Over the past 4 years, I've bought two System76 machines (FD: work paid for them). Each time, I maxed out what I was able to get from them.<p>Initially I had wanted to support a company that sells Linux-supported devices.<p>My first machine - a Gazelle (laptop) - had numerous issues on arrival. It'd randomly crash. Keypresses would get stuck and repeat. It was annoying. After sending it in, I still had random issues until I installed Debian, presumably it was a kernel issue - but for it to be shipped like that..was just bizarre.<p>My newest machine, I purchased a Leopard (desktop). It had been a few years, and I figured perhaps they'd gotten better at things.
I was wrong. They shipped this machine, knowing full well how long it takes to boot - again, due to some kind of kernel issue - it took over 2 minutes to go from cold boot -> login screen, USB devices would randomly not work, just weird stuff.. I put in a ticket, but nothing ever came of it. I didn't want to send this machine back like I had sent my laptop (TWICE), so I ended up switching OSes again, using an updated kernel, and things seem fine.<p>I get that they don't really have control over the kernel that comes with the OS they ship. I'm not naive. It's just a bit silly that they'd be comfortable shipping a new machine with those kinds of issues to the point where the machine is either unusable or stuff randomly stops working.<p>As far as the "physical quality" of the machines go, I'm still happy with both of them. They are well-put-together machines, IMO.<p>However, I know that my next machine is NOT going to be from System76. It's significantly cheaper to just get a nice Dell or something.