> Next time I consider a laptop, you made it tot the top of my list, even if it costs more.
I won't, if it means having to run Ubuntu (and derivatives) or Pop. I'd like to run the distro of my choosing, thanks, but no thanks. It will be possible to disable ME on other laptops/desktops as well.
You can run whatever distro you want, and the hardware issues should minimal at most? The nice thing is that the hardware is supported by the kernel and you won't run into a hardware issue like we use to all the time 10 years ago.
You cannot run whatever distro you want on a System76 if you want ME disabled.
> You must run Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Pop!_OS 17.10, or an Ubuntu derivative and have the System76 driver installed to receive the latest firmware and disabled ME on laptops
My guess is just a QA burden: they probably test the firmware cleaner utility on those operating systems, and they don't have the resources to test and certify the firmware tool on every conceivable distro.
Maybe it will run fine on Fedora, but if it bricks your laptop, they don't want to get blamed.
I'm not sure their motives for this choice, as their means of disabling as much of ME as possible is ME cleaner, which is not tied to distros.
I don't see why you can't attempt to do it manually yourself, without the aid of their driver and firmware update tool. Except that you might forfeit any warranties/support.
System76, can you clarify?
Sadly it's standard to only see official support for Ubuntu or RHEL in the Linux world. Not that I don't understand, it's all very fragmented, and that creates a lot of work as to support multiple distros. People are working on remedies, though.
I won't, if it means having to run Ubuntu (and derivatives) or Pop. I'd like to run the distro of my choosing, thanks, but no thanks. It will be possible to disable ME on other laptops/desktops as well.