 So we're here to talk about system 76 and pop OS. Yes, I'm running it on an IBM laptop So this is my IBM X 250 at 7.7 gigs of RAM 8 gigs it comes down 7 7 because of the Intel HD graphics and Intel Core i5 processor in here And I bring it up with what laptop I'm running said question comes up quite a bit But what I wanted to make sure people understood was one This is not a super fast high-powered machine and it's a few years old this the X 250 you can pick up for a pretty reasonable price Here in 2019 and I'm completely happy with it. It still does everything I need to do I my next purchase. I was very likely going to be a system 76 laptop Which is part of what first started me looking at pop OS So pop OS is a custom eyes a bunch of distribution from system 76 And it's not dramatically different than a bunch to and the last time I did a review of pop OS There's just a bunch of people that have to keep pointing out of how a bunch to like it is and I'm like, oh, I get it It's very a bunch to like I commented on that and then people when I Show the features are like, but those are known features I'm like, I know they're known features with a couple custom shortcuts. I get it But there is enough customization in pop OS and there's enough variation from a bunch to there's enough polish They put on it, which is a year later after I loaded it. I'm still running it I'm actually really happy with system 76 and pop OS as a whole I've looked at some of their laptops like I said, but even running this on a non system 76 device My desktop runs this and my laptop runs this these are just little those little polishes and little tweaks are What makes a difference to me on why you choose one distribution another now all my distributions I choose are generally going to be Debbie and base But I also am not what they referred to as a distro hopper So if you're in the Linux world at all trying to decide a distribution can be hard You'll like one feature that was put by this company or this other company. I've generally stuck with a bunch too I did try Katie and Ian. I used it for about a year and I really liked it But I don't really use any extra customizations Katie and Ian offers a big amount of customizations And I know it's not exactly a distro I'm not going to go down that road of debating the nuances of it, but Katie and Ian I was really happy with but I don't really use all extra customizations one size loaded pop OS It really has like that polish to it the fonts the theme is well It doesn't suck and it's probably the best way to describe it here. So let's take a look at it So here's the page on pop OS and like I said, they have all the features listed out here and things like that But let's talk about what makes this different than a bunch you also. I'll show you that When you open it up, it's not as nice as it is on my desktop I maybe there's a slightest bit of stutter when that opens But it's not bad. I this laptop even though being a low-powered i5 is still completely adequate It mostly it's like I said used for my network engineering work that I do and surf in the web And I have no problems doing that on here at all Let's talk about the differences though between pop OS and Ubuntu and they have a page I don't remember if this page was available or not back when I did the first review I don't recall but they do list out exactly what makes it different This is the part though that really gets me look feel session shell now granted I have my shelf hold up over here. I have this available. I'll leave a link on my github You can get the customization I have for the shell and the color scheme I'm using so it looks slightly different on mine Maybe it does on the default. Well, it definitely looks different than default But this customization all the details are in there. I'll leave that on github So I didn't care for the shell but everything else I did really like the keyboard shortcut now They have a whole list of keyboard shortcuts and that's something that's really Most of them are in gnome I know and someone's gonna go hammer out there but you can customize gnome to be this way and Yes, most any Linux distribution you can take the time to customize to be whatever way you want You can swap out the desktop manager. You can swap all the custom key settings, but with System 76 I didn't have to do anything. I just loaded it. These are all the settings They're documented so I can learn them and get used to using them so I can go Okay, I can just hit super key a which is the windows key and go right to the applications That's great. I can just hit t for terminal or I can run a command with alt f2 Just I in a lot of these are the same But it's also becomes very very fast to be able to jump in and out of these and they're documented. That's a big part So that's like I said the keyboard shortcuts. I like a lot Included apps these are irrelevant to me and I'll say that because I don't they have the pop shop and it's cool They have a nice default set of apps But one of the things about Linux because it relies on repositories and app stores installing apps has become absolutely Like a mundane task because you can do so much of it from their pop shop So if they didn't have something it's really quick to get in there But granted I've been a Linux admin and working in a Debian world for a long time So I'm used to apt get installing. I started my Linux journey. I started playing with it in like 97 I had a job doing it in 99. I switched to Debbie in around 2002. I think so it's 17 years of using it I do have a habit of apt get install Well in this case would be sudo apt get install, but those are the common ways I'm going to install applications, but they're one and the same and this is where sometimes people get confused when you get started with Linux and Thinking if you have to do things from a command line, you don't have to Things like the pop shop make it really easy to install apps without doing it But they're also one and the same if I apt get installed something from the command line It is also going to show installed on the pop shop here So I can install any of these things on the installed list Which I have quite a few applications on here or I can install them from the command line. So sudo apt get install Whoops Good and bad of long passwords. I Can install this from here or I can go search the apps and it's already installed Right here and just install a wire shark. This is the GTK version which I could have installed as well from the command line See you see QT GTK So it's all the same whether it's installed from the command line or not So it's not to me when they talk about the default applications not the Not the biggest deal for me like it's too easy to install apps I will say something pop has done and will pull up the pop shop again that you won't find well You can do this in other OSes, but they did this so it's out of an out-of-the-box experience That's a lot better which is the steam install now Like said, this is my work laptop, which means I have no games on it and steam is less than perfect on Linux It's getting better constantly But there's a few tweaks you have to do on like when you install it a bunch of there's a few things You have to change this is something that they did a nice job of in pop OS They just added those little customizations right to it To make it a little bit easier so you can just install it right out of here You can still do the command like I said you can still tweak it. It's still customizable But they took care of a few of those things That's a lot of what the pop shop does is add a little polish and a little bit of features to these Versus the Ubuntu store now Someone had posted and I think it's just because of their confusion on this see people say well They're doing things separate. Why are they trying to reinvent Ubuntu and they're not you can add the Pop repositories you can add all the different pop features back into Other distros if you want all the repositories are open free and open source So how they did all this and their feeds so to speak their repositories for these features are completely Usable inside of here and works great and that notifications that pop up this is a little bit of you know nice customization on the box the I see Xavier to sent me a message and We'll just go ahead and close the messages are nothing personal, so I'll leave them up here But this notification bar is really nice You can add this level of customization where it ties into my Google calendar It ties in some of my notices for other applications I have running specifically that message came from Keybase, but it consolidates them all into one place another little customization Yeah, I know noam supports it, but they've out of the box made my experience really easy I spend my day doing complicated network engineering things. So it's nice to have All this customization done for me when I load the operating system Which has really had me sticking with Papa West now for the last year, and I don't really have any plans to change The other thing is I'm only running if you notice on the about page here I'm still running the long-term support version of 18.04 LTS that means I don't have to do the full version upgrade And I skipped on the 1810 upgrade because there was some conflicts with a couple tools I use specifically shutter there was I seen what I had to do to fix the problem They had but there was no compelling features in 1810 that made me go. Well, I have to switch to that 1904 is around the corner here. I haven't really looked to see if there's anything compelling But they the Papa West repositories are the same for both So I'm still have all the latest and greatest all the security updates are there and all the latest and greatest pop enhancements Still come through it's not quite a rolling distro But it works as to in the way they roll it back and have those features in there So even though I'm running this long-term support. I still have all the other stuff I've just loaded a handful of updates today. Also the updates handled very smooth a year of updates on Papa West have Never have disappointed me in terms of breaking. They've all just worked really really well and it's gone smooth Now one other thing the installation on first use Papa West adds a new Linux installer designed to make installation straightforward reliable secure and fast and Yes, that's actually a really cool Because on boot it can do full disk encryption right from the rip I that's just absolutely convenient because if you're gonna load it load full disk encryption I absolutely think that is the way to go that way I never have to worry about like just encrypting the home drive as well out of people will choose But if you just encrypt the home drive and you accidentally saved a piece of data outside there And then the laptop gets stolen something happens You run that risk. Also, this is you know password on boot So I can't get into the OS to even do anything without a password therefore One more layer of security. So I have a password to unlock the partition then I have the password do actually unlock the home drive So in making that really easy is really and they have the in-hole Using Lux encryption. I have a detailed video of like command line Lux encryption But there's no command line here that you have to use to do this This is out of the box all integrated right from the rip Lux encryption. So it's all standard open source Nothing weird they did they use standard tools to do it. They did a nice job on there It does support dual booting with Windows and Linux OS and people getting started in Linux asked me that a lot about should I dual boot and I think absolutely not is always my answer The reason why is because if you dual boot you'll boot into Windows. You're like, oh, you know I booted I guess I'm here to do the thing I couldn't figure out how to do in Linux and then you never want to leave that OS again or Windows Doesn't update and it breaks the bootloader and it only boots Windows and doesn't boot Linux anymore And you go I'll load it later. Well, and then later never happens. I do have to run Windows occasion for my clients My answer is always just been virtual box And I have Windows 10 set up in virtual box on my desktop and on here And it works. That's my kind of solution. I almost I haven't updated this and haven't even loaded it in a long time Laptop here rarely use it on my desktop I use it like I said for clients that have applications. I need to test inside of Windows to make that happen But overall it's been very snappy to use the networking Works great the integrations of being able to Jump right in like, you know map. This is a samba drive. It's gonna fail because I'm on the wrong network But it integrates into my Google it integrates into My samba shares that I have here at the office that are on a free NAS box You can bookmark shortcut them the file manager is intuitive and easy to use And I know it's gnome, but it's gnome with a few tweaks that have just made it really handy for me to use I do miss that with KDE that, you know, the wobbly windows and things like that But those aren't really a big deal to me. The performance of it's been great I you know The polish on the UI and the fonts and everything they use are really what sold me on it and the keyboard Customizations and stability stability is absolutely One of the reasons I've recommended so many times people getting started in Linux with Ubuntu or pop OS both are really good at stability and the overall picture and like I said because this is based on Ubuntu for the most part like you're Underlying the kernel and things like that have not been dramatically changed it I don't even know if they've been changed at all by pop OS So those features in in terms of speed are the same You're not going to have any difference between if I loaded this with a bunch or low so pop OS the Functionality speed wise is going to be the same the because the underlying operating system essentially the same pop OS It's really just theming it a little bit But those little tweaks mean a lot and it does work really well And of course this pairs well with their hardware because they have you know any updated drivers That is one thing they do offer when that you go to download pop OS They have drivers for both so when you're on your site, you can get drivers for both The Nvidia or other systems, so if you wanted to load the extra and per Nvidia drivers You can do that right from the rip and right from the start So you don't have to like go and enable them to have the full Nvidia drivers enabled So another another feature where they kind of you know broke away a little bit from Ubuntu But not that much but overall I'm really happy with like I said This is running it a year later on both my laptop and desktop and I still don't have any plans to really switch between This and another OS that nothing's really been compelling in terms of doing that But the stability and everything is what's really kept me there I'm going to say it's not dramatically but definitely a little bit more stable than KDE neon and the KDE distribution, but not as customizable. I mean you can customize this you can tweak it it does have options for that you can load the tweak tool and You know mess around with things inside of here and change little Nuances and things like that and load the tweaks, but for the most part Yeah, I haven't really felt the need to Customize it that much so pretty much everything is stock as it was the way the bars and everything around the side here It just works that's that's the biggest thing for me is when it just works That's always what makes me happy because you know, I got a lot of work to do So hopefully this was helpful This is still what I used to do all my editing in case anyone's wondering as well Caden live on sometimes my laptop nine naps at the time editing on my desktop because it's this little power di5 is a All-day render to get that done. So if you're interested if you're getting started in the Linux I'm just I'm gonna tell you that a bunch of in Papa West either one you choose are great places to start that Little bit of polish and the well documented keyboard shortcuts and default applications on there when you're getting started with Papa West doesn't does make it a really nice choice. Alright, thanks Thanks for watching if you liked this video give it a thumbs up if you want to subscribe to this channel to see more content Hit that subscribe button and the bell icon and maybe YouTube will send you a notice when we post If you want to hire us for a project that you've seen or discussed in this video head over to Lawrence systems calm Where we offer both business IT services and consulting services and are excited to help you with whatever project you Want to throw at us? 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