Tuxedo Stellaris: A Powerful Linux Laptop | Hacker News Reader

Tuxedo Stellaris: A Powerful Linux Laptop

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64 pointsekianjo75 comments

This is just a Clevo. System76 (the Pangolin) and a billion other companies sell the exact same thing

https://clevo-computer.com/en/laptops-configurator/purpose/m...

yeah, I recognize that keyboard.

I purchased and returned a system 76 Pangolin same day. A key cap fell of in less than an hour of use and was not user repairable. I would have had to swap out the entire keyboard module. To System76's credit, they offered to do the work under warranty... but on the other hand - no way in heck am I paying $2.5k for something that literally falls apart in minutes.

It's amazing how HN always has something bad to say.

This laptop is under my Christmas tree. It has a i7 11800h and the lowest option nvidia I could find (I would have gone for Intel + amd but I couldn't find it). That cpu is a beast, don't even try to compare to overheating arm M1s.

Battery life should go for about 6 to 9 hours with my calculations, sure it's not crazy 20 hours, but anything more than 6h is awesome for me.

Nvidia gpu sucks on Linux? Yep, I 100% agree and I'm going to disable that immediately after I dual boot my preferred distro on it. I'll leave it on in tuxedo OS.

980 Pro ssd, there's a bunch of crap online comparing this to 970 Pro (which you also have the option to configure), from the numbers I saw 980 pro is fast and cheap, that's what I need.

It's thick, people are always complaining that laptops have incredibly bad thermal management, and here comes tuxedo (or clevo) making a thick laptop because of the strong components inside and everyone complains. It's amazing how childish people can be, I'm ok with it being thick as long as it doesn't burn my hands like Macs do and as long as it doesn't thermal throttle almost all the time like 90% of thin and light laptops do.

So yeah, if your are looking for a laptop, just ignore all these HN people that seem to not do anything but sit around all day complaining.

This is a really good laptop and I recommend it.

The M1 Air redefined (for me obviously) what a laptop should be. Fanless, efficient, great touchpad and display and crucially just works. I don’t know why all other laptops generally need a year (windows, more on Linux) of bios and driver updates to not suck, but it’s maddening.

> great touchpad

I wish the touchpad weren’t too large though or improve the palm detection. If macOS have the feature, then it is not on par as other trackpad manufacture which their palm detection/rejection is superior to Apple's. It is easily to mistouch it with my palm because of the offset placement from the standard keyboard. And it happens too often for me, I have it to set to autodisable the touchpad if my Bluetooth mouse is connected to it. But that just remove the important utility of the touchpad.

One thing I like about how the disabled touchpad will also disable the haptic feedback of the clicking. So, I know if the touchpad is disabled or not. It felt so weird for the first time when it is disabled since it is not clicky anymore. Because I thought it have depression underneath it. Blew my mind when I discovered it uses haptic feedback to mimic the touchpad depression. It felt so realistic!

> I wish the touchpad weren’t too large though or improve the palm detection. If macOS have the feature, then it is not on par as other trackpad manufacture which their palm detection/rejection is superior to Apple's.

Man, this is just not my experience at all. Apple's palm rejection feels best-in-class to me -- I literally never have any issue with it on a MacBook Pro (I never even thought about it for years, using Macs exclusively), and I've never not had an issue with it on any Windows laptop I've tried (Lenovo Thinkpads, Asus, Dell, Alienware). All of the WinTel offerings seem to rely on a bog-standard Synaptics or Microsoft driver with mediocre-at-best palm rejection.

Maybe it just works better for some people than others?

I own a personal MBP and 2 work MBPs. I am still in the market for a laptop like this. I would buy this for the express intent of being able to game when I go visit my parents. I'm usually visiting them for 1-2 weeks at a time. I dont want to transport my gaming desktop for a visit of that length. Apple laptops are just not the same use case as this laptop.

Honestly - just build a small form factor desktop.

I tried really hard to make gaming on laptops work - and the result is that you get a more expensive, less capable machine. You'll end up spending 3 times the money, and are usually left disappointed (I know I was!).

Most vendors will happily shove high end components into a box they know doesn't have the right thermals to keep everything running, so unless you're also dragging a freezer around to keep the thing cool - it will hit thermal limits pretty fast. At which point the nice cpu/gpu no longer matter, and god help you if you actually intend to use it on your lap (bank some sperm - because it will fry yours...).

I can fit my current travel box (mini-itx InWin case, 20 inch display, keyboard/mouse, mousepad, power cable, hdmi cable) in a carry-on sized piece of luggage, with a smidge of space left over.

Yes - it's still a lot bulkier than a laptop, but I can actually play games on it and have fun. Which is not really something my "gaming" laptops ever did very well.

---

Bonus - if you retire it after 4-6 years, it makes a killer media pc. Most of my laptops were basically garbage after 3 years (Cheap plastic cases degrade/crack. Screen/keyboard are worn out and not economical to replace. Bad thermals decrease component lifespan noticeably.)

I'm game if i can buy a 3080 or 3090 or an equivalent ATI. I love desktops so i have nothing against it.

Usually you can fit a full-size card in most of the mini-itx cases. Not every full-sized card, but a full-sized card.

I was lucky and building before prices shot sky high and availability became so limited, so it might be harder to find a card you know for sure will fit.

There's a pretty large community around building small form factor pcs, and a lot of forums will have case/card compatibility lists.

Thanks for this suggestion! I didn't think about it at all. I will look into it. I'd rather have a small desktop that I can carry than yet another laptop.

I completely agree with you that laptops degrade way faster than I like

pcpartpicker has dimension compatibility for at least some cases and cards, so it isn’t an impossible task, though it’s much more difficult than just buying a big case and not caring about size at all.

I assume that toting along a SFF desktop is a non-starter? Assuming you can get any GPU at a reasonable price, it is possible to build a relatively small and light desktop for less than a gaming laptop, and still get better performance. The size / weight will be greater though, and obviously it assumes you have a keyboard, mouse and monitor at the destination.

I'm thinking of picking up a laptop for a similar use case. In my case I'm deciding between the Air and a mid-tier laptop I can throw Windows or Linux on. One thing I wonder about is, if I go with the Air can I get by with cloud gaming? xCloud and Geforce Now work reasonably well, as does Steam's built in remote desktop.

I'm on the same boat but Steam Deck might actually solve the problem. Obviously it makes some compromises, but I should be able to buy a work laptop and keep games on the Deck

Yes, I'm on the waitlist for the SteamDeck. My estimated shipment time is Q2 2022. That was before the last delay announcement so who knows when I'll get it. But I loooove handhelds.

For those cases there is GeforceNow, Stadia, Xcloud

I am aware of those options. I avoid them for 2 reasons. 1) I'm hesitant to go to a service where I'm just leasing a game. Valve has proven to be a good steward (im aware of GOG being better in that you actually own the game). I've already bought $X000 of games on there over the years and my experience has always been good. I don't want to try another service where I have to rebuy games. 2) I live in NYC with a max 10ms ping to a server in a game. When I go to my parent's house, their network is stretched to the limit. The ping is much higher, the ISP provided bandwidth lower.

JFYI you can play all your steam games on GeForce Now at least.

Wow! Ok, I will check it out. I'm willing to pay a subscription if I have access to my library.

I really don't understand this insistence of covering the full width of the computer with keys. The numpad is less than useless most of the time and pushes the main keyboard to the left of the computer, which means to the left of the screen.

I wouldn't mind adding extra keys around the main keyboard, but at least put the main keyboard in the middle of the bottom, like God intended it to be.

I might be in the minority here but numpads are a must for me on any keyboard. I find typing phone numbers, etc, with the numkeys at the top of the main keyboard to be incredibly tedious.

I prefer a numpad too so you're not alone.

Number pads are huge for me. I'm much faster with one.

+1000 for this. It also pushes the touchpad to the left, even if this is the least of the problems. Manufacturers please take note: I'd pay an extra for a keyboard without the numberpad.

There should be a special key to switch the middle keys into a num pad, computer makers are becoming so uninventive.

Mu daughter's laptop has the numbers printed on the keys.

I've been pretty impressed with my Framework so far. 64GB ram and it runs Ubuntu perfectly. Only thing missing is a dGPU and maybe a bigger battery.

As soon as Framework puts out an AMD module, I am buying one of those. They sound amazing.

I'm definitely biased towards all-AMD Linux laptops these days. And this past summer I bought an ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition.

I really liked that laptop's CPU and dGPU. In Linux, I always have an easier time with GPU drivers/behavior with AMD vs. nVidia.

Unfortunately, with that particular laptop I realized I also care a lot about the key caps. I really hated their flatness and (to me) peculiar texture.

So I looked around for another all-AMD laptop, and the best candidate I spotted was the System76 Pangolin. Unfortunately it appears to have very similar key caps, so I didn't get one.

I ended up reluctantly buying a 2021 Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (AMD CPU, nVidia dGPU), because the keyboard feels much better. I'd rather deal with nVidia driver hassles than with an always unpleasant keyboard.

But I would have gladly payed another $100-200 for a laptop with the best of all worlds:

- AMD CPU

- AMD dGPU

- pleasant-feeling keycaps

I'm hoping that as AMD gains more laptop market share, eventually I can get such a laptop. (Assuming I stick with x86, which is less relevant to me each year.)

I mostly have a similar set of requirements as you. I swap out the need for a dGPU with a nicer display, though. Framework sounds amazing for the reparability, almost to the point that I'm willing to overlook some of that other stuff.

They could make one for the RPi CM4 and I'd get it immediately.

Maybe they could make something larger with the thermals and battery of a gaming laptop, and put a huge 160-core ARM server CPU in it.

Ditto. Mine runs Manjaro perfectly, and was way more affordable than my previous two Thinkpads.

That being said, having more laptops out there that can run Linux out of the box is better than having fewer. This Tuxedo machine looks nice.

The day they offer a model with physical mouse buttons, I'm ordering one.

I could use 64GB of ram for work (running a full stack of docker containers ) but at home I'm not sure I'd find a use for it. Do you find it helps having that much?

Honestly, I haven't seen any difference so far from my previous Dell Precision with 32GB ram. But I went big up front to keep it for years. I use it for work and home

That's not a bad idea to future proof yourself.

How's the trackpad on Linux?

No complaints from me

No DCI-P3 displays made it a no-go for me

When I hear 'powerful linux laptop' I think essentially portable workstation. This, on the other hand, appears to be very much a gaming laptop (1080p at 240hz with a fancy graphics card).

Good luck to them! Linux gaming has certainly made some strides. I don't think I'd bet my livelihood on selling a ton of these, but it is neat that somebody has decided to try.

> 1080p at 240hz with a fancy graphics card

On manufacturer's website [0], both the 15" and 17" Stellaris are listed with WQHD IPS-Panel (2560 x 1440 pixels) - I was looking at them just a few days ago.. The article lists 1080p as option, but it's not possible to order.

[0] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com

Apart from styling, what is the difference between a portable workstation and a gaming laptop?

Whether the focus is on graphics or computation, I expect.

Which one focuses which way? When I think "workstation", I picture people doing CAD, video editing, and GPU-accelerated simulations and number crunching, in addition to people compiling code.

Games aren't just GPU-bound, either. Unreal says they develop their games on systems with "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970" and "Six-Core Xeon E5-2643 @ 3.4GHz".

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/Basics/InstallingUn...

I like to think the main differentiator is whether the GPU is optimised for TF64 or TF32. But, really the boundaries are blurred for sure.

Developing games is different from playing them. The latter takes a pretty beefy GPU (for a given generation) before the CPU is a likely potential bottleneck.

Too bad GPUs are terrible for compute then

Workstations are of course a little bit more specialized so not everything needs to be satisfied, but I'd expect a workstation to typically have:

A differently tuned CPU (more cores or higher base clock depending on the workload, less emphasis on boosting).

More RAM.

Higher resolution display could be nice, no need for 240fps.

Workstation rather than gaming graphics card.

> appears to be very much a gaming laptop

That kind of explains the numpad.

I own a Tuxedo (one of their previous models), they downplayed an official CVE in their firmware as "hyped", later promised patches but never delivered anything.

A bigger problem though is the power-supply that is actually the same garbage as on my model. If you're moving the laptop around (or just tilting it with the cable in place) it will put pressure from the cable/connector directly onto the soldering on the motherboard - and break.

I soldered it several times, and replaced the female part of the connector (on the motherboard) twice. The original problem with the power-supply is design: it can only be solved by replacing the connector with something more rugged. Thinkpads and Dell models have a comparatively large connection that goes in deep and stays in place no matter if you move it from your couch to a table. I literally can't carry this thing from A to B without first unplugging it and moving the cable/charger separately or it will be a matter of time until I gotta unpack the soldering iron again. The only option is to totally replace the power supply with a more rugged option, meaning I have to drill a bigger hole into the casing etc

In my case there are also issues with the battery. It says 100% full but the battery capacity hints at an issue with one of the cells (notice the difference between capacity and percentage indicating a problem where GUI's tell you that you got 100% but you're out of juice in 30 mins):

  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               Notebook
  model:                BAT
  serial:               0001
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Thu 16 Dec 2021 12:44:05 AM (113 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               charging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              8.22528 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         12.1414 Wh
    energy-full-design:  45.36 Wh
    energy-rate:         3.90096 W
    voltage:             17.399 V
    time to full:        1.0 hours
    percentage:          72%
    capacity:            24.7%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charging-symbolic'
  History (charge):
    1639611845  72.000  charging
  History (rate):
    1639611845  3.901   charging

16 GiB is not a lot of memory these days.

Nor is 6-8h a long battery life.

This thing is gonna be made to look like it's standing still by the next-gen, if not current-gen, MacBook Pros, which will still have twice the battery life.

Let's face it: Apple has raised the bar on what a laptop should be (like they do every few years). Only the most neckbearded of FOSS developers are going to lay out that kind of scratch for a laptop whose design basically hails from three years ago; the rest of us will appreciate the hardware and software advantages the Apple ecosystem gives us.

There are plenty of people outside of "the most neckbearded of FOSS developers" who could use an x86 laptop with a beefy GPU—perhaps you need CAD software or fully supported bare-metal Linux for your job?

I'm typing this on an Apple silicon MacBook, but I won't argue that it's perfect for everyone everywhere.

If you need to crunch a lot of numbers, a beefy GPU makes sense, but don't underestimate the big M1's because being able to get to 64 GB of data without crossing the PCIe bus makes a lot of data flow optimization sins forgivable.

Can't play Halo Infinite on an MBP. Can't on this one either but I can at least attempt to dualboot Windows.

Halo Infinite actually works pretty well on my MBP via xCloud. The only hassle was that you need to do a workaround (chrome extension) if you want to play with mouse+keyboard. There's some quality drop when there's lots of explosions on the screen, but it's probably still better quality then you'd get running the Windows version on the same hardware

My non work laptop has 4GB (2013 MacBook Air running Linux). Works perfect as a daily driver. I wouldn’t want to work on it but I don’t code huge projects on my personal time. I prefer not to code on off time.

16 GB is more than sufficient for the vast majority, especially with a decent frequency.

Dell and Lenovo are supporting Linux on a small subset of their laptop lines, but it's good to see pure-play Linux vendors like Tuxedo, System76 or Starlabs.

Dell and Lenovo are known bad actors. Dell for things like custom proprietary coolers that prevents customers fixing their machines and Lenovo for rootkits.

So they're not really equivalent ootions.

Ubuntu and Nvidia card.

No thanks.

Maybe if they figure out how to disable the dGPU on the fly after over a decade of back and forth with fixes and regressions[1].

[1] https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/ubuntu-20-04-nvidia-gp...

How do these compare in build quality to something like the Librem 14? I always get the feeling that these "Chinese reseller" laptops are kinda on the lower end of the scale.

I have to qualify here that I only ever have seen review pictures and never actually held a system76 or Tuxedo laptop. I did get my hands on a Librem 13 which left me with mixed feelings though.

I have a cheap gaming laptop. It's called an Infinity o5. They're rebranded Chinese laptops. They look identical. https://www.infinitygaming.com.au/o5-4r7g5ti-888-gtx-1650ti/

That said it's a great laptop, the best I've ever owned.

Aren't these like Clevo cases ? I bet they are.

> barely thicker than an inch and weighing in at less than five pounds

I haven’t bothered with a laptop that bulky in over 10 years.

With this size, it should have a Xeon Scalable ;-)

Why are 10 keys practically ubiquitous outside of Apple? Typing to the side feels quite awkward.

I won't buy a laptop without one these days. I instinctively reach over to my 10 key to enter numbers, since I can touch type there. With the row above my standard keyboard I have to look down. I'd wager they're popular for office roles that need to deal with a lot of spreadsheet work.

I have a numpad on my desktop keyboard, but I agree typing to the left of the screen is mildly annoying.

My desktop keyboard is aligned with the laptop's.

They're fantastic for number entry. Touch typing for numbers basically requires one.

Although really, I think for a machine like this it's more for gaming use. A 10-key also makes for a nice directional input.

I think most people who game use the WASD keys in combination with a mouse, but I suppose it depends on the type of games.

I guess the All Other Vendors laptops are more geared towards accountants, and the Apple line is targeted at developers.

Kernel 5.11 is a poor match for the 5900HX. They should try again with 5.15. It has additional performance enhancement and fixes the suspend issue mentionned. I was able to do it on Ubuntu with an app called 'mainline'.

Haven’t seen similar configuration with Linux support in American companies.

Has anyone bought this from their website and had it delivered to USA? How was the process regarding paying import taxes?

Pretty sure Tuxedo rebrands Clevo or some other OEM's laptops. The Stellaris's chassis looks very close to this Xotic PC laptop. https://xoticpc.com/collections/custom-gaming-laptops-notebo...

I have had nothing but problems with nvidia and linux. That alone is a big nope for me.

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