Pop!_OS (Linux)

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Pop!_OS is an operating system developed by System76 for STEM and creative professionals who use their computer as a tool to discover and create. Unleash your potential on secure, reliable open source software. Based on your exceptional curiosity, we sense you have a lot of it.

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Whether this is your first experience with Linux, or your latest adventure, all are welcome to discuss and ask questions about Pop!_OS and COSMIC. Keep the discussions friendly though, and remember to assume good intentions whenever you reply. We're all here because we have a shared love for Linux and open source software.

Support us by buying System76 hardware for you or your company! Or by donating on the Pop!_OS website through the "Support Pop" button. Pop!_OS and COSMIC are fully funded by System76 hardware sales. All systems are assembled in the USA. With your support, we'll work to push the Linux desktop forward with COSMIC.

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Follow the Code of Conduct

All posts on pop_os must adhere to the Pop!_OS community Code of Conduct. https://github.com/pop-os/code-of-conduct

Be helpful

Posts to pop_os must be helpful. When responding to a user asking for help, do not provide tongue-in-cheek responses like "RTM" or links to LMGTFY. Linking to direct sources that answer the asker's question is fine, but it's advised to provide some explanation as to how you got to that source.

Critique should be constructive

We within the Pop!_OS community welcome helpful criticism or ideas on ways to improve. However, basic "It's bad" or other simple negative comments don't help anyone fix anything. When voicing a complaint about something, try to point out ways the complaint could be improved or worked around, so that we can make a better product for it.

This rule applies to both Pop!_OS and its projects as well as other products available from third-parties.

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It can be funny to joke about malicious commands, however this is not the venue for it. Do not advise users to run commands which will lock up their systems, steal their data, or erase their drive. Examples of this include (but are not limited to) fork bombs, rm, etc.

Posts violating this rule will be removed, even if the post is clearly in jest. Repeated offences may lead to a ban. You may understand that the command isn't serious, but a new user might not.

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Hate speech of any kind will not be tolerated. Any violations will be removed, and are grounds for a ban.

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[Off-topic sorta] Pop_OS! on a non system76 device (lemmy.one)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am curious if the fact that a lot people use pop os on hardware other than system76 hardware is detrimental or helpful towards the development of the OS and the workload of the devs. Like if the number of users of pop os on different hardware configs increases, is that helpful for the devs considering that it may increase the number of bugs and hence result in an increase in worload

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The workload is the same regardless of how many people are using Pop!_OS, or what hardware they're using it on. It is not detrimental to the development of the OS for people to report hardware-specific issues. Nor does it necessarily matter how many bug reports there are. Outside of what's necessary for System76 hardware, development time is not typically spent on resolving hardware-specific issue reports because we don't have the means to do so. Most of the team works exclusively on Pop!_OS and COSMIC-specific features and issues.

For us to diagnose and fix hardware-specific issues, the QA and engineering teams need to have that hardware on hand to test and validate with. Given that our salaries depend entirely on System76 hardware sales, and the QA lab is in the same factory where systems are assembled, that's the hardware that we provide the best first party support for. With each OS update regression-tested on the hardware we've sold in the past.

Sometimes the hardware support that we provide for our systems also fixes issues in hardware from other vendors. We've sold a lot of systems over the years with a wide range of hardware configurations. A lot of the components in our hardware are also widely used by other system vendors. Such as a particular Ethernet chip, or the latest NVIDIA graphics card. There's a lot of regression tests that we use to test some advanced hardware features, and these might coincidentally resolve issues in other systems. As had happened when we worked on hybrid switchable graphics in system76-power for our hybrid graphics laptops.

For everything else though, the majority of the support for hardware-specific issues depends on community support, kernel/firmware updates, or even updates released upstream in certain packages by Ubuntu. Community members who have the same hardware might respond to an issue report with a workaround they found. We might respond to support requests with known solutions we've seen reported in the past. Sometimes the community finds a solution that can be generically applied to Pop!_OS.

The best way to get hardware-specific issues resolved is reporting them to the Linux kernel bug reporting mailing list. If a kernel maintainer or developer has that hardware on hand, and is able to write a patch for it which gets merged, then it'll be included in a future kernel release. We regularly update the kernel in Pop!_OS, so we receive those fixes in bulk without any involvement necessary on our part — outside of packaging and releasing a new kernel.