personal tech
Bootstrapped Linux box-botherer flogs new Thelio kit, talks up COSMIC, and politely declines to bolt AI onto everything
INTERVIEW There are only a handful of dedicated Linux PC vendors. One of the best-known is the 20-year-old American company System76. It's not just a business that installs Linux on PCs. System76 is building something rare in 2026: a vertically integrated Linux‑first computing stack that treats open source as an engineering north star, not just marketing copy. We spoke to founder and CEO Carl Richell about where System76 began and where it's going.When Richell started System76 20 years ago, he had "$1,500 in my basement" and no venture capital. He only had a bet that there were enough serious Linux users to sustain an honest, Linux‑only PC company. It has since grown organically into a factory operation in Denver, where raw aluminum sheets and billets come in one end and finished Thelio desktops roll out the other, complete with in‑house firmware and Linux preloads.
It wasn't an immediate success. The growth curve was incremental. The company started in a basement, moved to a tiny office, then a slightly larger office, a still bigger one in downtown Denver, and, more recently, System76 operates out of its own factory. There, the company says, its servers, desktops, and laptops are "designed by nerds. Engineered by experts. Handcrafted by humans."
