4th Gen KDE Slimbook – Linux Ultrabook with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U | Hacker News Reader

4th Gen KDE Slimbook – Linux Ultrabook with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U

kde.slimbook.es

341 pointsjrepinc257 comments

Is there some hardware limitation of AMD Ryzen laptop processors that prevents a high-res display?

Every time I see one of these laptops (like the recent HP linux laptop, etc), I think they look really interesting except that I wish they had a higher res display - I've not seen any Ryzen laptop with what I'd call a premium display - something high DPI.

> Is there some hardware limitation of AMD Ryzen laptop processors that prevents a high-res display?

It's probably a limitation of the company they source the laptops from (Clevo?) :-)

The recently announced Tuxedo Pulse 2 [0] has a 1440p display; and the teased Starlabs Starfighter [1] is expected to come with a 4K display. Both are AMD laptops.

===

[0] - https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...

[1] - https://9to5linux.com/star-labs-teases-the-starfighter-linux...

The Tuxedo Pulse 2 looks amazing. They really addressed all of the complaints we had (purchased at the beginning of the year for our company).

I still have minor nitpicks with it, but those pale in comparison with the display port upgrade they did.

For me the worst on the Pulse is the battery. Had to change one after one year and the new one is losing charge at a seemingly higher pace than other machines. :(

I have a 2y old PF5NU1G (a second run Mechrevo CODE 01) as well, and the battery has decayed to ~73Wh (from a 91Wh original design). The one bright side is that the replacement battery, PFIDG-03-13-3S2P-0, seems to be pretty cheap ($60, shipped by boat from China) if you know you're going to stick to the same laptop for a while... https://www.aliexpress.com/i/3256803017144797.html

I didn't even see the Gen2 release. I own the Gen1 after much consideration (and very nice community management from Tom over at the XMG Subreddit). I got it in December of 2021 for about 600 Euros. (Great Deal).

I know I am very susceptible to "the new shiny" and already have the itch to go for the Gen2 since it really brings some amazing improvements to the table. Mainly more external displays. The rest is nice to have (wouldn't have needed >60Hz panel to be honest). Oh and the Gen1 USB-C charging only works with a subset of all available USB-C chargers. Probably some kind of incompatibility with the IC on the motherboard. [1]

If you're thinking about getting it, I can (at least for Gen1) vouch for it.

To clarify: Tuxedocomputers is a subsidiary(?) of XMG/Schenker. Their "Pulse 15" is equivalent to Schenker's "Via 15 Pro".

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/jx3220/validated_us...

I also liked that they fixed the biggest niggles w/ Gen2 (higher DPI display, 2 x M.2 storage, DP1.4 w/ the USB-C - rare to see any OEM actually fix the shortcomings of the previous verson). If it were a Ryzen 6000, I'd almost definitely upgrade, however, per Tuxedo's announcement [1], the 35W 5700U (Lucienne, so Zen2, not even Zen3 core) basically just matches the 54W 4800H in performance - great from a noise/heat/power efficiency perspective, but sadly, a total sidegrade when it comes to perf.

"This way the 5700U reaches the already high-end performance from its AMD Ryzen 7 4800H-54-watts-equipped predecessor, but it comes with significantly better power efficiency, delivering on-par-performance with over 30% less power consumption!"

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/vrb1me/tux...

I agree that the Gen1 was one of the best Linux laptops around, and the Gen2 is an improvement in every way. My original review from 2y ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechr...

Also, interesting about that charging chart. I was able to use basically every 65W and 100W USB-C charger I had (about 5 different ones over the years) and also 4 different 100W-capable batteries (Zendure SuperTank, SuperTank+, Baseus Blade, and Shargeek Storm 2) w/o problems (the SuperTank is listed as having issues). I wonder if some of the reported incompatibilities were due to bad USB-C cables...

Intel does a fair bit of exclusivity deals to prevent vendors from making certain pairings. It also didn't help that amd mobile CPUs were budget options for a long time. Manufacturers haven't caught on to the demand yet really.

Matebook 16

Amazing laptop. I'm never going back to a small screen or a non 3:2 screen

Very hard to source though. Had to have it shipped specially from China

How is the serviceability? Can you swap ssd / battery?

nothing special in that department.. It's not a framework

You can see the notebookcheck review for details: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-...

My main concern would be procuring parts. I'd have to order them over Taobao and then have them forwarded and wait a while. Fingers crossed nothing comes up..

Better get a battery replacement before you need it. It becomes really difficult to find replacement parts after a couple of years because the device is not "popular" and most sellers stop keeping stock.

that looks like an interesting machine, reasonably priced

Especially if you purchase on Taobao/VMall - then it's under $1K. I think they also sell a version in Germany, but the price is marked up a lot

I wonder what's with all the "3:2 screen" aficionados recently.

Some years ago, a 3:4 screen was considered "bad" and "unusable" and 16:9 or 16:10 was what you needed to have. Now 16:9 is bad and 3:2 (pretty close to 4:3) is back in business?

Is this just about chasing the latest fad? I mean 16:9 or even 16:10 has so much horizontal space that it's perfect if you do software development for example. Why is it so common now to give that up for more vertical space?

4:3 is not a fad, it's superior but lost out due to manufacturers consolidating tv displays with monitors.

I guess they would like you to think it's bad since they don't make them for cost savings reasons. I'd buy 4:3. There are still a few niche makers for medical and industrial purposes but the specs are crummy and prices high relative to mainstream displays.

I'd love to have a 4:3 laptop again. Best general use display. I find it amazing how we have been forced to use widescreens for so long yet our content, except for movies, still doesn't fit it. Office documents can fit on screen. Websites have to pad endless whitespace on the sides. The list goes on. We need to return to 4:3.

It is my belief that wider aspect ratio displays are easier to manufacture, too.

At a given pixel-pitch, you need fewer rows. In extremis, imagine a display that is N x 1 -- much easier to limit defects and handle the necessary multiplexing.

Back when 16:10 and 16:9 displays became common, I remember they weren't received particularly fondly by many of the developers I knew. Non-technical people seemed to like them more. More hardcore developers rather had to somewhat begrudgingly accept them.

Maybe the 3:2 aficionados aren't the same people who started disliking 4:3 displays when widescreen became popular?

My guess is this this is a resolution issue. When the resolution was low, moving to 16:9 or 16:10 allowed you to have two side-by-side windows open. Now that the pixel density is higher you can make it 3:2, have two windows side by side even more comfortably, and get your vertical space back as well.

That said, you do sort of need 16 inches. Otherwise things start to get too tiny and you'll want to do scaling (which defeats the point..)

The Matebook 16 for me seems to hit the sweetspot in terms of pixel density and I don't feel the need to scale anything (the DPI is similar to my 1080p 13inch). So I'm actually glad it's not 4K

I think people realized that the media-centric 16:9 doesn’t handle the piles of horizontal bars (titlebars, toolbars, tab bars, status bars, taskbars, etc) that compose modern desktop UIs all that well, particularly at traditional laptop resolutions (1920x1080 and its 2x counterparts and below).

Personally I don’t need a ton of width, the most I have side by side on a laptop screen are two code panes in an IDE. If I need any more than that I’m docked at a desk with dual 27” monitors. I would say my sweet spot is 16:10, but I’ve not tried a 5:4 or 3:2 laptop and have never used a 4:3 laptop for dev work, so I don’t know if I’d find those more suitable or not.

A few notes that may or may not matter to people:

* great res/aspect ratio, but claimed 300 nits, which is good enough for most indoor usage, but not in brighter environments) - that being said, Notebookcheck tested theirs at 350 nits

* RAM is soldered so you're locked into 16GB (M.2 wifi and 2280 SSD can be replaced)

* no USB-A ports

Overall though it's a pretty great laptop, can't wait to see how the Ryzen 6000 version performs (and if it had a 32GB version would be high on my personal shopping list).

NBC review for those interested: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-...

* no USB-A ports

I'm not sure what you mean. It's got two on the right side. And two USB-C on the left (though one will typically be used by your charger) - which seems to be unusual still..

16GB hasn't been an issue so far - but it's def my number 1 concern. But for under $1k I can't really expect more

Ah, you're right, I had a different Huawei laptop page open for the spec sheet. having 2 x USB-A ports is great (personally, I usually have a wireless keyboard and mouse dongle, so it's something I'm still concerned about).

If 16GB is enough then that's great. Sadly, I will usually end up hitting swap even with 32GB, so getting to at least 40GB (8GB+ soldered, 1 SODIMM), but preferably 2xSODIMMs for 64GB ends up thinning out my options considerably.

None, I have an AMD Ryzen laptop with a highres display (1440p), and there are with 4k displays. It's just that a loooooot of laptops you're seeing are going to be rebrands of these ones.

It's a gpu power consumption/battery life issue. Putting a high res display in an Air clone ("ultrabook") means poor battery life unless you can also make a very efficient GPU (which so far only Apple has done).

The battery life on my 4k XPS13 is atrocious and it gets hot enough to burn my thighs.

Battery life vs display resolution is always a balancing act. Even macbooks don't have 4k displays for this reason. Makes me wonder why manufacturers opt to make so many 4k laptops compared to 2k ones.

4k looks vastly better and many laptop users seldom or rarely run off battery for more than an hour or so.

While I agree that my laptop gets used plugged in most of the time, it is nice for it to last a while for the occasions when I'm away from an outlet (which I argue would be the primary benefit of using a laptop).

Economies of scale. Factories are pumping out huge numbers of 4K panels while the more balanced panels Apple uses are likely made to order. So in most cases it’s probably cheaper for manufacturers to use 4K panels, despite their problems.

Can you please explain what use hi DPI displays have in general? I bought one and it was almost nothing but disappointment except viewing photos. For me it concludes as purely wasted computational (and electrical) power.

Fonts and GUI elements look much sharper. After going HighDPI i can't go back.

Honestly adwaita will look like crap no matter what the resolution is.

(And before you get upset about the Gnome dev's feelings getting hurt, they've decided that this is the best theme and no one should ever use anything different.)

That's why I use KDE, since I saw how Gnome devs treat font rendering issues from the community[1]. And for some reason this is the most popular linux DE. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

You're not crazy, whatever Redhat decides eventually becomes popular because that's what people get paid to work with. It's very similar to the situation with Windows.

Also, I think most desktop Linux users that care probably use a small WM rather than either Gnome or KDE. Gnome also gets a lot of attention because GTK is easier to work with than QT.

I care but I don't understand the craziness about tiling wms, xfce etc. I like the convenience that KDE provides for me.

To me the guys who casually always mention "btw yeah I'm using this tiling wm and ..." are just smugly showing off, like vegans or people who own too expensive bicycles.

I don't think tiling WMs and Xfce can be lumped together like that. Xfce is very much a traditional DE with "batteries included"; it's more lightweight than Gnome and KDE, but still way closer to them than most lightweight WMs. I'd say it's closest to MATE (which, to remind, is itself a fork of Gnome from before it went nuts).

Better text rendering is the main advantage. This means that you can set text sizes smaller and have a lot more usable screen real estate.

I tried using a 4K IPS display for usual programming tasks, but the usual fonts become so painfully tiny that it's just unbearable (and I have almost perfect vision). Combining a normal old display with modern 4K also creates lots of problems. For example, I drag windows and tool boxes a lot between desktops when working with code or in 3D. The perfect resolution for my old-school self is now a WQHD 2560*1440. Not in any "hi-dpi" sense.

>4K IPS display

It's not what person above suggests. It's about something like 5K display rendered in 200% resolution, so it's equivalent to 1440p. Then you can have slightly downscale fonts compared to "raw" 1440p since you'll still have more clarity due to higher pixels per inch.

It is for this reason I prefer 2 1080p monitors connected to my work laptop.

I prefer physical size for my screen real estate as opposed to jamming more onto a single display.

Scaling between different display sizes as you move windows around doesn't work well on Windows so I also prefer my laptop display to have the same resolution.

My wife takes a different approach: Giant, cheap 4k TV with windows spread out connected to her work machine.

The text looks a lot nicer, without subpixel rendering which can also save computational power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

I always disable this crap, fine with pixels %)) OK, I understand pixel interpolation is useful in printed media production, but on displays... Win95 still looks great to me.

It does make a huge difference for readability of Chinese/Japanese/Korean in small sizes (e.g. comparable to reading a normal book or paper).

Now, that makes a good point, thank you!

Well, people have different opinions about it. I personally hate visible pixels with passion. I was an early adopter of HiDPI displays (starting with IBM T221 back in 2007), and I don't understand how anybody could settle for less after they see this gorgeous high resolution.

It's probably the fact that most people haven't experienced it. Regular consumers think macbooks have magically "better" displays than most windows laptops but can't name the exact reason. But just getting a high DPI laptop/monitor gets the same effect.

Anecdotally, I've used HiDPI alongside 1x res monitors since 2015 now, and I can honestly say I don't care much about which one I'm using for reading and writing.

What does matter though is gray uniformity and the size of the color gamut. Especially for the work I do (video and photography).

Anecdotally, I find non-4K displays incredibly uncomfortable to use after using a 4K one for my desktop for 2 years.

I had an old iPad (before retina) and used it for general tasks, sometimes. My newer hiDPI iPad has become my primary device for everything but actual work.

I would never have read a book on the old iPad, I read several in hiDPI. It really changes the way you read if the fonts are (perceptually) as crisp as print.

Having said that, I still use a 1080p display for work and watching video

So my tiny iPad has like twice as many pixels as my big screen.

As others have said, smooth, crisp font rendering. I’ve been using high DPI displays for almost 10 years now and would never consider going back. Using a 1440 monitor, say, feels to me like using a machine with a floppy disk: an anachronism.

My wife though swears she cannot tell the difference and doesn’t care which she uses. This boggles my mind and is actually a bit frustrating to me, but that’s my problem.

So, I’m interested in if you can tell the difference but don’t care or if it’s something else.

I’ve always used a Mac though, maybe that’s the difference? Never seen Linux/Windows in 4K.

I don't care that much but I do notice. Most PC laptops these days are 1080p and at their sizes this is generally 160+ PPI which is about the same as a 27" 4K display so it looks fine to me.

Apple also has made their text rendering look worse on non-retina screens a few versions back which exacerbates the problem compared to Windows and Linux.

1440p can be quite crisp if you're using pixel-perfect, antialiased rendering and looking at the whole screen. Even for text. Anything higher is either overkill or (most often) compensating for defects in the rendering pipeline.

(In fact, there's a viable argument that even 1080p ought to suffice, and 768p be "good enough for most uses".)

I switch back and forth between modern High DPI displays and older ~1440p displays. I don't really care myself. High resolution has never mattered to me.

I'm the same way with video tho, I can still watch 480p YouTube video and it doesn't bother me at all. Whereas some people I know can't stand watching 1 second of video below 1080p.

For a programmer, screen real estate (dependent on scaling). I look at 4k 100% scaling as having condensed two 1080p monitors without bezels.

4k is actually exactly 4 1080p screens' worth of pixels, unless you mean non-100% scaling.

Switching from 1900x1200 to a 4k monitor was night and day for me. So much less eye strain by the end of the day.

In the setup you like now, how far away is your monitor from your eyes? How many pages of text do you keep open typically? seen at once

For me, it's all about text. I spend my whole day staring at text in some form - email, code, etc. A good high DPI display creates a much better text shape for the same physical size text on screen (and doesn't have as much of an issue with trying to snap vertical text to actual pixels, etc).

It makes reading a lot easier for me - and vastly decreases how tired I feel after a day of it.

It's not a hardware limitation, but many vendors are still using AMD only in their budget SKUs and using Intel in their flagships.

Since the AMD SKUs are aimed at a different price-point, they generally don't have higher end display options.

High DPI on something like a phone screen makes sense since it is often used so close to the face - but are people really getting this close to their computer displays?

For a 1080p 14" screen, and a person with 20:20 vision, you would need to be closer than 50cm to the screen to be able to discern any visual differences. Hackernews has lots of people who like to claim they can tell the difference, but the science of visual acuity is against them and they never back up these claims with studies or experiments.

Given a blind A/B test at a normal desk viewing distance, I'm doubtful any of these people would be able to pick out the difference between 1080p and 4k on a screen so small.

High DPI displays have been available for a decade, since the 2012 retina macbook pro. "Science of visual acuity" aside, the difference is noticeable.

I use a tablet pc and find it bizarre some vendors sell the m with 1080p displays when it's meant to be used closer to the face at be times. 2-in-1 budget laptops also have the same issue when using 1080p panels

Read this article: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/. There's simply not enough pixel to render character correctly on non-hiDPI displays.

I have two laptops, one with a high DPI display (Macbook), and one with a regular 1080p screen. Both running Linux. There is quite zero difference viewing text at a regular viewing distance.

If I move uncomfortably close to the screen, I can of course make out the changes. The examples on this page do not work because they do not take into account viewing distance.

Difference is pretty obvious. I'm 100% sure to pass ABX test.

Is it seriously needed is different question. I strongly prefer it but I can live without it.

everyone talking about HiDPI, but everyone seems to miss display brightness. Standard displays are 200 - 300 nits, woefully inadequate if you are going to use it on the balcony, terrace or even near a big window. Very limiting if you open a laptop and it's unreadable.

For the first time I splashed out on a premium 4K monitor 32", and at 600 nits you forget the word glare - there is no glare if the screen is brighter than the sun.

Which sunglasses do you code with?

My eyes can’t handle the dimly lit room they once could, especially not when reading code. 400 nits is a minimum for me now.

Yes, this is crazy frustrating. The problem isn’t exclusive to boutique Linux laptops either, a lot of manufacturers use terribly dim panels that are barely usable in a well-daylight-lit room, and exacerbating it they’re glossy with extremely ineffective antiglare coating, which adds a thick layer of glare that the dim backlight doesn’t have a prayer of cutting through.

Even expensive laptops can have this problem… I briefly owned a $2k+ ASUS ROG G15 that had an otherwise nice screen (15.6” 2560x1440 144hz IPS satin finish), but had a 300 nit backlight which rendered all that moot except at night.

This is one of those things that Apple nails. The MacBooks I’ve used for work have all had displays bright enough to handle a bright room with ease with very little glare despite being glossy. My Thinkpad X1 Nano also has a matte 500 nit display that’s quite nice.

Nope. See e.g. my reply here elsewhere about the Xiaomi RedmiBook Pro. These are available since a while with ~240ppoi screens (3.2×2k). I.e.the 2021 model already had that resolution.

Also Huawei's MateBook laptop series has been offering AMD CPUs + HDPI screens since years, afaik.

If I were to buy a new laptop I'd probably avoid high DPI displays. I can display fonts small enough that I can't read them even though the screen can resolve them on the older 1080p screen my thinkpad has. All the high DPI means is extra trouble and I think they know this.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro has 2880*1800 ~ 3k 90hz display with Ryzen 5800h

This laptop is a refresh based on the Tong Fang PF5NU1G chassis. Tuxedo just announced their version, the Pulse 15 Gen2 that has a WQHD 2560x1440 165Hz 350 nit display: https://www.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/vrb1me/tux...

There's no limitation for Ryzen itself, it's largely up to the ODM/OEM to decide. For example, Lenovo and Asus have multiple QHD/4K options for Ryzen 5000 and 6000 series (iGPU-only) laptops (just do a search for Yogas, Thinkpads, Zenbook, Vivobook, etc).

Note, certain designs might have display limitations. A couple years ago, for the 1st gen PF5NU1G, Schenker tried to get a 4K OLED panel to run, but failed due to PCON compatibility and then sourcing/logistics issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/izg598/no_4koled_pa...

How's the keyboard on the Pulse 2 from someone who might be very partial to loud, clickety, far travel, mechanical keyboards?

How does Linux do with the high refresh rate display? Does it destroy battery life like I imagine?

I don't know how high refresh rate displays affect battery life, but in the worst case I imagine you could turn down the refresh rate when you aren't interested in using it (certainly refresh rate is tunable in X11).

If you want a mechanical keyboard, you should probably carry your own, as even the "mechanical" keyboards on laptops like the Eluktronics Mech 15 are IMO pretty lackluster. The NuPhy Air 75 fits exactly over the keyboard deck, btw, so that'd be my recommendation (replaced an Anne Pro I was using, which felt better, but was much bulkier. A Keychron low-profile might work as well, but I can't confirm whether it'll sit on the deck properly or not w/o having to disable the built-in keyboard.

In terms of the built-in keyboard feel, it's adequate. I would say that it reminds me of the keyboards on early-2000s Apple TiBooks. For the previous gen (and in my copy as well) there were reports of slight unevenness of the keyboard deck, although it was more of a curiousity than an actual issue in day-to-day use.

I've scanned through the Lenovo site as an example and I can't find anything AMD with a display larger than 1920x1080 (at least on the UK site)...

In Germany Lenovo sells a Legion S7 15 with a 4k display and Ryzen 7 5800H (article number 82K800GUGE). There are also variants of the Yoga Slim 7 Pro 16, the IdeaPad 5 and the ThinkBook 16p G2, each with a 2560x1600 display and a Ryzen CPU.

A bit OT, but I've always found that beyond 2560x1440, I can't really tell the difference on a laptop-size screen. If anything, the only 4K laptop I've owned was a bit more troublesome than the 1440p ones because so many applications had scaling issues that I had to deal with.

Fully agreed and on the other hand once you get used to 2560x1440 (QHD), lower resolution laptop is a real bummer regardless of the screen size. This also applies to desktop monitor and as you grow older the phone screen as well. Strangely, the entry level Samsung Galaxy S20 phone screen is regressing from QHD+ to 1080p in the S22 after two years, and the recently released flagship ROG 6 pro phone from Asus also stucked at 1080p.

> Fully agreed and on the other hand once you get used to 2560x1440 (QHD), lower resolution laptop is a real bummer regardless of the screen size

Yep! 1080p is unfortunately now unbearable to me for monitors and laptops, although thankfully I have not reached the point yet where I'm this picky about phone screens

QHD with Ryzen https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/legion-laptops/legion-5...

There were a few other QHD Ryzen gaming laptops. Couldn't find any business/workstation ones on the UK site though.

Similarly, the US has a 4K Ryzen gaming laptop. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/legion-laptops/legion...

Solid laptops. Enough power for a portable homelab. Went from a Legion 5 to a Legion 7 because I ended up liking it enough to make it my main machine. Much fewer random firmware bugs than AMD ThinkPads. They even do KVM GPU passthrough reasonably well.

I've actually found it quite hard to find Ryzen 6000 laptops with just an iGPU. RDNA2 would be perfect for me, you lose the weight and cooling issues that come with a dGPU but still have enough graphical performance to play some games.

Not to say they are common, but they are out there.

https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/For-Home/Zenbook/Zenbook-S-1...

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th...

And yet there is no "buy now" button and when I go to find the laptop I click on laptops -> for work -> all series -> filter processors -> "more" -> ryzen 7 ... not a single ryzen 6xxx shows up... Seems they are not acutually for sale yet. Same story for lenovo, the laptops with 5xxx cpu's can ship tomorrow, but the 6xxx cpus ship in "3+ months"... so ya, they are not actually available yet.

P16s looks perfect. I didn't want to say in my original post as it was a bit me-specific, but I'm also looking only for 16"+ laptops, and want to avoid the gamer aesthetic a lot of them seem to have, so the P16s looks perfect. Port selection and positioning is a bit odd, but hopefully ultradocks still exist for these newer thinkpads. I have one for my X220 and it works perfectly as a stand+dock

Look at the Thinkpad T14 / T14s Gen 3. Doesn't have a high-res display though...

The T14s has a 2880x1800, OLED, 500nit, wide color gamut, 90hz, screen option. It's probably the best screen you can get on a laptop right now:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

The T14 has a 4K IPS option:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

With that and USB4 the AMD Lenovos seem to be finally uncorked. At this point the Intel-only X1 is suffering as a supposedly top of the line laptop. The chassis is slightly better and that's about its only advantage.

Where did you even get those links? When I go to lenovos's website I and filter byt processor I cannot actually find any laptops with these specs to order... So maybe these are only available for businesses to order? Or they are not available yet???

I worry that 14" would be a bit small for me, this would (probably) be for a desktop replacement so screen real estate really matters (right now I'm using an x220 with a tiny 12.5" screen and its the main reason Im looking to change).

I prefer iGPU solutions as well (primarily for better battery life, less potential driver issues, and hopefully weight savings) but one thing you tend to lose is cooling headroom. Most of the iGPU only designs end up with single-fan single-heatpipe cooling for U chips designed for 25-35W of heat dissipation. As a point of comparison, the Asus G14, which has a 6800H allows you to get up to 75-80W sustained CPU on its Turbo setting! https://www.ultrabookreview.com/53935-asus-zephyrus-g14-ga40...

The G14 is 1.65kg, which isn't the lightest, but is actually the exact same weight as Asus's upcoming iGPU-only 6800H/6900HX Vivobook S 14X: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/Vivobook/Vivobook-S-14...

currently on a Lenovo P14s with an excellent matte 4k, color calibrated, bright display and Ryzen Pro 5850u.

EndeavourOS (Arch) with KDE/Plasma works great.

I have a 4K display AMD Ryzen laptop (Asus ROG Flow X13 2021 edition), so yes it's actually possible. The Japanese fonts look really pretty when everything is scaled 200% (to be equivalent to 2K display). But I value real estate so I still have everything on 100%.

For some reason, the 2022 edition lineup no longer offers 4K display.

Thinkpad T14 Gen2 is shipped with (14") 4K UHD (3.840 x 2.160), IPS with Dolby Vision™, 500 cd/m² and Ryzen 5850U. Linux certified.

Hm, that's not available on Lenovo's UK store that I can find :(

Maybe it's also a regional issue.

edit: or the US store? shows me a T14 Gen 2 (AMD) - Up to AMD Ryzen™ 7 Pro 5850U Processor, Up to 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, anti-glare, touchscreen with Privacy Guard

T14 Gen2 (Intel) - Up to 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1185G7 with vPro™, Up to 14" UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS, anti-glare with Dolby Vision™

I bought it from a re-seller. On ThinkPad Germany it is also sold out.

Nope. Even HP sells a 13 inch 2560x1600 Ryzen laptop for about $700. Asus goes even higher resolution on their 13 inch OLED at 2880x1800 but it costs more.

But I'm not sure there is a difference between 1920 and 2560 for most users at 13-14 inches.

It depends on what you're looking for. There's been a withdrawal on focusing on 4K displays in laptops. Most of them exist as a marketing point, but provide no ancillary benefits.

One thing you might notice is "low res" displays tend to support things like higher refresh rates, might have better color and HDR

I have an ROG Flow X13 2021 with the 1980x1200 display. This "low res" display supports higher refresh rates, variable refresh rate, has good color and HDR support, and works quite well for a 13" laptop.

I've seen Ryzen 5000 series laptops with premium displays. I wouldn't consider 4K to be the only metric for that, though. My current Ryzen 5900HS laptop (from 2021) gave me the option of a 1920x1200 display or 3840x2400 at a lower refresh rate. Both displays have good color support, HDR, etc, but I went for the 1920x1200 display model for the smoother experience.

When I came out of laser eye surgery, I ended up with exceptional vision. I'd have to pixel peep to see a difference between those 2 display options. I would have preferred something that met half way in the middle, but this DPI is fine for the display size. Outside of that, I get good color accuracy, good brightness with HDR, and the high refresh rate with adaptive sync makes for a very smooth experience.

Do we not consider features like that also premium?

I guess you weren't looking hard enough. I am writing this on a fairly light and slim machine, equipped with Ryzen 5800 and a 16:10 2560x1600 @ 120Hz display. I used to have a 14 inch model with an even higher resolution at same refresh rate. Both were ~1k euro, depending on exact configuration.

My experience has been that Linux is bad at scaling HiDPI. Maybe KDE is better. In Linux-specific forums and chats, I've seen many people comment that they go out of their way to buy a 1080p display to avoid the scaling issues.

The Ryzen 7 5700U is Zen2 based: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Zen/AMD-Ryzen%207%20Mobile%20...

Not that great a deal when Zen3 based notebooks (5400/5600/5800U) have been out for over a year already.

It is baffling to me why AMD chose to have the odd-numbered 5000 series (5300/5500/5700) with Zen2, and the even-numbered 5000 with Zen3.

In the 80's the IEEE determined that CPU part designations must be sociopathic or manufacturers would be heavily fined.

I don't think anything can top how bad GPU naming from the 2000s was.

> It is baffling to me why AMD chose to have the odd-numbered 5000 series (5300/5500/5700) with Zen2, and the even-numbered 5000 with Zen3.

Oh no, it's actually even worse than that.

5300U/5500U/5700U are Zen 2 (Lucienne, Renoir Refresh).

5300G/5400U/5700G/5700H are Zen 3 (Cezanne).

I find it remarkable how AMD started a completely new, fairly sane naming scheme from scratch and screwed it completely up within two generations (Remember 3200G/3400G? Pepperidge Farm remembers).

I remember reading somewhere that this kind of convulated naming convention is intentional (both by Intel and AMD). Consumers prefer to buy the latest and fastest CPU they can afford. Such convulated designations confuse the consumer on what is the latest, and ensure old / previous generation stocks can still be sold for a good price.

They block any connections from HK so I'm not allowed to access the site. The number of sites blocking any connections from certain countries like Hong Kong as increased lately, it's becoming rather frustrating and I can't really see the reasoning behind it.

In my experience, China and Russia get blocked by many corporations' web application firewalls (WAFs) or other firewalls. You may be caught by that restriction.

The number of spam connections emerging from China and Russia are huge. For small firms who might not have the expertise or the budget to host things on CloudFlare, wholesale blocking off IP addresses from the two countries results in almost 100% decrease in spam.

I have a VPS which I maintain for myself to experiment with different services, and I do the same. The number of spam attempt to connect on my ssh port went down from around 10k per day to 1 per week.

Yup, for all my clients it is Russia, China, Brazil, Vietnam.

It's all floods, spam, hacks, bots, malware, with zero market for my clients. All downside, zero upside in accepting any traffic from those places.

I'm in Taiwan and am also blocked. What did Taiwan do wrong?

It's strange, clicking the "International websites"[0] at the bottom right, they explicitly state that they'd allow calling the Mandarin version Taiwan instead of China, if the translator wanted.

There is a public mail list[1][2] of the webmasters at the bottom of the page as well, if you want to talk them.

[0] : https://kde.org/support/international/

[1] : mailto://kde-www@kde.org

[2] : https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-www/

Nothing, the vendors can block/choose where they want to advertise their products in.

Is VPN usage not common in HK as it in in China?

Unlike China, we don't have to deal with the great firewall... I do use a few VPNs but that's mostly for testing things from different sites. I've also noticed that VPNs tend to be blocked too.

Similarly, since a couple of weeks ago Starlabs Systems offer their Starbook with Ryzen 7 5800U:

https://starlabs.systems/blogs/news/the-starbook-now-comes-w...

Is there any high-end Linux laptops with matte displays? Everything seems to be using glossy displays, which after being used to use a matte one, is simply impossible to use, especially when using the laptop outside or in a sunny room.

https://pl.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook

System 76 laptops tend to have matte screens.

Depends on what you mean by "Linux laptop", but Dell XPS Developer Edition (comes with Ubuntu) have matte display options.

I have the same problem with MacBooks. I always apply a matte screen protector.

If you live in The Netherlands: https://www.smartfolie.com/

Macbook displays, although glossy, are generally better compared to other glossy displays with respect to reflections. Do you use your macbook in a particularly bright room/outside?

No but I've got macOS usually set to dark mode. So the whole thing is really a self-created problem :-)

Dell Precision 5750 has an option for matte display and it rocks.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/workstations-isv-certif...

Which display? The low res one?

FHD+ yes, 1920x1200

Sad that there is no option for matte 4K+

I bought my Precision 5750 in late 2020 so my infos might be outdated. Check the description or call a Dell rep.

You can apply a third-party non-reflective screen-protector.

My guess is that the main reason many devices have reflective stock screens is that a reflective screen has higher brightness, while a matte screen is dimmer. I think most will agree that matte is preferable in actual use, but when looking at basic screen benchmarks or when looking at a bunch of screens in a hardware store, buyers are attracted to bright screens.

> You can apply a third-party non-reflective screen-protector.

This is great, I actually had no idea that existed! Very glad I asked the question now.

How well do they work compared to displays that are already matte by default? Is it basically the same thing or would it introduce some imperfections?

How well it works depends on how well you've applied it. I've seen some botched applications. Good news is that they're cheap, so you can try again with a new one. Try searching Youtube for application walkthroughs and tips.

There could be differences in protector quality as well, I've no idea about that.

All Thinkpads have matte displays, including the ones with touchscreens. Some have a glossy option (the ones with HDR AFAIK).

Thinkpads have matte (upto 4k) displays, very good Linux support and are around 2000 USD/EUR.

> very good Linux support

Writing this from a X1 Gen9, I wouldn't call the following "very good". Not sure if it's already fixed in new firmware (and couldn't google the support forum right away), but I had to

* switch sleep mode to stop it from getting hot while asleep;

* disable touchpad in BIOS to stop it from spinning fans while awake — great for me because I don't like it anyway and vastly prefer the trackpoint, but people not used to this consistently go wtf while trying to show something on my laptop.

I have a ThinkPad E595 with Ryzen 7 3700U and it has wonderful Linux support

I had some of these issues with the 5.17.x kernels but once I switched to Fedora 36 and 5.18.x, and updated the BIOS, the situation improved dramatically and sleep was fixed.

Never had the touchpad issue though.

Any of the Tuxedo laptops with Omnia display. They can be configured pretty high-end. https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note...

Using newest XPS 15 and am really happy everything works (you have to run newest Kernel though). I am using Ubuntu. Even the Bluetooth microphone and fingerprint work !! Haha

Check out System76 laptops, they have matte displays (at least my Lemur Pro does)

I ordered my Thinkpad X1 Carbon with a matte display, and Linux pre-installed.

My Thinkpad X1 Nano also runs Linux quite well. They come with Windows pre-installed but are certified for Ubuntu. Qubes/Xen also runs pretty well, although Xen doesn't support hibernate (only suspend).

I use an ASUS ROG G14 2022 (AMD/AMD) and it works great on fedora minus one bug in 5.18 and newer (I've kept it on 5.17)

Arghhh! Why can’t Linux laptop manufacturers center touchpads under the keyboards anymore?

Also, this is lower resolution than the display I was using with Linux 20 years ago.

Why would they?

Your hands are not in the center of the keyboard in the base position either.

I'm seriously asking, I have no idea right now what the more ergonomic option would be.

Oh, you’re right. The keyboard is off center too.

However, the trackpad isn’t centered under the base position.

I’d prefer the center of the screen, case, alphanumeric keys and touchpad to all be along the same vertical line — like literally every laptop I have ever owned.

It take your comment for me to realise that the laptop I am typing this on, Thinkpad Carbon X1, doesn't have its trackpad on the exact center either.

And it doesn't bother me one bit.

Why tough? For looks or for ergonomics?

Would be great to have a 16/10 aspect ratio but what is even more important is a decent brightness.

Does someone know if the RAM is glued in or easily replaceable ?

Wondering when we will finally see a good ARM-Notebook with high memory >=32GB RAM

The ThinkPad X13s runs a Snapdragon and allows up to 32 GB RAM.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th...

You get 2 x SODIMM slots. I run my last-gen (4800H) version w/ 64GB of DDR4-3200 w/o any issues.

I may or may not be super knowledgeable on the subject have the KDE Slimbook team considered going full with ARM chips instead of the x86_64 processors?

I keep reading how ARM is more "efficient" and lower power consumption altogether. I also noticed that some Windows-laptop devices are shipping with ARM as well. (Windows on ARM not being new if you have been following Microsoft closely)

this looks like it's aimed at creative types, graphics rendering and video editing on ARM would be painful

ARM is situated firmly within the efficient end of the efficiency-power Venn, whereas this pushed towards sharing the middle with powerful

Out of curiosity Apple M1 Chips being ARM-based (I own a m1-powered laptop) I... honestly haven't really noticed any slow down while using ffmpeg but granted I don't do encoding/transcoding a whole lot and my usage of editors like Affinity Designer/Photos is pretty basic.

But on that note I feel like a budget laptop for the masses with ARM-chips would be quite the spot for many people include my father. he doesn't need any application just being able to use a browser. ( I guess, a more open, less shady Chromebook-like equivalent).

Well, I guess I just say this because my experience with the m1 chip has been way over the top to the point I haven't really noticed any slow down with docker/vscode/etc etc.

Apple seems to be a couple of generations ahead of every other ARM vendor. e.g. the Qualcomm SQ2 doesn’t seem to bad on paper but it’s several times slower than the m1 and barely competitive with the more power efficient AMD chips.

Wasn't NVidia making tablet-scale ARM chips (Tegra) for a while? It seems like they would know how to address this niche, but somehow it hasn't materialized.

Arm is mostly more efficient, but the overall performance is not there apart from Apple silicon. You can get some laptops with qualcomm chips and they're weak - basically an underpowered netbook class. The competition is missing because of a deal between qualcomm and MS for Windows laptops (https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22798231/microsoft-qualc...). So if you want to do something serious, there's very little choice.

Then there's the issue of running Linux on SoC where Qualcomm and others are not super keen on providing open support. M1 is going to get reverse engineered support for all the devices first because they offer hardware people actually want.

>You can get some laptops with qualcomm chips and they're weak - basically an underpowered netbook class

The new Sanapdragon Thinkpads released a month ago are on par with the Comet Lake i7 CPUs so I'd not write them down that quickly

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i7-10850...

So, 8 core QC is beaten by a mid range 6 core Intel. Might be a reasonable choice if it actually ran Linux and various other things (bsd/vmware/etc) out of the box, but since it doesn't, it looks overpriced unless you prioritize windows and battery life or want a windows/arm machine for a specific purpose.

AKA, on the general market it doesn't look particularly competitive, even when compared with these amd 5700U's which also slightly best it and are frequently found in ~$600 laptops.

I don't think an H series i7 would be considered midrange (it has a 45W TDP, and will only really be seen in workstation/gaming laptops). The Qualcomm processor is not terribly impressive, but being on par with a 45W i7 is still very promising.

Wow this looks amazing.

Non-soldered RAM would be a feature but I'm not sure from the description... If anyone from the team is reading that: add that info to the page, it's a really nice feature.

Non-soldered SSD is the really important one though for me.

And not sure why I can't select two non-samsung 2TB SSDs but that's details anyhow.

The second m.2 ssd slot can be configured to be empty so I figure that at least that slot is non-soldered to allow for users to put in their own ssd.

KDE team member here: I asked internally to our contact at Slimbook and both the RAM and SSD are non-soldered. This should indeed be on the website, I will try to squeeze some time tonight to do so :)

Is the "8 GPU cores" a typo?

Problem is: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542529665449226240

The spec page said "Has 2 sockets, dual channel from 16GB".

Not sure if it was just recently changed though.

This seems like a very nice laptop for the cost, but for a bit more you could have the framework laptop. A few hundred bucks more seems like a reasonable trade for something reparable and upgradable in place of a rebranded white box laptop.

Or if you want same level of reparability as framework with less novelty factor: starlabs.systems are doing great things.

I love KDE. I've used it as my daily driver for several years now. Despite having so many features it's surprisingly lightweight on the resources. I've used it on everything from beefy Lenovo T- series to little netbooks that I would otherwise run OpenBox on.

KDE Neon was really buggy when I tried the last LTS. Lots of programs had theming issues. The Kubuntu LTS, on the other hand, left me with a much smoother experience. Neither are perfect, sadly.

A core issue with KDE is that of theme installation (Cursors, Window Decorations, etc.) KDE ships with utilities to discover, download, and install theme components. While using Kubuntu, about 25% of the time, I find that a given theme is just impossible to install. Usually it'll be a network error or sometimes the downloaded package seems broken. With Neon, I had a 100% failure rate. Even once you do get a theme installed, it usually looks nothing like the preview. Theme developers often end up relying on third party tools, usually around compositing / GPU rendering. These tools are difficult to install and don't seem to work with all hardware.

The Slimbook ships with Neon. Personally, I'd replace it with Kubuntu.

Of course, there are other distros available where KDE can be installed in. In my experience, the KDE-first distros provide a smoother UX than others. It's as if all the KDE apps play better together when an OS comes with them all bundled in together than if you choose to piecemeal install them.

I've tried a bunch of KDE-centric distros, and Manjaro seems to be the best polished in my experience.

Which of these comes with a 4K display?

None. I cannot understand why. Like all linux-preinstalled laptops. The only exception are Dell XPS line.

There are other exceptions from Tuxedo Computers and Starlabs Systems mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

Though yeah, Clevo and others improving their display game would be a gamechanger.

X1 Extreme.

I have HP Chrome 13" with 4k IPS. I love it. But it has one bright pixel now.

I have an older XPS and I'd never buy a newer one with 4K display - too much battery life consumption for marginally better results.

I don't know why this is getting down-voted? It's a serious question. 1080p density on a 15in display looks horrible.

Because it should be obvious that there is no such option, so the question is not in good faith.

Currently the most top-voted comment raises the same issue with different words.

Why should that be obvious? In fact what the poster above us asked seems to be a more obvious question for any laptop in 2022.

Did you click the link and look at the sales page? Did you see an option for a 4k display? Or does the page explicitly say "1920 by 1080 resolution"? How could something be any more obvious than that?

Does anyone have a full bios manual (and/or the bios unlock sequence to get to the hidden menu's)? While this is shipped with Linux, I'm not sure I trust the slimbook people to have put a lot of work into assuring, particularly that it doesn't drain an unnecessarily amount of battery in standby and/or that it hibernates properly.

You can search for the keywords on PF5NU1G, BIOS, AMIBCP, EC and find plenty of discussions there (w/ info on making your own unlocked BIOS if you want), although the Tuxedo/Schenker people have also done a fair amount of work making sure the laptop works well with Linux.

The point general of buying from a Linux computer mfgr is to get a supported machine, so if you don't trust Slimbook, you can order basically the same laptop (w/ a slightly better display) from Tuxedo or similar class Linux laptops from Star Labs, HP, System76, or Framework.

I love that there are many offerings like this.

But when it comes to laptops and Linux, I never buy a 'good Linux laptop'--I buy 'a good laptop that also runs Linux well'. There's really no such thing as a 'Linux laptop' for me--I want a great laptop first, Linux compatibility second.

I love that there are offering like this too. When I bought the The main thing for me was "is this thing linux compatable", so pre-installed linux was worth the extra $ for me.

I just couldn't bring myself to try and figure out which notebooks where compatible. I couldn't figure out how to determine if a machine ran linux. There are so many models and subtle differences. So I ended up with a "Clevo" rebranded notebook, without actually seeing it physically first.

Its big, oddly decent (I came from a 2015 macbook pro, which is a high bar) and besides one fan grinding, its been solid. (That might be on me.. but I could get a spare and replace it..) It plays steam and over the 4 years I've owned it linux has gotten better and better.

I'd be interested in this if the display had a 2k or higher resolution and 120 hz or higher refresh rate.

Here's the version you want: https://www.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/vrb1me/tux...

Can I eventually install Windows on this machine to replace this OS? Or these devices are like Macs where I can't install another OS as primary.

If I can, what is the value preposition of 'Linux out of the box' if I can install exactly the same OS from a USB?

The assurance that all hardware works properly and is compatible with Linux. It’s always a gamble to buy a laptop and expecting everything will work with an alternate OS.

The same exact reason you've never seen an average person tried to even manually upgrade windows using flash drive. Why is this still need to be discussed again?

This looks lovely but I’m over pretty slim things, at least for personal use. I have an Apple device for work but at home I want something for hacking.

What’s the closest thing I can buy to a cyber-deck laptop, these days?

https://www.mntmn.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-mo...

Very nice. These ARM socs work best when they can run stock OSs. The best ones can, the worst ones need GitHub curl hack after hack. I wonder how MNT’s product stands up to this test?

https://frame.work/

I wish there were more initiatives like this!

Check also Tuxedo, and several Amazon stores in Europe do sell laptops with Linux pre-installed (that is how I got my Asus 1215B back in 2009).

Tuxedo!!! I had completely forgotten about Tuxedo!!!

Thanks for the tip :)

A 2k screen in 2022? I haven't used a non-HDPI laptop since a decade (bought the first retina MBP at the time). I can't understand how people can still use such displays today.

Also the CPU. It's from last year.

I just ordered a Xiaomi RedmiBook Pro with R7 6800H and additional Nvidia GPU – 1.200€.

It will Linux just fine but with more 2022ish hardware specs. :)

It's also slimmer than the 'Slimbook' (14.9mm vs 16.7mm).

Is 2k bad or good for '22? I still haven't moved past 1080p, so I'm not sure how to take "can't understand how people can still use such displays today."

I think most consumers haven't experienced/don't care about high DPI. Programmers on the other hand look at text all day so it's understandable we prefer crisp text.

Confusingly, 2K typically refers to 2560*1440. By that logic 4k would be a resolution greater than 3840*2160 of course, so I'm not sure how sound the naming convention is.

Does the lid open a full 180 degrees and is the hinge sufficiently strong to support the lid if propped up against a wall?

Gosh I really hope so. That's how I laptop.

> Does the lid open a full 180 degrees?

No, only around 150-160 degrees

> is the hinge sufficiently strong to support the lid if propped up against a wall?

Looks strong enough to me for my 3th Gen KDE Slimbook

I appreciate this effort, even as GNOME-User and while I prefer smaller ThinkPads (13').

I'm disappointed that the three photos in the Gallery with the laptop in use aren't actually showing what the screen would look like IRL; they've been cleverly doctored by overlaying screenshots on top of the display.

So many great laptop options out there besides mac. Wish there was like a laptop conference where one could sample all the offerings. I could never buy a laptop without first trying it.

Make use of the 30 day return window.

I tried hp dev one, but the screen’s viewing angle was so bad I couldn’t position the screen so that I could see all four corners at once without color shift.

I owned it less than one week.

Something like that but in the clothes of a XPS (but not as thin for the sake of thinness by sacrificing cooling). I'd eat it right away.

> CPU base GHz (lower is better)

Ehh.. Seems like an odd inclusion when every OS will downclock and put cores into idle..

Wayland would break my workflow (evilwm does not work with it).

Any idea if these can run X11?

Separately, what about OpenBSD?

X11 works fine w/ the 4800H version. The 5700U uses the same iGPU so I'd expect it would work fine as well.

1920x1080 display? In 2022?

CPU base GHz(lower is better)? This is a mistake, higher is better.

I think they mean that lower base GHz is better because the laptop drains less battery when idle or doing low effort tasks.

Those are orthogonal really since your laptop clock can still go below base clock when idle.

How much Gbps does the USB-C port support?

Does the HDMI port support 4K displays?

a thousand euros for a linux ultrabook is a bit of a stretch. there are many alternatives AND I can run both operating systems via dual boot.

Wayland is usable as a daily driver?

Yes. Fedora and Ubuntu are both Wayland by default now. I've been using Wayland for years now and it's pretty rock solid at this point.

I occasionally see a few apps that don't seem to play nice with a HiDPI/1440 mix of displays but that gets better day by day and is now pretty rare for me.

Not if you need fractional scaling. But that's the only limitation I'm aware of.

As these days many users have HiDPI displays I'm really surprised that Wayland still doesn't support it properly (please don't tell me to scale my font size ...) and why so many distros use Wayland as default.

Doesn’t do screen sharing for video conferencing I’m told.

It does, just not every app has updated to support PipeWire (which is necessary for Wayland screensharing). Zoom has, Teams hasn't for example.

1080p why

> KDE Slimbook 4 > The most popular HTML, CSS, and JS library in the world. What??

looks like KDE Slimbook uses bootstrap for the website :P

Incredible to see Wayland on a laptop out of the box, just 13 years after their first release

Linux as a desktop machine is horrible. Dozens of package managers, distros, UIs, everything. Instead of creating one thing right and bug-free, linux devs prefer to waste their time reinventing the wheel.

No, choice is far better, for there is no single solution for all. There just isn't.

It is as if you are arguing that there should only be one motorized personal transportation device. No small or large cars, no trucks or motorcycles.

Different people have different needs.

Yes, dad.

Correct. Somehow, though, Linux does "everything" better than any other OS I've used in the past. Relative to MacOS and Windows, Linux really can be the best of both worlds. Linux still plays the games that MacOS and even Windows do not. Linux is still getting regular updates on my laptop from 2007. It hosts my Plex server, handles the majority of my work-related tasks, and generally it doesn't really complain. Having spent dozens of hours working around roadblocks in MacOS and tweaking Windows to just barely be a dev environment, I'm perfectly happy to use Linux even if though it is total garbage, because the kernel is almost undeniably better than modern NT or XNU.

I still think the world of Linux desktop development is a total disaster, though. GNOME is out for blood, KDE is building great stuff on a terrible library, and everyone else is just shifting uncomfortably because Wayland still isn't desktop-agnostic (much less hardware-agnostic, for that matter). The way things are headed, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux was almost entirely unsupported by Slack/Spotify/Discord in 2025.

what I really dislike is some linux user trying to brush those things off as a non-issue, it sure is for non-seasoned users.

and this to me is the biggest hinderance to its wide adoption. it caters to a specific crowd.

I'll take that state of affairs over "one thing" that is not right. Which is the case on macOS, for example.

Doesn't exactly look very slim, Bob. I'm not expecting Macbook Air level slimness but we can definitely do better than this. I'm not a fan of older display technology as well. A glossy 1080p screen just isn't good enough anymore. I need more pixel density so I can have more code up on screen (sure, at smaller perceived font sizes). It's almost like all these Linux laptop makers are using older, discarded, excess inventory the factories had lying around.

I can not really tell pixels apart with 1920 by 1080 resolution on a 14 or 15.6 inch monitor as often seen on laptops. For reference. I am using a 24 inch monitor (8 to 10-ish more inches) with 1920 by 1080 and I am not to upset about that.

And for a differing point of view, I had a hell of a time finding 1440/1600p laptops with the specs I was after. Not 1080p, I'd like screen real estate, and not 4K, because fractional scaling on Windows is not that great. So many good laptops have only 1080p options, but I ruled them out instantly because it's a pixelated, rough experience.

Laptops are usually used with the screen much closer to you, so for me at least 1440p is the lowest I'd accept.

I can tell. Edge aliasing, font crispness, pixel density. I don’t want 4k in 14” but we can do better than 1080p now.

How slim do you want your laptop to be? Slimmer than 17mm? Why? What advantage does this give you?

Your backpack is 30mm thick and wouldn't fit a sandwich anymore? You want to slide your laptop under the door and there's only a 12mm hole? You want to look hip in a café and 17mm doesn't cut it?

Weight makes a difference, sure. Apart from that I care about the thermals and ability to replace parts, both of which are better on thicker laptops.

In addition, this has an ethernet port. Many companies these days remove the ethernet port to make their laptops thinner so at least this one is doing something with the extra thickness.

The advantage is not needing a backpack but just a small bag. The advantage is less weight. The advantage is being able to hold your laptop and a coffee without one arm feeling heavy and throwing off your balance. The advantage of having a laptop that feels powerful yet elegant.

If this laptop got rid of the Ethernet port in favor of wifi only and it got rid of the hdmi and USB ports in favor of USB-C, and it upgraded to at least a 1440p display, I’d probably buy one as my daily driver.

No one can come close to what my MacBook Air can do and how it feels. I wish they would. It’s thin, quiet, comfortable, elegant, but it’s arm64 in a world of x86 and that has issues still. I’d love an x86 version (even if it’s a few mm thicker to support a fan).

> If this laptop got rid of the Ethernet port in favor of wifi only and it got rid of the hdmi and USB ports in favor of USB-C, and it upgraded to at least a 1440p display, I’d probably buy one as my daily driver.

And by ripping out useful features, they'd lose a different part of the market. Some of us like having ports.

Interesting that they're building hardware specifically for KDE. Can't be a large market for that. As a GNOME user I love the look of the hardware but find it strange they are not simply supporting one of the common Linux distros and allowing users their choice of desktop environment.

More importantly the keyboard is Spanish by default and cannot be changed to a US layout - only the weird localised layouts that (almost) nobody likes. That's easily the weirdest thing about this store for me.

On the US layout it says "Agotado", which means they have run out of them.

BTW, almost no one in US may like those layouts, but for each of the speakers of those languages they are quite important.

Try again, looks like they fixed the page.

I disagree. Most people do fine with US-intl keyboards, perhaps with extensions to specific keys such as alt gr to type a few dedicated diacritics or other altered letters. The trouble with regional keyboards is that they frequently move special characters around for very little actual reason (and that isn't saying anything about the whole AZERTY thing, which is incomprehensible).

AZERTY is plainly the worst.

You need to see the laptop page and scroll down to get a Keyboard section. Now you can select en-US https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-slimbook-16-co... I think folks outside the EU zone need to pay customs duty on imports. So, if you are in the US, go for System 76 (AMD/Intel), HP Dev One (AMD), or Dell Dev Edition XPS (Intel).

Those keyboards were listed as out of stock when I looked. Perhaps this has changed in the meantime.

https://slimbook.es/en/us

Good callout. The about page says they are based in Spain + the prices are in Euros.

gnome is not the most popular

and you can install what ever you want

> gnome is not the most popular

That's a surprising statement. Got any reference?

Among gamers it is not:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

And among everyone else it is not:

https://distrowatch.com/

Ubuntu for desktop stopped being popular the day they switched to Gnome3

It coincides with the rise of Manjaro (and Arch) wich comes preinstalled with XFCE, mint also showing strong presence

I don't think there's anything specific about the hardware for KDE besides the logo. I think this is more about giving back to the community, which I personally think it admirable and makes me look upon Slimbook more favorably.

> Remember that with every purchase, KDE receives a donation from Slimbook and KDE Community members get a generous discount!

https://dot.kde.org/2022/07/06/new-kde-slimbook-4-now-availa...

Because it's a laptop built in co-operation with the KDE Project. It's mean to give KDE developers a "showcase" laptop platform. From the original Slimbook 1 release:

    The KDE Slimbook allows KDE to offer our users a laptop which has been tested directly by KDE developers, on the exact same hardware and software configuration that the users get, and where any potential hardware-related issues have already been ironed out before a new version of our software is shipped to them.

https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-lapt...

I feel like if KDE really wanted to build hardware specifically for KDE then they would and SHOULD bring in Qt Developers (The QT Company) onboard for the best optimizations of the desktop environment....

They ship reskinned Ubuntu too. It's called Slimbook OS for IP reasons.

You can also install vanilla Ubuntu yourself and add the Slimbook PPA for hardware specific stuff.

I have the Slimbook Pro X 15 and have found their service to be very good.

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