Ask HN: Would you pay for a beautiful and stable Linux-distro for high-end PCs?

3 points by abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | 22 comments

By high-end I mean at least 16GB RAM, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive (or better), min. base frequency of 2.50 GHz, quadcore Processors and above (no Ultrabook support). Think Dell XPS 15 Laptop (here: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-15-laptop/spd/xps-15-7590-laptop/xn7590edldh).

Distro would have the following focus:

1. battery life; above 9hrs [CRITICAL]

2. beautiful and fast UI [CRITICAL]

3. intuitive and pleasing UX [CRITICAL]

4. developer focus: stack exchange integration, git/Mercurial plus GitHub, GitLab integration in explorer. tons of programmable interfaces for booting, screen etc. [CRITICAL]

4. only support for resolution 1080p and above (1920x1080)

5. only support for high-end pcs and laptops

6. limited drivers support to a small set of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other common devices (based on who's willing to pay)

7. Linux based and open source

8. no support for legacy drivers and devices

Expected audience is a small set of maybe around 10,000 people / developers who are willing to use it as their primary operating system and have an eye for battery life, design and speed.

Given these focus areas how much would you be willing to pay? If not for the OS itself, but for its development over a period of 2 years?

uberman 5 years ago |

I guess my first reaction is what would be the value proposition over alternatives like System76 or potentially Boxx?

I'm also a little confused by the description, specs, and timetable. We are starting with two years for development where one might expect delivery some time after that, but I consider many of the specs to be minimums and not representative of a "high end pc" today.

While I would certainly not want a "slow UI", your first 3 items seem unimportant as far as I am personally concerned. My main workstations are desktops and I almost never use my laptop when it is not plugged in. Even my laptop has about twice a guts of your spec and it is several years old now. For me battery life is completely irrelevant and I would gladly trade beautiful and pleasing for ubiquitous driver support.

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

> I guess my first reaction is what would be the value proposition over alternatives like System76 and Boxx?

Does their OS work equally well on non-System76 laptops? Because a lot of people would like a different laptop but would be fine using the System76 OS, that is, if it provides the same level of experience (battery life, performance) as laptops by System76.

Our focus would be on high-end laptops in the beginning. The timeline is when you'd expect things to be turn-key moving forward. The 2 years is just a guess.

kristoo 5 years ago |

I use PopOS as my OS on a high end PC and it is pretty good. There are some things which I find annoying, such as Bluetooth headphones going to a headset mode at the start of calls. Just tiny things. Would I pay to have a smoother experience? Probably, - I would like the OS to be as smooth as possible.

Although, I don't think that's the main problem with a Linux distro. Most of the friction still comes from third party apps, such as Teams (which I use for calls multiple times a week and it absolutely sucks).

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

Have you tried it on a recently released high end Laptop? Not Alienware level but something like the new Dell XPS 15?

kristoo 5 years ago | | |

I have not. I use a MacBook Pro as my laptop.

solarkraft 5 years ago |

> only support for high-end pcs and laptops

Why? This sounds like it's supposed to be inefficient.

> limited drivers support to a small set of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other common devices (based on who's willing to pay)

Also why? The Linux kernel has all the support for free.

That it's open source would be a precondition for me. The closest to what you're proposing is Elementary OS, which I would likely pay for if I was still using it.

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

The reason behind high-end is because it takes additional developer hours to support old computers.

Linux kernel does support all for free, but we want the booting, and the experience to be smooth. So we'll not use any code from Linux Kernel that slows the computer unless its absolutely needed by that small set of people.

The goal here is to make an opensource operating system that doesn't suck the way even ElementaryOS does. The battery life is bad unless you can spend 2 weeks optimizing every part of the kernel and OS. The experience is bad, lots of bugs spread around the distro.

verdverm 5 years ago |

As a reference point, I switched from linux to a Pixelbook Go for your critical reasons. I'd have a hard time justifying a higher price. The slightly lower specs have not hindered development, tho sometimes laggy when video call + screen share + heavy website like Jira

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

Would you pay $15 a year?

verdverm 5 years ago | | |

I pay 50 to Google per year per machine to provide a ton of control and security over software and access. So the amount is not a problem, but I'd want to maintain the ability to remote manage with my Google Workplace capabilities. They provide his for several OSes, other vendors do as well. You'll want to be workable for that maybe, maybe your niche doesn't care.

7174n6 5 years ago |

Buy a Thinkpad X1 Carbon and install Pop_OS on it. Done. And System76 won't charge you a cent!

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

Curious to know what sort of battery life you are getting?

7174n6 5 years ago | | |

I don't know for certain because I haven't ever let it run the whole way down. But I don't notice any difference than when the machine was running Windows 10.

yuppie_scum 5 years ago |

You’re kinda describing MacOS

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

Yes, but less expensive and maybe potentially free. A simple description would be an open-source MacOS meant only for developers.

kristoo 5 years ago | | |

That would be a dream come true (if it had Mac level app support and additionally supported Nvidia GPUs). Probably next to impossible, unfortunately.

phendrenad2 5 years ago |

$300, or $600/year

abhikandoi2000 5 years ago | |

More like $15/year

phendrenad2 5 years ago | | |

My thought is, the work required to make Linux meet all of your bullet points will be so costly that you'll need a lot of $15/yr users. But it's definitely possible to get them.