System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock
system76.com
system76.com
You used to be able to pop the trackball out from the right side of the keyboard area, slide the keys to the right, and then re-insert the trackball into the left side.
Do the same with a num pad, instead of a trackball. And for people who don't want the num pad, make available half-width blank inserts to occupy the space on both sides.
I'm not a fan of symmetry for symmetry's sake, but I do think some affordances for the human body might be a good idea. How do southpaws enjoy this keyboard setup?
The ergonomics of laptops are bad enough without stuff like this.
You and many others probably know this, but figure it's helpful context for others who might stumble through this thread: it's not necessarily all on System76 as to why that shell is used, since the shells themselves are (IIRC) rebranded Clevo shells still.
i.e I would suspect they're making use of what they can reasonably acquire to sell.
(The offset aspect would drive me mad as well)
https://www.dummies.com/computers/pcs/the-hidden-numeric-key...
Yes, that is the first thing I notice. Any laptop with an off-center trackpad goes in the do-not-buy list.
Seriously, anyone using a laptop full time for work (who cares about ergo) should invest in an external keyboard and monitor.
FWIW, I’ve been using a 15” MBP as my primary dev/work machine for over a decade and I’ve just become used to it. Tried external monitor, keyboard a few times, but it just doesn’t work for me anymore. I mostly run in high res mode, as opposed to the scaled default mode and it works well. This is also why the 13” laptops are not an option for me, am eagerly waiting for the 16” MBP fingers crossed.
Gaming? 78462 make for the best movement, and the number pad also has seven non-numerical buttons to bind things to. It also puts your index finger right next to lENTER, which is so useful for games that make use of it.
Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an IDE.
Calculating? So nice to have an ergonomic numerical input.
I understand that many people need it and many others don't. I wish manufacturers had an option for keyboards without the number pad. I'd pay an extra for it.
Mind sharing some examples of your bindings?
If this sounds like a convoluted REPL with fancier in-line documentation, you're kind of right. It's basically just interactive and automated literate programming, though.
The rest of my bindings range from pretty simple (running an open project's tests, displaying results from the last 10 commits, etc.) to significantly more complex. I have a few different xkb layouts depending on what I'm doing, and a few different languages get dedicated ones, but for the ones I most-commonly use, they all share one.
Not really. There was a time where laptops, especially 15", had front speakers. If the choice is that or numpad, I pick front speakers. Its a bummer smartphones don't have them anymore these days. More keys might seem like a no-brainer, but its always also less is more and keys you don't use are useless keys. As power user, it seems (re)binding of keys is in order anyway.
1080p and numpad is a downgrade from my MBP 2015. It also doesn't specify much about the AMD graphics card. I'd rather get a modular laptop instead, but with 1440p minimum.
The thing with a trackpad centered to left (let alone its gonna be as good as a Magic Trackpad 2 by Apple from 2015 and onward), is that if you use your right hand your arm can get hurt if you let it rest. And, you should let your arms rest. Also, the arm is in the way. Apple had a neat solution to it: large(r) trackpad (though I prefer the previous one, centered).
But I was never in the market for this because if I order something like this from USA I get to pay a large amount of taxes on top of it cause the price never includes tax. Let me know if its available in Europe and I'll have a look, but the above remain serious concerns so I doubt it.
Phone speakers have come a long way since samsung was putting them on the back of the phones..
I think the Framework laptop is our best shot at it though.
As for customizing a keyboard with minimal effort... it's actually easier to do that with MacOS and Windows than it is in linux, in my experience. Sure, you can do basic key remapping really easily in linux with xmodmap but if you want to do anything complicated with the built in keyboard, MacOS has Karabiner Elements which is far better than any of the built in or custom keyboard software like xcape or xkeysnail. Similarly on Windows, AutoHotKey is much easier to do complex customizations as well. I haven't really tried Kmonad but that is cross-platform so it wouldn't really be considered an advantage to linux.
What terrifying place is that? (I'm just poking fun, but seriously: where?)
Some hobbyist shops may offer assembly services. If you don't want to solder, ZSA labs have a "moonlander" keyboard that looks quite nice, for a premium price.
If you're not put off by soldering, then some popular split keyboards would be the Corne (also known as "crkbd"), Kyria, lily58, Sofle.
There are also designs which are closer to a normal keyboard, like the ultimate hacking keyboard. (But, personally, I don't understand why you'd spend so much money on a keyboard and have it be asymmetric).
I think there's a sort of hobbyist renaissance going on right now, though. Plenty of new keyboards are being designed and built because it's more accessible than ever to design your own pcb or if not that to get someone else's design printed, which along with the general mechanical keyboard enthusiast market, has given people a wealth of options to choose from.
Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26179311
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preference...
Why skip 5 to use 2 instead? And you also have extra keys around WASD to bind to. What makes numpad keys any different? For lefties who use mouse with left hand you can have same keys on the right hand side but hat varies (for me equal keys would be plöä)
>programming
Are all of your function keys already populated? And if you are going to move your hand to numpad why skip over insert, home, page up/down, and end?
>calculating
Well there you have me. 20 years ago when I was manually inserting PSU serial numbers into excel numpad was real nice, but I can't remember last time I had to input numbers like that.
My current keyboard has numpad, but only thing I've used it in years was as abort button for some bots.
Walking backwards usually is slower in video games, so you can bind 5 to something you use more commonly. 7 is autorun. 5 makes a great button to set for fishing or your most-critical spell.
> And you also have extra keys around WASD to bind to. What makes numpad keys any different? For lefties who use mouse with left hand you can have same keys on the right hand side but hat varies (for me equal keys would be plöä)
The left side of the keyboard has more buttons, and you use those for complex combinations in video games, which leaves the number pad in a unique spot of being a "quick access" bar.
> Are all of your function keys already populated? And if you are going to move your hand to numpad why skip over insert, home, page up/down, and end?
On a good laptop keyboard, insert, home, end, pgup and pgdn are all directly above the number pad. This gives you extra buttons that are just a little out-of-the-way, but it doesn't make it so you have to reach your hands over them to reach the number pad. On the best laptop keyboard I've ever used, literally every button was just in a grid, with a few smaller (but still grid-fitting) buttons mixed in, like the arrow keys and function keys.
But yes, my function keys are already populated.
> Well there you have me. 20 years ago when I was manually inserting PSU serial numbers into excel numpad was real nice, but I can't remember last time I had to input numbers like that.
Anecdotally, I use calculators of various sorts as a way of verification while programming; a lot of the problems I find myself drawn to are close to abstracted math (as are most things when you aren't a web programmer), and it's really useful to be able to jot down an equation and verify you've handled the problem right before you commit to it.
> My current keyboard has numpad, but only thing I've used it in years was as abort button for some bots.
You should bind the buttons to be useful to you! It's very nice once you've done so.
The usual story is that is is about pitchers, but the timeline is wrong. The first official baseball game is cited as in 1846, with "southpaw" occurring in 1848 already referring to boxing.
Personally in the never use it camp, and hate these offset laptops. Sometimes its because people do a lot of number data entry spreadsheet style, I can understand that case a little more, however even people that mostly type text I've seen for example will like to enter IP addresses on the number pad for no obvious reason. God speed IPv6 adoption :)
On the other hand laptops are terrible for ergonomics and daily usage anyway, it's unfortunately we've moved so far into laptops from desktops and it doesn't seem so common to dock them and use an external keyboard.. to my feeling mostly because the screen ends up being too small once you push it back to use an external keyboard so then you need an external monitor and the cost and complexity goes up.
I also did practice my musscle memory for the numpad in a similar way to touch as part of typing scientific data (back in the 90s). After a couple of weeks of that, my speed on the numpad would be at least twice as high as when typing numbers on the main keyboard. Also, accuracy was high enough that I could reliably trust the output even when not looking at the result (very close to 100%), which is critical for many use cases that involve numbers.
Even if I spend 99% of my time on the regular keyboard now, if I have to spend more than 5mins typing only numbers, I will feel really frustrated without a numpad.
Then again, I tend to use the laptop keyboards quite little anyway, mostly only while travelling or when in a meeting room. In the office, there is a dock and at home I use a desktop.
Especially considering that nowadays "docking" is pluggin in an USB-C cable from a monitor that: - is used as a large external display - powers and recharges the laptop - acts as an USB hub, with external keyboard, mouse and webcam.
If I want I can go outside to have a meeting and when I want to code, I go back to my home office. And when I commute to the work office, I can work on the train. And when I get there, I plug it in the same setup as home. Next step would be having all of this wireless but it's already near perfect IME.
I just described my setup actually :)
It does matter. The arrow key cluster and numpad take a lot of space, which means the left side of the keyboard (where asdf / your left hand are) and your mouse have to be very far from each other. This leads to either putting the keyboard's letter key section in the center, making your mouse be uncomfortably far to the right, or having your mouse in a natural position for your right hand, leaving your left hand way out to the left. Over time this can (and did, to me) cause posture / muscle balance issues.
Currently I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt Wireless keyboard. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/accessories/products/keyboar.... The main keyboard with letters and two extra columns just to the right of the letters (with no gap) means everything can be positioned perfectly. The wireless numpad is there for when you need to use it. It's a very overpriced product at $100 but works wonderfully.
Also, in college I had a tiny desk with a cabinet underneath its left side, so my chair was offset to 60/40% of the way to the right. With a full size desktop keyboard with numpad, there literally wasn't enough space for my mouse, unless I moved the keyboard very far to the left. Thus causing the issues I mentioned above. That's what got me into tiny mechanical keyboards :) I'll admit it's a somewhat niche case, but there are probably still many millions of people in the world with a similar desk setup to that for whom a full size desktop keyboard is an unhealthy option.
I built a numpad once but found I'm so used to not having one, even positioned on the left, it wasn't much use.
On a side note, I love the CM Storm Quick Fire TK keyboard I have with brown switches. It has no arrow/home vertical area, instead when you turn the numpad off the keys act like that slice. I wish more keyboards were like it. Not sure why they aren't.
I suspect the utility of a numpad is increased while the off center problems are decreased for touchtypers which is why there is such a divide.
Ah? I would have thought the opposite. I cannot touch-type at all (and you could promise me a million dollars reward, I still wouldn't manage), nevertheless there is one part of the keyboard I can use without looking, and it is the numpad. Possibly because it is a limited area with a limited number of keys, and the numbers are placed in a "logical" order (compared to letters on the main part of a keyboard).
I am bad at entering numbers on the top row, a I am forced to do on most laptops (and unfortunately, I personally find the pseudo-numpad, which requires using the Fn key or similar, utterly unusable; I never could get used to it).
I did buy a wireless numeric keypad at one time that had some extra keys and arrows that made data entry really fast.
The "5" key on most numpads has a bump so I can reach it without even looking at a keyboard I'm familiar with. Any 4-digit security pin I use is entered from numpads.
I always buy a laptop with a numpad. Its my preferred method of typing numbers. There are also a whole slew of video game applications, as well as Blender movement (camera angles, camera movement, etc. etc.) that's highly intuitively mapped to the numpad.
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I should note that when I was practicing for the video-game community "Blazblue", all movements were discussed in terms of numpad. 236 is quarter-circle forward. 69874123 is "360-degree circle, counterclockwise, starting with right".
Needless to say, typing a combo such as 5b 5c 2d 28d 28 b c b 8 b c 236c 2d was much easier with a numpad.
Anyone who wants to "decode" the button pushes only needs to look at their numpad to see how their left-hand should move, with "b, c, d" being the keywords for the right-hand buttons in Blazblue. Street Fighter players use lp, mp, hp (light punch, medium punch, heavy punch) instead. So those bits get game specific, but the numpad approach to discussion is basically considered superior.
The bump on the j-key on the keyboard, and the 5-key on the numpad is very much clear to high-speed typing.
On keyboards without bumps, I find myself off-aligned. Instead of typing "jumping jellyfish", I type "hynoubg hekktfusg", and have to realign my hands.
Could I do it without the bump? Probably. But having the bump there (both the j-bump and the 5 bump) is very useful at preventing this mistake.
Example with image: https://andrew.kvalhe.im/2021-03-19
With this method you can customize the location and surrounding mathematical operators.
It's an impoverished numpad that requires different muscle memory that you probably don't use often enough to master.
Personally I never use the virtual numpad on my devices, I use the full numpad if available or I usr the top row of number keys.
I suspect the divide here is between people that are touch typists w/ experience in numeric data entry and people who still need to look at the physical keyboard to type.
As a touch typist I've never particularly cared where the keyboard is, and while I haven't used a numeric keypad in years, I still miss having one.
I guess now I could look at the X1 extreme, because that has a 15"/16" display and no numpad.
Definitely an acquired taste and not the most portable of devices.
But it is really hard to find notebook without numpad these days. Especially hard if it needs to work with linux out of the box.
[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
EDIT: Except the secondary screen is above the keyboard: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/ZenBook/ZenBook-Duo-14...
I'm in this minority! Why don't people use the top-row numbers!?!?
So much so that I often use AHK to remap the top number row to be other functions.
I find the 10-key to be more accurate and faster for me. My muscle memory is numbers are entered with my right hand...
So of course, the advertisement for every laptop emphasises internal component metrics that don't actually matter that much. "Now with X8-7820Z SUPER!" or whatever.
Instead they have terrible screens, tinny speakers, noisy microphones, and non-customisable keyboard layouts. The latter of which are always cramped, and I mean always, even on 17" laptops.
Do you have any idea how cheap it would be for these manufacturers to allow you to choose your keyboard layout? It's a removable tray already! They can be swapped out in seconds! There are multiple keyboard layouts available from the parts manufacturers!
Can you order such a thing? No.
(I'm in no way affiliated, just eyeing them up for my next laptop purchase)
This is really unfortunate unless they are going hard for the "Accountant" demographic.
* FWIW: Typing this on a System 76 machine with a [1] TKL mechanical keyboard.
[1] TKL / Tenkeyless - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tenke...
Only the external standard layout will really do for look-free pressing of all the useful keys.
So I stopped expecting anything beyond a couple minutes out of laptop keyboards and always carry a standard-enough 104-key.
I first began this practice when I had a laptop with a few missing keys, but soon I realized how much better an external keyboard is, and how little extra weight it adds to my bag.
What I don't understand, if they're going to include a numeric keypad on the right, is why they didn't make the bottom of the numeric keypad the arrow keys. Looking at [1], 2 should be Up, 0 should be Down, Right should be Left, . should be Right. So Num Lock should be Insert, 7 should be Delete, / should be Home, 8 should be End, * should be PageUp, 9 should be PageDown.
I'd imagine that most techies use the arrow keys and Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys a lot more than the numeric keys, why not make that the primary layout, and be numeric keys only when Num Lock is on?
Am I crazy? Or does nobody give keyboards one ounce of thought ever?
[1] https://images.prismic.io/system76/0dccf217-22af-4e7e-adc9-e...
Besides, this is a laptop running Linux, what do you think is the more likely target audience? People entering numbers in a spreadsheet, or people doing software development?
Most of the comments here are people complaining that the numeric keypad is there at all.
I hate to break it to you, but they can't be both simultaneously. They only "double" if you have a mind-reading genie hovering above your shoulder and pressing NumLock for you whenever you need to switch from arrow-mode to number-mode and vice versa. I don't have one of those; do you?
> Besides, this is a laptop running Linux, what do you think is the more likely target audience? People entering numbers in a spreadsheet, or people doing software development?
A) This Clevo-clone keyboard is exactly the same as on Clevo-clone Windows boxes. Windows spreadsheet users outnumber Linux software developers substantially, so that's who the market produces hardware for.
A) Personally, I kind of do both; I often (well OK... But not exactly rarely) use a spreadsheet full of numbers to generate code.
C) One gets the feeling that the main driver behind this particular comment was contempt for the ordinary spreadsheet-using "sheeple". At least, condescension seems to come naturally to you, Mr. I-hate-to-break-it-to-you.
> Most of the comments here are people complaining that the numeric keypad is there at all.
Sure. And they are (quite rightfully) clamouring for keyboards without one... But what does that have to do with this? Not wanting a numpad at all is a very different (and far less misguided) idea than severely crippling the usability of both the separate arrow keys and numpad on keyboards that have one, which is what your suggestion boils down to.
But I totally agree that the people putting keyboards together don't seem to actually spend much thought and definitely don't user test it with representative users, including keyboard-centric users like coders.
For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb):
Pangolin - 1200$
Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1]
For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb):
Pangolin - 1542$
HP 15z - 640$[2]
I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support).
[1]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-3-15-15-6-AMD-Ryze...
[2]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laptop-15z-ef2000-touch...
The thinkpads (at least the X,T and P models) tend to be a different story but even that is changing in recent years
I don't know those answers; perhaps carbon plastic wins on all metrics. It would be interesting to learn.
Usually tensile strength. For example: Tensile strength: even a commodity PA6-GF30 (most half-decent tools are made of) is ~110MPa [according to ISO 527], cast Aluminum - would be ~150MPa (22K psi for the imperial folks) depending on the alloy.
Of course, most laptops would be using an ABS blend, which is the hallmark low-quality tools.
>Dents
That would depend on the top finish, not so much of the material itself.
> That would depend on the top finish, not so much of the material itself.
Would it? If I dropped an aluminium bodied laptop like a Macbook or HP Envy, I'd expect it might scuff and slightly dent at the point of impact. If I dropped the cheapest plastic bodied thing from Currys/Walmart/whatever, I'd expect it might scuff and crack the plastic between screws or something.
What top finish would you apply to a cheap plastic laptop to make it 'ding' like aluminium instead of crack in a drop test?
Again, a good plastic with glass or carbon fiber reinforcement would have similar properties to al-mg body, yet feel cheap as most people consider all plastics quite the same. For example: polycarbonate, 30% carbon fiber would have tensile strength of 150MPa (which the same to cast aluminum)
You said above that that was more to do with 'top finish' than 'material'; that's what I was responding to - how would you finish crackable plastic material to make it dent like aluminium/alloy instead.
As someone else noted, "strength" in material is not one-dimensional. Carbon plastic is still way more conducive to cracking, for one.
Ergo, there is no "objectively better" choice between metal/plastic/carbon in the general case, it comes down to preferences, priorities and requirements.
The issue seems to be less with structural design and particular choice of plastics that cause them to not hold up to wear.
If only it had a less brittle video-out and TB it would be close to perfect even today, but these to otherwise minor factors unfortunately make it close to useless apart from as a spare travel device.
Maybe relative to Thinkpads of yesteryear, but in comparison to the field of professional laptops, they are still best in class.
While it has amazing components like the AMD Ryzen, Radeon GPU, etc. The quality of the rest of the components is trash.
The trackpad keeps disconnecting, the screen is very poorly backlit, the speakers sound like headphones that came with 1990 Walkmans. It's not a good laptop even if it looks good on paper.
I get that shit happens and sometimes products have defects. I'm willing to put up with a reasonable amount of annoyance. I'll never buy another Lenovo product, though, because once you're out of warranty, you may as well throw the thing away. They don't care at all.
Thinkpads with AMD cpu-s are not that expensive: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1645679-REG/lenovo_20...
Same specs for 40% less than Pangolin.
Which Dell XPS with equivalent specs at 15 inch screen is cheaper let alone considerably cheaper? I can't seem to find on the Dell website https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sr/laptops/xps-...
Gets even worse with 32 Gigs RAM- the cheapest Dell XPS is ~$500 more that this machine specced out to 32GB RAM https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sr/laptops/xps-...
My own experience with thinkpads has been one of non-stop frustration with battery life. The T495 advertises something like 14h of battery life; the actual battery life I got running stock Ubuntu on it was.... less than 3 hours, and that's with power optimization packages that do things like making USB no longer work installed. I recently switched to a system76, and so far its battery lasts easily 6-9 hours depending on what I'm doing.
I have a P14s Gen 1 from work now, that’s one gen ahead but an entire different league in battery life (and it wouldn’t cook your fingers on the palm rest)
Newer kernels have helped a bit too, much more than TLP, if you still have that device try Fedora on it.
This has not been the case in 5 years.
Unsure how not updating firmware on a dock means linux is not supported well on a laptop.
Linux is at best a side project for Lenovo and Dell.
Kubuntu Focus - https://kfocus.org/
On top of that, every series have been getting worse and worse maintainability/extendability/serviciability for pretty every generation. The latest vanilla T-series are comparable to the first-gen Carbon-X1 in this regard.
...Now if only System76/any of the others in the open-laptop space could figure out a way to do more than 1080p on a 13-15" panel. It's 2021 and I can buy a decent 2K 10.1" USB-display online for $200, why are there no options for that many pixels on a new customizable laptop starting at $1200?
And in september and november Lenovo will launch additional QHD IdeaPad Ryzen models for an even lower price.
QHD (1440 resolution) is important to me because I've become accustomed to it on my workstations. And my work got me a Thinkpad Yoga X1 4th gen which has an internal resolution of 2560x1440 so now I just can't go lower than that.
And yes I am a full time Linux user.
In the past they had pushed a driver update that disabled the laptop display when multiple monitors are connected. I had recognized the problem since their system drivers are open source and was able to recommend & review a PR to fix [0]. It was nice to see that patch go in.
I buy devices like this for productivity. I don't care about black bars when watching videos because I don't watch videos on it. What I absolutely care about is the extra inch of text in my terminal or text editor.
I didn't think this was a controversial opinion.
Wide screen - great but add a little height so you can see more rows. Now you have a tall screen - great but add a little width so you can see more columns.
No it isn't. A4 paper is roughly 7:5 (actually sqrt-2). The fact that people consistently get this wrong suggests that the golden ratio isn't actually all it's cracked up to be (IME the golden ratio makes for things that are too wide. My laptop has a 3:2 screen that I'm very happy with)
In the end, wide vs tall makes less of a difference than total size in inches and total number of pixels.
Take your preferred 4:3 and add horizontal pixels under 16:9, or your preferred 16:9 and add vertical pixeks under 4:3, on either case you can fit more on the screen.
If you’re used to the extra height, even ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9 (or even wider) do not compensate for the lost height compared to the corresponding :10 or :10.666 height.
For desktop monitors, it can be more of a personal preference regarding FOV and window layout. For me personally, I think a ~30" 16:11 [sic] would be close to ideal.
I'm optimizing mainly for viewing three documents side by side here. Having your primary document (e.g. text editor or IDE) centered means you're not constantly turning your head one way or another. And it has the added benefit of working well for media (compared to 3 monitors in vertical orientation). At 8k and that screen size.. the aspect ratio doesn't matter as long as there's enough vertical pixels and inches.
Is this different from <<On a ~42" 4k monitor, using 1x scaling>>?
I am also _very_ picky about my screens.
On mine, it's roughly the size and proportion of my last CRT monitor. I didn't do it out of nostalgia, but it's significantly less comfortable for my eyes to scan horizontal than vertical.
It's not that I want height as much as I don't want width.
Macbook Air and Macbook Pro have 16:10 resolution.
For laptops, I've used Apples and Dells over the past 7 years and I don't think any of them were that low resolution.
I want to buy their shit; I even bought their insanely expensive $300 keyboard just because I think they are awesome. But I wouldn't buy a 1080p laptop in this day and age for any price.
Pop OS (as sane people call it) also happens to work fabulously on high resolution monitors! I run it on a 4-year-old 32" 8K Dell UP3218K monitor at 200% pixel doubling, and it looks fantastic — much better and way crisper text than any Mac (e.g., my work M1 Mac Mini with hyperexpensive 6K XDR Display or my 27" 5K iMac Pro).
For that Dell display, 200% is perfect, but Reddit says fractional scaling also works great on Pop OS. So it's not like they have some technical reason they need to use blurry low-res displays.
It's just kind of weird. I would absolutely buy this otherwise, but the weird retro display is a deal-breaker.
(I don't give a shit about the off-center keyboard or numpad though, so I guess we all have our own individual deal-breakers....)
As an aside: Pop OS is really awesome, though — a great distro for those of us who were always rooting for Linux, preferred open source and felt like we were the kind of person who wanted that approach to win out and would likely use Linux, but mainly ended up usually buying Macs for purposes of convenience and just getting our shit done. Pretty much works great and stays out of your way. :-D
Would love to hear what is offensive and undignified about it.
> But I wouldn't buy a 1080p laptop in this day and age for any price.
Most laptops are 1080p (or less), but I guess you're allowed to have that opinion.
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Personally I feel opposite about them. I like their hardware, hate the OS. POP OS! is ugly, full stop. They'd be better off going with Arch or Fedora base so they can keep closer to modern GNOME and potentially offer other DEs easier. Every beta they ship for POP is super broken in one way or another, and I hate cosmic, so I rock Arch on it.
I have an ipad, but Apple can fuck right off with the capital P.
But putting an exclamation point right in the middle of your product name is even worse. Like why don't they just call it "Hey! I'm An Asshole! OS" at that point.
I love their hardware, too, except their incomprehensible low-res screen fetish. (They even offer you a low-res desktop display option when you buy a $10,000 workstation.)
I mean even the 13" MacBook Pro in 2014 was 2560x1600. All my Dell laptops were at least 1440p and since a few years back, full 4K.
Graphics AMD Radeon™ Graphics
Storage 1 x M.2 SSD(SATA or PCIe NVMe). Up to 2TB total.
The graphics are integrated into the APU, so you can look up their specifications.
I know it's not the latest architecture, but I've found it very capable for integrated graphics.
Disclaimer: contented customer
Yes, though they tend to use quality parts. My 2019 Darter Pro (darp5) was configured with a one of the NVMe options and shipped with a 'Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus'. No complaints on hardware quality or longevity so far. </anecdote>
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-ca...
$1200 gets you a Zen 2 (previous generation) 6-core, 12-thread CPU[0], 8GB RAM, 240 GB NVME, 15" 1080p (did not see brightness/color accuracy mentioned.)
But I like my laptops to come with fast refresh and a dedicated GPU, and I run Windows, so I'm not their target audience. Would love to hear how this is received by those in the right market segment!
[0] A bunch of $600-700 laptops with this CPU: https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-5500u
I've had a system 76 onyx laptop running popOS for over 2 years now. It keeps itself updated and I'm able to do my tasks with very minimal system configurations. Firmware updates come through fine. I think Linux hardware support is pretty good for a lot of laptops, but for me it was worth the extra money not to have to deal with it.
My system 76 is "Clevo" OEMed machine. Very much evidenced when I let stuff get in the fan and I had to replace it. Parts are available.
https://www.clevo.com.tw/index-en.asp
As someone who is new to Linux on desktop, it was pretty great. I got Unreal engine compiled, Intelij and It can even use steam. My machine has a Nvidia 1060? so its actually pretty decent for the limited gaming I do.
Like many things, if things go well and this scales up, the additional cost for having staff making sure linux is supported should go down.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/search?fq={!ex=733}lengs_Screen...
* AMD Ryzen™ 3 Pro 5450U Processor (4 cores)
* 8 GB RAM
* 128 GB storage
Looking at the AMD laptop linked...
Lots of empty space that could have been slightly optimized for a larger battery. It just seems basically thought out... not like consideration is actually put into the design and layout.
Other companies like Purism, MNT, and Pine64 have gone way further than system76 despite being much younger.
Have a look at https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 then.
- Does the hardware fully support Linux? Yes.
- Does it have the latest AMD Ryzen CPU? Kind of (last gen is decent too).
- Can you run other OS on it? Yes.
- Is the screen glossy? No (is matte / anti-glare).
- Is the RAM soldered? No.
- Is the RAM upgradeable? Yes, upto 64 GB.
- Is the SSD soldered? No.
- Is the SSD upgradeable? Yes.
- Can the battery be easily replaced? Yes.
So just the stuff I'm more or less currently on, plus articles to read "soon", plus mandatory work related tabs (Jira, etc.) and it quickly explodes to 10GB+ of RAM.
TLDR: Don't use with systems languages. Rust takes ages to compile and I have almost switched to learning go just because of it. Of course, I am expecting way too much out of a laptop (systems programming? really?) but I didn't expect it to be so terribly slow.
$ cargo vendor
$ tokei vendor/ crates/ -t Rust -s code --exclude winapi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rust 1248 615700 493777 83201 38722
$ cloc .
193 text files.
170 unique files.
114 files ignored.
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.88 T=1.88 s (73.3 files/s, 25634.5 lines/s)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rust 85 3984 9128 28104
Markdown 19 923 0 3637
Python 2 194 313 830
TOML 13 42 11 342
YAML 3 30 60 313
Bourne Shell 8 22 9 130
zsh 1 16 14 67
Bourne Again Shell 2 11 22 28
Ruby 1 4 0 19
Dockerfile 4 4 0 12
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM: 138 5230 9557 33482
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are losing sight of the forest through the trees here. This isn't an abstract argument about what is or isn't part of a program. This is a concrete measurement heuristic that has precisely defined inputs.
I can tell the difference between a 1440p/4k and a 1080p screen, but it doesn't bother me to the point where I won't buy machines which don't have it, it's just a nice bonus.
I don't know if you're confusing it with high dynamic range? This isn't about colour.
4K is a little overkill for 14", but I wouldn't consider a laptop below 3K. Definitionally not dumb.
I can easily get 10 hours of battery life with light use, sometimes more (my system idles at around 5W unless I crank up the brightness to excessive levels).
4k (UHD) on a 14" display is excessive, in my opinion. I don't know what the power consumption is like, but at the scaling that I prefer, the layout ends up looking identical to my wqhd setup, only crisper. That would seem like a waste of power. Shame all the recent T-series Thinkpads have gone down this route.
There’s really no magic way to make fonts as readable with 8px as with 12px.
Either way, I can't really see the difference between 1080p and 4K, so it wouldn't matter for me.
To understand why, just print an identical piece of text on 600, 300, 150 and 75 dpi on your printer and look at the printouts side by side. There is a significant downgrade in quality between each step, and anything below 300 dpi looks quite bad.
15.6" at 1080p is ~141 ppi[1] which is in the "not good" range. Your OS attempts to salvage the situation by applying font hinting (i.e. distorting your fonts to fit the pixel grid) and antialiasing (subpixel on linux, grayscale on the latest versions of windows & macos) - both of which are imperfect workarounds for the lack of resolution.
The MacBook Pro is ~217 ppi (1800p at 15.6"), which is better but still not perfect.
A 4K 15.6" screen works out at ~282 ppi, which is starting to be good enough to finally turn off font hinting and view fonts as intended by their designer rather than squished by subpar display technology.
Imperfect, certainly, but they are pretty good workarounds that usually generate perfectly readable text. In my experience, when text looks bad at 1080p, it is more often because hinting has been done badly, heavily distorting the letter forms, rather than the inherent limitations of the resolution.
To be clear, I certainly prefer reading text at higher DPIs, but at should be seen as one particular tradeoff to be weighed against the heavier battery and graphics demands of higher pixel count screens.
That being said - if you're coming from the macbooks retina it's definitely a downgrade. My guess however is that this device won't have a screen that is that good either way though.
If you're stuck on Windows I can't imagine using anything lower than 4k at that size. On the other hand, I'm using a 17.x inch laptop currently, only about a foot and a half from my face, at only 1080p, and it's fine. (Before you blame my vision - I'm actually nearsighted. My vision is near-perfect at this distance.)
I certainly wouldn't accept this DPI from a current laptop, of course; the font rendering certainly could be a lot better and more density would be nice for easier photo editing and so on, but I think a lot of people have forgotten just how good 1080p can be if it's handled well in software. A whole generation spent most of their time on crappy CRTs. Compared to that almost any HD screen is an enormous improvement.
Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling.
I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.
See my reply here.
15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×.
15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 1440p.
15.6″ 3840×2160 (4K): 282ppi. Generally comfortable at 2–2.5×, most will use at 2×.
These figures I’m suggesting are aiming for about 110–140dpi. I have a 15.6″ 2560×1440 screen, and 1.5× scaling mostly works very well, basically perfectly under Windows which I never use and with only minor issues under Linux/Sway with high-DPI XWayland patches once I’ve manually intervened to fix a few variously broken things.
Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small.
Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me.
But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.
(13.3″ works better: 100% for 1366×768, 120–150% for 1080p so no integer there, 160–200% for 1440p, 240–300% for 4K.)
Fractional scaling in Sway doesn’t degrade quality in any way in Wayland windows: it leaves the scaling to the app to execute, and I haven’t come across a single app getting it wrong. Text will be rendered perfectly. Pixel-precise stuff can be a tad funny, e.g. a 1px border on an element in Firefox will be rendered as one or two device pixels in most contexts.
But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do.
On my 1440p 15.6″ display, I have scale 1.5 and xwayland scale 3, which normally works very well, but I do have to drop it to 1 occasionally for some things due to apps that don’t do scaling and the fact that the patches are still imperfect and you can actually soft-lock apps when they try to open certain windows (mostly popups, including menus) until you drop the scale.
Funny you say that considering Firefox goes haywire if you use it on Sway with fractional scaling.
https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6432 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6426 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6147
Other Qt apps like Qterminal are also not able to show tooltips normally if you enable scaling. Some Qt apps which I absolutely adore like Spectacle and Gwenview don't work at all though this might be a different issue.
> But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do.
The unofficial XWayland HiDPI patches? Yeah, I'm not gonna use them if they're official. It's a pain to compile and build complex packages like these. The AUR is fine for small and casual packages with a few dependencies but nothing complex, I feel.
Tooltips are working in all the Wayland Qt apps that I have (marble-qt, zeal-git, musescore, telegram-desktop).
If you have an AUR helper, replacing {sway,wlroots,xorg-xwayland} with {sway,wlroots,xorg-xwayland}-hidpi-git is really easy and not at all slow, though at least sway and wlroots do interdepend so that if you upgrade one you should rebuild the other or things may break (happened to me a couple of months back, there was a .so version bump). I decided that I’d rather have not-quite-perfect scaling and any package management concerns, rather than having XWayland content always look terrible. And remember that’s true of any scaling factor other than one.
I hope the fix lands on my desktop soon because I'm still facing those issues if I enable scaling. Even when I don't enable scaling and just use the Zoom option in Firefox, it starts behaving strangely for dropdown menus in Firefox settings. The menus aren't where they should be and sometimes flicker.
> (Incidentally, remember Firefox uses X11 unless you manually turn on its experimental Wayland support via MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1)
Yeah, I've exported this as a user environment variable and confirmed with xeyes that Firefox runs natively in Wayland.
> Tooltips are working in all the Wayland Qt apps that I have (marble-qt, zeal-git, musescore, telegram-desktop).
Please let me know if it works for you on Qterminal.
I'd also love to have Spectacle working on Sway. It starts natively in Wayland but fails to screenshot anything and tells me to open a bug report.
Gwenview looks broken on Sway/Wayland. The colors are all messed up.
> If you have an AUR helper, replacing {sway,wlroots,xorg-xwayland} with {sway,wlroots,xorg-xwayland}-hidpi-git is really easy and not at all slow, though at least sway and wlroots do interdepend so that if you upgrade one you should rebuild the other or things may break (happened to me a couple of months back, there was a .so version bump). I decided that I’d rather have not-quite-perfect scaling and any package management concerns, rather than having XWayland content always look terrible. And remember that’s true of any scaling factor other than one.
I'm not really using any XWayland programs at the moment except rofi so I don't think installing those packages from the AUR is worth it for me. I'd be happy to use them if they were available as official precompiled binaries.
Any ideas why these patches aren't merged to master? Some disagreements among devs?
(Either that, or it's something weird with my sway/monitor configuration, but I don't have anything unusual).
The major benefit of high-DPI displays isn't for gaming or graphics, it's for text. Once you're used to decent resolution and scaling, reading on anything else looks like a blurry mess.
Having said that, most people probably set the text magnification on a 4K screen to be the same as a 1080p screen, so any real estate gains tend to be a wash.
Since getting presbyopia several years ago, I had single vision glasses prescribed for using a computer. So when I am using a computer, as long as the screens are around 21" to 27" away from my eyes, everything is sharp. It sucks having an extra pair of glasses (and remembering to swap them when not using a computer), but I would go nuts if I didn't have them.
If someone's buying a laptop with a 4K display for real estate, he's probably misinformed. You buy a 4K display on a laptop for the pristine ~293 PPI vs a mediocre ~146 PPI on a 1080p display which would look even worse considering it would need fractional scaling while the 4K display would work with integer scaling.
That depends on the OS though, right? I don't know about Linux or Mac, but I'm pretty sure that if you scale on Windows, you're still running at the native resolution, but the UI elements get scaled. Nothing should look weird. At least that has been my experience on Windows... outside of apps that don't follow Microsoft's scaling guidelines.
I like Apple's approach in this case. Enforce the usage of HiDPI displays by default with at least ~200 PPI which needs integer scaling. Instead of trying to work around the issue, they simply bypass it, which is what I'll do in the future.
1080p is about the resolution of the screen, not the size of anything rendered on the screen.
I think my 27" 4k display is perfect. My dad has slightly worse eyes and prefers his 32" 4k display, which I find noticably grainier but perfectly serviceable.
Putting a trio of portrait 24" 1080ps gives you 42" of almost 4k (3240x1920 as opposed to 3240x2160).
I don't see whats extreme about this at all, its a better use of area than my trio of 24" 1080ps (in landscape) that I use now.
As opposed to 3840 × 2160, no?
If you have a 48" 4k, then you're running it at 100%/96 dpi, just as if you had a 24" 1080p or a 27" 1440p. Same density, just more pixels.
If I was ultrarich, a 48" 8k would be the best of both worlds. It would also murder game performance, but oh well.
I have UI scaling disabled on my 27" 4k display and it looks fine to me.
So why would I need higher res than that? I thought that but I was proven so wrong.
Through some weird work circumstances I got a chance to use the (ludicrously expensive) 6K 32" Apple XDR Pro Display. To my eyes, this looked exactly the same as the LG 27" 5K displays I had been using — and they do indeed have almost the same pixel density.
BUT THEN!!!!!!! I had to switch to Linux for some other work reasons, and ended up with the (old as hell) Dell UP3218K 31.5" 8K display.
For programming work, it is so much better and crisper than the LG 27" UltraFine 5K and the Apple 32" XDR Pro Display.
I cannot SEE the pixels on any of them, but the text looks DRAMATICALLY better on the 8K one. I can comfortably use smaller font sizes, and the regular same-sized text is so much crisper and more comfortable to read on the 8K.
I feel like this 8K display is one of the best computer things I ever got — it's like the display version of going from HDD to SSD — and not getting one years ago is the biggest computing mistake in my 25+ year career.
And I also say this as somebody who just this year got his first prescription for eyeglasses (my vision is deteriorating in middle age, but isn't so bad yet; I wear the glasses like half the time, and the dramatic difference with the high res screen applies with or without glasses).
NOTE: I don't notice any differences at all when viewing photos or videos — it is strictly about viewing text, for doing things like programming or reading email or web pages.
FURTHER NOTE: Although I strongly disagree with your comment here, I upvoted it anyway because I think it is a commonly-held opinion which I myself believed a variant of until my recent lived experience with the weird Dell proof-of-concept monitor, and I don't think it deserved the light-gray dimming. And also because I remember you recommending the metal band Annihilator several years ago on this website, the discography of which I then obtained and enjoyed. :)
Both the 5900HS and the 4900HS will beat the low-wattage 5700U in performance handily. The G14 has a 76 Wh, so despite the “higher”-power (35 Watt) CPU, it’ll still get a LOT of battery life.
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/linux-unplugged/id6875...
[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/11/20/syste...
But:
CPU Single Thread Rating
Apple M1 - 3,778
AMD 5700U - 2,636
The 5700U is 8% faster on a synthetic multi-core benchmark vs. 30% slower on a single core benchmark. I know which CPU I'd choose if I had a choice.
I would take an AMD chip over the M1 in a desktop any day, but not in a laptop.
I can understand why there is this real push to reverse engineer the M1 platform to get Linux running on it! The efficiency per watt is amazing.
1. The Max boost clock of 5700U is 4.3Ghz. Compared to M1 at 3.2Ghz
2. The TDP of 5700 is Typical TDP, it doesn't actually take into account of boost. Not that it matters in a single thread performance comparison because it wont use 15W per single core, but still relevant info to keep in mind.
On the other hand this is a Zen 2 on 7nm compared to M1 on 5nm. The Gap would be less if it was on Zen 3 and 5nm. But even then my guess it would something like 3000, still quite a bit to go to catch up with 3800.
Chip shortage is hurting a lot.
It will run with an 11th gen Intel compute pack (x86 ), and have premium specs (roughly double the resolution of the Valve Index).
Turning it on will boot you into SimulaVR's VR window manager (built over the Godot game engine) with hand tracking. All open source.
It's intended to be more comparable to a Linux laptop (like System76) than a VR gaming device like the Quest.
Working in VR provides an enormous virtual space for immersive work, and can for the right person be actually 10x more productive.
The keyboard was later recalled, so I swapped it out with a new one they sent me which wasn't cut to the correct dimensions and never fit (bubbling up in the center and leaving a gap around the keyboard for things to fall into).
The touchpad is awful. Way too sensitive to palm touches, even in windows - so it isn't just a linux driver issue. This might be related to the fact that its off center but I think its just lousy hardware. In linux I've tweaked both the touchpad area (reduced) and threshold settings but its still barely usable and I palm-touch constantly unless I hold my hand at an awkward angle.
Maybe this pangolin is better but I looked at the overhead picture of the keyboard and it looks almost identical to my oryp5. The touchpad may be upgraded hardware, so I don't know.
I love what system 76 is doing, PopOS is great, but I really wish they'd get off these Clevo laptops. The hardware just isn't very good, IMO.
Have you tried it with Wayland?
Lenovo T14's are going for 65% of the asking price of one of these, if you don't care about intel vs amd.
As for the price difference: you can buy the base model of the System76 and upgrade ram/disk yourself. This is harder to do on the Lenovo ones; it seems the T14 has (some of) the ram soldered on (ugh).
But, it is nice to see that you can actually buy a T14 with Ubuntu preinstalled (if you are willing to wait 4+ months...), and they list it next to the (more expensive!) Windows version:
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...
System76 is all in on Linux support. That's why I support them.
Over the hears I've had monitor pixels die. They don't care, they'll replace it.
And unlike with Apple Lenovo doesn't mind if you replace the hard drive or other components yourself, the warranty is not voided.
Then one time for fun I tried Pop!_OS, and lo and behold, never had a problem with WiFi again!
Good job System76!
The only available tech specs seem to be for pang10 not pang11 hardware, maybe this will change.
We need something that combined the Dual Channel Support within one Slot and at least half the width of SO-DIMM.
To be completely honest, the framework laptop makes me realize I'd rather buy a laptop that can be repaired rather than a linux laptop...
I doubt the battery life on this thing is going to last a single day or even more than 12 hours compared with the Apple Silicon laptops out there or even the upcoming M1X Laptops.
Hence this, I am in no hurry to rush into buying this contraption and will just skip it for the alternatives.
Surely SO-DIMMs are just as susceptible to bitflips as regular Desktop DIMMs?
Am I the only one to care about this?
I’m curious if bitflips have been an issue for you in your experience. I don’t think I’ve encountered it, but I may have misattributed various bugs to software defects when they were in fact due to bit flips.
Whenever I've had non-ECC systems KPs/BSODs, it's possible that it might just be due to a bug, but in the back of my mind, I know there's always the possibility that it was due to a bitflip.
I feel psychologically uncomfortable working on a computer without ECC. I say ECC everything - Desktops, Laptops, and even smartphones.
This laptop proclaims a maximum of 64GB of RAM. If you do populate the slots with that much non-ECC RAM, that only further increases the surface area for random bitflips. What use is more RAM in a Linux laptop if it hasn't been made more reliable?
It's high time more laptops shipped with ECC. At least unregistered ECC, if not buffered ones.
Also if pixel count would be an issue smarphones would also go this way as they are more battery time critical.
Even my shitty XPS has a >200ppi display.
Why do PC laptops so often have crap screens? How am I to replace a retina MBP with this?
Linux is a side project for Dell at best, they have one model that officially supports (Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition).
Is this a normal price for a new laptop?
I am in the market for a new laptop and am a linux user.
I have a laptop running Linux that cost me $400 in 2016. Similar spec is $600 now. I'm fairly sure I can get by with what I do (YouTube, streaming, documents, web programming) fairly well with it.
Dell and Lenovo put up with Linux but it's a side project for them at best. And other vendors dgaf.
I've tried multiple kernel versions to no avail.
I heard they planned to manufacture their own machines recently, but I’d rather buy a ThinkPad for the awesome keyboard than gamble on whatever keyboard they’re using now.
Take a look at the keyboard layout before you decide to purchase a system. Also, ask yourself if you shouldn't just be getting a Dell instead.
1080p on 15" is quite criminal, do they think people look at this at 2 meter distance or something?
It's like the comparatively fucked up natural scrolling on macOS, when coming from windows, or whatever it's called. Your brain will accommodate.
The CPU likely consumes 30-45W depending on configuration.
So it's not trivial, all things considered.
Where do you get the 12w from?
Right now I have 16gb and it's been great and I generally don't put much pressure on it (except for some occasional Android Studio virtualizing).
However, it seems as though software resource usage has a tendency to creep up over time so it seemed like more RAM would be a safe option. I also tend to use the computer more lightly when it's unplugged.
I don't know much about hardware so all input is appreciated.
Here's one example:
https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-memory/how-much...
> As a rule of thumb, however, you want to allocate around 3 watts of power for every 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 memory. High-performance memory such as Ballistix® parts can draw more power, especially if you overclock the voltage beyond XMP settings.
Similar numbers here for slower DDR4-2133.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5960x-has...
Power consumption adds up pretty quickly.
why?
I unplug the AC adapter and monitor to go over to someone's desk or hold a presentation perhaps a few times a month at most. I would not want to write code a whole day on even the best laptop keyboard and the most crispy 4K laptop screen.
There is a surprising lack of choice for laptops targeting this mode of use though. For example the $3k Dell precision I have now doesn't like being used plugged in for extended periods. They put a category of battery in them that swells when heated. So if you, like me, leave it on for say a year at your desk (This happened during the pandemic) - it expands and the keyboard and trackpad stops working.
When you go for a "workstation" class laptop, the manufacturers have crammed so much perf into an impossibly small package, that it's screaming loud and glowing hot. Just make it twice as thick with half the battery size and I'll buy it.