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

by abhikandoi2000 on 3/23/2021, 6:58:07 PM with 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?

  • by uberman on 3/23/2021, 7:13:23 PM

    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.

  • by kristoo on 3/23/2021, 7:16:08 PM

    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).

  • by solarkraft on 3/23/2021, 7:09:41 PM

    > 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.

  • by verdverm on 3/23/2021, 7:08:04 PM

    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

  • by 7174n6 on 3/23/2021, 7:52:38 PM

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

  • by yuppie_scum on 3/23/2021, 7:18:08 PM

    You’re kinda describing MacOS

  • by phendrenad2 on 3/23/2021, 7:34:06 PM

    $300, or $600/year