System76 Blog

Any individual can purchase a system intel ME disabled.

Dell, System76, and Librem all sell at least some systems with ME disabled and those are just the ones I can think of without trying.

https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/

https://blog.system76.com/post/168050597573/system76-me-firmware-updates-plan/amp

https://m.hexus.net/tech/news/systems/112835-dell-now-offers-pcs-intel-management-engine-disabled/

As far as risk goes, the risk is very small and my personal opinion is that hardware is not worth replacing unless you are worried about being the target of a state-level actor who will spend the resources to gain clandestine physical access to your machine in order to surveil you.

ME attacks require a level of sophistication that is only worth it to a small number of entities pursuing extremely important targets.

Kind of disappointing that there is not much details... Does this tie in with their new manufacturing plant in the states [1]? I thought about buying a System 76 laptop two years ago or so. But I hear that there were some problems so stayed away (and that the laptops are just rebranded with additional software work). I currently use a X62 Thinkpad and it's already pretty "open sourced". The schematics are readily available online and the unit works flawlessly on Linux. Best part is that you have to build it yourself! If this new laptop is at the right price point and quality, I'll be pretty interested. It would be pretty awesome if it can be self built.

[1] http://blog.system76.com/post/175995780368/system76-new-manufacturing-facility

Huh, I'd swear I'd seen that too, but looking at the alpha blog post [1], they do indeed say:

> The official release of COSMIC DE will debut on Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, which will be based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Running and testing on 24.04 gets us closer to a final, polished release.

I'm assuming, but not sure, that 24.04 will be released in April, 24, though its version might just be a reference to the Ubuntu version it's based on - it would be pretty quickly after the Ubuntu release.

Although the distinction between "official release" and "final, polished release" might indeed mean that the 24.04 release would still be alpha?

[1] https://blog.system76.com/post/closing-in-on-a-cosmic-alpha

In terms of packages, Pop!_OS has the flatpak over Snap, which I believe is not installed by default. Their distro is also known for a brand new tiling window manager on top of GNOME [0]. They have also recently made a notable contribution to improving the "Linux on the desktop" experience (e.g. [1]).

I would not oversimplify it as just "repo added on top". For many years we could say the same about Ubuntu and Debian, but I don't agree with this generalisation.

It may walk like a duck, but if it doesn't quack like a duck, it might not be a duck.

[0]: https://pop.system76.com/

[1]: https://blog.system76.com/post/more-on-cosmic-de-to-kick-off-2023

Cosmic has fractional scaling. I'm not sure about XWayland compatibility.

> In Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS, you can scale your resolution by 200%, 300%, or 400% to make these elements easier to see. However, you can also toggle the “Fractional Scaling” feature in the Displays settings for access to scaling options in 25% increments (125%, 150%, 175%, etc.). This past month, fractional scaling functionality was implemented into COSMIC DE as well.

https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-skies-of-a-colorado-july-2023

The redox-os post mentions cosmic desktop, and future wayland support, which may now already be almost implemented?

The System76 blog appears to have updates regarding COSMIC DE: https://blog.system76.com/post/the-spirit-of-cosmic-december-updates

Components of Cosmic Desktop Rust-based Desktop Environment: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch#components-of-cosmic-desktop

cosmic-comp/src/wayland/handlers https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-comp/tree/master_jammy/src/wayland/handlers