System 76 - Preorders for Thelio just started, the Open Hardware computer manufactured in the USA

System 76 is the producer of laptops and desktop computers tailor made for running Linux. They've recently created their own Ubuntu based Linux distribution called Pop!_OS which shares the installer and App Center of elementary OS, and they've been working for the last three years on a new computer model called Thelio that is manufactured in the USA and is as "Open Hardware" as possible, it's OSHWA certified Open Source hardware.

One of the strongest points in favor of Open Source software is security and the ability to change software to your needs, but you can't tinker a lot with proprietary hardware and it doesn't matter how secure your software is if the hardware could be spying on you, so for a long time now people have wanted an "Open Hardware" computer.

Thelio is just a small step in that direction, you can't go full Open Hardware right from the beginning, there are too many components you would need to develop yourself from scratch. So what System 76 does with the Thelio is that in addition to the motherboard it comes with a "daughter board" called Thelio IO:

It has a few components that replace the work that is usually done by the proprietary motherboard. This way System 76 can slowly start replacing proprietary, closed hardware components and replace them with their own. And since everything is "Open" as in "Open Source", any company or enthusiast can take the designs and specifications and create their own components, improve them, you get the idea!

Preorders for Thelio have just started, shipping is set for early December. Despite being manufactured in the USA and despite the Open Hardware components, prices are competitive and start at $1099 for the smallest model "Thelio", $2299 for the medium sized model "Thelio Major" and $2899 for the largest model "Thelio Massive". These models can all be configured to have faster CPUs, more RAM and so on. You can also choose if you prefer a cheaper AMD or an Intel processor. The computers come in two wood colors, Walnut and Maple. It comes preinstalled with either Pop!_OS or Ubuntu. All of the models are made to be tinkered with, the components can be easily replaced.

System 76 opened a factory in Colorado to manufacture the Thelios series of computers:

Discussion about the Thelio can be found on Hacker News