Ask HN: System76 Ubuntu laptops? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: System76 Ubuntu laptops?

17 pointsbrightball18 comments

More and more lately Apple has been making me want to look elsewhere so I'm trying to find a quality 17 inch "low hassle" Linux laptop. I've found several 3 year old complaints about System76 but nothing more recent. Any HN users use them? Experience/thoughts?

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I got a 14 inch Dell e6470 with 4 physical cpu cores - its stellar machine, everything is working using OS drivers from kernel - I love it - you might consider that - I like this machine way better than the late 2014 macbook pro (13 inch) my company issued to me.

76 generally fine. I think the entire company is like 3 Russian guys who live in Flordia or something.

Biggest downside I saw was you are paying a 50% markup in Dell or Lenovo... But I guess no more pricey than Apple. (But no apple retina screens)

I'm pretty sure they're based in Denver. Do you think this page is fake:

https://system76.com/about

I had a System 76 laptop around 2010, and it was great except for the battery life. I'll probably try another one at some point.

Not sure this was a few years ago. Always got Russian tech support.

I have 2 System76 Ubuntu laptops and I love them both. One is a 14" Galaga UltraPro from 2014 (they don't have this model anymore) and more recently their new 15" Oryx Pro. Nice solid builds, good keyboards (apparently there has been a vast improvement with the kbds) no hardware issues etc. I use both for work. My Oryx Pro has 64GB RAM, 2 512GB SSD's (I put Win 10 on the second disk) and an NVidia GTX980 (I game on it as well, e.g Dragon Age Inquisition etc). The only issue is battery life - I ordered two power bricks for each (for work/home), but then I was not expecting a lot there. I highly recommend them (I'm a bit annoyed I missed the 10 series GTX cards which were just announced) Edit : I live in Finland, and ordered them from the U.S.A

Thinkpads really are great machines for linux. Ubuntu 16 and immediately install cinnamon or Xmonad (per your taste)

No experience with their laptops. I can speak to their customer service, and it is absolutely fantastic. If you find a machine that works for you, I could not recommend them as a company more.

I have a 2-3 year old Gazelle and a 2015 mbp. Here's my opinion: the Apple has beautiful hardware, retina screen, and an nvidia gpu. I hate everything else about it (e.g. mac os). The Gazelle shell is just a System76 branded generic laptop, but it has an i7 and ssd. The thing is a powerhouse, and I use it for almost everything.

My advice: if you want a solid development platform, System76 is the way to go (and will cost half as much). If you care more about a nice retina screen and dont mind mac os, stick with a mbp.

Just curious, why do you dislike Mac OS so much? I use an MacBook Pro laptop and have Debian based OS for work and I find the transition between the two computers almost negligible. Using the brew package manager on OS X lets me install anything I've needed.

Though to be fair I primarially do data analysis and not heavy application development.

It's all the little differences that add up. Emacs behaves differently. /home isn't actually /home. Some of the Unix utilities are slightly different from the gnu versions. Etc. Basically, my Mac finds a way to annoy me every day.

This is all my research group uses for development, reverse engineering, and personal use. They really make some great machines, but I haven't tried the newest, super expensive models.

I imagine it is even better than the ones that we currently use, which are over four years old and still do everything we need them to do in stride.

Caveat: Almost none of us run these machines with Ubuntu. Debian or Mint are common, but so is Arch.

I have an old Lemur bought 5 years ago I think. I still use it occasionally (my main machine is a MBP now).

Never had any problem running Linux on it (I use Linux Mint). The quality is OK. The keyboard wasn't great, and the battery deteriorate really quickly. To elaborate, at the beginning I could get 5 hours, but after 2 or 3 years I had to replace it (Customer service was great btw).

I can assume that the newest generation fixed a lot of issue (based on photos the keyboard now looks much better). I would definitely buy a new one the day they decide to finally offer a 13''.

I wouldn't bother. I bought one in late 2013 and regretted it. I was so pissed that I even wrote a blog post on it. They keyboard sucked so bad that they literally sent a new keyboard to install along with a cute email from their CEO. I wanted a refund but they would not issue. I should have done a chargeback but I decided not to at the time.

[in the US]

Dell Precision 17 7000's can be ordered with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. They come standard with three year next business day onsite warranties.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7710-workstatio...

Microsoft Surface Book will boot most distros just fine, especially with the tigerite kernel. Prettier and faster than Thinkpads and thankfully devoid of the TrackPoint abomination.

I love trackpoints :)

I've got a 3 year old(?) Lenovo Y500 15" 1080p running the latest Ubuntu and it's fine with everything working.

Thinkpads are the Linux analogue of MacBooks.

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