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HP Ubuntu Hardware

HP Chooses Ubuntu-Based Pop!_OS Linux For Its Upcoming Dev One Laptop (betanews.com) 64

System76's CEO Carl Richell announced that HP has chosen the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS operating system to run on its 14-inch developer-focused notebook called "Dev One." Brian Fagioli from BetaNews speculates that a HP acquisition of System76 "could be a possibility in the future -- if this new relationship pans out at least." He continues: HP could be testing the waters with the upcoming Dev One. Keep in mind, System76 does not even build its own laptops, so we could see the company leave the notebook business and focus on desktops only -- let HP handle the Pop!_OS laptops. "We've got you covered. Experience exceptional multi-core performance from the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO processor and multitask with ease. Compile code, run a build, and keep all your apps running with more speed from the 16GB memory. Plus, load and save files in a flash, thanks to 1TB fast PCIe NVMe M.2 storage. We've even added a Linux Super key so shortcuts are a click away. Simply put, HP Dev One is built to help you code better," explains HP.

The company adds, "Pop!_OS is at your service. Create your ideal work experience with multiple tools to help you perform with peak efficiency. Use Stacking to organize and access multiple applications, browsers, and terminal windows. Move, resize, and arrange windows with ease or, let Pop!_OS keep you organized and efficient with Auto-tiling. And use Workspaces to reduce clutter by organizing windows across multiple desktops." Apparently, there will only be one configuration priced at $1,099. So far, no details about a release date have been announced other than "coming soon."

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HP Chooses Ubuntu-Based Pop!_OS Linux For Its Upcoming Dev One Laptop

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  • by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @05:41AM (#62554266)
    AFAIK, System76's laptops are popular because of their physical build quality, not just their performance specs, i.e. their keyboards, trackpads, screens, well-assembled, few faults, etc.. Don't HP have the opposite reputation? (Many years ago, I met an ex-HP employee that told me so).
    • by BlacKSacrificE ( 1089327 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @06:51AM (#62554338)

      Both as an ex-field tech with HP and as someone who has stunk up many build rooms across various orgs, I would say it's hard to draw a line between HP and Dell enterprise kit, the only real decider is the sweeteners you get from the OEM for purchasing the bulk. They are otherwise bullet roof and highly serviceable.

      The key word here in "enterprise". Consumer tier Dell and HP (Inspiron, XPS and Pavillion, I'm looking at you) are absolute trash. Being the kind of guy I am I have seen dozens of these machines from friends, relatives and colleagues to see if I can work out "that weird thing it does when I try to open my mail", and all of them are resource limited and redlined with bloatware mess. Build quality is what you'd expect from thin plastic trying to compete with the thickness of Apple hardware and the alloys of the enterprise ranges

      Despite not having laid hands on a 76 laptop, I would be comfortable saying that from an overall build quality perspective most will be satisfied *if* it is HP's enterprise arm taking the lead, as I would hope. If it's consumer tier, it's already dead in the water. I don't think devs will tolerate that dross.

      • Wasnt the HP enterprise arm what they got when they acquired Compaq?
      • Thanks for the background info. I get the best bang for my buck when I buy whatever decent hardware is available, remove the pre-installed malware (Windows), & install Ubuntu. I can usually sort out any particular problems with Ubuntu-hardware compatibility in a couple of hours & sometimes everything works "out of the box," e.g. my current MSI. For me, HP doesn't qualify as decent hardware.
      • >I don't think devs will tolerate that dross.

        That's why I've been buying Apple laptops ever since they went unixy and X86. The PC laptop landscape was too much of a minefield. I deal with an endless number of other people's laptops in a big corporation and friends and family. There doesn't seem to be much of a safe zone where you can say "Buy from X and spend at least Y and you will be good". They all come out with something terrible at every price point sooner or later. Of course now Apple has caught th

        • Personally, I'm still galled MacOS + Windows have nowhere *near* the capability to control fonts like Ubuntu-flavored Distros can using gnome-tweaks:

          https://www.linuxfordevices.co... [linuxfordevices.com], (Refer to #3)

          I'm old, use a 4K monitor, and I like my fonts large enough to read comfortably. Is that too much to ask? For this reason alone, every time Apple introduces a new OS, I make a point to speak with a Genius and always walk away with the same unsatisfying result. I don't understand why people accept that B.S. A
          • I certainly don't buy apple monitors. They don't seem to make much sense as you make clear.

            As for ubuntu fonts, I retreat to the command line and gentle glow of an SSH session. The font is whatever monospace font I set the terminal to.
            So I'm blissfully ignorant of Ubuntu fonts. Pretty documents are done in latex.

      • Consumer tier Dell and HP (Inspiron, XPS and Pavillion, I'm looking at you) are absolute trash. Being the kind of guy I am I have seen dozens of these machines from friends, relatives and colleagues to see if I can work out "that weird thing it does when I try to open my mail", and all of them are resource limited and redlined with bloatware mess.

        I'm a bit confused by your account. This seems to reflect poorly on the pre-installed software rather than the build quality. What if you wipe the bloatware or even better wipe the OS and replace it with some lean GNU/Linux distribution?

      • Countdown to HP purchase 10, 9, 8,

    • HP doesn't even design many if not most of their laptops. They are some ODM [wikipedia.org]'s design from stem to stern. They just get some HP marks silkscreened onto the PCBs during production, and some HP logo grafted onto the case lid.

      Consequently HP (and most other brands) laptop quality is a completely mixed bag. Some of the hardware is very high quality. My lady's HP P4 laptop is still around here because the fucker still works flawlessly and I haven't been able to bring myself to chuck it. (It's going now though, in

      • Also offtopic FUCK YOUR CAPTCHAS SLASHDOT

        THAT LAST CAPTCHA DID NOT WORK

        YOU ARE A BAG OF FUCKING LAMES AND HCAPTCHA IS FOR ALSO-RANS WHO CAN'T AFFORD TO USE A REAL CAPTCHA

        Also your spam filter is fucking incompetent

        Filter error: Don't use so many caps
        Filter error: Don't use so many caps
        Filter error: Don't use so many caps
        Filter error: Don't use so many caps
        Filter error: Don't use so many caps

    • by b0xii ( 904500 )
      Build quality is average. Had multiple overheating issues with mine. Sent it back and got a refund.
    • by Astfgl ( 203296 )
      All I know is, when I think of a developer laptop, a 14" screen does NOT spring to mind. Call me when they come out with a 17" model.
  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @05:52AM (#62554274) Homepage

    More Linux-friendly vendors are always good. A couple of questions for HP, though...

    First, why don't they make their existing laptops Linux-friendly. I have a new Z-book, and many (most?) of the special buttons (display brightness, etc.) are not recognized. The touchpad and the trackpoint have identical IDs, meaning that it is difficult to distinguish them in the settings (the only difference is the order in which they are registered with the OS). Lots of other little things - annoying. Fix what you've got, HP.

    Second, why rebrand Ubuntu? That seems needlessly confusing, and it will add another layer of update complexity. After Ubuntu issues an update, how long will it take HP to follow suit? Plus, you'd think they would profit from Ubuntu's name recognition, whereas (Sorry System76) no one has ever heard of Pop!_OS.

    • by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @05:57AM (#62554280)
      That's not fair, lots of people have heard of pop os! It's well known as the os that nukes itself randomly when trying to install steam :p
      • In my case Pop!OS is just the OS that Valve Software refuses to support Steam on. It mostly works fine. And it's also the OS that Aspyr refuses to support Civ VI for Linux on. Even though it's a direct Ubuntu derivative with very few changes, neither of those vendors will support you if you use it.

        Consequently, although I have no technical problems with it, I will be ditching Pop!OS next time I feel like dicking around with my Linux install, and going back to Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu, holy shit GNOME is a s

        • Pop_os doesnâ(TM)t support secure boot. And HP is offering it as a product? Itâ(TM)s dead before it starts.

          • Pop_os doesnÃ(TM)t support secure boot. And HP is offering it as a product? ItÃ(TM)s dead before it starts.

            Wow, that's super lame, since Ubuntu supports it. System76 reveals themselves to be yet another bag of lames who should not have done their own distribution. If you don't support stuff that works in the distribution you're deriving from without a very, very good reason then it's better not to bother.

            • It's an intentional decision. They're opposed to the forced use of the MS-signed EFI booter.
              Fortunately, Secure Boot as a standard allows you several legitimate ways around this.

              You can authorize the specific boot binary and kernel, but you'll have to do that every time those are upgraded.
              You can create a CA, set it up to auto-sign, and register the cert with Secure Boot, and never have to touch it again.

              I did the former for a while, got tired of having to re-authorize binaries (mostly because it piss
              • Not being able to run Ubuntu is like not being able to run Windows, so if they actually need to run Pop!OS then they are a non-starter anyway, and if they don't then why not just put Ubuntu on 'em?

                • I'm sure you can run Ubuntu, if you want... Or Windows.

                  There is one successful Linux laptop OEM on the planet, right now.
                  They use Pop!_+whateverOS (I really do hate the name).

                  I don't think I could think of a better reason to use it if I tried.
                  But from my personal experience, I get it. I doubt I'll ever go back to Ubuntu after Pop.
                  • But from my personal experience, I get it. I doubt I'll ever go back to Ubuntu after Pop.

                    I will, and soon.

                    Pop added nothing to my experience, and it significantly detracts from it since nobody will support stuff on it. Out of the box it's as lame as a Macintosh. You can't configure the taskbar for example, unless you scrub it and install the one that it's based on, and both are buggy and crashy. One of the things they did when they forked it is take away config options. That's fucking garbage. But if I want Kubuntu, I can just install that. I don't need to dick around with a derivative of Ubunt

                    • Out of the box it's as lame as a Macintosh.

                      As much as any other GNOME3 installation.

                      You can't configure the taskbar for example

                      Assuming you're referring to the dock.
                      Settings, Desktop, Dock.

                      unless you scrub it and install the one that it's based on

                      See above.

                      and both are buggy and crashy.

                      Never had it crash or "bug" once. Unsure what you're referring to.

                      One of the things they did when they forked it is take away config options.

                      No, they moved them, and you couldn't be bothered to go look.

                      That's fucking garbage.

                      I agree. One should generally try to educate themselves before engaging in faux confident slander.

                      I don't need to dick around with a derivative of Ubuntu.

                      Pop has passed Ubuntu in popularity. And for good reason. Ubuntu's desktop has been an unmitigated disaster for years, now.
                      22.04 looks like it's turning the ship around, th

                    • Assuming you're referring to the dock.
                      Settings, Desktop, Dock.

                      Because I actually went through this I actually know that they actually removed some of the settings options in the dock. By all means though, tell me more about how you ignored my comment's content.

                      Never had it crash or "bug" once. Unsure what you're referring to.

                      The dock crashed out on me several times.

                      No, they moved them, and you couldn't be bothered to go look.

                      I forgot the name of the stupid dock but if you do the research you can see what it was forked from, install the original yourself, and see that it has more configuration options. That is, if you want to know what you're talking about. I've seen little evidence of that.

                    • Because I actually went through this I actually know that they actually removed some of the settings options in the dock. By all means though, tell me more about how you ignored my comment's content.

                      Actually, you said:

                      You can't configure the taskbar for example, unless you scrub it and install the one that it's based on, and both are buggy and crashy.

                      There's no qualifier, there.
                      Then you said,

                      One of the things they did when they forked it is take away config options.

                      That one is ambiguous, but if you use the sentence that preceded it as context, a normal person would read it as absolute as well, since it makes no sense if it isn't meant that way.

                      So no, I didn't ignore your comments. It just seems like you've got an ax to grind, and are now throwing spaghetti at the wall.

                      I know all this, because I too went through this when I transitioned from Ubuntu (+ Dash-To-Dock, which Cosmic Dock is a fork of, as you

                    • Jankiness of plasma?

                    • Ya. Do you disagree? I know a few peeps who are very, very.... in love with Plasma. And that's fine, to each their own.

                      I just find it inconsistent and strangely broken in strange ways, nearly always.
                      Every time it's time for an upgrade, I almost always start with Kubuntu just to give Plasma a shot- because it's really beautiful. And I always move away from it because of weird shit that is buggy or just janky. Most recently, it was that I had 2 audio icons, and it continually detected my main drive as a re
                    • No I have not experienced those issues in plasma and I have been a regular user of kde since the 2.x days (your removable problem sounds like an issue I had with my Iomega jaz drive lol). The only thing that I can agree with are the widgets comment. Way too many menu items. Itâ(TM)s like they wanted to keep windows 3.1 alive.

                      Kubuntu is also not the latest nor the most maintained kde distro anymore. Neon probably fixes a lot of your problems as it is also bleeding edge.. but itâ(TM)s far from a r

                    • My problems are consistent across hardware, so I'm fully willing to believe that it's Kubuntu specific, and I honestly haven't put any effort into trying to find a KDE-focused distro that does a better job.

                      I'll give Neon a shot.
        • I primarily run Pop on my ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo. Runs Civ VI great, and no problems with Steam thus far. Anecdotal, of course, but gaming on Linux has always been YMMV.
          GNOME3 really bugged the fuck out of me for a while, but I found a standard set of extensions to install to make it not suck, and Pop's own extensions go a long way toward that too.
          I just can't use KDE anymore. I can't. It's so fucking clunky. GNOME3 wants to be an OS that can be controlled with a single finger, and KDE wants to get in your
    • by kick6 ( 1081615 )

      Plus, you'd think they would profit from Ubuntu's name recognition, whereas (Sorry System76) no one has ever heard of Pop!_OS.

      I'm a seldom linux user as the packages I need for my day job are windows only, and even I run pop!_os. Not having heard of it is a you problem.

    • by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @06:21AM (#62554308)

      First, why don't they make their existing laptops Linux-friendly.

      If you make a laptop which is for Windows then your parts manufacturers support Windows. If you build for Linux and select components which support Linux then they will support Linux. There have been situations with Dell XPS laptops where an OS/Firmware bug meant that device firmware was updated and became incompatible with Linux. The Linux based XPS laptops obviously didn't get that update and didn't break. I've even had a Dell technician downgrade the firmware on such upgraded hardware to a Linux compatible version.

      Generally, components for a Linux system are much more likely to be selected to reduce or limit binary blobs. Again, these cause a support problem in that, if there's a bug or worse security vulnerability found in a binary blob that the manufacturer has abandoned there's nothing that can be done about that. By contrast, problems in F/OSS drivers can be fixed.

      It's a very worthwhile thing for everyone to insist on getting hardware that comes with official Linux support and even better, though sometimes difficult, to insist on completely free firmware on the system.

      • Everything you said is true, and yet what the GP said is also a good point. In particular there is no good reason why the buttons should not function. If you use USB internally, another thing which there's no good reason not to do, there are standards that you can and should be using for that functionality. It's very very cheap to make HID Consumer controls these days, and there are standard codes for brightness, volume and so on. In general Linux users don't want special treatment, what we want is a lack o

    • System76 uses all the normal official ubuntu repos, so updates to ubuntu should come in a timely fashion.

      Pop! was created by System76 to avoid a supporting the GNOME transition. Unlike many Linux companies, System76 provides a level of free support. So, when Canonical decided to chuck Unity for GNOME, System76 decided they would fork and maintain Unity so they didn't have to retrain all their people on GNOME.

      • So, when Canonical decided to chuck Unity for GNOME, System76 decided they would fork and maintain Unity so they didn't have to retrain all their people on GNOME.

        The interface for Pop!OS is GNOME. So if Unity was the justification for Pop!OS, that was a shitty decision, and it's no longer true anyway. I installed Pop!OS on my desktop and GNOME 3 was a shit show, shock amazement. The taskbar/launcher doesn't even work right, and it's a fork that removes options from the original to boot! So I installed the original and that didn't work right either. It's not the default taskbar, it's some replacement. So it's not really GNOME, it's GNOME with an even shittier toolbar

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      In reality, it doesn't really matter what OS HP puts on their laptops. About 80% of Linux users are going to wipe the drive when they get the machine and replace it with their own preferred distribution.

      What's really important is that the laptop has Linux driver support available. We can figure out the rest from there.

    • by alantus ( 882150 )
      Not to mention that the name Pop!_OS is beyond stupid.
    • >the special buttons (display brightness, etc.) are not recognized.

      That should be handled in SMM, regardless of OS. If it isn't working, it's HP's fault.

    • whereas (Sorry System76) no one has ever heard of Pop!_OS.

      Can always tell when someone who isn't a regular Linux user shares their opinion ;)

      Pop has been more popular than Ubuntu [distrowatch.com] for quite a while, now.

  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday May 21, 2022 @05:56AM (#62554278)

    I would pass. We are coming up on year four of using HP and the number of system boards we've had to replace is staggering. This is on their Elitebook line.

    We also have the swelling battery issue and have to use the HP Battery Health software to keep the batteries from fully charging to prevent the swelling.

    In addition, according to HP, a machine lasting just over two hours while not plugged in and being used is perfectly reasonable.

    No way would I use an HP machine.

    • But they did so much for Compaq. "...HP acquisition of System76 "could be a possibility in the future"
    • I had an Elitebook fail due to a known GPU die bonding problem (Quadro G71) and it took me over 24 hours on the phone and two "tech" visits (the guy was a total dildo) to get it replaced even though I had a 3 year warranty. They did eventually replace it with a faster refurb (after they broke it completely, it was just shutting off before their monkey shat on it) and then I sold that immediately.

      Complaining about the battery life is silly though. Elitebooks are desktop replacements. You don't expect them to

      • Complaining about the battery life is silly though. Elitebooks are desktop replacements. You don't expect them to have a lot of battery life.

        Yes, we do. Some of our people work in locations where they're on the move for several hours doing surveys or gathering information. They don't have the luxury of plugging in their machine and doing their work. If a machine only lasts 2 hours or so while not plugged in, that's unacceptable.

        • Elitebooks are desktop replacements. You don't expect them to have a lot of battery life.

          Yes, we do.

          That's frankly unrealistic. Nobody's desktop replacements have a lot of battery life. Literally. If you want the powerful CPU and GPU then you're not going to have the greatest runtime. You've prioritized ability to use power and then you're complaining that you're using it. Prioritize battery life instead. Or if you actually need those computing resources, then budget for additional batteries. You're going to need them no matter who you buy your laptops from.

          Some of our people work in locations where they're on the move for several hours doing surveys or gathering information. They don't have the luxury of plugging in their machine and doing their work.

          Wait, you're making people carry around massive,

  • ... but I question whether it would be the distribution of choice for developers, especially advanced ones.

    I use it as a gaming rig - made the transition about a year back from a Windows rig - and it's fairly adept at that - but so are many distributions.

    It's ridiculously simple to use, but I would find it far too stripped back to be a useful dev machine.
    The software centre is ... just another Linux software centre ... and has an annoying inability to actually tell you what is happening when it's downloadin

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Arch is hard to support as a rolling release model, Debian is a tad too conservative on release cycle. Additionally, the purist sentiment around open drivers could be a problem, though outside of nVidia that may be of limited practical import, but that would make Debian and Fedora both challenges.

      Ubuntu has a reasonable cadence, but the very hard push of snaps dings it a bit, so one of the Ubuntu derivatives that are putting effort in 'un-snapping' the distribution, though at some point it'll probably make

      • it'll probably make sense for such distributions to give up on Ubuntu and go straight to, say, Debian testing as their platform, as Ubuntu stuffs more and more of their 'value' into snap-only.

        Pop!OS' thing is flatpaks. Naturally you can also install snaps... I don't think that's a dealbreaker for them.

        As more and more software expects to be installed this way, it might actually get harder to run it any other way... Because of version incompatibilities.

        • I transitioned from Ubuntu to Pop about a year ago. Generally speaking, the only things that are available only in snaps are Canonical stuffs. But it's fine- flatpak and snap coexist without problems.

          Right now, I only use it for lxd, because it is a legitimately nice container tool.

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