Is this the endgame? System 76 Serwal – AMD and pop!_OS | Hacker News Reader

Is this the endgame? System 76 Serwal – AMD and pop!_OS

system76.com

21 pointsramanujank28 comments

NVidia is not the endgame. Also, desknotes are large, heavy, and have short battery life.

A better link for imagery of the product: https://system76.com/laptops/serval

I don't understand why System 76 keyboards for their higher end laptops include a numeric keypad. Doesn't seem worth the downside of narrowing keys that I'll predominantly use. Is there much demand for numeric keypads that aren't better served with an external USB addition? Is it because the internals or screen need the extra width anyway and they're filling in what would be unused space?

I find inconceable to NOT have a numerical keypad (and a proper cluster of home/end/pgup/pgdown/ins/canc keys).

Lately I find even 17" laptops without the numeric keypad (but with empty spaces at the borders...), it's very unsettling.

This is the reason I won't consider most of their laptops. I understand they use an oem and the oem doesn't give a shit about design, usability, ergonomics, or practicality. That's why it's like this. Most laptop vendors simply don't give a fuck about design or quality. Making unusable laptops is the norm. You can't expect to have a reasonable explanation of something no one has given a second's thought to. This is why people like Apple although they have adopted mostly the same stance nowadays.

To nitpick on Apple in the keyboard realm, I've never understood Apple's decision to make arrow keys half the size of other keys, presumably to fit them into the corner. I use them significantly more than most other keys and I'd much rather sacrifice the right shift key width to fit them all in as normal. It's been at least a decade of this travesty.

Actually the 2016 to early 2019 mbpros (and maybe airs) had the full size keys. People generally hated then because they are hard to pick out by touch. But you can grab one if you don't mind getting a keyboard that will likely break and has no escape key as a trade-off.

Didn't realize that. I could see how it's harder to go by feel without the gap around them. Adding some texture to them could mitigate that.

I wish System 76 would stop trying to pack more hard drives into their laptops and instead focus on bigger batteries. Given the two M.2 slots would anyone actually want a 2.5"?

Sometimes storage size is more important than speed. Spinning rust isn't quite dead yet.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine there are many people out there who need more than a TB or two in a laptop.

Lenovo ThinkPad T490 and Lenovo ThinkPad P90 is the endgame.

Install whichever Just Works distro. I recommend Linux Mint because it just works.

Damn it, I'm on the hunt for a new laptop and System 76 seems so appealing, specs and price, yet I'm put off knowing that if something goes wrong with it, it will be months before I get it repaired (as a non-us resident)...

If you are from Europe check out Tuxedo Computers from Germany. They sell the same Clevo laptops like System 76.

Yes, Europe, Bulgaria. I'm considering Tuxedo, I mean without the covid-19 situation, a return ticket to Germany is ~60 euros, I'd still have to waste a 2-3 days compared to my current Asus (the largest repair center is 700 meters away from me. The hinge of the screen broke ~2 years ago, the guys replaced in the time it took me to have a coffee. Shame Asus started adding those horrid screenpad things...

Depending on which model you are interested in, you might find some European company offering the same chassis (usually Clevo or Tongfang).

For example, the Lemur Pro 14 looks like a Clevo L141CU which is also sold by Schenker (or Tuxedo for a Linux version). You can probably find a brand that retails in your area/country/continent.

my only real problem with system76 is that they don't offer international keyboard layout. My fingers "need" an ISO italian one.

Does anybody really like those touchpads with separate buttons? I still only really like Apple touchpads.

Yep me! I couldn't live without those buttons. Especially the Lenovo versions of touchpad and buttons.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "endgame" in this kind of bare context. If you are asserting that this is a cool setup then I agree.

Coincidentally, I was just on their site this morning looking at their wood paneled workstations.

I'm personally not sure about pop!_os though. I would have like them to offer a mint option as part of the standard builds.

I just got one of their Thelio workstations in March, been really happy with it so far. Pop!_OS is neat, but I installed Fedora KDE within a week and it was seamless. That the choice for "default installed OS" didn't include my preferred flavor didn't really bother me so much.

They offer both Ubuntu and pop! os; I don't think it's fair to ask for more distros. If you want Mint, just install Mint. An install of Ubuntu 20.04 for me required zero configuration on a new Oryx Pro 16" that I bought a few months ago.

I'm well aware they offer both Ubuntu and Pop. After all, I was just there looking to purchase a workstation. Ubuntu might be your cup of tea but I personally don't care for Snap. I know absolutely nothing about Pop!_OS. Neither of these options are ones I would choose.

It would have been nice (imho) if they offered Mint as an option as it would potentially save me the pain of hunting down the proper drivers and hoping I can figure out how to install them and get the workstation I want to actually work.

Not for me. This is a paving slab.

Note, this is a previous generation Ryzen. The new ones are much better.

Actually no, these are desktop CPUs from the current generation!

Why would they do that? Can a desktop Ryzen even be cooled in a laptop, especially together with GTX2080? o-O

An off-center keyboard is a dealbreaker for me.

That thing is an absolute unit.

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