Unity’s End

We were shocked. Development of the product we’ve shipped since 2011 would cease. Unity was no more. Ironically, we had a meeting with the Canonical cloud team that day. It was a short meeting. 91% of our business was affected and we had work to do.

There was some relief. Most System76 employees were using different desktop environments at this point. Just keeping my team excited about Ubuntu had been hard for a while. We’re technologists, and we felt Ubuntu drift. I agreed with the Canonical strategy of maintaining Unity 7 while developing Unity 8 separately. But time dragged on and we were stuck between waiting for our new product, which sounded constantly just around the corner, and investing in Unity 7 that was on its way out. There were no good decisions. Just hold the line. That’s not comfortable for an ambitious company. Now, with Unity canceled, the world was wide open again. I spun up distros.

The Business

In hindsight, we should have known. Like everyone, I wanted Ubuntu desktop to stand on its own economically. It’s only a matter of time before a company must align its investments with its paying customers, and that wasn’t the desktop for Canonical. But it is for System76.

The desktop is what we work on every day. We survey and listen to our customers. We know them well. Our engineering, marketing, sales, and support are already aligned to offer a Linux desktop. I started thinking that Canonical can focus on the enterprise—where they excel—and we’ll focus on the desktop where we excel. Our direction was taking shape.

Getting Closer to Pop!

We have a fundamental belief: the computer and operating system are the most powerful and versatile tools ever created. The desktop OS has moved too far toward the casual user. Every deliberation is planted in those guiding ideas.

I distro surfed when Canonical announced the end of Unity. Ubuntu GNOME received the most attention from the team. We figured that it’s essentially the future of Ubuntu and we better get to know our new product. GNOME stood out. There was an abundance of technologies and thoughtful workflow, and with the extensions framework we saw the potential to shape the desktop to our customers’ needs. We liked GNOME.

We adapted existing themes, icons, and fonts to the System76 brand. Then boot branding. Then distro settings and default apps. Then it wasn’t Ubuntu desktop anymore.

Making it Matter

With Linux we don’t need a single operating system that caters to everyone. That’s what macOS and Windows have to be. Not Linux. Diversity is our strength.

Our customers use their computer to build websites and robots; to discover medicines and launch rockets into space. What development decisions would we make if we built a distribution that focused solely on our customers and people like them? How would it differ from existing distros?

The answers started coming pretty easily. Jettison solitaire, photo managers and the like from the default install. Center our approach on user testing and careful analysis to identify pain points and determine features. Focus on productivity and the developer experience. Pop!_OS was born.

Making it Great

We like to communicate our passion for Linux and computers in a positive and inspirational way. We can see the potential that exists and how open source makes it a reality. Pop!_OS extends our ability to help our customers, and people like them, unleash their potential.

If you’re in software engineering, scientific computing, robotics, AI or IOT, we’re building Pop!_OS for you. We’ll build tools to ease managing your dev environment. We’ll make sure CUDA is easily available and working. We’ll conduct studies to understand your workflow and work to make it more efficient. It’s only the beginning.

Today, our first beta arrives. Download and install it. Tell us your thoughts and about any unexpected behavior. We’re here to answer questions, fix bugs, and refine this release so it shines come October 19th. Even with it being only our first swing, we intend to knock your socks off.

https://system76.com/pop