System76 Transmission Log

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.

Hey, Alex.
Hey, Emma.

Welcome back to the studio.
Yeah.

We're finally back
at Coupes Studio in Boulder.

Oh, yeah.

I heard you didn't get breakfast either,
so you brought a box of cereal Yeah, I was

eating straight from the box in the car.

Saved some time.
Yeah.

Got to make it here before
the recording starts.

Otherwise, it's just going
to be a one-woman show.

I think it's funny
that you eat dry cereal.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not a typical thing,
but I can if I need to eat.

Okay.

Yeah, it's not your typical Mickey D's
breakfast sandwich that I see you with.

No, that's my on the go.

I hail from the northeast.

I come from one New York parent,
lived there a couple of years, and I

am partial to a bacon, egg, and cheese.
Okay.

All right.
Forget about it.

Let's talk about hardware.
All right.

We're talking about hardware.

All right.
Laptops.

We got a powerful lineup
that has been updated.

How powerful is it?

So powerful, it could erupt
like Mount Etna did today.

Whoa.

That was so timely, but thinking about it,
this isn't going to be released today.

I love it.

Yes.

So excited.

Okay, so the Serval W.
S.

Guys, we told you about it last month, but

it is available and ready to order now.

We're still playing with the little crime
theme because a lot of us are just so

surprised at how criminally fast it is.

We're trying to venture
into doing more fun things.

We love doing the fun things.

We know you guys love it, too.
Yeah.

Anything to make the nerds laugh.

The next video is going to be pretty fun
for that one, though, so keep

an eye on our social for that.

It's an interesting squirt
bottle thing going on in that.

So the Serval,
in case you missed the announcement,

it's got a 24 core Intel CPU,
Nvidia RTX 5060 TI graphics.

5070 TI.

50/70, excuse me, TI.

Up to 96 gigabytes for RAM

and 12 terabytes of storage.

And it's a A 2K display,

1610 aspect ratio, I believe 240 hertz.

So this is a really nice machine.

You're going to want to get
your hands on this one.

I'm really proud that you
just did that with no notes.

I'm going to go back and check
if that's even accurate.

My notes are writing the website,
so I have to have this memorized,

so I don't have to keep going
back and checking my notes.

Okay, I'm going to quiz you on the Bonobo.

I'm going to talk about the graphics,
but you get to talk about the other stuff.

I mean, the graphics is one
of the only differences, I would say.

As far as the update,
but you could tell people who are just now

hearing about the Bonobo WS for the
first time how awesome it is because

on top of the 18-inch screen,
it features Nvidia,

RTX, 5080 or 5090 GPUs.
But what else?

This one is also a 24-core Intel CPU.

It is up to 192 2 gigabytes of RAM,

so an insane amount of RAM.
192?

192.
Are you sure?

Positive.

Lies.

It's right there in the specs.

I'm checking it.
You're checking?

All right.
What else?

So while I'm getting fact-checked,
it's up to 12 terabytes of storage.

It's a 1610 aspect ratio
and 2K or 4K display.

The 2K display is 240 hertz.

4k display is 200 hertz.

And if that part isn't correct
on the website, I need to fix that still.

Oh, my gosh.

It is 192 gigabytes of RAM,
people, in a laptop.

Insight.

I'm speechless.
It is a wow factor machine right there.

It is.

And by the time this comes out,
we have one more powerful laptop,

but it is not out yet.

So maybe it'll be coming out shortly after
this podcast releases,

or maybe not, maybe a month after.
Who knows?

But the Adder is our
other powerful laptop.

And can you tell me some of the updates
that we can expect with that little one?

So the Adder is also a 24 core Intel CPU.

It is up to 96 gigabytes of RAM,
12 terabytes of storage.

And that one will have either

a Nvidia RTX 50/50 or 50/60 GPU.

This This one is 1080p.

I don't believe it's 1610.

Maybe in the next update, it will be.

But whatever power doesn't go towards
powering more pixels on the machine will

go towards whatever you're working on.

So not all is lost on that.

Nice.

So sounds like one of the main differences
between our powerful laptop lineup is

the GPU is what differentiates them.

Very much, yeah.

And then the Bonovo just blows everything
out of the water with twice the amount of

RAM and a giant screen and crazy graphics.

I mean, they're all pretty epic.

Now, in cosmic news, the engineers are
hard at work on making the beta, Emma.

There's about 90-ish, as of recording,
90-ish issues for them to tackle.

We're hoping to get that out to you guys
soon, get that out to a broader group

of people to really experience
a feature Future Complete Cosmic.

Yes, the beta is coming.

Also by Future Complete,
I don't mean we're not planning anymore.

Features after that.

It's just the main ones are done.

Thank you for explaining that.
Ready for testing.

Thank you for explaining that.

Just in case there's any confusion.
Okay.

We've been looking at different ways
to update the Cosmic and POP pages.

Now that it's about to hit beta, we got
to prepare for the official release.

I've always wanted a highlight video
for pop,

something that really shows off all
the different features, all of what makes

it special, what you can do with it.

You might see this with something like
Windows, where they have a nice animated

video that gets you excited
about using the operating system.

You might be more excited if it's
not Windows, which pop is not.

I think it would be really cool to
show off on the page,

get more and more people excited about
pop, and have an open-source takeover.

So one big video?

One big video.

No promises.

We're still working on the page,
but that's my hope.

I like it.
How long is that video going to be?

Oh, I mean, how long you got?

There's so many features to cover.

It's exactly the answer I
was hoping you would say.

Open Source Summit is coming to Denver.

This is one of the largest open source
conferences in the world,

and it is hosted by the Linux Foundation.

And Jeremy and Carl will be doing a Cosmic

DE presentation at 1: 30 on June 23rd.

So we're super excited to share
Cosmic with this new group.

We haven't attended
this one too many times.

We're excited to see people's booths
and get to know all the nerds

that come and see the presentation.

Presentation and share
our love for open source.

After that, the fun doesn't stop there.

We're going to be doing a happy hour
across the street on 16th Street

in downtown Denver right after
the convention on Monday.

We'll have lots of food and drinks
and hardware to take a peek at.

And oh, Thaleoastra will be there.

Oh.
Yes.

It's finally come home to roost.
What?

The astra.
To To roost.

Yeah, it's roosting back in Denver.

The astra has gone around the world,
visited many conferences,

and now it's coming home.

Well, not this particular astra is
going to be demoing

128 Cores doing something cool.

Our friends at Ampere are going to be
there to hang out and talk

with you guys and connect.

So hopefully you guys can make it.

It is at 6: 00 Monday, June 23rd.

If you are local in Denver, you are
invited, and you can RSVP on meetup.

Com.
Is that AM or PM?

It's definitely PM.
Okay.

It sounds like a conference start time.

So I just wanted to
clarify for the listeners.

I said it was after the conference
concluded on Monday.

Okay.
I space out sometime.

I think it'd be fun, though, because
Carl and Jeremy are going to do the talk

and people are going to be hyped up about
Cosmic and have lots of questions and then

be like, Oh, you make computers, too?

I'll be like, Yeah, we do.

Want to come see them?

It's good timing, too,
because the downtown Denver,

it's been getting a lot of construction
since I was living down there.

So I think they've been working
on it for about five years.

When he says a lot, a lot.

That means $175 million have
been put into improving downtown.

It's been a huge project.

But it's done now, so that's exciting.

So we're going to go down there
and show them open source.

Emma, you're interviewing Screenly today.

I'm actually interviewing
Victor from Screenly, but yes.

Screenly is his middle name.

All right, let's get into it.

Hey, Victor, can you tell us a little
bit about Screenly and what you do there?

Yeah, absolutely.
I'm one of the founders of Screenly.

We do digital signage,
and that's just a fancy industry

term for display management.

All these screens you see in airports,
in retail shops, and in offices,

we have a platform to power or
remotely manage those screens at scale.

That's essentially what we do.

Started out in the world of open source.

Now we're focusing more on secure digital
signage geared towards

enterprise and developers.

That's what I'm doing in a really short
30 seconds about what Screenly is.

Where would we see some
of Screenly signage right now?

It depends on where you are in the world.

We have a pretty large footprint around
the world, but you will see a lot of our

screens are in retail environments.

A lot of our screens are in offices.

Depending on what company you work for,
there's a good chance you have screens

running there, running screenly.

We have north of 10,000 screens
around the world running our software.

There's a pretty good probability
that there are screens around you

that are running our software stack.
That's cool.

What does your Linux journey look like?

I know you already mentioned open source,
but let's talk about that a little bit.

Oh, yeah.

I started my Linux journey back
in the mid '90s, back in slackware.

That's where I started dabbling with the
world of Linux, and I never really left.

Had a bit of a detour over the FreeBSD
and BSD and BSD world for a few years,

but I eventually settled on Ubuntu.

But yeah, started with Tinkering
with that, traditional like,

cis-admin style work,
eventually moved on to more DevOps-y.

When Docker came along,
early on Docker, both in screen,

then in ad engagement, we were early
in that world and same for Kubernetes.

But my very first entry point into Linux
was back in slackware, and that's

where my love for Linux started.

It was a long time ago.

Do you remember the version number?

You put me on the spot there.

Can I say seven dot something?

I don't remember the slack for versions,
but whatever came out,

I want to say 96 or 97,
where you still got it sent with you

as part of your Linux magazines on CDs.

Oh, my gosh, the Linux format magazine.

They actually just stopped printing.
Did you hear that?

Just like a week ago.
I did not.

But it was a funny thing for me that they
have covered some,

I think it was Linux Format
that actually had a cover on Amthias.

That was a full circle of,
wow, we- You're famous now.

Yeah, very click famous
in the Linux world.

That was funny actually seeing that.

But yeah, that's sad to hear.

I was living in Sweden back I had to order
it from the US or the UK because the local

press did not have a lot of that.

There's a lot of shipping fees
to get your copy off of your Linux.

I think, Reddit 5.

2 is the one I remember having.
5.

1, I remember having a hard copy
of at least around that era.

It's so much nicer now with the USB,
just boot up and go.

It's a bit more convenient indeed, yes.

Can you walk us through how Screenly
evolved from an open-source project,

Anthias, that we mentioned,
into a commercial product that is

used for enterprises today?
Yeah, of course.

For those who are familiar with or not
familiar with Amdias,

they might know it by a different name,
which is used to call Screenly OSE.

That's what we started it out as.

The origin story is funny.

Me and my as a founder, we ended up
basically acquiring a failed digital

signage network in Sweden, and we had
about 10 screens or so on that network.

As nerds, we looked at it and said,
Hey, you know what?

How How hard could it be?

It came with some piece
of software based on flash.

We were like, That's not going to happen.

How hard could it be
to write your own software?

Between Christmas and New Year's
of that year, I can hack together a very

rough version of what would become the
first version of Screenly OSU or Anthias.

We started building that on...

People on this part, you can probably
remember these guys, the ASUS EEPCs.

Those are like netbooks,
and they had a desktop version of that.

They were this big or so.

Like the first, I guess, affordable PCs.

We started building our side of network
on that, running Ubuntu, probably 804

or something like that, or 1204 maybe.
1204, sorry.

It was 1204.

We built that for our own needs, really.

Then It just so happened that the RASPA PI
was announced literally

months after we did this.

We looked at what we were paying for our
devices and we were like,

The RASPA PI could do exactly that
for a fraction of the cost.

We were like, All right, that makes sense.

We got busy porting what we have
for X86 over to the RASPA PI.

Bear in mind that this was the very
first RASPA that was waitlisted.

I got my first RESTPai
in June of the year.

I think it was, this must be 2012, 2013.

I think it was something like that.

We port it over and we announced it
on the RESTPai forum with just a GitHub

link saying, Hey, we built something.

It just so happened that a fleet of people
basically managed to get the RESTPai.

They're like, Now what?

We basically gave them a use case and it
just exploded It was loaded from there.

People just loved it and it grew.

I've lost track on many views
that particular forum post has,

but it's a large number of views.

We do this intentionally.

We never intended to build a product,
let alone a based on this because we just

solve our own needs,
really, to run our network.

It was about two months or so after we
published that on GitHub that we had

a company reaching out to us from the US,
saying, Hey,

what you've done is really cool.

We have a fleet of 10,000 ATMs.

Can you make this run on these ATMs?

Now, that particular deal didn't work out
because they wanted

to own the IP and whatnot.

But we started getting more and more
of these requests and we were like, Okay,

this is something Coming bigger.

Eventually, due to commercial demand,
started seeing more people ask for, Hey,

this is really cool, but I just
want to run this for a business.

I don't want to deal with myself.

I want to manage multiple screens.

I want to have a larger fleet of these.

That's how our commercial entity was born.

Initially, Screenly, as it's called today,
which is different from Anthias,

that's where we broke the names apart.

Screenly was based on Amthias.

But Now, they don't share any code base
anymore, but they essentially started from

the same foundation, but then grew apart.

Now, they're two completely
different products.

We still support Anthias.

We have people working paid full-time
to just maintain Anthias,

but they are two different products
entirely, very much geared

to different audiences.

But we still very much support Anthias,
and we still very much think it's

important to our DNA to keep
supporting it and doing that.

People love it and people are using it.

That led us down the road of building
a company like Completely,

really, more so than anything.

We never set out to build
a digital signage company.

In fact, it's funny because I
just met last week at one

of the big signage events.

I met one of the industry journalists,
and he was the one who actually introduced

me the concept of digital signage.

I didn't even know that was an industry
term until he actually called out,

Hey, you're doing this.
And we're like, Oh, I guess we are.

The industry existed before us.

But he was not somewhere
we even looked at.

It just snowballed.
That's cool.

Just to go back to the very beginning,
I didn't want to interrupt you,

but did you say that you worked
from Christmas to New Year's?

I mean, was it a week that you wrote this?

It was a few months, like two weeks.

Yeah, like Christmas-ish.

To write, it was very much
held together by duct tape.

It was basically like a bunch of bash
scripts that wrapped around FFM peg and

some interesting Linux commands that I had
never used before, like the @ command, for

instance, where you could schedule jobs.

But yeah, it was basically like literally
a wrap up with a bunch of bash script,

FFM peg, and a few other built-ins.

That was the very first version of Amdias.
That's cool.

I love it.
That's a great story.

Great.

I think we like, SAP things in or our sync
things in as a cron job to see what's

to be playing and just play
something from a folder.

It worked, but it would be a lie
to say that it was bulletproof.

We're really excited about joining forces
and having you guys use MeerCats

for the Screenly player MK2.

Did you want to talk about that?
Yeah.

This is something that
we've been thinking of.

We started with the REST part and then

eventually, as we moved up market to more

enterprise customers, they wanted
to display more heavy content.

If you're displaying videos and images,
that's fine on the pie.

But when you start getting
into the heavier content,

like heavy web pages and heavy dashboards,
that's when the pie starts to struggle.

We I introduced our first xSuite6
player about three years ago.

Two years ago, three years ago.

That was fine.

But when we started to see
things like Logo fail and Pixie fail

and these serious volubility and biases,
that's when we really started to probably

want to find a different supplier that we
can work with to really lock

down our supply chain security.

We bumped into, you guys at one
of the Boon to events, actually.

I went by the call and Sam over there.

You guys have been this, well,
for a long time doing Linux desktop,

probably longer than anybody else, really.

So familiar with you guys.

We sparked up a conversation.

It turns out that what's on you guys
roadmap and what's on your guys' radar,

very much aligned
with what we are valuing.

I think supply chain security is one
of those things, particular going down

to fully understanding the firmware.

I think very few people in the industry
really understands that.

We talk a lot about
Coreboot, for instance.

That's something that didn't make it
into this revision of the screenplay

player, but we're hoping that either we
can do it over there update with Coreboot

or maybe in the next
revision to have Coreboot.

But I think The supply chain landscape,
and particularly with buyers and

lower-level hardware, has changed a lot.

We really wanted to find a partner that
speaks and sees the world the same as we

do and really understand the lower-level
of supply chain security and really can

help work together with us to provide
essentially the world's most secure

digital signage player running on Linux.

I think that was the synergy
for us was pretty obvious.

There are not that many people
on the planet that really

understand that lower level of...

In particular, if you're overlapping,
if you do a Venn diagram between people

understand Linux,
people understand hardware,

people understand software,
that Venn diagram overlap is very tiny.

That's what we were looking in the partner
for the provider for that hardware.

Cool.

What exactly are the MeerKATs going
to be doing with the project MK2?

Will they be mounted
on the back of monitors?

Yeah,
It varies a lot,

depending on the use case, but a lot of
them will be used for enterprise signage.

A lot of them will probably be mounted
behind screens or in ceilings or something

along those lines, driving big screens.

There dual displays on this one,
so that can drive up to two screens

once we enable that support on our end.

But I think a lot of them will be sitting
in enterprise environments where

people really care about security.

I think that's the thing that coming back
to, we pride ourselves in security

on the software side,
but we need a hardware counterpart

that can worry the lower level side
of that bias in all those hardware parts.

Now that we've been doing the commercial
side of this for a while,

what are some of the interesting ways or
surprising ways that people

have used Screenly.

We've seen so many strange use cases,
I think, over the years.

Maybe not shockingly surprise or strange,
but one of the odd ones,

we've seen people driving whole hotels,
the in-store, the TV when you go

into a hotel room that has an idle screen.

We've had people using our hardware
to drive hotel buildings like that.

Oh, my gosh.

When I went to the Hilton,
when I walked in, it says, Welcome, Emma.

I was like, That is so creative.

It just had personal options.

I really liked that.

That's something that you
can find screenly with.

Probably not for those.

Those are probably the Samsung LLG got
a lot of custom hotel options for that.

But these are more like
you're driving like a...

What are the channels might be like, Oh,
a slideshow of what's

available in the region.

Some more of that stuff.

We have spoken to customers about
having more of those tailored.

You could do those tailored
things with Screenly.

We have a developer environment called
Edge Apps where you could build custom

applications that could
pull in APIs and so on.

That would be indeed possible to do.

That's one of the custom
things we've seen.

Arth exhibitions, we've seen quite a few.

Then in large enterprise,
pulling out feeds to be feeds

to conference rooms, not super crazy,
but that's another one we've

seen people use Screenly for.

But yeah, more use case,
I think of big dashboards, big billboards,

definitely seeing all those as well.

Do you have plans to maybe incorporate PLS
or anything into the signage,

or do you already do that?

Perhaps build it into PLS system,
but rather pulling data from PLS system.

One of the things we've been exploring is,
imagine that you have a shop and you're

shopping, you're using maybe
using Square for your PLS system.

Imagine a smaller retail environment.

Building many boards based on the data
in there is something that we looked

at using our Edge app environment.

You could basically
build a menu board that is dynamic so

that if you're out of, I don't know,
maybe you have a smoothie shop,

but you're out of strawberry smoothies
for whatever reason,

you can just automatically remove
that from the menu board in real-time.

That populates based on what you
have in your inventory system.

That's something that we have seen,
we call reactive signage.

It's pausing live data to render
the content so that it creates a better

user experience rather
than just a static image.

Yeah, that's cool.
I like that.

Are there any customers you're excited
about who use Screenly's digital signage

or any fun uses for digital signage
that you've seen from users?

Yeah.

One of the most exciting customers,
I guess, we locked down in terms

of bragging rights, I guess,
is one of our customers is NASA.

I think that was a pretty
cool one when we got that.

Because it just comes down to they value
our security posture

and they trust our security.

Getting device in there is
really challenging.

We have a lot of banking customers.

Again, much like that in the financial
sector, security is really tight.

Being having that validation that they
trust us is really big for us.

That's what we doubling down on.

We have some 4,000 to 5,000
as customers as well.

Where the procurement process is very
rigorous and it takes a lot of time.

But once you're in there,
it's a testament to your ability

to produce good quality software
and high caliber security.

I think those are things we're really
proud of, really.

Those are compliments.
We passed our SOC 2 compliance.

Not that it changed our security or
anything, but it's just tick box.

We're doing security, right?

Yeah, that's really cool.

That speaks volumes, definitely for
the quality, especially the NASA thing.

That's really awesome.
Good job.

Thank you.

Is there anything else you want to add
about Screenly or the future

of the company and where
your products are headed?

Yeah, we have shipped a lot of new
things in the last six months.

We started doing RaspiPi,
we branched out to x 86.

We now have We have an Android app,
we have a Tizen app for CVs,

we have a web-based version,
we have a version for ChromeOS, and a

bunch of other things we're adding there.

That's something that we are pushing a lot
on terms of being available

wherever our customers are using us.

That's something we're pushing for a lot.

We are going to InfoComm next week.

I'm not sure when this is going live,
but next week from the recording,

so I think second week of June,
is InfoComm in Florida.

We'll be there, we have a booth there,
so come check us out if you

happen to be at InfoComm.

We will be even having some cool system
76, swag, I believe, at the booth.

That's something we're there.

What else you should check out our
podcast, The Change Log, where we talk

about what's new in the world of Screenly.

We're releasing, we one
or two episodes a month.

I also have a personal podcast called
Nodding Up with Victor, where I will

be having Carl on my next episode.

That's going to be fun if you want to deep
dive into, I guess, you guys

cover it on your podcast too.

But from my vantage point,
exploring The backstory of Carl

on how system 76 came to be.

That's another hook there.

I guess people could check out.
Oh, that's awesome.

We'll definitely share
that when it comes out for sure.

If you're paranoid about security,
you should check out Screenly.

That's what we do.
We are paranoid about security.

We are doing secure by design.

We are trying to be the best of the best
when it comes to security and actually

show that you could do secure digital
signage, which is, unfortunately,

the industry out there is
still not quite there.

You see a lot of end a few end-of-life
Android devices out there,

end-of-life Windows devices out there.

An example of poor security,
screens being compromised.

If you want to avoid that,
get in touch with us and we can help

you improve your security posture.

Great.

Thank you so much
for joining us today, Victor.

Amazing.
Thank you so much.

Let's play a game.

Let's see if you can
guess something for me.

Platypus.

No.

What am I guessing?

Yeah, I was about to tell you,
but you jumped to conclusions.

I have a pack of balloons in my car.

What color are they?

She He's picking the balloons again
because that was the only game I've lost.

Let's see what color are they.

I feel like you expect me to guess pink,
but I'm going to say blue.

Wrong.

I stumped you on the balloons again.
Green.

I didn't feel stumped.

Yeah, you just got stumped.
No.

Yeah, that was stumped.

You hesitated for a solid 15 seconds.

I was thinking, but I wasn't stumped.

That's called procrastinating
and excuses for being stumped.

Thanks for joining us today.

Yeah.

And we'll see you next time.

3, 2, 1.

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.