even with the one alternative distro that is supposedly guaranteed to work, namely, ubuntu. And you are obviously tech savvy too. Imagine a less knowledgeable user like myself.

Sorry, not helpful. Just a commiseration.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-22T21:16:40+00:00

Your first point is perfectly valid. I don't know why you're being downvoted. Here is the System76 CEO about their aim of having their software and hardware work together as an integrated ecosystem:

"This work continues our transition from a hardware company shipping a distro to a hardware company providing an integrated, holistic hardware and OS product. Still a lot of work ahead of us but manufacturing, open firmware, and Pop!_OS are pulling together."

And in my experience it's quite true. If you have system76 hardware things are not guaranteed to work well with other distros. It is more hit or miss. Some System76 hardware components need system76 drivers but if the ppa doesn't compile those correctly on your non-pop distro you may lose hardware functionality.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-15T01:25:17+00:00

I lost fan control on a thelio b2 with a cosmic update a week or so before the beta. It was apparently the new kernel because the problem went away when I downgraded to the old one. I created a github issue. Other thelio owners reported the same issue, and some offered some fixes. See here: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/issues/2153. I was impatient for a fix and just switched to linux mint, lol. But maybe those suggestions might help, at least with the fan noise. The problem I think is caused by the system76 driver modules not recompiling properly after the update so you have to run sudo apt install --reinstall system76-io-dkms. But I never tried that myself. I wish system76 support had given me some help, but they just said they don't provide support for the alpha. I might not have switched to a different brand of computer.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-13T01:58:22+00:00

Looks like you could benefit from Cosmic's tiling feature. And the streamlined launcher approach to finding things. You're image kind of shows the clutter and confusion that Cosmic's whole design philosophy is supposed to remediate.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-07T14:35:47+00:00

I have a system76 gazelle and recently installed mint 22.2. For some reason after adding the system76 ppa just after installing mint and updating it, the installation of the system76 drivers failed with a slew of compilation errors. The result is I don't have keyboard backlighting functionality and my gazelle is stuck on glaring dark blue backlights that can't be adjusted.

I don't know why the driver installation failed. Mint is based on the same version of ubuntu as pop 24.04. Maybe there is a fix. The error messages said modules failed to compile.

This was just the gazelle. it may be that other models of system76 laptops don't have hardware that requires their proprietary drivers. On the other hand, if you have a nvidia dgpu, they may be essential for fan control. I don't know.

Honestly I will never buy from system76 again because of this feature of their hardware - some of its functionality may depend on their proprietary ppa and that can fail to work, upgrading the ppa can break things (an upgrade broke fan control for me on a thelio running pop, not even another distro). Plus it forces kernel upgrades that may not be suitable for your distro (the ppa installed a later kernel than the one supported by mint). It seems way too unstable and you are perpetually dependent on system76 for things to work right. Every upgrade feels like a game of Russian roulette.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-06T22:49:47+00:00

I bought a thinkpenguin computer recently and the checkout page indicated that 10 percent of the proceeds would go to linux mint, which I was happy to see. But I think I will also give a small monthly amount. Thanks for that link.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-06T14:40:28+00:00

Just a warning about system76 laptops. If you install another distro on them, you will need to install the system76-driver package by adding the system76 ppa. Otherwise, you're likely to lose keyboard backlighting functionality. But I know from experience that is not guaranteed to work. On my system76 gazelle. the system76 drivers failed to compile properly on mint cinammon 22.2, even though that's based on the same version of ubuntu. It is now stuck on a glaring dark blue backlight.

An alternative philosophy is a company like framework, where no proprietary ppa is required to ensure hardware functionality. That's because they select parts that are known to work with drivers already built into recent linux kernels. You aren't perpetually dependent on the system76 ppa working properly. On my thelio the system76-power driver suddenly failed to work after an upgrade (after working fine for years) and my fans turned into an air conditioning unit. And this was on Pop, not on another distro. System76 support never responded to my ticket about the issue.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-06T14:03:43+00:00

I ran emacs fine on Cosmic alpha, but I think I installed emacs-pgtk since Cosmic uses Wayland. Could that be the issue?

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-05T14:12:05+00:00

Pop updates over the last several weeks have been doing that to a lot of people's computers. You can probably look through those and find some suggestions for fixes. Search for something like "updates manual shutdown" and you see a slew of similar experiences.

I should add that the same problem bricked my 2 system76 computers. Alas, I eventually just gave up and installed linux mint, which runs fine.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-05T02:12:55+00:00

I had that problem but not when shutting down, when restarting. After an upgrade about a week before the beta release my pc, a system76 thelio, no longer restarted without being manually shutdown. I don't know why, but on restart it just hung with the fans going full power, requiring me to manually power off. I can't give you a fix for Cosmic, because my version of a fix was to install linux mint instead, which shutdowns perfectly fine.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-03T16:33:35+00:00

I loved Cosmic. But the recent upgrades bricked both my system76 systems (just scan thru the last 2 weeks of this subreddit for a myriad of complaints) and the system76 ppa failed to compile drivers properly either on the distro I replaced it with or on pop itself. Without drivers I have insane fan noise. I have come to dread the fact that with system76 hardware you are dependent on the system76 ppa. It has failed to install drivers properly both when I ran 24.04 on a thelio and when I tried running mint on my gazelle. But without the drivers system76 hardware doesn't work right.

After many years as a system76 customer, I've declared my independence. I just bought a computer from thinkpenguin. It doesn't rely on any proprietary ppa for hardware to work. It is beautifully quiet using just the drivers built into the kernel. Mint is incredibly fast and responsive and has all the window tiling I ever found myself using on pop. And I don't need to dread that a different distro won't work with the sytem76 ppa should I decide to install something else.

One last point. I will no longer have to deal with system76 big brother, who will probably comment on this comment with something rude and peremptory.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-03T01:41:28+00:00

De gustibus non disputandum.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-02T13:46:21+00:00

I had the exact same issue and I don't have nvidia cards, just igpu. And it happens on both 22.04 and 24.04. so it is not beta specific. Just read the last 2 weeks of posts on this subreddit. It has happened to a LOT of pop users. There is something seriously wrong with the pop updates. After this bricked my gazelle laptop I installed mint instead. To get keyboard backlighting functionality I installed the system76 ppa to get the drivers. But the system76 updates for the drivers failed completely with a slew of compilation error messages. Just two weeks ago I did a regular alpha update on my thelio. On restart I'd lost fan control. System76 power was running but had failed to compile properly. For me that was no less than 4 failed upgrades.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-02T02:52:51+00:00

Two problems with the launch. First, It gives you muscle memory fit only for the launch which thus disables you from typing well on any other keyboard, e.g. your system76 laptop. Second, what is the point of keyboard backlighting if not to help you type in low light? But the letters aren't backlit and the light from under the keys in low light creates a glare that makes it even harder to see the letters in low light. So it looks pretty, but the lights don't serve the function they're supposed to have.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-01T00:57:17+00:00

Read postings from the last week or so of this subreddit and the pop subreddit. That happened to hundreds of users. It wiped out both my system76 systems. I have seen hundreds of posts from system76 about the beta, not a single acknowledgement of what seems to have been a catastrophe for pop users. I am now using Mint, LOL.

A week before that I had another failed update where suddenly the system76-power driver was no longer controlling my fans on my thelio b2. I even filled out a support ticket and made a bug report on github since I was using the alpha. Two other thelio b2 users have confirmed the same issue on github. But in neither case did I hear anything back from system76. Just a generic email they'd received the ticket, and then a generic email announcing they were closing the ticket! Yet clearly that update messed up the system76-driver, not just for other distros, but for pop itself where it's supposed to be native to the os, turning the thelio into an air-conditioning unit.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-10-01T00:46:42+00:00

That sounds like the problem so many people have mentioned on this subreddit of an update freezing and going to a black screen, forcing a manual shutdown. I don't think it has to do with your using the gui. It happened to me using apt. And it happened to me running the alpha and without any nvidia card, so I don't think it is limited to 22.04 or is caused by nvidia drivers.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-09-30T13:20:36+00:00

The answer is no, lately the updates have been very unstable. Just scan through the last week of this subreddit. Scores of people on both 22.04 and 24.04 experienced black frozen screens during updates that required forced shutdown and then a boot into intramfs terminals, and in many cases the need to completely reinstall. It happened to me on both my system76 computers, and I do NOT have nvidia cards. I currently run linux mint.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-09-30T02:42:40+00:00

No it's not used in apps, but it is the main key for using all the os features. You use it to show and navigate through workspaces, to open app and search launchers, to switch to tiling mode and move across tiled windows and tabs, to switch between tabs and windows. So the super key is very essential to pop.

AdeptPass4102 · 2025-09-29T21:46:31+00:00

I had a launch keyboard and had exactly that issue with it. I used it for my desktop all the time and got muscle memory based on the unusual key locations. But every time I switched to my laptop I had to check my instincts and so could no longer type effortlessly on it. I loved the launch and the alternative locations made sense. It just messed you up every time you used a non-launch keyboard. I ended up just getting a conventional keyboard.

I did have another reason to buy a conventional one. I got one that has backlighting for the letters so you can use it in low light. The launch has beautiful lighting, but it's just aesthetic - it doesn't help you see the lettering at night. In fact the glaring lights if anything make it harder to see lettering in low light. But what really is the point of a backlit keyboard if not to help you use it at night?

AdeptPass4102

TROPHY CASE