System76 reveal their new and improved Thelio desktop design

The case looks pretty but makes me really wonder how it gets any air into it at all. Maybe from the lower side panels. Oh, and no doors. The whole top appears to slide upwards. The accept panel seems cool though.

The case looks pretty but makes me really wonder how it gets any air into it at all. Maybe from the lower side panels. Oh, and no doors. The whole top appears to slide upwards. The accept panel seems cool though.

The air is pulled in from the bottom and pushed out though the back of the system.

I rather liked the woody look. I've had a computer since I was a kid (and I'm in my 50s); they're not a new whizzbang futuristic idea any more. A computer case is basically furniture. Most of my other furniture is wood. So I thought it was kind of refreshing for a computer case to go for that woody warmth.

I think it looks nice. I'm a bit partial to the red and pink ones. I think it would go well with my furniture (splash off color can't hurt)

I still love the wood grain model, but could never justify the price. Also, last time I tried Pop_OS, it was a dumpster fire...

I rather liked the woody look. I've had a computer since I was a kid (and I'm in my 50s); they're not a new whizzbang futuristic idea any more. A computer case is basically furniture. Most of my other furniture is wood. So I thought it was kind of refreshing for a computer case to go for that woody warmth.

While I can kinda relate to this there is also an element of "Oh gawd...it's a Buick Roadmaster!" or some throw up paneling from a rumpus room remodeled in the 70's.

I'm probably not one to talk, as even though there are many models and styles of the old 2600, I refuse to own any except the wood paneled heavy sixer, which I now have a second on the way :P


Last edited by slaapliedje on 22 September 2022 at 4:50 pm UTC

The case looks pretty but makes me really wonder how it gets any air into it at all. Maybe from the lower side panels. Oh, and no doors. The whole top appears to slide upwards. The accept panel seems cool though.

I think my problem with these things is that they don't provide a standard ATX back that you can pop out in case you want to upgrade the motherboard a few years from now when the current models are out of date.

That's a beautiful looking case. Very tempted... but no need for a new PC right now. One to keep an eye on.

more like Puke_OS!

Seriously? It's just Gnome with tiling features and a dock. No need to be weirdly aggressively rude about it.

I rather liked the woody look. I've had a computer since I was a kid (and I'm in my 50s); they're not a new whizzbang futuristic idea any more. A computer case is basically furniture. Most of my other furniture is wood. So I thought it was kind of refreshing for a computer case to go for that woody warmth.

While I can kinda relate to this there is also an element of "Oh gawd...it's a Buick Roadmaster!" or some throw up paneling from a rumpus room remodeled in the 70's.

I'm probably not one to talk, as even though there are many models and styles of the old 2600, I refuse to own any except the wood paneled heavy sixer, which I now have a second on the way :P

I don't have anything against the wood, I like wood. Problem is the original s76 wood just looks like crappy printed vaneer. It has that cheap tacky thing going on.

Uh huh huh, uh huh huh. you said you liked wood.

That's a beautiful looking case. Very tempted... but no need for a new PC right now. One to keep an eye on.

more like Puke_OS!

Seriously? It's just Gnome with tiling features and a dock. No need to be weirdly aggressively rude about it.

Nah, they janked it more with 22.04 and called it Cosmos or something. I tried installing it on my Thinkpad P52and it felt like I'd installed it on a 386 with an early VGA card! It was a slide show. Then randomly after trying to get it to update, it started working better... but then they built their packages to depend on not having gnormal gnome-session installed (like I tried installing their nvidia-prime package and it'd remove gnome and install cosmos) so I did what I didn't think I'd do... installed Ubuntu and ripped out snapd.

Sad as I really think that's a missing niche; a distribution that is released every 6 months with a new Gnome that is Debian based that doesn't have snapd. Basically Fedora; but Debian.

That's a beautiful looking case. Very tempted... but no need for a new PC right now. One to keep an eye on.

more like Puke_OS!

Seriously? It's just Gnome with tiling features and a dock. No need to be weirdly aggressively rude about it.

Nah, they janked it more with 22.04 and called it Cosmos or something. I tried installing it on my Thinkpad P52and it felt like I'd installed it on a 386 with an early VGA card! It was a slide show. Then randomly after trying to get it to update, it started working better... but then they built their packages to depend on not having gnormal gnome-session installed (like I tried installing their nvidia-prime package and it'd remove gnome and install cosmos) so I did what I didn't think I'd do... installed Ubuntu and ripped out snapd.

Sad as I really think that's a missing niche; a distribution that is released every 6 months with a new Gnome that is Debian based that doesn't have snapd. Basically Fedora; but Debian.

Pretty sure you can turn Cosmos off with a couple of sliders in the control panel.

I rather liked the woody look. I've had a computer since I was a kid (and I'm in my 50s); they're not a new whizzbang futuristic idea any more. A computer case is basically furniture. Most of my other furniture is wood. So I thought it was kind of refreshing for a computer case to go for that woody warmth.

While I can kinda relate to this there is also an element of "Oh gawd...it's a Buick Roadmaster!" or some throw up paneling from a rumpus room remodeled in the 70's.

I'm probably not one to talk, as even though there are many models and styles of the old 2600, I refuse to own any except the wood paneled heavy sixer, which I now have a second on the way :P

I don't have anything against the wood, I like wood. Problem is the original s76 wood just looks like crappy printed vaneer. It has that cheap tacky thing going on.

There is that. I probably like the wood concept in theory better than I would have liked it on those actual cases.

That's a beautiful looking case. Very tempted... but no need for a new PC right now. One to keep an eye on.

more like Puke_OS!

Seriously? It's just Gnome with tiling features and a dock. No need to be weirdly aggressively rude about it.

Nah, they janked it more with 22.04 and called it Cosmos or something. I tried installing it on my Thinkpad P52and it felt like I'd installed it on a 386 with an early VGA card! It was a slide show. Then randomly after trying to get it to update, it started working better... but then they built their packages to depend on not having gnormal gnome-session installed (like I tried installing their nvidia-prime package and it'd remove gnome and install cosmos) so I did what I didn't think I'd do... installed Ubuntu and ripped out snapd.

Sad as I really think that's a missing niche; a distribution that is released every 6 months with a new Gnome that is Debian based that doesn't have snapd. Basically Fedora; but Debian.

Pretty sure you can turn Cosmos off with a couple of sliders in the control panel.

I think you could do that with the earlier releases that were still 'Gnome with Tiling' it was basically an extension. With 22.04, which I think is their first real release of Cosmos, it's a whole new DE. I don't know this for sure though (hence phrasing it as 'I think...') Would like to be shown I am wrong.

Of note; the reason I'd like to do this is the absurd amount of effort Ubuntu is going through to force it's users to use snapd. Like if you have the gnome-software-plugin-snaps (or whatever it's called) installed at all, it wouldn't even allow me to install from flatpak, I had to purge all snapd stuff.


Last edited by slaapliedje on 22 September 2022 at 10:52 pm UTC

weirdly aggressively rude

That's an odd take on a school yard spin on the name. It was meant to be comical but also on point, Pop_OS is a pretty horrible distro. There is a lot more that differentiates POP_OS from others, it's not just "just Gnome with tiling features and a dock." This is why every time I've tried it it's been brutally broken where a meh Ubuntu build works just fine. Plus anything based on Gnome gets a 100% NOPE for me. GTK has been broken by design for years now for specific things and Gnome doesn't care as they push for their Apple like organizational "direction." Due to that I won't even try anything Gnome / GTK based anymore because it is broken on my hardware config...by design.

I've said this before, and I'm pretty passionate about it - the last thing a tiny niche needs is half of that niche shitting on the other half for reasons that don't even affect them. You don't use Gnome, or rate it? Fine. But poking childish names at the whole distro and indeed, one of the extremely rare corporate sponsors of Linux as a whole? It's just not necessary.

Not saying that criticism isn't valid or welcome, but that's not what you were doing. "GTK is broken" and "broken by design", is also about as helpful, insightful and constructive as calling the whole distro "PukeOS". It's just petty and it diminishes the entire Linux ecosystem unnecessarily.

I think you might misunderstand a tiny bit - I agree with what you said. I just don't like the negative way you said it. I'm on KDE on Endeavour these days, don't have much time for Gnome myself - I tried to use it after Ubuntu ditched Unity in 2018, but it just wasn't for me.

But so what? That's my point - some people do like it, and it doesn't affect me AT ALL that they do.

There's absolutely nothing positive that comes from in-fighting, whether it's over distros, DEs, your packaging system or the stores you prefer. All I want to see is Linux becoming viable as a platform to combat the depressing defacto standard of "just use Windows". And tearing down good efforts to deliver that platform into the hands of the masses, like System76 and Pop_OS... it's just counterproductive. It achieves nothing, and worse, creates bitterness and negativity around something that, for someone else, might be magical and engaging.


Last edited by scaine on 23 September 2022 at 11:49 am UTC

It's not your job to motivate people here. Tearing down the things you don't like isn't helpful. Trash talking is just that - trash talking.

I actually can't believe that you took my post complaining about your childish negativity over a distro and decided to respond with a lengthy post being negative about the entire Thelio range (again), re-iterating your dislike of both Gnome and GTK (again) and then throwing completely unwarranted bullshit at KDE too. You're nothing if not consistent.

We'll agree to differ at least.

I think you might misunderstand a tiny bit - I agree with what you said. I just don't like the negative way you said it. I'm on KDE on Endeavour these days, don't have much time for Gnome myself - I tried to use it after Ubuntu ditched Unity in 2018, but it just wasn't for me.

But so what? That's my point - some people do like it, and it doesn't affect me AT ALL that they do.

There's absolutely nothing positive that comes from in-fighting, whether it's over distros, DEs, your packaging system or the stores you prefer. All I want to see is Linux becoming viable as a platform to combat the depressing defacto standard of "just use Windows". And tearing down good efforts to deliver that platform into the hands of the masses, like System76 and Pop_OS... it's just counterproductive. It achieves nothing, and worse, creates bitterness and negativity around something that, for someone else, might be magical and engaging.

It's even worse than you think!

So you have users fighting against each other, and that's fine. Sometimes it's constructive when people can actually point out the specific thing that they don't like about the DE they are bashing on.

It's worse when you have Ubuntu having their own modifications to Gnome, and then Pop_OS hating Gnome (is it Gnome, or Ubuntu's Gnome?) so much that they ditched it and started creating Cosmos. The distributions that actually use Gnome without really modifying it (at least that I know of) are Fedora and Ubuntu, who basically just package up the upstream stuff and send it out. The Gnome you get with Ubuntu and it's multitude of spinoffs is actually one that has features enabled somewhere that are not on standard Gnome. I don't even know of a way around that either, as even if I install the standard gnome-session, it has weird tweaks to it. No extensions or nothing.

So is it that people hate Gnome? Do they hate a flavor of it? Do they hate that they have to install extensions 'to make it usable'? I've been using Gnome-shell pretty much since about 3.10 or so? Once you understand what they are trying to do with it, it's actually quite good. And I'm one who will bitch about a right click menu changing in Windows 11 and refuse to use it as such...

I think my biggest complaint about KDE is that the default has always just reminded me of using Windows, and I wanted to get away from that interface. The core technologies that drive it are really good, and it's really customizable, but at the same time, it's customizable enough that you could spend days getting it just right... and sadly I don't have enough time for that.

I also kind of think macOS is kind of garbage, and they seriously need to do something with Finder, which hasn't fundamentally changed since macOS 7...

Well, I feel like I need to pick apart a couple of points on that. Hopefully I'm not mis-quoting you, as I generally don't like "quote spamming" a reply, but here goes.

It's worse when you have Ubuntu having their own modifications to Gnome, and then Pop_OS hating Gnome

That's not "worse", or "hating" - to me, that's the opposite. Ubuntu and System 76 LOVE Gnome, but they recognise weaknesses, and have addressed those weaknesses. No idea what Ubuntu do to Gnome, right enough, other than add the Dash to Panel extension, but it's been a while since I tried it. As for System 76, they just wanted a better dock and better tiling.

So is it that people hate Gnome? Do they hate a flavor of it? Do they hate that they have to install extensions 'to make it usable'?

Again, when you perservere, continuously, to improve something instead of walking away from it, it's clear to me that they absolutely love Gnome, but just want to further improve it.

I've been using Gnome-shell pretty much since about 3.10 or so? Once you understand what they are trying to do with it, it's actually quite good.

Good stuff. It didn't work for me, and I gave it a year. It's not terrible, but when I looked at the list of things I had to do to be pleased with it, I ran out of patience. Lots of extensions, tweaks, replacing Nautilus with Nemo, and so on. It felt like a burden.

I think my biggest complaint about KDE is that the default has always just reminded me of using Windows

Sounds like you might be a bit out of date on Plasma. It doesn't feel very Windows-y to me. The start menu, I suppose, is vaguely similar, albeit no tiles. I mean, if that was genuinely your biggest complaint, I'd suggest spending some time with alternative panel widgets and some theming. Although, Plasma's theming is pretty unintuitive. But if you're comfortable on Gnome, why bother?

I also kind of think macOS is kind of garbage

Back to the very first point of my original rant - I'd rather hear about things you love, than read about you (even politely) shitting on things you don't.

Well, I feel like I need to pick apart a couple of points on that. Hopefully I'm not mis-quoting you, as I generally don't like "quote spamming" a reply, but here goes.

It's worse when you have Ubuntu having their own modifications to Gnome, and then Pop_OS hating Gnome

That's not "worse", or "hating" - to me, that's the opposite. Ubuntu and System 76 LOVE Gnome, but they recognise weaknesses, and have addressed those weaknesses. No idea what Ubuntu do to Gnome, right enough, other than add the Dash to Panel extension, but it's been a while since I tried it. As for System 76, they just wanted a better dock and better tiling.

So is it that people hate Gnome? Do they hate a flavor of it? Do they hate that they have to install extensions 'to make it usable'?

Again, when you perservere, continuously, to improve something instead of walking away from it, it's clear to me that they absolutely love Gnome, but just want to further improve it.

I've been using Gnome-shell pretty much since about 3.10 or so? Once you understand what they are trying to do with it, it's actually quite good.

Good stuff. It didn't work for me, and I gave it a year. It's not terrible, but when I looked at the list of things I had to do to be pleased with it, I ran out of patience. Lots of extensions, tweaks, replacing Nautilus with Nemo, and so on. It felt like a burden.

I think my biggest complaint about KDE is that the default has always just reminded me of using Windows

Sounds like you might be a bit out of date on Plasma. It doesn't feel very Windows-y to me. The start menu, I suppose, is vaguely similar, albeit no tiles. I mean, if that was genuinely your biggest complaint, I'd suggest spending some time with alternative panel widgets and some theming. Although, Plasma's theming is pretty unintuitive. But if you're comfortable on Gnome, why bother?

I also kind of think macOS is kind of garbage

Back to the very first point of my original rant - I'd rather hear about things you love, than read about you (even politely) shitting on things you don't.

I'll try to clarify what I mean by it being detrimental to the Gnome project when particular distributions tweak it beyond the standard release. For example, Ubuntu does something to theirs (mind you I kind of what to know WHAT it is, as I was playing around recently and found a neat feature that I thought was part of 43, but in fact is not. This feature is that by the icon will be multiple little orange dots that indicate more than one window belonging to that application. Unfortunately it's limited to 3, but still an interesting feature. Also you can right click on an icon and it'll give a list of all the open windows you can individually close from there. One thing that I wish macOS would copy from Gnome is to have it's overview add close buttons on the mini windows, love that feature in Gnome).

Pop_OS no longer uses Gnome. They have ditched it in favor of their tiling WM, Cosmos. I think it's all GTk3 (I don't think they've updated to 4 yet). Which is fine, the problem is when they try to make it difficult to install Gnome on top of it. It's an either or, and some of their packages (nvidia-prime specifically) is removed if you install the standard gnome-session. I understand the reasons why they're doing what they're doing, but I can't help but think they're going down the same road Ubuntu did.

With Ubuntu I kind of think of them like Apple, but with less money... and I suppose the way a lot of people feel about gnome. Like they make decisions that everyone should be happy with. I think the only reason Apple gets away with it is because they had a more charismatic cult leader :P Ubuntu did what Pop is doing now, they create their own setup based around gnome tech, when they can't quite get it to work out the way they want it to, they turn it into gnome extensions that are pre-installed into their distro when it ships. While I understand wanting to do this, I prefer a raw gnome so I can then extend it how I like (I much prefer a minimal amount of extensions. Like I mostly add the AppIndicator and then Vertical Overview (I tend to use the activities hot corner a lot, and having to bounce up there and then all the way down to the screen to the dash / favorites is... well bad design. Especially on a super ultrawide monitor like I have, it's nuts!) I don't like desktop icons, so I leave that alone.

Now with KDE and it's likeness to Windows. It's a very superficial 'at a glance' similarity for sure. And even the menus, due to xdg, are actually organized, unlike under Windows. By the way, Windows 10+ no longer supports the tiles, so KDE can still look pretty much the same as Windows. Now I know Plasma/KDE can basically look like whatever the hell you want it to, but as you can tell, I tend to stick with close to defaults usually. What I really wish KDE/Gnome would figure out is a standard between the two on a few things like keyrings, and such. It's irritating when you have both installed on your system, and you start getting prompted for akonadai unlocking when you're logged into Gnome... And yeah, I tend to have both installed in case I want to log into the other and test something. Ha, I think at one point under Debian I had Budgie, Enlightenment, Gnome, Wmaker and KDE all installed. Unfortunately I think I ran out of space on /...

Curious about why you switched from Nautilus to Nemo. I've been using Nautilus for years, and never had any issues with it. Then again, I usually end up doing copies of things with rsync rather than moving stuff around with Nautilus, I mostly only use it for files.

One quick note; I do really hate where UI design is going... Like do we REALLY have a hatred for the Window Title Bar? Firefox merging it's tabs into it makes it 100% useless for actually being able to grab it and drag it around on your desktop... and now with Gnome43, Evolution and Nautilus and others all have buttons in the title bar... it's weird. I guess the 'we must save the pixels!' people got their way...