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New computing platform is ‘Made for Making’ — Caligra c100 Developer Terminal targets creators with distraction-free ‘computer for experts’
The lovely bead-blasted metal wedge design of this computer will win retro-fans. But its AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, 96GB DDR5 RAM and ‘Workbench’ Linux-based OS are also strong draws at $1,999.
London-based Caligra recently showcased its c100 Developer Terminal, touted as a brand-new computer platform. At a San Francisco Bay Area event, interested parties were given a sneak peek of the retro-licious wedge form factor metal bead-blasted computer. “Designed from the ground up for experts,” the c100 targets those wanting a computer that is “made for making,” and is purposed to accelerate your work.
San Francisco - this Thursday @coffeejunk and I are hosting a little meetup for @caligracomputer. Come and check out the c100: https://t.co/r71dRo1sop pic.twitter.com/N8YK0VbRL0November 5, 2025
Caligra is quite bold in its marketing of the c100, as you will already have grasped. The company takes the following stance, “We think the world needs a brand of computing that stands behind creative technical work, dedicated to creating instead of consuming.” Thus, the Caligra c100 is aimed unwaveringly at “Scientists and artists. Engineers and designers. Hackers and painters.”
Whether its ambitious plans will succeed will rely on a number of factors. We’ve already highlighted the design, with various images. Other essentials that it will have to get on target are the hardware specs, software, and pricing.
Though it looks reminiscent of a wedge computer of old, the c100 is, of course, thoroughly modern inside. According to the pre-order specs, buyers of the so-called Developer Terminal will get:
Those are respectable specs for a modern computer. The integrated design is also pleasingly premium. It looks nicely portable, too, an aspect of the c100 that isn’t made a lot of by the company.
Software, old school name but modern Linux based
Caligra has named its c100 OS ‘Workbench.’ That’s retro-famously the GUI that was rolled out with the Commodore Amiga computer line, but is not at all related to it. To cut a long story short, this new Workbench is Linux-based.
We like the approach of Workbench, billed as “An OS that does less,” so that your work can take center stage, and be what you focus on. It may resonate with users who are fed up with OS bloat, AI, cloud, etc
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“We’ve removed the distractions, so it’s just you and your ideas. A clear space for deep thought,” says Caligra. “With a focus unlike anything available from big tech, Workbench is entirely dedicated to accelerating your work.”
Workbench uses an rpm-based core system, but while it is “not a distribution,” it is touted as an ideal host for containers and packages from open source and commercial repositories. Specifically, packages from the Fedora project can be added by root users, and tools like distrobox allow for software from other distros to be added.
Unlike a truly bespoke, clean sheet, ‘new computer system,’ if Workbench development ended one day, we don’t see any reason that you wouldn’t be able to use this hardware for a Windows, or other flavor of Linux, install. Hopefully, that doesn’t jinx it…
Pricing and availability
We did a rough calculation of the component hardware costs of the c100, and considered several unique parts central to this pleasing design. We think it would cost between $1,200 and $1,500 to make something similar, hardware-wise. So at $1,999 for the product, software, industrial design, support, and so on, the c100 seems like a reasonable proposition. You can pre-order 'Batch One' machines now for a $99 deposit, with shipments pencilled in for January 2026.
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
The design triggers warm feelings of nostalgia, but I wonder if the people who designed it really know much about peripheral design.
The colour scheme definitely reminds of the Atari ST. I'd applaud the idea of putting the numpad on the left.
But moving the nav cluster one row up away from the arrow keys and then both one column to the right looks like they were caused by off-by-one errors in Keyboard Layout Editor.
The mouse looks shaped exactly like an Apple Desktop Mouse with an added mouse wheel.
The successor to the Apple ADB mouse had got its rounded shape after much research in human-computer interaction.
Also, the classic Amiga OS with its Workbench is actually still actively maintained, with new revisions having been released quite recently after a long period. So the name is not free for the taking. If I were Caligra, I would rename my desktop to avoid legal problems.
