PopOS is great but I think system76 needs to design their laptops from scratch instead of relabeling Clevo laptops if they’re serious about challenging Apple. Their laptops have the specs, but the fit and finish is just not there.
I have a Clevo laptop (a few years old now) and even at the time, it was not exactly state of the art in terms of weight, battery life, etc. It's proven to be a fairly tough beast (even having fallen off my bike and lived). It is, unlike many new laptops, relatively easy to open up for upgrades and repair. Getting Apple's 'fit and finish' means a closed box.
That's true now, but it doesn't have to be. Before the retina MacBook Pro, the MacBook Pro used to be one of the easiest laptops to service. Opening it up, it was very easy to access almost every component.
When I was searching for a new laptop, I stumbled upon this comment from a System76 employee that goes into more depth about the work they do on new laptops that seems more than just relabelling Clevo laptops.
I'm thinking about using PopOS on my Thinkpad X1 Extreme, as it's rumoured to be the only Linux that supports hybrid graphics, and it's specifically designed for developers and other creators (which Macbook Pros once seemed to be).
Their hardware, though, seems to be meh. Give me this on some high quality hardware.
I dual book my X1 Extreme with Windows 10 and Pop OS and it works about 98%. The trackpad is buggy as hell, auto date/time switch is broken, and a few other minor usability issues endemic to using Linux just drive me crazy.
