Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
system76.com
system76.com
I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web)
The battery life is comparable to Windows (on integrated graphics mode, it has graphics switching available)at 7-10 hours with 70% brightness and balanced power settings using VScode and firefox.
The g14 has a 75wh battery vs the pangolin's 49wh, so I would expect less battery life from the pangolin despite the 4700u having a lower default tdp, since the 4800hs likes to sit at around 6-10 watts when doing non-intensive tasks anyway.
In 2021 I'm not missing any major programs. It's pretty incredible how much is cross-platform now.
- What kind of external webcam do you use? Does it have any problem with any video-conferencing software?
- Do you access any streaming service (with DRM)? Any issues?
- Any issues with drivers, returning from sleep/hybernation?
Thanks!
A side note: the build quality was extremely disappointing, coming from an XPS 13.
* Locks up on suspend/resume
* Locks up when inserting an external USB-C monitor
* Requires a recent kernel to work properly (5.8 or later)
* Locks up without amdgpu.runpm=0 kernel command line
* dGPU can't be turned off, so increases power consumption
* Locks up with vsync on with the dGPU
* Kernel warning on startup, but doesn't affect stability
Besides these issues (which can be worked around), it's very solid.
It's worked great so far except for plugging into Dell's USB-c dock in the morning. This is a guessing game of which (of 3) monitors are going to work, often requiring opening/closing the lid a time or two or turning on/off screens.
Battery life is decent (VERY good if you turn down brightness and ssh to your work) and it's blazing fast. It does get egg cooking hot when unplugged and running the GPU (games).
Running Win10 currently, but trying to figure out which Linux is going to run with 3 monitors without doing hours of research. Suggestions welcome. Guess I'll try PopOS next.
The nvidia driver is a bit of a pain to set up, especially if you're on wayland or if you want to use displays via USB C (reverse prime does not work yet due to an nvidia driver bug, so you need to use the nvidia gpu as primary when docked). Other than that, everything works and the community (arch wiki and rog-core) provide good support for getting everything up and running. A bit of configuration and a somewhat recent kernel will be needed (it's pretty new hardware after all), but it's not that hard if you either know Linux or are willing to spend some time. I'm running this config for 8 months now, so the situation from a fresh install might be even better.
Similar to the sister comment, I came from an XPS 13, but I'm happy. The laptop is a bit heavier, but in exchange you get a lot more power, far more RAM (up to 48GB), more ports and, subjectively, a dar better keyboard. Initially I wanted to stay with an XPS, but now I'm happy I made the jump.
EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage.
Can you speak more to this? Does Pop_OS! configure this (more-or-less) out of the box? Would it work with any Nvidia card or are there restrictions?
I'm interested in such a setup and have done research from afar. I've developed on Linux for years, but have heard GPU passthrough can be difficult unless you wrangle drivers a bit.
EDIT: I'd also like to use it for CUDA in Linux. Do you have to reboot when enabling GPU passthrough (not a dealbreaker, just curious)?
Sure! Regards working out of the box, you'll probably have no luck with that. VFIO is still somewhat of a niche and VFIO on a laptop is a niche of a niche, so you'll need to expect some command line usage and a bit of config file editing. This being said, getting it to work is not too hard and, if you've done VFIO in the past, you should feel right at home.
For the initial setup, you can mostly follow the guide on the arch wiki [0]. You might need to adapt it a bit on ubuntu(-based) systems, but the major points are the same. The only difference to the usual setup is that you need to include an APCI-table [3] to get the laptop driver to work in the VM. This reddit thread [1] describes it quite well. The author of that thread also has a repo [2] where he published his files and on which I based my scripts on. Note that you need the usual CPUID work-around (see the "Error 43" section on the arch vfio page). Also, you'll need an USB C to HDMI/DisplayPort/... cable and a monitor for the initial setup, after that you can use a dummy plug [5] and looking glass (also described on the arch wiki) to use pass through without external monitor. The setup is also very stable for me, with the exception of the looking glass part - if you absolutely depend on the setup, having a monitor handy will save you a bit of headache, but you can always revert to a VM display in the worst case.
Regarding GPU support: It should support all GPU configurations, but you should check reddit etc to be sure. If you're talking about other laptops, the situation is a bit different. The big advantage of the G14 is (1) that the GPU has its own IOMMU group and is therefore easy to isolate and (2) that the display ports are well split between the two GPUs (the HDMI out and the internal display are connected to the AMD iGPU and the USB C DP-channel is connected to the RTX). This is rather rare, but makes setting this up (comparatively) easy. Note that the USB channel of the USB C out is not routed via the GPU, so if you're connected to a docking station, its display ports will be used by the VM, but the USB ports are on the host, still. This, however, comes with the drawback that you can not pass through an USB controller, as the groups for those do not work out. The ACS override patch (see arch wiki) might fix this, but unless you need to use audio interfaces, the "normal" USB redirector will suffice anyway.
Rebooting is semi-required. In order to change from VM to Linux and back, you'll need to [un-]bind the nvidia driver and switch to vfio-pci. Going from Linux to VM is only possible when nothing uses the nvidia driver, which either needs a restart of your display server or only using the iGPU for all apps (quite easy on sway/wayland, haven't tried on X). The reverse should work as well - the author of the reddit threads above has scripts to do so, but this did not work out for me. Leaving the vfio-pci driver for the GPU is not an option either, as this will prevent it from going into the low power state and therefore heat up the laptop and use up the battery. Because of this, I usually simply reboot. In summary, if you don't mind rebooting, having the GPU bound to vfio-pci via kernel parameter on a secondary boot option is by far the easier way :) But it should be possible without, it'll just be a bit of work.
To work with CUDA, you'll need to have the nvidia driver loaded, but you'll want to have that anyway to enable low-power states, as mentioned above. Using only the iGPU for display is possible in combination with CUDA, you'll simply need to stop your CUDA-apps before unbinding the driver. That's actually the setup I use, too :)
Hope this helps!
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/hx5j8q/success_with_l...
[2] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu
[3] Since the original link is down for me: You need the ACPI table [4] and include it like this in the `<domain>`-part:
<qemu:commandline>
<qemu:arg value='-acpitable'/>
<qemu:arg value='file=/home/cole/vfio/acpitable.bin'/>
</qemu:commandline>
[4] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/acpitable...
[5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MKR9WH - no affiliation, anything should work
On related note - does external display works without nvidia GPU? A lot of manufactures have lately decided to hardwire external HDMI connection to descrete GPU and hence it has been pretty painful to use NVIDIA powered Laptops on Linux. :(
I guess that could just be my sight, but the reviews for the XPS laptop vs the 4k model of the same were pretty much unanimous on the 4k variant being a waste of battery for a neglible return on image quality, so it's at least not a fringe view
It is
1080p to 4k is such a large difference
Perfect vision is usually understood to be the ability to discern details of about 1/60 of a degree, or 0.29 milliradians. By the arc length formula (s=rθ), we find that the distance needed to precisely align this angle with the level of detail provided by a 1080p screen is about 20 inches.
In other words, if you sit closer than 20 inches away from your screen (perhaps not that unlikely for a laptop), you might be able to discern details beyond the 1080p level. This would only be possible for extremely contrast sensitive small details, like text in a small font size at 1:1 (no DPI scaling).
So... it's a bit complicated, but I suspect 1080p would be good enough for nearly everyone at 13 inches, but move up to 15 inches and I could see many people preferring 1440p.
High DPI screens are able to render text without aliasing, and that makes a significant difference, especially with less-than-perfect eyesight.
What you're saying is true insofar as I had to squint up to a 1080p screen at 13" to actually see the pixels. But everything was slightly blurry, and switching to a "Retina" (1600p iirc) screen fixed that.
Which was the lack of subpixel aliasing: you can make those screens look blurry as well, by turning it back on. But a 1080 without it just looks like it has janky text rendering.
An actual 4K screen is unnecessary at 13", imho, but the extra pixels are harmless except in battery life. I do detect a real difference in textual rendering between 170ppi and 227, because it's the difference between leaning on subpixel aliasing and turning it off while still getting good results.
First of all the cone spacing in the fovea is around 31arcsec or about half the arcmin you assume. IMO that is more relevant than the 20/20 vision number because that number is not based on any intrinsic quantisation of the visual system but rather mostly limited by blur which tends to be very much not gausian -> not an ideal low pass filter for most eyes.
Now consider the nyquist shannon sampling theorem that tells us that any signal we want to fully capture needs to be sampled at at least twice the frequency of the highest frequency of interest. So if we want to be able to fully represent any state of our visual system on a display we need at least twice the resolution of our visual system (ignoring for a minute that that assumes an ideal lpf which your eye is not as stated above). so already 4x your 1arcmin resolution number.
But that all quickly becomes rather theoretical when you look at jagged elephant in the room: aliasing and scaling! a lot of what we look at is either rendered with pixel precision being very prone to aliasing at scales that are much much larger than your pixel pitch (see this worst case demonstration https://www.testufo.com/aliasing-visibility) or image or video files that might be displayed at a size that isn't an integer multiple or fraction of its native resolution. scaling just like aliasing causes artifacts that go way beyond the scale of your pixel pitch and one way to mitigate the issue is to just have a very high target resolution to scale too. So yeah I don't thing "can't distinguish individual pixels" is a meaningful threshold and even way beyond that there is still benefit to be had even for those with less than perfect eyesight
The biggest thing keeping me on my Macbook is it's hard to find a 13 inch, hi dpi, close as possible to mac keyboard laptop. The Razer 13 inch was sooo close but they made tilde and backslash half keys for some reason....
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/k...
Especially with Chinese/Japanese characters, these can sometimes become unreadable on smaller fonts on 1080p.
I have two 14” Thinkpads I switch between which have almost identical setups, but one is 1080p and one is 1440. I’m not buying another 1080p if I can avoid it. And yes I have been tweaking fonts and X11 quite a bit already.
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/4k-1080p-201311153442.htm
https://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution-matter/comment-pa...
https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/4K-vs-8K--Who-can-tell-...
Once you see and appreciate the difference, you can’t unsee it. Anything less is jarring.
Print media figured out three to four decades ago that print buyers prefer at least 144 lpi for black shapes, at least 300-600 dpi for grey images, and minimally 300 dpi but ideally 1200 dpi for colour photos people will consider high quality. (Note: For reader convenience I’m mixing lines per inch or lpi with dots per inch or dpi here, lines is per screen but there may be several screens per image, so dpi is the source material you’re trying to reproduce with screens.)
We’ve been settling on computer screen quality for too long. If all we did was video, fine, but we spend most time simulating print.
Both laptops are 15".
I have a ThinkPad, and this has been my experience. Sitting next to my Macbook Pro 13" retina, there is not much difference. 14" 16:9 1080p vs. 13" 16:10 1600p. The matte finish + slight diagonal increase closes the gap between the two. Unless you're in your 20s with perfect vision, I doubt the average person could tell a visual difference between the two.
I will also say that at 13", the difference between 16:9 and 16:10 is practically nonexistent. Especially 14" vs 13". I thought this would be a major issue for me. But it's not. On a 27" desktop monitor? Sure, that can make a difference.
Yep. What's getting lost in this whole discussion over resolution and whether >1080p is necessary is the issue of panel quality. Most laptops have always had absolute shit that is useless for photo editing or color-accurate work. Even at the high end they rarely advertise things like gamut coverage.
I absolutely hate viewing text on my LO-DPI PC vs my 6 year old HD-DPI Macbook Pro or either my 4 year old android smartphone or my 1 year old iPhone or my 7 year old iPad. It's like playing a NES game vs a PS4 Game. Sure some are fun and it's nostalgic but the world as moved on and lo-res is old.
This is exactly what the product people who are building blazing fast, high spec laptops with top-of-the-line circa 2006 displays need to hear.
But support for 1440p on Linux (and as far as I know not just Linux) is crap.
Anyway in my experience having a high quality display is much much much more important then the display resolution (as long as it's at least 1080p).
Sure some wayland implementations do support fractional scaling but only in a way which leads to not so crisp fonts and images (scaling by 2 and then down scaling the pixel output to the given 1.x scaling factor), which defeats the whole point of getting a higher resolution screen.
Sure if your 1440p screen is also size wise bigger this might not matter but then my argument was always about increasing resolution without increasing monitor size. E.g. like a 1440p14" Laptop or similar.
Also a perfect size scaling on a 1440p14" to make the UI be the same size as on a 1080p14" monitor is technically impossible, through there are ways to get solutions which are good enough anyway (but not scaling to exactly the same size but something close by, separately for each font and other elements in a UI).
And while X impl. might work better, lets be honest X is dead. Still used, sure, but dead anyway.
This has less space than 4k at 200% (normal for 15") or 1080p at 100%.
Not sure why it is that way - it's just a matter finding a global pixel size, rendering all screens to these bitmaps and then 2D scaling them down to panel resolution.
That's not my experience at all. For a while I was using a 27" 4k display at an effective resolution of 2560x1440. Obviously it wasn't as nice as 5k at 2x scaling would have been, but it was much sharper than a native 1440p display.
How does Windows fix this? I have used so many Win32 apps that are jus broken in one way or another on HiDPI displays, most shockingly Visual Studio, my experience of HiDPI on Windows is always worse.
Now, seriously, I find it hard to see the difference between 1080 and 4K. What would be nice is a good HDR display panel.
Thank you for the pointer. I have the exact same laptop and tried Ubuntu on it - couldn't even change the screen brightness.
This would also work for Ubuntu.
For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically the only thing making a difference in battery life for laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery.
Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD + WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if working full speed.
From my desk, to my easy chair, to my bed, and back again.
Not hard on my battery (two of those have charge cables handy) but difficult to pull off with a desktop.
Now that you mention it, it's been more than a year since my laptop has left my home. Ouch.
Granted, becoming a parent also meant that things like watching a movie are “haha, I’m going to sleep” now, too.
I use a sit/stand desk but barely ever sit at it, so fifteen minutes of down time here and there helps.
If the computer can only hold up a 1.5 hour battery it really doesn't satisfy the use case of a laptop, doubling the battery up to 99 wh really allows for a 3-4 hour minimum battery life and a longer battery life for non-GPU work.
But then, at the office, they got some HP Elitedesk minis, which are very small - but use regular desktop CPUs - and I bought one for myself. Now the laptop spends most of its days in a drawer because the desktop is much beefier and just as portable.
Of course, there are use-cases that a computer requiring an external screen and AC to even work can't handle. That's why I would be much more interested in having a "big" laptop, as in powerful CPU, tons of RAM, glorious screen. Could even be tempted to throw in a dedicated GPU. Don't care about it being 1 cm thin, featherweight and all-day battery. I do care about it not spinning up its fans when I'm just running vim in a console. I don't mind lugging around 2-3 kg of copper if that means the CPU can do a lot of work in silence.
I have a friend who's moving much more around, in meetings, etc. Her old macbook air is perfect for what she does. Also, the latest and greatest AMD wouldn't make a difference for her job, but she would clearly hate to lug around a heavy, bulky beast.
I think the issue is that, with today's technology, there's clearly no one size fits all. And there seems to be a trend in laptops to optimize for size and battery-life. Luckily, there are people for whom this is the right compromise. Don't know if they're the majority, but clearly there are other use-cases for which choices are more limited.
It wouldn't turn me off from System76 if the hardware were good, but it's just... bad... real bad.
System76 should take a risk and truly make an interesting laptop. leaving the standard, boring design to the big name companies.
OEM are very risk averse. They only produce cookie cutter designs because most of their buyers themselves look for most casual buyers.
The iGPU has a hard-locked 64MB of RAM allocated to it, which means the Nvidia graphics chip is ALWAYS on, causing it to get maybe 2~ hours of battery life at best
The build quality is miserable, I ended up replacing all of the screws in the machine to make it more properly sturdy (which also fixed the case flex causing the fans to grind to a halt if you nudged the machine too harshly)
Linux support still isn't 100%. The Nvidia blob doesn't support GPU switching for what ever reason and Nouveau just causes kernel oopses
After suffering with it for so many years I finally bought an "MSI Modern 14" Ryzen laptop, which I'm moderately content with. I'll probably send the Mibook off to some people I know that work at Red Hat so they can at least improve its Linux support for those who still have it though
I find them completely useless and am ready for them to be gone, but it's like they didn't even try.
At this point Apple can design any gimmicky piece of hardware, stick their logo on it, sell it for three times the price of equivalent third party products and still run out of stock on launch. You can't beat that.
$1000 for the M1 air is not a huge premium. It's actually very cheap.
Which is a huge problem for the competition. I know that I can get just get a cheap Mac and it will still be fast, it will still have a great screen and the build quality will be higher than the majority of PC laptops.
I happen to like macOS, so it's not a huge issue, but if I want to get a laptop for Linux, then I need to go to a store to see the models. Otherwise I can't be sure if I'll like the screen, keyboard or overall look an feel. The minor price difference for an Apple product is acceptable, given that I know what I'll getting a usable laptop regardless of which model I pick.
Now, if you spec out their Mac Pro, especially as it gets updated so infrequently, those get very out of line with competitor hardware quickly.
Retail prices already include higher profit margins than bulk order prices would include, which makes this markup even more egregious.
I calculated it the other day, and Apple is charging $0.52/GB for SSDs on their M1 MacBook Air.
Samsung's 980 Pro is under $0.20/GB for the 1TB model on Amazon right now. That is arguably one of the best SSDs on the market right now, and I'm fairly sure Samsung' 980 Pro is actually significantly better than the internal SSD that Apple is using on the M1 MacBook Air.
That means Apple is charging a 160% markup above retail price, minimum.
The Western Digital SN550 1TB PCIe SSD is priced at about $0.10/GB at retail on Amazon, which means Apple is charging over a 400% markup relative to the retail prices of that perfectly good SSD. Most users would not be able to tell the difference between the SN550 and the internal SSDs Apple is currently using.
I recognize that other OEMs can sometimes charge steep upgrade markups too... but Apple's prices for storage are personally annoying to me because the M1 MacBook Air seems reasonably priced until you get into the upgrades. I wanted to get more storage, but I'm not going to pay $0.52/GB for additional storage these days... I just don't find it reasonable.
Since we’re on the topic of System76, a fully upgraded Oryx Pro (except leaving the GPU at the base option) costs about half of what a fully upgraded 16” MBP costs (also leaving the GPU at the base option), while offering similar specs — $3158 vs $6000. The System76 chooses to go for a 144Hz panel instead of a HiDPI panel, but different people value different things. The System76 obviously has a better port selection (for most people), while obviously not being as sleek — but it’s not huge either, it’s reasonably thin and light. It’s more durable while not as shiny. It’s easy for people to pull out the “no true Scotsman” defense at this point, but it all depends on what the customer is looking for. It’s Apple’s fault if they don’t offer enough variety to meet the needs of their customers.
I’m sure I could dig into comparative analysis of other OEMs vs Apple and come up with other examples, but this one is easy enough.
Spec for spec, Apple charges much more than twice as much for many important upgrades... so a sufficiently upgraded Apple laptop can be more than twice as much, even if it’s often “only” a 70% markup or something. That doesn’t excuse charging egregious prices for storage. Customers want storage, and Apple withholds it unless customers want to pay a large ransom. They solder the SSDs so that customers cannot upgrade their own computers.
I own an M1 MacBook Air. I’m not some “Apple hater”, but their upgrade pricing is truly appalling, and for all their talk of environmental friendliness, their attempts to thwart aftermarket repair and upgrades significantly hinders the total potential lifetime of their products, which increases their environmental impact relative to what could be.
I bought the 256GB/16GB model, and that 256GB SSD is borderline too small for me to deal with, and I’m not even like an average user that would be attempting to store music and pictures on it. I’m almost exclusively using it for software dev and web browsing. I would swap out the SSD, but... that’s obviously not possible.
If I can’t make the 256GB of storage work long term, I think I would rather sell this thing and buy something else than give Apple $0.52/GB. The M1 is good... but it’s not priceless. My opinions are subject to change, of course.
Not sure where you're getting these numbers. Comparing like for like and maxing out the Oryx, and the Mac's processor, they both have 64GB RAM and a 4TB SSD. The price I'm getting for that Mac config is $4800 vs the $3168 that you mention. $6000 doubles the Mac's storage to an 8TB SSD, which the Oryx does not offer. 6K is indeed a lot, but how many PC laptops even offer an 8TB SSD at any price? I haven't seen many.
But I digress. That's roughly a 50% markup, which is indeed a lot. For the extra $1500 you get a much higher resolution display (2880 x 1800) with good color reproduction, much better build quality, macOS and the Mac software ecosystem, Thunderbolt ports, Mac trackpad and keyboard, etc. Maybe these things are not valuable to you! But it's not like you're not getting anything for that money. The products are not equivalent, even if their specs were the same on paper.
I own System76 products and Apple products, and have owned countless PC laptops in the past. I do the math regularly and know what I'm paying for with Apple stuff, and it's almost never a 70% markup. And Apple stuff has specs you just can't find in other products, like the high-res displays and high number of Thunderbolt ports. Which isn't to say it's perfect! I don't like the Touch Bar and would like an SD card reader and HDMI out. But in general, statements about the price inflation are overblown. It exists but it's not as bad as many people think.
The rest of your points I’ve already addressed. More thunderbolt ports is actually bad for most users if it comes at the expense of ports they can actually use without a dongle. The build quality is not really any better... I’ve owned both as well, and I’ve also had a work MacBook Pro 15 with the butterfly keyboard. Until recently, Mac keyboards were the worst in the industry, including reliability. Now they’re decent, but nothing to write home about. Definitely not an advantage. Trackpads are what you make of them... Apple certainly makes good ones, but it’s not 2010 anymore. Every mid-to-high end laptop I’ve used in the last 5 years has had a good trackpad, but I still reach for a mouse even on my Macs.
I already addressed the display as well. It’s a trade off. Apple doesn’t offer high refresh rate displays on their laptops, which matter to some people. If they didn’t matter, Apple wouldn’t put them on their iPad Pro.
System76 used to offer 4K displays (optionally matte) on the Oryx Pro, and mine was exceptionally good! And that’s higher resolution than Apple uses, in addition to the wonderful matte effect cutting down on glare. I’m just guessing the massive ongoing part shortage has affected which displays they can actually acquire for the moment.
So yes, I agree you get different things with a Mac, but those things are unlikely to be worth 50% more to most people, with the exception of macOS itself... and that’s only valuable to people who like macOS or are literally required to use macOS.
> in general, statements about the price inflation are overblown. It exists but it's not as bad as many people think.
I started this conversation by pointing out the price inflation I care about the most: storage, and it’s on the order of a 400% markup. It’s extremely awful.
If Apple would be environmentally friendly and allow people to repair and upgrade their computers, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, because I’d have a 1TB SSD in my MacBook Air, and it would have cost me $100. If Apple would charge a healthy 100% profit margin, I would probably have paid them for the SSD... I’m just not willing to go to 400% markup.
Apple has basically always charged egregious upgrade prices, it didn’t start when they started soldering things down, so the small number of people like myself who would actually upgrade components should not be considered a threat to their profit margins... but even if most people did it, Apple should allow it because it’s the right thing to do long term, even if it impacts short term profits. Instead, they seem to be optimizing their products to eek out every last percentage point of profit. Which is understandable... it is a company, but it would be nice if they didn’t. They already have hundreds of billions of dollars of cash.
I mean, yeah. This is the one thing that's basically inarguable. Their computers increasingly do not contain serviceable parts, except for the Mac Pro, which is absurdly expensive. I suspect they just prefer compactness and longer battery life to repairable devices. I have to admit this isn't something I care about very much because I don't upgrade my machines and I use them until they break, which is often around a decade with Macs. Because you have different preferences I can see how you'd find these changes upsetting.
$999 Starting Price. tempting
+$249 +265Gb SSD (and a 8th GPU core)
+$200 +8Gb RAM (to a reasonable 16Gb)
+$200 +512Gb (to a nice 1Tb)
So that's $649 for a 768Gigs of SSD, 8 Gigs of RAM (and a GPU core). Cost of 1Tb gen-4 and a stick of RAM is about $200
i.e. You've paid the absolutely necessary $249 to get the 512Gb... then it's only $200 to get an extra 512Gb. Once you've overcome that first hurdle, the 2nd looks almost good value.
If you want great design that matches a Mac (overall, better in some areas, worse in others), look at the flagship ThinkPad models, Microsoft Surface devices, etc. There are many laptops that have "standout design features" such as convertible designs, novel display and input options including pen-and-touch, etc. If anything, I think Macs lag behind in these innovations, although they have other benefits.
Anyway, that's basically the creation myth of the iPhone, no? That it supposedly was basically iterated on for quite a few years before the technology got to the point where a high-quality execution was allowed. I also had Windows Mobile smartphones and remember the iPhone releasing. I didn't recognize or appreciate that difference then.
Turns out I was entirely wrong: Apple wasn't positioning this phone for IT/business professionals for corporate use. They were building a consumer product. The feature set they were prioritizing was entirely counter-intuitive from my perspective. The features that I thought were gimmicks at the time ended up being the features that made it successful: natural multi-touch input, a (then) gigantic screen, and a bare-bones UI/UX. It had nothing that I wanted or needed, but it had everything that they needed to open up the market to millions of people who weren't using HTC bricks on their Verizon corporate plan that their IT admin configured for them.
Just search "windows mobile" on YouTube and look back at the awful (but feature filled!) experiences we used to think was awesome. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXDgsZvSTP8
[1] https://beneinstein.medium.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-...
* extremely, extremely thin margins
* in general, users are pretty low-discretion, which makes it hard to meaningfully differentiate your product
* deeply entrenched competition (what % of laptops are sold at best buy/etc?)
* the users who are high-discretion are going to be extremely demanding users. They're going to nitpick over small details in both hardware and software. And they're probably going to be installing their own OS (or at least reinstalling the existing one) and will generally be more demanding of both product design and support. Also, they probably have the tech skills to correctly point the finger at you when it's your fault. Whereas less discerning users might just go "Ugh bill gates!"
Doesn't help that the "linux laptop" niche was probably a big part of this "niche laptop" market segment and Dell and Lenovo are both kinda warming back up to that niche. e.g. the newest XPS's all work great on (latest kernel) linux.
The XPS 13 competes directly with the mac in terms of (familiar but) industrial design, standout display and inner design (with the white carbon fiber) and USB-C ports for a lifetime. Stating it first, because its the most obvious competitor.
The Razer, Asus, HP and Surface flagships have clear standout designs and similar features.
The only 2 laptops that are purposely boring are the Thinkpad and System76, because they seem to cater to people who need them as work machines, first and foremost. (LG Gram is not a flagship)
I don't _hate_ the XPS 13, but I wouldn't recommend it and I probably won't be getting a 3rd one (unless they change).
The build quality just isn't there. First of all, the flexible chassis is annoying. If I pick it up on the side with one hand, it's likely to flex enough to trigger a trackpad click. Secondly, while it's pretty quiet, it does get rather hot. Third, the trackpad and mouse aren't Macbook-quality (butterfly keyboard aside). In my first one, the trackpad and battery had to be replaced. The keyboard on my current one (9300) has very mild issues (I think they reduced the travel distance and it, like butterfly, is somewhat susceptible to dust/dirt)
Not sure what I'll replace it with. Will see how the reviews for the Framework laptop are.
Seems like the reasonable choice, given that host-side USB-C is still dead in the water.
Still has soldered in RAM, unfortunately.
Apple has huge volume, big margins a very tight supply chain and a mountain of cash in tax havens. They have a lot more options.
If a seller like System 76 adds too much margin on their models people will buy a Clevo rebadged by some other seller which is a shame because System76 are adding value with their firmware and OS tweaks.
I am looking forward to the day when a company like System76 can release their own designs but without being in Apples position of fleecing customers for music, video, apps, cloud, mobile, tablets etc in a closed ecosystem it might be a long time coming.
* trackpoint + buttons (can be without touchpad, disabled anyway) * full keyboard * strong durable * removable battery * 4k screen * ecc 64-128gb * rj45 * lots of ports * hardware switches to disable: networking, camera, mic,..
Thinkpad's are move farther away each year. I hope some company will fill the gap.
But I totally agree: Input and output to the user (keyboard, trackpoint/mouse buttons/touchpad/screen) are of critical importance. I can be really effective on a decade-old Thinkpad (with the IPS display mod!) and woefully out-of-date processor, but if it takes too long to adjust to the keyboard I'll be frustrated every time I have to use it.
Sure the above wont work for everybody, but if you are like me, you unpacked the laptop at home and at work each day at exactly the same space, where all the cables and extra monitors were.
I used to use laptop in coffee shops and outdoors, but nowadays between phone, and tablets (wel phone and kindle in my case) I almost never feel the need.
Buy silent box, mobo for overclocking and underclock it for extra silence, and throw the box under the table.
Still have my laptop, but its mostly just "backup" and in case I travel somewhere, but honestly I don't care about it as much
Did you solve those problems? and if so how?
If you don't want to do something like that, with a Microsoft account a lot of settings can be applied to multiple machines.
Setting up Syncthing in the cloud was a challenge, had to tunnel the web-ui with ssh port forwarding.
That same git repo has scripts that apply some of my system configurations, and a readme to walk me through the GUI stuff I have to do.
My first few setups were hard. I had to debug some weird issues on my Linux install. (Not sleeping properly, remapping some keyboard keys).
But now I've got it cased. I setup 3 machines (2 Linux, 1 windows) over the past couple days and all are essentially equal development experience now. Was super fast to setup l. If your going the Linux route, make a repo where you record all the tweaks your making so you can redo them if you need to on a new machine.
It's shitty the first time, but now I know I can buy any new machine and have it ready to rip in mere minutes. With my custom keyboard layout (home, end, pageup, pagedown, alt, cntrl, alt+tab), my custom VSCode hotkeys, my ssh key identity management, my terminal font and themes, my system hotkeys (moving windows around and switching workspaces). Now that I've got all this setup, it feels great. Feels very fluid on all 3 machines.
Sync isn't an issue. All work is on VMs, and they get backed up every day to my Synology.
My backup laptop is a 6 year old Thinkpad, which hasn't been out of it's bag in over a year.
I’m on Linux, and use mosh as a more reliable ssh client.
I use wireguard to access my home network when I'm visiting my parents.
Nope. Actually, just like with my phone chargers, I like to have a laptop charger in all the spaces I like to compute.. I like to have a charger in my bedroom, my living room and in the garage.
I used to have this for all my machines - though I now have a new HP Omen (bad ass machine) - but I only have one charger for it currently.
I havent touched my ipad in a really long time.
But here is a tip - this super light and super cheep USB screen is AMAZING to have with a laptop:
(This thing was $69 when I bought it - but its now $99 but still - a USB only monitor is fantastic.
https://www.amazon.com/AOC-e1659Fwu-1366x768-Brightness-3-0-...
What I do, is I make it the top monitor - and I have this TV Tray stand that is at the perfect level for me to have my laptop on my lap, a tray or a TV tray, and then I have the AOC monitor on this stand and I just move up to click on that mon...
And this is dope because during this pandemic, I am trying to take every free training I can get my digital hands around.
https://digitaldefynd.com/free-udemy-courses/
So I have the training vid on the top screen and then I can use whatever program(s) I need on the laptop...
Blender courses are a good example of how this works great. The point is to have the two screens stacked vertically so that you only move your eyes up and down and dont have to turn your neck...
A laptop (xps 13 9360) for traveling or working in remote places.
Even have a yubikey on each desktop and one for travel. All storing the ssh keys.
I don't use the laptop for months, open it and update the packages and dotfiles before going for a travel and that's it. Ready to go.
This is something other than just having your dot files in git, and system config in git via etc keeper?
Systems are slightly different, at work i have two 27 inch monitors and at home i have one 30 inch, and I do play some paradox games on home computer on ocasion
I have a thinkpad x2100 and it is a great laptop.
I have an x200 as well, so if I was really worried I could just carry a spare battery.
I am glad I am not the only one.
I can't understand why Thinkpads are moving away from this absolutely perfect design in the name of... slickness?
Why are laptops with a minimal (or non-existing) touchpad so difficult to find? Once you start using the trackpoint your wrists feel incredibly relaxed at all times.
Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports? When in the lab, I find my self needing one almost daily.
Why this trend of including keyboards with shorter and shorter travel distance?
There was a campaign to bring attention to all these details a few years ago which (surprisingly!) resulted in Lenovo releasing the "Thinkpad 25 anniversary edition" [1] which ticked most (but not all) of my boxes and which is unfortunately no longer available.
Do people really prefer the new design trends? Am I out of touch with reality?
[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/thinkpad/think...
Having been a user of the old X lines throughout the years the current X/T and X1 lines seem like a definite improvement to me. And I also use the trackpoint exclusively.
Feels quite well built despite the low weight, too. It doesn't sacrifice on solidness to achieve its weight.
Plus the extra battery life in the Carbon. But the X1 Nano beats my 2020 intel macbook air in battery life from the benchmarks I've seen, which could be longer I have not found lacking
It's mainly due to two factors: 1) thanks to having a very small touchpad, the keyboard is closer to the edge and I feel much less strain on the lower part of the arm, near my wrists, which becomes more apparent after long coding sessions; and 2) the key travel is much longer and typing feels "better" (I make far less mistakes).
Also, because the x395 is almost half the thickness, they could not fit a bigger battery (which is definitely my main complaint on these newer machines).
Don't get me wrong, the "X" series is great and I will probably get the latest version when I need a replacement *but* I'm sad they make these sacrifices in the name of "design".
> Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports?
I'm guessing that because laptops are portable machines, almost nobody ever uses the network port and if you need one, you can use an adapter with the USB port.
They come close in number of ports and battery life *but* they still have an excessively big touchpad, don't have a 13 inch version and start at 1.7 kilos (which makes them less than ideal for carrying around).
But I agree they are the very nice machines and we keep a bunch of them in the lab.
However I think that yes, most people (including me) prefer the new to the old. Eg.: I dislike full keyboards because it shifts my hands to a side and moves the mouse further away. I tried track points but I find touchpads superior. I don’t need an RJ45 because even if I wanted to use it, I’d much rather have it on a USB-C dongle with pass through power, so I only have one cable to disconnect when moving around. And call me crazy, even though I use a mechanical external keyboard most of the time, I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard more than on other laptop keyboards I have and had.
The X61s was far closer to an absolutely perfect design, it just needed less plastic in the chassis. Things started going downhill with the X201s in the transition to wide aspect ratio displays, and X220/X230 arrived at full retard on that trajectory.
Slow by modern standards, being pre-Nehalem, yes. But not 32-bit, the X61s tops out at a 1.8Ghz c2d L7700, which is 64-bit:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/32243/i...
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology: No
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology: No
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x): Yes
Intel® 64: Yes
Instruction Set: 64-bit
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology: Yes
Intel® Demand Based Switching: NoLots of games on Steam has achievements for extremely simple tasks, such as launching the game for the first time or playing it for five minutes, and popularity of those is typically around 82.5% and 75% respectively among audiences for most popular titles.
IOW, 17.5% of PC game enthusiasts pay for a game and immediately put it on a shelf and don’t even double click on the icon. 25% reaches past the loading screen. Of all purchasers, maybe 10% reaches the final boss or end of the storyline. Potentially less.
A person who has issues with a mainstream laptop for its lack of an Ethernet port few years into ownership, who knows how many of those exist in the whole world?
At least, many people in HN and most people in /r/thinkpad seem to agree! :)
They also have the T25 frankenpad: https://www.xyte.ch/shop/t25-frankenpad-kit/ and https://www.xyte.ch/thinkpads/t25-frankenpad/
The laptop market churns way too much for my liking and I feel like the second I move away from my macbook pro (work) I'm going to be disappointed with the quality.
When it comes to development, my goal is to be able to ssh into my linux box and use that for most development (tmux + vim). That plus ZeroTier and I now have access to my dev machine from wherever.
Even on large codebases written in Typescript, vim + plugins are "good enough."
macbook pro + live inside an ssh terminal seems to be working well enough for me.
1) Mixed DPI is insanely bad on Linux, and that issue is amplified if you have Nvidia hardware. At least as of last month, Wayland and XWayland are basically unusable with Nvidia. Since the laptop screen is 4k, but I was using a Thunderbolt dock plugged into 2x1080p monitors, I'd have to turn off display scaling on the laptop, and, because I was stuck on X11 because Nvidia, I'd have to restart the laptop for the scaling change to take effect.
2) There was no Thunderbolt dock support for unlocking full disk encryption, so if you wanted FDE, you either had to unplug the laptop from the dock, open it, type the password and plug it back in every time you turn the laptop on, or just not used a Thunderbolt dock. This wouldn't be a big deal except I was restarting the laptop frequently when changing pretty much any display parameter.
3) There was no clear best practice for managing switchable graphics. There are options like Bumblebee that I never really figured out if they were working properly - especially for games. Then, Nvidia supposedly added a "primus-run" feature to the driver, but again, it seemed to just not work. Eventually I settled on "prime-select" but that involves rebooting every time you switch.
4) Selecting the Nvidia graphics disabled on-board audio. I had to either use USB or Bluetooth. I never figured this out despite countless hours of messing around with alsamixer. My best guess is that it was trying to direct everything over the HDMI out even though that wasn't plugged in. The Intel drivers were loaded, just every time I selected the Nvidia chip, the audio devices would disappear.
In the end, I settled on picking up an Acer Aspire refurbished from eBay. It has an i5 10400, 12GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I put a 1050 Ti in it without any problems. The total system ran me $500. It's much nicer. So the moral of the story is for me, if you do go Linux laptop, avoid Nvidia like the plague.
Possibly a stupid question, but isn't a "1050 Ti" an Nvidia chip? How did this help you with the driver issues?
Try sudo alsactl restore
I have a Dell G5 with Nvidia RTX and my headphones do not work when I start it
Took me a few months of investigation, but that alsactl command fixes it in 90% of situations
They're not a gimmick if well implemented. Useful gestures are very dependant on deep software integration, however.
I never used gestures. But I seriously miss inertia scrolling. You never realize how much a pain in the ass it is scrolling web pages until you don't have it. Firefox has it, but you have to turn on an environment variable to get it and it feels a bit weird to me. Chrome does not have it all on Linux. And the way they are implementing it means that every app has to reimplement inertia scrolling on its own. Sigh. At least you can hold down the middle mouse and use the trackpoint to swiftly scroll.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but this is just when you scroll, release your fingers, and it slows to a stop instead of stopping instantly, right? I have that out of the box here on Linux. Firefox + X + touchpad with the synaptics driver.
I had thought this was what "Use smooth scrolling" did it in the Firefox preferences.
Edit: I also just checked and I have this in my terminal (Konsole), text editor (KWrite), and PDF viewer (Okular) so this is at the very least not a Firefox only thing. It feels exactly the same in each application. I bet it's a feature of the touchpad driver.
Given the number of people these days who don't even own a desktop, I don't understand why mouse buttons aren't the standard. With the XPS I can even play casual games while sitting on the couch. No need to move to a desk and dig a corded mouse of the drawer!
The nearly identical Clevo NL51RU/NL50RU [1] has a 2.5" drive caddy but a 36 Wh battery. Take a look at the internal photo of the System76 unit at [2]. It's the same laptop. Heck, they didn't even bother removing the boss and brass insert for the 2.5" drive retaining screw by the left speaker.
System76 is not an OEM, they whitelabel and have tweaks made to Clevo/Sager laptops. I think they do a great service to the Linux community with PopOS and driver development/compatibility to make those into machines where Linux "just works" out of the box, don't get me wrong.
This obsession with thin-and-light goes completely counter to the whole point of "Our laptops’ guts are fully accessible!". They say they've got a tactile keyboard, to fit in 20mm thin right on top of the heat sink for the high-power Ryzen processor and discrete graphics I think I'm pretty safe in assuming it's a pathetic <1mm key-travel scissor unit.
1" thick or more is not too much. You could fit in all the ports, as well as an 80 Wh battery, and cooling to run at boost frequencies for more than 20ms. You don't have to match the dimensions of a Macbook Air and be able to slice tomatoes with the wrist rest.
[1]: https://laptopwithlinux.com/wp-content/uploads/Clevo-NL51RU-... from https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-nl51ru/ [2]: https://assets.system76.com/products/pang10/internal.png
I think it depends a lot on an individual's needs. Like in my case, a recent laptop purchasing decision revolved around qualities that make a laptop particularly good at being a laptop — that is, high portability, low/no noise, little/no heat. Power and ports were a cherry on top because I already have another machine that fills those needs.
In that situation, 1" isn't necessarily too thick, but it is negatively impacting its functionality as a laptop, if only because added thickness implies added weight (especially for sizes larger than 13").
With that said, ultraportables shouldn't exist at the cost of models more oriented toward power and flexibility… they should be an option alongside more traditional laptops.
I accidentally spilled a glass of water on my old thinkpad w, and all I had to do was to replace the keyboard (happened twice). It also helped that I could find spare part easily online. Would it be possible with lesser-know brands? It also fell several time on the ground but never broke anything. I'm honestly very interested to know if there are laptops as durable as thinkpads.
It is so annoying to type with your hands off-center from the screen.
It is so annoying to have to type long sequences of digits without one.
However, I think there are use cases and people who prefer using them. Some software is really geared around the full cluster being there. I've got a full size, numpad-ed keyboard (some old stock DEC thing that went to a mid 90s alphastation I believe, I got it for dirt cheap) attached to my "windows gaming machine", and I use the numpad on a few shortcut-heavy games.
Otherwise, though, I just don't have any muscle memory for it. I have to look and hunt/peck for keys on a numpad. I'm mostly using bash and vim for work, though...
Now I feel crippled whenever I'm on my laptop, which doesn't have a numpad, my own fingers flailing uselessly over numbers that whilst in mind are not available to my right hand.
I should probably get one of those external numpad USB things, but I much prefer a whinge.
(because left hand is on the keyboard, and right hand is on the mouse or stylus, and putting down the mouse to reach for a numpad is just weird.)
Doing it with the laptop would be even worse, I imagine.
This includes a surprising variety, from accountants and POS, to 3D modelling artists...
Actually, thinking about it, it strikes me as slightly absurd that this isn't an option on at least a few mainstream laptops.
Given the reportedly awful quality of webcams and especially speakers on those Clevo laptops, you might be on to something...
I know this sounds crazy, but IME the worst part of keyboard ergonomics on mac laptops is that my hands are much closer together than my shoulders are; widening to shoulder width makes for much more comfortable typing.
I'm sure nobody will crazy enough to build a laptop like this, but it makes me wonder...
I don't usually do a lot of numerical stuff so rarely need the number pad... it'd just be nice to have a wider laptop keyboard when I'm roaming about (though tbf I'm not sure I'd want a laptop that large...)
That said if you're a numpad user a keyboard with centered numpad is pretty much the best concept other than the rabbit hole of custom ergonomic keyboard layouts. Either way you can only get into that realm with a lot of money unfortunately.
It is also far more ergonomic than the current status quo.
I've been thinking of getting an ergodox and putting a trackpad in the middle..not sure if the windows Trackpads on Amazon will work on Linux though.
EDIT: hadn't seen the sibling commenter mention https://atulloh.github.io/oddball/ which looks interesting, but perhaps too minimal for my taste (eg; where's the space button?)
Ergodox, if you're reading this, an integrated trackpad/trackball solution would be pretty appealing!
Turns out it even has a touchpad, though its size is pitiful. Alas the whole keyboard reeks more of ‘mechanical + wacky layout‘ approach, with dubious ergonomics aside from the split halves.
Otherwise, trackballs on keyboards don't seem too rare: image search turns up this Adesso board (https://www.hippo-deals.com/products-images/1500/65915.jpg or better-ish https://www.adesso.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2017061601...), something named KeyTronic, etc.
I use an ErgoDox, and there's just enough space in the middle for a numpad.
But I often stick my phone there, and I just don't think I'd use it very often. Technically I can pop up a layer to turn the right side keys into a numpad (advantage of ortholinear) but I don't quite have the muscle memory to really take advantage of it so that's basically wasted.
I've mulled over having a special lighting routine that lights up only those characters, in distinct colors, that would probably get me close enough. But it's just enough hassle that I never get around to it.
A trackpad should fit, because you really want the halves parallel to your shoulders or just a bit tighter. Though as I think about the movements and gestures, you might find one of the halves interfering by being where your wrist naturally wants to be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Sebeolsik_Flnal.svg
Next step would be adding more keys under thumbs: backspace and arrows would be good candidates.
Until you experience it, you will not have the experience.
Either UHK v2 or Dygma Raise. Both are great.
I can't remember when was the last time I had to type more than 8 at any time.
Having a built in UPS is pretty sweet for some use cases though.
They can also just like having the option of portability, and appreciate the less bulk. Plus, they do use it once in a blue moon outside (at a conference, traveling, etc).
> Because all laptop users make use of the screen.
If they wanted less bulk, they could buy an Intel Nuc or similar form factor device.
The screen and portability are the compelling feature of the laptop design.
It turned out to be quite fun and useful. Not a very good laptop if you want to use it where you don't have a screen, but it was kind of like a modern TRS-80. You could treat it like a keyboard and not have the laptop screen get in the way of the larger desktop monitor (back then it probably would have been a CRT) I actually wanted to use. In a sense it was actually less awkward than a normal laptop for the way I usually wanted to use it.
Using a mouse is very bad for my shoulders if it's too far away from my center. Numpads are simply not an option for me, unless I had an external one in a special location.
I think the numpad users are outnumbered by the indifferent and numpad haters. I'm in the latter column.
If I really wanted to work on desktop I'd need to buy a car and bother with transporting it few times a week, or I'd need to buy multiple desktops and move only external SSD.
And in that case it would be a luxury, but I'd still want a laptop for occasional work and entertainment from couch.
It can be important to keep the trackpad close to centered on the keyboard for easily use of both, but the screen not aligning by a couple inches is purely aesthetic.
I've sort of regretted the decision. Not the keypad part, I still hate those, but there are other little aspects to the laptop I still don't like, or didn't work quite right.
I don't know, I guess I shouldn't really complain. For all the expense, the 16G of RAM and SSD are holding up well after this time. The programmable gaming keys didn't work quite right for my purposes (I just wanted dedicated PgUp / PgDown, Home and End, with the shift and Ctrl variants), and the battery life is crap these days (glued in). It still mostly works though.
It would be better for that keypad to be on the left side, as it interferes less with mouse use.
But, a friend of mine, was asking specifically to get a laptop with such an extended keyboard.
This looks like a good option for a 15.6" laptop.
My issue with it is that they're still shipping with those barrel plugs AC adapters, and don't appear to support USB-PD for charging on the USB-C ports.
The lack of Australian support also makes it a difficult purchase - a former colleague bought a System76 laptop a few years back and it died a few months after purchase. Having to ship it back to the US, and the associated delays means having to buy a second laptop to continue working while it's being repaired.
Clevo are known to be the OEM behind many (all?) of System76's laptops. In Australia they're sold under the brand of Metabox.
The System76 Pangolin tech specs[1] match the Metabox Edge specs[2] and visually match as far as I can tell identically, and neither mention USB-PD or Charging capability. Metabox specifically call out USB-PD capability on their other range of laptops, so I don't think it's an omission.
[1] https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin#specs [2] https://www.metabox.com.au/store/Edge-Range/Specs
Notice "65W+ USB Type-C Charging Compatible" in specs.
> Canadian customers only - covers all shipping for warranty service.
> Canada warranty two way ground shipping coverage +$65
They don't offer it for Australia.
I'd be surprised if they would - you'd be looking at air-freight, and from prior experience shipping a Lenovo laptop to Australia it was over USD$150, and that was 10 years ago - so probably more now.
Australia to the US would be even more still.
But whatever the case is, lack of Thunderbolt is unfortunately a deal breaker. I've moved on to unifying all my docks and power chords to only be Thunderbolt. It's unfortunate because the Ryzen chipsets are clearly getting to be superior from a price/performance point of view.
EDIT: I am writing this as someone who supports System76, and has only ran Linux professionally and at home for the last 10 years.
USB Type-C is a connector shape, used by both USB and Thunderbolt. So people saying they want thunderbolt and you saying they should want USB Type-C doesn't make much sense.
Imagine someone in 2001 saying they are disappointed with new computers being released without USB 2.0 (i.e. still using USB 1.1), and you replying that things should be based on Type-A. Both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 used Type-A connectors. The shape is unrelated to the protocol/speed/etc.
Around January 2020 vendors are able to make their own controllers and submit them for certification. AMD doesn't have any. Intel's controllers don't have an embedded version for sale.
Several reasons.
a) Intel wants licensing cash for allowing you to use it
b) It does not actually add that much to USB. You want to attach monitors? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. You want to attach storage? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. Networking? Charge your device? USB can do all that.
The remaining selling point of Thunderbolt is that you can attach an external graphics card over it. There are external USB graphics solutions, too, but they can't really compete if you plan to do high perf 3d graphics over it.
However this selling point is also the Achilles heel of Thunderbold. It exposes PCIe to devices outside the device, allowing direct memory access over it. This can be partially mitigated if the OS and all drivers cooperate and are really well written (for example not expose a memory page that contains other stuff as well).
But bottom line? I actually view this as an AMD advantage. It's a bit like Firewire was. a) it cost licensing money and b) it introduced a similar security issue while c) not actually delivering that much of an advantage over USB unless you are part of a certain niche.
Docks.
Now, I had a thin 'n' light with just 2 USB-C ports, and I could get a dock/adapter that had power delivery, HDMI, Ethernet and a couple USB-A/USB-C ports. But for high-refresh rate monitors, a proper dock will want a lot of bandwidth. Without that bandwidth, you'll have to pick your compromise on the dock.
Like the other comment mentioned, docks.
Yes you can theoretically accomplish everything with other ports, but I don't want to feel like I'm disconnecting my laptop from life support every time I move around. 1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back.
This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power and video.
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000141328/displaypo...
MacOS has a nice feature that shows you in the device tree what the thunderbolt connection speed is, for my eGPU it shows as '2x' which is 20GBps, and that's running an eGPU with 2x 4k displays.
For work, I run a 4k panel from Lenovo[0] that has a USB-C in and while that's a 60Hz screen, it does not show any signs of input lag or artifacting.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBBq9vHufU9a6d59irhR...
Being left handed makes the numpad even dumber. It's placed on the wrong side of the keyboard.
I also already normally type with my keyboard slightly off-center on my desktop, so an asymmetrical laptop keyboard ain't really all that big of a deal. Even if I didn't, and insisted on a perfectly-centered typing experience, having an off-center screen is something that I've yet to actually really notice.
Was going to say the same.
Also, I will not buy a 1080p laptop. We're in 2021, give me 4K or at least 1440p or I'm not interested.
I also personally prefer 13" laptops for travel convenience. (Not that its a concern right now, but I assume one day it will be again!)
For normal use, 1440p is fine, but 1080p is too low for me. 4K is probably not necessary if its only used to watch videos. I probably should have flipped it and said: "give me 1440p, or even 4K"
Although one area where I find higher resolution is beneficial code editors, if I have enough pixels that I can have 3 vertical splits and have the text still look crisp, that really helps my development workflow.
On a 15" and above though, I wouldn't go lower than 4K personally.
Because they still sell.
Back around 2 decades ago, we had a funny thing in Russia where people demanded 640x480 monitors back, and even bought, and sold them on premium because new 1024x768 monitors "make everything so tiny!"
An I agree that 1080 now is a 13-14'' display resolution only nowadays.
Also, the screen resolution and size seems odd. I'm okay with a 1080P screen... but not at nearly 16". This should be offered with a 3K or 4K screen only.
There are tons of apps, specifically in the video editing / 3D modeling space that are basically unusable without one.
When I code, I have macros tied to numpad keys. Couldn't work without them.
If all you do is browse the web and answer email on your laptop, then yeah, makes sense.
For any serious work, no numpad = no buy.
I've been doing "serious work" for my entire career, thanks, although these days I do spend more time in Zoom meetings and writing emails/documents.
What's that?
It's essentially a keyboard lacking function keys, a numerical pad, and a navigation cluster. Usually has between 61 and 68 keys, and contains an extra "function" key that acts beyond the typical Fn key to help you control layers. Every 60% doesn't have layers, but most do, and those layers are generally programmable. These days pretty much all of them use QMK or VIA firmware.
The Deskthority article for some reason mentions the Minila which is actually a 65% keyboard (which is a 60% + arrow keys).
It seems that most developers (their target audience?) love hidpi which may be one of the biggest adoption issues for System 76.
I just spent a few weeks working with them to debug a transient kernel panic with my new Thelio. Throughout the entire process, I talked to support techs with actual agency, and not just automata reading a script. Serious kudos to System76.
(The problem ultimately turned out to be a clearly labeled experimental feature I'd turned on a few months earlier and forgotten about. Ooops...)
The Thelio is my daily driver, and PopOS just fades into the background.
What is it that they're trying to do? Sell re-branded Sager laptops?
I agree with the overall sentiment though that it's time for a premium-designer-made-for-linux-laptop!
Do people actually like that kind of layout? It seems pretty awful to me. I'd prefer no numpad at all and a full size shift key with half-height arrow keys.
If I want a numpad, that's what desktop keyboards are for, or a USB numpad.
I find whether minor things like the off-center trackpad bug me tends to reflect more about my current state of mind than anything else.
How do System76 and Purism compare in terms of daily drivers? Anyone tried both and could provide a comparison?
Come on.
That could mean literally anything from Intel integrated level performance, to a proper dedicated GPU, though for the price here I'm guessing on the former ...
Vega 7 @1600Mhz
You are unlikely to see dedicated graphics paired with a U-series processor in most cases. (There are exceptions, but you'll see the dedicated graphics card specified in those cases.)
I don't want to advertise, so I'll just say - you can go to a big computer/hardware seller website and search for laptops with nvidia graphics cards. You can get a laptop with a GTX 1650 for $700, which has 3x the performance.
AMD's APU graphics offer a good enough solution while removing the headaches many of us are trying to avoid.
Also I don't understand why a laptop of that size doesn't have a 99Wh battery.
The 1080p resolution is understandable... high DPI support suck-fest can be avoided.
Yet those companies provide zero contributions, rebadge open source projects, and just re-sell taiwanese white-label computers while going great lengths to hide that and fake innovation.
if pcpartpicker.com adds a single checkbox to their searchs: "[ ] support in mainline linux kernel", it would make more good to linux support than all those companies combined.
Also, barrel charger plugs? ugh.
All publicity is good publicity, I guess...
Surely someone at System76 has to be aware of this, which begs the question, was this naming intentional? It would have to be I imagine. It seems a bit crass to go this route in the current climate.
I long for a ~13-14" 2k AMD Ryzen ultrabook. So far the screen is always subpar. I've been using 2560 resolution on my X1 yoga now for 2 years and I can't go back to 1080.
Note, I'm in UK "slim 7" here is used by Lenovo for a "Yoga" model whilst the poster mentioned an "IdeaPad". I assumed that as I searched for the latter and got the former that they must be different regional names. But, no. They're very different with very similar model names. Lenovo seem to do this a lot and it's very annoying.
[0] https://clevo-computer.com/media/image/15/da/88/CLEVO-NL51RU...
I'd expect to get dinged for GST or HST, but were there any additional surprise brokerage fees or duties?
This thing is really up my alley and I just got my first decently paying, steady software job...
Excellent machine, faster than anything else I got. But it was only a short time test balloon, I fear. Not available anymore.
Can someone comment on the pros and cons of the Ryzen CPU? Wondering how to compare the new machine to the Intel-based System76 laptops.
After just putting in an order for a Darter Pro, of course this immediately becomes available!
15.6 inch screen at 1920×1080? That’s barely OK but not great for a laptop in 2021.
I had four of these laptops - and on ALL 4 they would have screws come loose and fall out inside the case. You could hear it rattling around when you turned the machine. Two of them had one type of connector for the screen and the other two had a different connector - One got fried and on the other I broke the screen on - so I couldn't harvest parts from one to the other.
S76 wanted $90 for a new charger after one of mine failed.
I have an HP Omen laptop as my primary machine now - here is what is cool:
I had an HP Omen and it failed to power on one day - so I contacted support and they had me send them the machine - instead of fixing it, they sent me a brand new Omen which was way better than the failed unit. The design is super elegant, and it has dual NVME slots, so I have dual drives in it.
The screen is matte so no glossy reflections like my macbooks have...
Yeah - I think I'll stick with Omens for the foreseeable future. HP's support was FANTASTIC.
When my macbook pro caught fire in my sleep and nearly killed me (it was laying on my bed and I fell asleep watching a movie and the machine caught fire - something that that model was recalled for) I took it to Apple's main store in San Francisco - and they kept it for two months "analyzing it" then came back and told me that even though it was a safety issue and the machine was under recall for CATCHING FIRE, they found that one of my moisture sensors had been triggered and therefore, they were not going to replace, fix or help me.
(I had spilled a small bit of water on the keyboard many month prior to the machine catching fire)
Then they tried to sell me a new machine, or have them "replace the machine for $1,500"
A total joke. Ill never buy another apple machine nor a s76 machine again.
HP support is AMAZING.
Also - When HP bought Compaq - we had a bunch of Compaq/HP servers back in 1998 - and the support back then on those servers was top notch - and the HW design was as well. I used to rebuild those servers in minutes in the literal dark.
All the Sun servers we had, like the 650s would bitch if their case was even slightly off center and would refuse to boot.
I am quite familiar with breaking down/working on all types of machines...
they had lock-tight paint on the screws, which didnt work.
and the sad thing was that the connector type between the two broken machines had changed, even though they were the same model "Gazelle" - they are also a super pain in the ass to work on. The screen connector requires you to basically dismantle the entire machine...
Obviously this machine was a white-label Clio machine, and S76 has more recently started designing their own machines (supposedly - so I dont know how much of that design is in-house vs them spec'ing things out to other design services...
Can anyone else back this up? Has HP changed? I've sworn off HP products (both enterprise and consumer) because of their terrible customer service and documentation. Dell/Lenovo always offer something very similar in price and performance, and their enterprise support is fine to great.
I was completely dumbfounded when HP just said "we are going to send you a new machine, at no cost, please pick from this list...
And I picked this dope Omen machine and when I opened it up to look at the guts and put in a second SSD, I was taken aback by the elegant symmetry of the design. The only downside is that even though the sound is "bang & olufsen" - its a bit too quiet.
However, the support guy on my case was dope, and I love this machine
I bought one, and didn't like the keyboard. Send to a relative overseas. Months later the Mobo died a few weeks under warranty. Called HP and told i was overseas. They provided a local support number. ship by local post. upgraded new mobo. no charge.
This was a non-business $300ish laptop.
sadly, their shopping experience is abysmal like every other PC manufacturer :(
I'm typing this on a 7 or 8 year old s76 Gazelle. It was my primary work and personal machine for 3 or 4 years and has been my primary personal machine since. I did replace the original drive with an SSD, and I think I may need to replace the fans---they're getting loud. Hardware- and build-quality-wise, I've never had any problems. (Well, ok, I killed one of the USB ports. Probably broke some of the connections.)
The one problem I have had is with the NVidia graphics, which have never worked properly. (I've got graphics acceleration disabled now.) Either it wouldn't go to sleep, or the graphics wouldn't wake up. The last straw was when I got those problems beaten into a standstill, and Chrome started somehow overriding my window manager and keeping the (accelerated) Chrome window front and center, minus WM decorations.
Sure, it's a generic Clio or something, but I've been very impressed. Never had much love for HP, though.
A Legion 5 will have an Nvidia dGPU, so you have to decide if you want to run PRIME or something else and see how the external monitor outputs are muxed if that's important to you.
Compared to the latest Thinkpad X1 Carbon, I wonder how bulky the thing is. Sure display wise, it's bigger.
Would be really nice to use a proper modern DP instead of antiquated HDMI for this.
Is it using Coreboot by the way?
Of course sometimes the HDMI fails due to DRM nonsense, so that's also an issue.
And personally, I had a lot of problems with HDMI in the past. Unlike with DP.
Edit: Behold this list of requirements. https://www.reddit.com/r/htpc/wiki/faq#wiki_what_do_i_need_f...
DP should support HDCP as far as I know, if you need it.
Seriously, HDMI should just disappear already but that corrupt cartel will keep it around for years.
and for under 15" it is just a waste for 90% of people.
Edit: I expect to be downvoted, and this is just my unhelpful, subjective opinion. But the font on those keys looks like one you'd get from a 90s shareware kit of 100 free fonts.
Oh, and Pop OS runs great too!
The Ryzen 5000 is out, I highly recommend either going for Asus Zephryus or wait for lenovo's mobile 5000 AMD lands.
I enjoy gaming on my laptop, and prefer native resolution gaming.
I require a high refresh rate due to post-concussion syndrome. So sure, if that can be the case with a higher resolution that's fine, but that isn't the norm yet. (2021 seems to be the year for QHD 165Hz though!)
I'm in no way saying QHD or 4K isn't ideal for anyone. It's just silly to say that "this option I don't want is a non-starter" as if it applies to everyone.
* Concerns about power
* Concerns about HiDPI issues / fractional scaling, esp. with Linux
* Likes seeing pixels
* PriceIf you need fractional scaling, only native Wayland applications work well. X11 applications are going to be upscaled and look blurry. Today, Chrome, all Electron apps, Jetbrains tools still do not support Wayland, though at least for Chrome/Electron the support is on the way.
I have a 4k monitor on my laptop but I regret that choice.
3/2 is the best ratio ever when writing code (after 4/3, but that’s definitely dead).
Note that for the above substitutions there often is no part number change so you have no way of knowing if the amazon/costco model will work even if it works for someone else.
System76 is there for those people.
I'm sure I likely could have purchased and assembled the components myself and found a more spartan case and all that, but it felt a bit like Christmas using it for the first while.