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"In this day" portable devices are moving more and more towards that. I understand your not liking it, but it's really nothing extraordinary.

This sounds like the only real issue here, deserving of a separate thread.

This is NOT "vendor lock in" and not "unacceptable".
On the contrary - it's nice of System76 to provide packages that just make their hardware work.
I'm 100% sure it can be made to work on other OS, too.

Reading between the lines, this means you do get tech support for the originally installed OS. That's good, one would expect that from a vendor that prides itself on selling hardware with GNU/Linux preinstalled.
I think it's only fair that they don't support other OS versions.

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You what? When I wrote "support Mint" it was short for "support for Mint installed on a system76 laptop". I didn't for a moment assume system76 were obliged to support the Linux Mint distribution as such.
Isn't that what you did:
a) install Mint on the laptop
b) no WiFi and keyboard lights
c) asked them to help you with that
???

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They don't lock you out. Mint just fails to provide the correct drivers in the default install. I would guess that they aren't in the default install of any other distro. Linux is not Windows. It is not provided as one monolithic operating system that you have to take as you get it. There are many distros, all with different features. Almost all can be configured to work the way you want on the hardware you have, but you have to invest some effort to get it done. If you're not willing to make the effort to learn how to configure your hardware, then Windows is probably a better choice.

I don't know anything about POP-OS, but I would bet that it can be configured with a different desktop environment than Gnome, which I detest. I like Xfce, but there are several other choices. Perhaps System76 could help you with that. If not, you would need to learn to do it yourself. It's not rocket science, and it's easier than changing distros completely.

1 members found this post helpful.

^ The AUR has a bunch of System76 packages.

Anyhow...
As I already wrote:

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murphcid has valid complaints. Nowhere does System 76 say in their product descriptions their machines will not work well with distros other than the POP OS and Ubuntu you can get preinstalled. Sadly, their firmware is tailored toward those distros and using anything else is a nightmare to get working correctly.

I also have a System 76 machine (17" Serval WS; serw11), which System 76 discontinued shortly after I bought it (and paid for a three year warranty; makes me wonder if my warranty is any good now) and I had, and I'm still having, all kinds of problems getting it to work correctly with Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon. It's been a huge disappointment.

Part of the problem with mine is it has an NVIDIA graphics card (I'll never again make the mistake of getting a machine that uses an NVIDIA card!). It took me hours to find out how to get Mint installed and get a readable display. System 76's tech help wasn't much help because their directions they gave me left out a couple of critical details. They weren't any help with another issue, either (TRIM on external SSDs).

The service and quick start manuals for the machine are full of errors, omissions, and outdated information.

The specs for the machine are a bit misleading. One thing that was not mentioned in the specs are each pair of the four USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 Gen 1) type A ports are actually shared ports. I tried to connect a USB DAC and a USB to Ethernet adapter on a hub to a single USB port on the machine and they "stole" power from the mouse dongle plugged into the adjacent USB port, reducing its range to almost nothing. I was trying to avoid using the Ethernet port on the left side of the machine that gets in the way.

I have other complaints about the machine and System 76 but you should get the point now.

That's pretty much the same thing as locking you out. Even system 76 essentially said he was locked out when they told him to install POP OS. I was lucky and got a version of their drivers before they discontinued my machine and switched to core boot.

No duh! Thank you Captain Obvious.

Well, that was really helpful. Instead of just telling people to learn how to configure their hardware, why not help them learn how or, at the very least, if you can't be bothered to help them, tell them where to get the info they need (and don't pull a LMGTFY on them!).

It might as well be rocket science to someone new to Linux. Also, you have no business giving advice about POP OS since you admittedly know nothing about it. murphcid stated he tried to get help from System 76 with bad results yet you advise him to ask them for help (btw, I've also had problems getting good advice from them)? If you can't be part of the solution, don't be part of the problem.

You would be 100% wrong. Their packages are designed for POP OS and Ubuntu. They don't work as well for other distros.

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A laptop is sold with a certain linux distribution preinstalled. It is well configured, even comes with FLOSS firmware (based on coreboot afaiu). Everything works OOTB.
When one installs another Linux, not everything works OOTB.
To call that vendor lock-in is simply a mis-interpretation of that term.
To complain about having Coreboot on your laptop borders on stupidity; why'd you buy it in the first place? I wish I could do that, even if I'd have to do it myself.

It is one thing to ask us for help to fix a problem, and another thing to ask for sympathy for your situation and against system76.
Do some venting.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure system76 is not beyond reproach. There's always the aspect that such companies are making money with GPL'd Software without any warranty, that's always a little fishy, especially if most of the stuff is designed to be installed manually.
You spend a few hundred bucks extra on ... not very much, really.

Here are a few articles about the exact same hardware:
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/rev...oware-proteus/
https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-n151cu/
Both claim excellent Linux support, and yes, more than just Pop_OS. Ubuntu at the very least.

What OP did there and falsely expects to work flawlessly without voiding customer support... let's just say I wouldn't do it either if I were system76.

1 members found this post helpful.

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You have no clue what you are talking about. When he bought it, nothing was said in the System 76's product description about it. I ran into the same problem with incomplete, outdated, and inaccurate product literature with the model I bought.

Both of us bought our System 76 computers based on the glowing reviews we saw online about the products and their support system (I'm starting to wonder about the validity of those reviews) and the poor System 76 support. Besides incomplete directions when I asked for support while installing Mint, their directions for installing hardware was incomplete or missing. The one time I called, the guy I spoke to had no clue which direction a certain pad was to be installed when installing a 2.5" drive (I eventually found a photo of an older model on the "interwebz" that showed the direction). The screws included for installing 2.5" drives had the wrong thread pitch and didn't quite fit. Since the heads were very thin (standard M3,screws have too thick of a head and wouldn't fit) I had to go online and find a company that had the correct size screws and order them (I also ordered spares for every screw I'm likely to ever remove and possibly lose; I had to remove and measure those screws because the section in the manual titled Screw Sizes only had a couple of useless pictures and no sizes listed).

We know that not everything will work out of the box when changing OSes. However, some basic hardware should work no matter the OS. My machine has a fingerprint reader on the touchpad. Even with the preinstalled Ubuntu, it doesn't work nor was it intended to since nothing is said about it in all their literature. Then there was the issue of supplied hardware (screws) being the wrong size (also, I had to order an M.2 SSD hold down screw for the empty M.2 slot because they didn't include one).

You are the one misinterpreting vendor lock-in. If one has to use the firmware or OS from the vendor to get hardware to work, that is the very definition of vendor lock-in.

Let's just say that if you are System 76, it will be a cold day in summer in Death Valley before Murph or I ever bought anything from you or anyone else with your attitude.