I love what System76 is doing, but I have to say that the name Pop OS is just horrible. It just screams "toy" and sounds like a name that would come out of some fly by night junkware vendor. The exclamation mark makes it even worse. It's almost as bad as ending a name with "-ster."
Naming is hard, but almost anything would be better. If in doubt I'd go with something bland like "System76 Linux."
I bring this up because for the past 20 years closed silos and locked down platforms have won almost entirely on the basis of UI/UX and polish. System76's hardware looks good at first glance, but everything else matters too. An OS name that says "this is a toy and will be useless for real work" is a real problem for wider adoption. Even worse the name tends to transfer via mental association onto the hardware, conveying the idea that this laptop will fall apart.
Agree. Also their webpage for Pop!_OS[1] should show front-and-center what the GUI/Desktop looks like, not the logo of the OS name. They should take note of elementary's landing page.[2]
The Pop page on system76.com is just bizarre. It leads with things that are really niche interests and you have to scroll way down to get to what the desktop looks like.
My 30 second impression is "this is for children who want to program toy robot kits."
I am posting this criticism in the hopes that it's constructive, since I do like what system76 is doing. I use a Mac right now but I'd consider their laptops as one of the first possibilities if I ever abandoned the Mac platform.
Naming is hard, but almost anything would be better. If in doubt I'd go with something bland like "System76 Linux."
I bring this up because for the past 20 years closed silos and locked down platforms have won almost entirely on the basis of UI/UX and polish. System76's hardware looks good at first glance, but everything else matters too. An OS name that says "this is a toy and will be useless for real work" is a real problem for wider adoption. Even worse the name tends to transfer via mental association onto the hardware, conveying the idea that this laptop will fall apart.