Sitemap

The System76 Thelio gets ever better in 2022

6 min readSep 21, 2022

For years, System76 has held a special place in my heart because of a simple fact: They actually give a shit. And it shows.

A Little History

In 2019, I was coming to the end of a 15 year love affair with Apple computers and felt completely lost about where to go next. Not only did MacOS change in ways that didn’t suit me, the hardware went from incredibly beautiful and special (my first: Quicksilver G4 PowerMac) to uninspired trash (my last: 2019 MacBook Pro). I wasn’t ready to go back to boring beige boxes, or flimsy plastic Windows machines. I also didn’t want to go back to Windows, period.

I was pretty comfortable with Linux on the server, but was never brave enough to run it as a daily driver. What if something went wrong? What if I got stuck? Am I voiding my warranty by installing Linux?

This is when I discovered System76 and it changed everything. Here was a Denver, Colorado based company that built, sold, and supported computers with Linux pre-installed. Not only do they fully support you with hardware AND software, but they allow and encourage you to service the machine if you wish too, as they’re a huge supporter of right to repair. And they do all this while making beautiful machines.

I started out with their Lemur Pro laptop as a test and quickly fell in love with Linux, the community and the company. It wasn’t long before I had their 100%-made-in-Colorado flagship desktop: The Thelio.

I’ve been such a vocal fan of this incredible machine, that Adam of System76 reached out to me last month to let me know that they redesigned the Thelio, and wanted to send me one to try out for a month, and see what I thought. I, of course, accepted and have been living with it for the past month as my daily driver.

External Changes

My personal Thelio on the left, the new review unit on the right.

I’ll be honest, when Adam told me they were redesigning the Thelio, I was scared. To me, it was already the perfect machine that was super powerful and high tech, but not flashy about it. They weren’t going to add lights or something tacky, were they?!?

Thankfully, NO. In fact, I was pleased to see that it mostly looked like the Thelio that I’ve come to love all these years.. just updated and refined. It reminded me of how a Porche 911 always looks like a Porche 911, but smoother after each redesign.

New Thelio on the right

Externally, it’s very much still a Thelio, but just better. It feels more solid, the powder coating is darker, and the graphics on the side are brighter. My old Thelio was really nice, but this is just sharper. And then there is the most obvious change…

The Accent Panel

The biggest talking point about the design change is the full side wrap of wood veneer being replaced with a thinner accent panel on the front. The story goes that CEO Carl Richell was waiting in his car for Covid testing and in his boredom, started really looking around his car. He noticed that the wood grain in his car was in thinner accents and made it look more modern and sleek. And now that I’ve had them side by side, I have to say that I agree.

This change also unlocked a new trick, the ability to easily swap out your accent panels to really change the look of your Thelio in seconds. My review unit came with a number of options, and they really DO drastically change the look.

Decisions, decisions…
In seconds the Thelio transforms to Code Red!

Still, when I saw this was a headline feature of the Thelio, I was worried it was going to be a gimmick and would somehow cheapen the feel and experience of owning a Thelio. However, System76 found a way to make this feel high end and solid. Each accent panel is metal backed with 3 metal buttons on it, that slide into metal holes in the frame. The result is a smooth and polished look with no gaps or wiggles. It simply looks like it was built like that all along!

Internal Changes

It would have been easy for System76 to stop there with changes. After all, this is what people are going to see. But that’s not the type of company they are. There are just as many changes INSIDE.

New Thelio on the right

At the top, there is a new support brace that holds 2 rows of extra screws you’ll need if you plan to slide some SATA drives in there. Next to that is a new custom metal cover over the SATA drive bay with 76 cut out, which is an insane level of detail for something that lives inside the machine. You can put up to 4 SATA drives in there in addition to the m.2 drive already installed on the board.

Airflow is very important in this, and it has a huge low speed fan at the bottom for intake, and a metal encased fan to directly push that air past the CPU and out the back. This might sound like a noisy combination, but it’s not. In fact, I was unable to even hear the Thelio’s fans the whole month I had it on my desk.

Finally, there is a new vertical brace that extends down and has adjustable guides for a GPU, should you install one. If you don’t install one, you can just enjoy that System76 even cut their own custom dust covers with little rocket ships on them.

Who does that?!

Conclusion

I’ve always loved my Thelio because of the fanatical attention to detail at every corner. You can just TELL they deeply care about building the best open hardware computer in the world. I was concerned that a redesign meant that they had to start cutting corners, because this level of detail wasn’t scale-able. I’m happy to report this isn’t the case at all. In fact, this is further proof that System76 is fully committed to what they build. And in my book, this counts for a lot.

You’ll notice I didn’t really talk about specs, benchmarks, etc. This was very much intentional. You’ll order this with the specs you need, and find it outpaces other computers with the same specs. Benchmarks are interesting, but will never be the deciding factor in me placing it on my desk and living with it every day.

I want a computer I’m happy to see. I want a computer that inspires me to sit down and do my best work. I want a computer that feels more like a work of art and a partner in crime, than just a soulless box.

And the new Thelio is that computer.

My actual workstation where I tested the Thelio for the last month.

--

--

Mike Kelly
Mike Kelly

Written by Mike Kelly

CTO of MemberVault / Linux Nerd

Responses (3)