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Welcome aboard the System76 Transmission Log. The space station orbiting the Linux computer manufacturer, System76: home to handcrafted Open Source hardware and the makers of Pop!_OS.
3, 2, 1, 0.
Welcome aboard the System
76 transmission Log.
Our broadcast is about to begin.
This is the latest on System 76
computers, manufacturing, and pop OS.
Now for your in-orbit crew.
Did you guys get a chance to tag in on the
hot dog sandwich debate yesterday?
No.
Did you hear about it happening?
No.
I saw the messages on Slack.
What was it?
I didn't even see I think
it was on the other side.
I think it was on the other side.
I think it was on the other side.
Apparently, that's where a lot of it was.
No, it was in person.
Oh, it had to send it out.
It was Samy and Brandon and Thomas
egged it on, too, and Aaron.
Samy was very adamant.
Sammie was very passionate about what
a sandwich should be classified as.
I don't even remember what
it actually ended up being.
But yeah, the whole hot dog
sandwich debate was crazy.
Liva was having fun.
He was just poking the bear
and poking the bear on slack,
and he was having a freaking blast.
Then Thomas came out and tried
to use the, Okay, this is what it is.
He tried to lay down his argument,
and then he said, Now it's
time to get back to work.
Then I came to the office and started it
again and told Thomas how wrong he was.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
He was wrong.
It's a wrap for the record.
Okay.
I think we're going to do a Whoosh sound
and then jump right into it.
All right, we have a lot
to cover this round.
My name is Emma.
My name is Alex.
And we're just going
to jump right into it.
That was your line.
Well, that silence was me jumping.
I take stage direction quite seriously.
First up, we had a few laptop releases
that I must share there.
Oryx was updated to Intel HX class CPUs.
The lemur snuck in there with
its beautiful 14-inch, 16 by 100% SRGB
display, feather-like weight,
and up to 14 hours battery life.
The Darder Pro was updated with
a sleek new design and new CPU
with Intel ARC graphics, and it's
available for pre-order now as of today.
It's also been updated with
our new screen real estate agent, Sam.
He has been happy to show people
the new property that we have
with its vaulted 1610 ceilings
and silver-finished fixtures.
Now with this new Dartre, all All of our
ultra portables have a 100% SRGB display.
You're going to get really vibrant color
from any lightweight laptop that we have.
I think that's pretty exciting.
It is.
And desktop news, we have a few desktops
that have been updated now.
First off is the Thaleomira,
which now has an Intel 14900 KS CPU,
which is a faster clock speed than the K
It's actually considered one of
the world's fastest desktop processors.
Did you see the video I posted on social
of that when we launched it?
It was Sam acting as the fast 1400
KS, and then Thomas was the other CPU.
They were like racers, and then
they ran down the hallway
towards me, and Sam was much faster.
Yeah, his face in that was great.
Thomas walks, but he does not run.
And then he gives this
little look at the end.
It was so funny.
In other desktop updates,
we have the Thelio now with PCIe 5.
0, and that's with both
storage and the GPU slots.
As far as storage drives go,
it now supports 1.
8 times faster read and
three times faster write speeds.
In Thaleo Spark news,
there's an AMD Thaleo Spark in the works
with Ryzen 8000 G-Series CPUs,
so you're going to get good performance
at a higher affordability.
And speaking of affordability,
I think the podcast might release before
the end of the spring sale.
That ends on May 21st,
and you can get $100 off on Spark,
$100 off Thalia, $200 off Thalia
Mira, and $300 off Thalia Major.
Sure.
Nice.
Thanks for throwing
in that spring sale there.
Customers want to hear that one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, moving on.
We have some pop OS and cosmic news
to share, don't we, Alex?
Yes, we do.
Pop OS was updated recently with kernel 6.
8.
That includes driver support for the new
Intel Core Ultra line that our lemur and
or Darder have, as well as ARC graphics
and an eventual AMD line of Zen 5 CPUs.
And the Intel ARC graphics are what
the new Darder has, so that's exciting.
Yeah, it's got the integrated
graphics in there.
I hear it's fairly competitive
with AMD's integrated graphics.
So whether you prefer the Silver Laptop
or the black laptop, you're still going
to end up with some pretty decent gaming.
So that's exciting.
So for Cosmic, we've had a couple updates
since our last podcast update.
The main point being that GTK 3
and 4 theming have been added to Cosmic.
So if you open no maps like GIMP,
it's going to follow the theme
of your desktop environment.
So everything It looks good and cohesive.
In other news, the Cosmic App Store
implementation is almost finished.
I've heard from many people
around the office that it's very fast.
Carl even said that our CEO,
Carl, he generally prefers using
the terminal to perform updates,
but because of Cosmic Store being so fast
that he actually likes to update
through the Cosmic App Store now.
And we have quite a bit of
community contributions out of the gate.
So Ed Flora's HZ on GitHub
made a Cosmic Tasks app, a personal
task management to-do list thing.
It looks really cool.
I think he did a good job on it.
There's a web app manager from 11Hsoft.
So you can type in the URL, call it
something, and decide if you want to be
opened in a private session or not,
and you just create an app right there.
And then lastly, there's an
Input Devices applet from Leb Kuchen
on GitHub, where you can change
the keyboard language, keyboard layout.
So if you wanted to use
Dvorak instead of Cordy.
You can also adjust
keyboard settings from there.
Nice.
I love I know our updates
are always out of this world.
Far out, man.
Yeah.
The Cosmic Talk at Linux Fest
Northwest was packed full, too.
We're spreading the word
about cosmic, left and right.
We also have a meetup in Boulder
where we're going to be presenting Cosmic
for about 30 people
for the Boulder Linux user group.
Carl is going to head over there
on June 13th and do that talk
if you're in area and want to attend.
It's on meetup.
Com.
If you are interested
in attending that, just check out meetup.
Com for the details.
The meetups are always a great time.
We actually had one just
a few days ago if you wanted
to talk a little bit about that one.
Yeah, we actually had one May fourth
for our monthly meetup, and it was
a Star Wars-themed meetup,
which was very appropriate for the day.
We had a lot of themed food, and we did
Star Wars Trivia, and we did a factory
tour, and we had a lot of fun.
Then Monday, we actually had a meetup
for people that are in town
for the Red Hat conference.
We've just been having lots
of meetups and lots of get-togethers,
pulling all the nerds together.
It's been so much fun.
If you can't make it in June, there will
be more, but it is highly encouraged.
Yes.
Well, Emma, Well, that's it
for our news, but we do have a couple
of guests here in the studio with us.
Who did we have the opportunity
to talk with today?
I'm glad you asked.
We have Stephanie and Marcos here
from the production team at System 76,
and we wanted to know a little bit
about your guys' roles there.
So if Marcos, you could get us started.
Well, there's a lot of
different mini departments
within the production department.
They always try to be very useful in
different departments, so I work a lot.
Started off in keyboards, building them,
assembling them, testing them.
Then they moved into post powder internals
where I assembled our PCs, our Thelio
line, our Miras, our majors.
And then from there, they sent me
to the I do, and that's pretty much
what I do right now.
A lot of working there with
the sander and the laser
and the saw, cutting raw material.
I just do whatever is
needed in the production.
If there's something I don't
know, I'm always willing to learn.
But That's pretty much my role.
Cool.
Steph, what's your role?
I'm the production manager,
so I'm responsible for facilitating
everything from ordering our raw materials
to getting the process through the floor
to be able to create our Thaleo line,
our Nebula line, and our keyboard line,
and anything and everything
that that entails.
Nice.
Marcos, what are some of
the coolest projects you've had
the opportunity to work on?
There's been a lot of cool projects.
We get to work with a lot
of machinery: lasers, big saws,
all types of that make noises and stuff.
But I think the coolest, to me,
would probably be flashing I/O board.
We have a separate little board
for our fan controls inside our PCs,
and we would have to flash them.
It's nothing too hard.
You would just drag and drop, and then I
would do the stress test using terminal.
I thought that was pretty cool
because you get to see how ones and zeros
translate into voltages, and you
get to see the fans turn on and all that.
I don't do a lot of programming,
but when I was doing that, it made me
feel like a hacker or something.
That's awesome.
Steph, what are some of
the coolest projects you've had
the opportunity to work on?
Probably online and keyboards.
It was really nice to be able to bring
something from an idea that Carl had
to actual full-blown fruition all within
the building, all within the same team.
It was really cool to create the product
line and then expand the product line.
That was probably one
of the funnest things.
I think we started with launch,
and then we went to light,
and then we went to heavy.
It was about a year and a half,
two years, but it was fun to literally
be like Carl's like, I want a keyboard.
They were like, Cool.
How do we even make a keyboard?
And figuring all of that out
was a lot of fun.
The other fun thing would probably
be when we get new machinery.
It's a lot of fun to play
Tetris with the warehouse.
And try to figure out
how to get these gigantic machines
into the right spot and then getting them
set up and lined up in a very straight
line, which makes my OCD very happy.
What work went into figuring out
how to make a keyboard?
Everything.
The The Thaleo line was semi-figured
out as far as what they had wanted
when we started production in-house.
They had a starting point
when we were using trend wear to actually
outsource our PCs to begin with.
That one wasn't taking it
from concept into reality.
It was taking it like halfway
through the concept already being there,
altering it around a little bit.
When it came to keyboards,
we designed the entire thing all in-house
with the same team,
from literally being like, Well,
we want a keyboard,
figuring out all the steps of how to make
the keyboard, then what materials we would
need, what packaging we would need,
the PCBs,
working with so many different departments
to actually take it up into fruition
and then expanding the line as well.
Making our own testers in-house,
making our own configurator in-house,
assembling them, having keycap parties
until we got the machinery in.
It was really nice to watch the product
line literally grow from the ground up.
Along the same lines, it sounds
like you really like the keyboards, but
what's your favorite System 76 product?
The heavy.
I really didn't think before
we started making the product line
that keyboards were a cool thing.
I thought it was just something
that you type on, and I thought people
were a little crazy for being so into it.
I felt that way a little bit
when we had the launch and the light
because I was like, It's a keyboard.
It's not really that big of a deal.
But now that I have my own heavy and I'm
able to map it and change it around for
what I want and you're able to change out
the switches, it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, I have a heavy, too,
and I can't live without it.
I No, it's a game changer, man.
It really is.
It's amazing to me how just
having conversations with people who also
have opinions about stuff can lead to
just such better quality of product.
I always thought of a keyboard
as just being this standard plastic thing
that you're like, I'm using this to type.
But System76 making the launch
opened me up to, Oh, actually,
if you work hard at it, it can
be something that's enjoyable to use.
And then I actually have
opinions about this thing now.
And I love that we can
innovate and change things so quickly.
We take a lot of feedback from customers
as well as people in-house to be able
to make and change anything that we want.
And I think at larger companies,
that's a more challenging thing to do.
So it's really nice.
You will even hear from the production
team when they're assembling something
or when they're doing something,
what they would like to change around
and what they think would be cool.
We bring it up to software,
they end up implementing it in,
or bring it up to hardware,
and they end up implementing it in.
And it's a really cool thing to see.
My favorite part about keyboards
is probably the RMAs.
We fix a decent amount of keyboards repair
orders, and it's just cool
seeing all the weird ways people
mess up their keyboards.
I just imagine every busted keyboard that
comes in is just filled with Cheetle.
Often, yes.
Sometimes bugs as well.
We found those a few times.
I have fun.
That's always an interesting one.
We always get wrapped up in a bag
for two weeks before we touch them.
A lot of our employees are makers
or creators or builders outside of work.
Do you guys make or create
things outside of work?
I saw her.
Before this, I used to work
at advanced circuits.
I got familiar with IPC
standards, and I got to saw her
a lot of circuit boards together.
Every once in a while, I'll
buy a sawder kit, especially now.
Since I like to distract myself
with hobbies because I'm living
at my parents house.
So I've gotten back into soldering.
The other day, I finished
this little voltage regulator.
It's nothing fancy.
It was like a do it yourself kid
for kids It's twelve and up,
but I think it's cool.
It's therapeutic, soldering
the joints and all that stuff.
I didn't realize how useful it was
till I started fixing electronics.
A couple of months back,
I fixed my mom's dryer.
It was just a little wire terminal
that had broken looking loose somehow.
But still, you feel good
when you can fix an appliance like, Oh,
yeah, I don't got to pay the $300
they try to charge me or anything.
Steph, how about you?
I craft a lot.
I'm mildly obsessed with it.
Right now, my biggest things are
cross-stitching and knitting and candle
making and sewing because I make costumes
for the Renaissance Festival,
which I'm also insanely obsessed with.
I do a little bit of woodworking.
That one's gotten a little bit less
because I've crafted for so long.
My hands are giving out a little bit.
But I like to get furniture
and change it around and make it a little
bit more unique, especially restoring it.
That's one of my favorite
things to do right now.
A lot of people paint a lot of really
beautiful old furniture and destroy it.
So restoring it back to an old look
is something that I'm really,
really loving right now.
You also knitted all
the little gnomes that are.
Yeah, I did.
I got really obsessed with
those guys for a little bit,
and I think I made a hundred of them.
That was a really fun project.
There was a lot of hand
sewing, but it was a lot of fun.
And they're called Tomptas.
They're like this Swedish
mischievous little thing that
if you don't clean up after yourself,
they'll come and mess your house up.
So I thought it would be fitting
to have it in the factory, and now
they're just everywhere, which is great.
I didn't know you sewed
all of those together.
Yeah.
They look really good.
I thought they were store bought.
Thank you.
No, I made them.
I made them all.
They're all slightly
different, which was even fun.
And let me play around with a lot
of different patterns, a lot
of different ideas of how to do it.
And now I have a couple of people
from work requesting them.
They want some themed ones.
So I'm going to be trying to work on that
for the Christmas season this year.
That's fun.
The plants at the factory,
we have tons of plants now.
Is that you're doing stuff?
Yeah, I'm obsessed with plants as well.
My whole house is covered in plants.
I have skylights at my house,
which is fantastic.
I have them scattered everywhere.
Then I was running out of room,
so I started bringing them to work,
and then I just kept making them
and propagating more and finding more.
And we're actually trying, again this
year, to garden at the warehouse as well.
So we're going to be making
some garden beds that have wheels on them
so we can roll them outside and then
get sunlight and then bring them back in.
So we have a bunch
of seedlings that are starting.
Don't know if that's actually going to
be successful this year, but we're going
to try to get that one figured out.
And then we're actually
going to put them in the beer garden.
So where everybody has their lunch,
there's going to be fruits
and there's going to be some vegetables
that people can pick and add
onto their I'm just, That's cool.
I was feeling sad about how dead
my space felt at the office.
Then you come in with two plants
and like, Do you want these?
Like, Yes, please.
I appreciate you taking them because
the table is exploding at this point.
We have a bunch of plants
in my area and Jen's area as well
that are shooting off little babies.
We keep having to...
First, we just started that
we wanted more, but now they're doing
so well there that they're starting
to make little offshoots.
We have to cut those off
and we have to propagate them.
But I only have two tables,
so spreading them out throughout
the whole warehouse is fantastic.
Do you find your hobbies
help you in your day-to-day at work?
Oh, absolutely.
Production is pretty much just crafting.
I think it can feel a little bit
monotonous because in a lot of ways,
you're doing the same thing day in and
day out if you're in the same section.
But pretty much what we're doing
is just crafting all day long.
Even though we We have machines, and even
though we have a lot of processes
that help automate it, it is still
a handcrafted product line that we have.
No matter what, even if it's just loading
and unloading stuff, QC work, little
details like that all end up adding
into being very involved in doing it.
We actually have a lot of different
crafters in our department as a whole.
A lot of the people that we
end up hiring are people that just
like to make stuff, and they just
like to play around with stuff.
It's really cool to be able to have
that aspect in your job every single day.
You guys made pinatas for May the fourth.
Yeah.
You want to talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
It was something that was
a good team building exercise.
We got to let everybody get their creative
juices flowing, which has been nice.
We've had a lot of orders, so it's been a
lot of people being at their same station
day in and day out, doing the same work
over and over and over again.
Getting to teach them how to do that
and allowing them to use their artistic
skills, I think was really nice.
They made really cool moons.
Yeah.
They were so cool.
They were so cool,
and they did a great job on them.
One of them is so cool
that we didn't want it be destroyed.
The destroyed version is on the floor
in the beer garden still.
That's probably Satoshi's.
He is super, super crafty
and super creative.
All right.
Is there anything else that you guys
want to share about production?
The only other thing I really
want to bring up is I've grown up with
a lot of entrepreneurs, and I've grown
up in a lot of manufacturing facilities.
My partner even works in
another manufacturing facility.
I think one thing that's really different
is how much we do, do, and in-house
and how much we focus to keep
as much in-house as possible.
Most places that do manufacturing
tend to be more of an outsource thing.
For instance, we'll have a floor dedicated
to a specific line of a specific phone.
That's all they do day in and day out.
Or you'll have companies like Apple, where
They do a lot of outsourcing where it's
not their product, it is products for
other people that don't want to be able
to do the manufacturing aspect in-house.
But with us, we do everything
in-house, from concept to making it, to
troubleshooting it, to figuring it out.
Even powder coating is something that
we do in-house, which again is something
that normally people outsource to.
I think it's really cool
how we work hard to get as much
into one building as possible.
It can be challenging at times
because we are learning a lot.
We don't always know what we're doing,
but we have the room to be able to figure
out what to do, and we have the freedom
to be able to figure out the best paths
forward, which again is also something
that's extremely rare when it
comes to a manufacturing facility.
That's probably one of my favorite things.
Going off of that, all the in-house stuff
is probably my favorite thing
to do, too, because there's a lot
of just creative problem solving.
You run into a real problem,
especially when we're doing a new process
or a new Thelio line, we just have to get
our brains together and figure it out.
So I really like that it's just not
the same repetitive, boring stuff.
They really make you
think and work, and it's great.
Yeah, and I would say the people to
keep you on your toes throughout the day.
What would you say is the nerdiest thing
you've seen at the factory?
Probably the conversations on Slack.
Honestly, Honestly, just in the last few
weeks, there's been such interesting when
we had the garbage disposal situation.
We had the conversation that we were just
talking about, about the difference
between a sandwich and a wrap
and what gets classified as what
if it's a hot dog or a hamburger.
The day-to-day conversations
are honestly probably the nerdiest thing.
It's one of the things that I love is we
have so many different types of nerds.
We don't just have software nerds,
and we don't just have building nerds.
We have nerds of all varieties, and
watching them all come together and talk
to each other, whether they're arguing
or whether they're collaborating,
it is a very interesting thing.
You're never bored there, ever,
just looking at the conversations.
It's a beautiful thing.
It is fantastic.
Elaborate for a second, though,
what was the garbage disposal situation?
I went in to try to check
the garbage disposal.
It wasn't working, so I had to go
to Bjorn, break his heart to let him know
that the garbage disposal wasn't working.
Because we do literally
as much in-house, we even
do our own repairs to our own areas.
Bjorn went to go and pull it apart
and found, well, we're pretty sure,
I think you were the one that even
said it looks like part of a banana.
I'm pretty sure you're right.
It was part of a banana, which then led
into a whole conversation about proper
etiquette when you're sharing spaces.
Also the fact that our garbage disposal
cannot handle things, what you can't
put down and what you can't put down.
Then people just started getting
extremely creative with that.
I think there were a few messages
even before that day.
I don't remember what they were,
but they were also interesting.
It's just like that entire channel
that day was just so random.
Because there was leftover food
from May the fourth,
the party from May the fourth.
There were funny foods
that were leftover in the fridge.
Yeah, what was it?
Han burgers and...
Han burgers.
Job.
Of the Hot Dogs.
Yeah.
Obiwan Canolis.
Obiwan Canolis.
Yeah.
Then Jen was asking
where her foam mace was.
Oh, yes.
It was all in one day, I was like...
In a short amount of time, too.
I think within three hours,
it was just bam, bam, bam.
So good.
Last question for you.
If I wanted to come to System 76 to take
a tour of the manufacturing facility,
how would I go doing that.
You just email Emma at system76,
or you can just stop by.
We've had people just come knock
on the door and be like,
Hey, what you do is cool.
Can we come in?
And yeah, people can.
Yeah, that's cool, too.
Our tours are free.
They're very engaging.
You get to see the entire warehouse
from beginning to end.
We have customer care in there.
We have our data analyst in there.
We have sales in there.
We have our marketing people in there.
We have our build team in there
that actually assembles the PCs.
We have production in there.
We have our QA department in there.
And you get to see the company
as a whole, which I think is also one
of my favorite things tours.
It's also something that's
a little bit different from a lot
of other manufacturing facilities.
Normally, you go on a manufacturing tour
or you go on an office space tour.
When you come to System 76,
you literally get to see the company.
From coming in the front doors
to going through the entire warehouse,
you get to see it all, and you
get to meet so many different people
from so many different departments.
Emma, I believe you have a box.
You have a box.
Right.
Okay, guys.
I generally think outside of it,
but today I'm thinking of the box.
Okay, so this This is the fun game
that I created that, again,
might be fun and might not be fun.
What is going to happen
is I'm going to shake this box.
You guys have to listen very
carefully, and then you have
to guess what's in the box.
But you each get one question to ask,
and that'll be your hint.
Then at the end,
everyone can guess one guess.
Ready?
Ready.
It's not a head, is it?
That was your one question.
It was my one question.
No, it's not a head.
Is it something from the factory?
Yes.
Is it square?
No.
Okay.
I'll give you a hint.
It is something that lights up.
Interesting.
I can fit in the box.
A USB port thingy.
How did you check?
Oh, it was Because Marcos is fantastic.
Wait, define the thingy.
A USB.
Like one of the little pop-OS?
The sticks?
Oh, I didn't know.
Oh, look at you go.
It's a USB stick, pop-o-s branded,
that we bring to conferences, and it
has pop OS on it, and we hand those out.
Yeah, and when you flash it
with an ISO, it lights up.
When you plug it in, it lights up,
but when you flash it, it blinks.
I was going to guess the broken part
of the lightsaber from the pinatas.
That doesn't light up anymore.
I was going to guess one of
those blinking candles that
we put in the baby head in Sam's office.
Oh, that'd be a good idea, too.
Next time.
Our VP of sales went on vacation,
so we decided to prank him by putting
a baby head on the wall that was found
in a snowman so that when he
walked in and went to his desk, he
would be looking right at the baby head.
That was glowing with
the little outside of it.
I found these little candles
I think we used them for Superfan
at one point and put one of them in
the baby head so the eyes were glowing.
It was good.
I still don't know why there was
a baby head in the snowman.
It was like a regular snowman,
and they ripped it open
and it was just like a doll.
It was creepy.
I had to fix it.
And we didn't want to put the head
back in because it made no sense
why there was even a head.
I'm just going to chalk
it up to Christmas magic.
It could be.
Creepy Christmas magic.
It even has boots.
Nightmare Before Christmas magic.
Oh, that's a good one.
All right.
Well, thanks for playing today, guys.
And thanks for coming in
to have an awesome interview with us.
Of course.
Thank you for letting us
talk about what we do.
Always a pleasure.
3, 2, 1, 0.
This has been the System
76 transmission log.
For more inspiration, check out the
website and follow us on social media.
On your descent back to Earth,
please keep your hands and feet
inside the transport beam at all times.
Captain, sign off in transmission.
That was audible.
Sorry.
I'm hungry.
I have a-Oh, that was me.
I thought that was me.
I thought that was me.
That was me.
Maybe it's all of us.
That was me.
I drink a Monster every morning,
and that's not the best idea,
especially now that I'm getting old.