System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life
system76.com
system76.com
To be fair, I don't even consider apple laptops mainly for this reason.
My personal iMac and work MBP for example are glossy but have 600 nits SDR brightness with great coatings, and so have no issues with glare even in a brightly lit room while I’m using dark mode (which shows reflections more).
That said matte screens can also benefit from high brightness. The 500 nit matte panel in my Thinkpad X1 Nano is excellent.
Matt screens exist for a reason and can't just dismiss them as being inferior when they specifically solve a problem many have.
Maybe they sell better in a store but so do touch screens in cars. Once you however want to use them you realize the mistake you made.
I hate this world we are turning into where we redesign things for the worse because "look it's shiny". For me a laptop is a utility item and I need it to work. It needs to be able to use the CPU in it and not be throttled down to crap so it can be in a thin case.
It seems to be a point of pride in the Linux community that low-res screens are sufficient. Maybe it's because only Apple has figured out how to do both high-res and long battery life/low weight in a single system. The ultrabooks (air clones) are all struggling to replicate it. My 4k XPS13 has atrocious battery life. The only way that this machine manages to get good battery life is via a 2008-era screen resolution and the world's slowest GPU.
It's a very hard problem to do small+light, with long battery life, and a high-res screen. The whole class of "ultrabooks" was invented by Apple with the MBAir, then retconned into a notebook category, and they're still way out ahead on the screen/gpu/battery life situation, as well as speakers.
Presently all long battery life ultrabooks are low-res and have speakers that remind me of the 90s.
They were both unusable under Windows, and probably MacOS 9/10.0, but worked fine out of the box in Debian (once you set the DPI correctly in xfree86's config file).
High DPI support for Linux has strictly regressed since then, since, for some reason, people think Apple's scaling hacks are capable of pixel perfect rendering, and ported them to Linux.
I definitely wish it were easier to get a matte+high-res combo.
It's not that they don't, it's that they can't. There's no way to make a high ppi laptop that's small and light and doesn't kill the battery in 3 hours of use.
GPUs that drive that many pixels are power hungry. Apple designs their own integrated GPUs now.
Apparently Asahi recently published their first alpha release. Does anyone know how close it is to being usable as a daily driver?
Also, has anyone tried the Tuxedo laptop that came up in another recent thread? I'd be surprised if the trackpad entirely held up, and I'm personally against including USB-A or proprietary charging ports in any new hardware, but it is at least the first Linux laptop I've seen with a high-DPI screen. Inclusion of a Dvorak layout option is also a nice touch (Apple still forces me to pop out and rearrange the keys, which feels like a ridiculous kludge for such expensive devices). If Ryzen 7 is halfway competitive with M1's efficiency, I could see this being a very attractive option for a lot of people.
[1]: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...
I won't go less than a high dpi screen, preferably near 4k.
It's the sunset cigar thing. Guy watches the sunset from his porch every evening. One day he smokes a cigar at the same time. Loves it. Now he HAS to smoke a cigar every evening or he can't enjoy it. What has he gained?
Doesn't matter though because things are changing, native Linux device makers like S76 and Tuxedo provide have started providing 4k screens on their models.
> Or maybe I'm just projecting my own views on the issue.
Sometimes it's useful to point out flimsy evidence, but they already did that. You need to bring your own thoughts in this situation.
Glossy screens sometimes have good antireflective coatings which help (new imacs, ipads eg)
My S76 laptop just annoyed me. It was fine for a linux machine, but there was just so many little details, build quality, etc I missed from the mac. I also found a few bugs in their custom pop packages and I reported them. The first engineer that responded was honestly pretty rude and implied I didn't know what I was talking about. A second engineer responded and said in fact one of the things I reported was true and hard to fix unfortunately. About a month later I noticed an update went out that fixed the other thing I reported.
Some of these points are subjective. I used to be an Apple touchpad evangelist, but at some point they switched to having enormous touchpads without any buttons. (the touchpad is the button) I had a touchbar Macbook Pro, and I'd get accidental input from the touchpad with good regularity. I wanted the touchpad from a 2007 Macbook Pro.
Giant trackpads are terrible.
I miss my Lenovo nipple.
The one on my Lenovo Legion 7 is large, but smaller than the Dell, and the palm rejection is lightyears ahead of the Dell, but still fails. However it doesn't fail enough for me to care because it's so ever slightly smaller than I dont have the bottom of my hand on the corner of the trackpad while typing like I do on the Dell.
To make a convincing case, you have to move beyond anecdote to actual statistical analysis and the numbers are still pretty overwhelming that many common things that many common people need to do can't be done without the CLI.
And even if you generate data that 60, 70, 80% of people would have no problems using linux, that's irrelevant in the case of a specific person who has a specific common need that linux falls over at.
I think people had to learn Windows. They can learn Linux. The excuses are bs. Schools should teach unix/linux, and not proprietary systems. We should expect people to learn new things to be able to operate new tools. Thats ok to expect. This idea that the computer is a dumb terminal is far too prevelant thanks to phone and tablet proliferation, another tech corrupted at the outset to be user-hostile and spy on them.
Desktop linix and laptop linux are 99% of the way there. Yes, you will have to learn new commands and ways of doing things. Yes, some software you are used to won't work (wine be praised).
It's worth all the trouble though. Freedom isn't free, you have to actively persue it.
I look around and see way too much Stockholm Syndrome going on.
When was the last time you used Windows? Microsoft employees a small army of user experience designers to ensure it’s a great experience. It’s not perfect, but I can do everything I need to do using the GUI.
This isn’t a case of learning how to do the same thing differently. The GUI is objectively better for most consumer use cases. Linux, for better and worse, relies more heavily on CLI.
In windows it will come up by typing 'mouse' into start.
Things that other OS’es usually don’t even allow.
Edit: Another issue with Linux configs is that since nearly every setting can be changed through the CLI, and it’s usually a single liner at that, most online resources tend to provide the single liner that one can use to copy/paste into the CLI to achieve what they want, because the alternative is providing like 10 screenshots for 15 steps for someone to try and painstakingly replicate with their mouse or trackpad.
The most common example of this is that pretty much every application will give its installation instructions as:
sudo apt install thunderbird (On gnome).
When you can just as well go to the software center, search thunderbird, and hit install. Or go to thunderbird.com, download the package and double click/install.
However, the CLI method is clearly far superior and easier, yet it leads to complaints about having to “dip into the CLI”.
I'm not sure if Windows has finer grained control in the GUI or not, but TBH I've also never ran into anyone but a techie (and very few of them) who had mouse acceleration set to anything non-standard.
GNOME tweak tool has even more options, also from a GUI: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tweaks
Perhaps they'd not know of gnome tweaks, though they could remember Power Tools from Windows....
Mouse acceleration is annoying (bordering on infuriating, imo) because it changes cursor movement from an easy 1:1 mapping of mouse movement->cursor movement by adding an additional dimension. You then not only have to keep in mind how far you're moving your mouse, but also how quickly you're moving it. I can't fathom why UI designers seem to think that it's so great that it should be present with no ability to disable it.
Oh, you’re doing an Apple to Oranges comparison between Linux manually installed on a machine vs Mac or Windows coming preloaded on the machine?
Because if you did an apples to apples comparison, any decent computer with Linux preinstalled will come with all the drivers installed as well. And when it comes to manually installing, installing drivers for Windows can also be a pain, and don’t even get started on trying to install Mac on a machine it didn’t come preinstalled on. Hackintoshes are hard to make work even for experts.
Is this no longer true?
Radarr needs functionality that is more specialized than most apps so there's special instructions and edge cases on all three platforms. But the Linux version is significantly more complicated because Linux doesn't provide as many out of the box tools for installation that works across all distributions like Windows or Mac.
Linux ditros don't have that. In my experience, Ubuntu and Fedora don't have that level of stability especially when running a heavy desktop like Gnome or KDE. My Arch laptop very stable, but I'm running a minimalist desktop. In the rare occasions where something goes wrong I have the experience and inclination to quickly learn to fix it.
I wish there were more competition in the commercial space, but I'm not sure that it's even a good idea for open source to try to match the GUI administration utilities from the proprietary OS's. It's far too much work troubleshooting weird corner cases. I wholeheartedly recommend Linux or open source for people who want the level of control over their machines that open source allows. But for people who just want their machine to work, it's reasonable to cede control to Apple or Microsoft.
Maybe PopOS, with it's backing from a commercial vendor on limited hardware will change this.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/this-macos-update-is-bricking...
https://www.itpro.com/hardware/358739/apple-releases-macos-u...
https://www.laptopmag.com/news/windows-10-update-now-brickin...
Searching Linux update bricking systems brought up nothing relevant. The closest I could find was a forum post by a user complaining about the update bricking their “experimental system”.
The Macos examples are particularly bad. Bricking systems with logic boards replaced by Apple repair and because you connected to “unauthorized” USB devices.
Linux is not infallible.
I'm using Arch, and ZFS, on my work laptop. A month ago, when I update my kernel, boom I had to use Systemrescue because it would no longer boot ZFS root. And of course just at that day I lost my Ventoy USB stick (probably my 2 y.o. son got rid of it ...)
In the case of Windows, there's a lot of onus on the OEM. Of course, most OEMs will not test Linux at all, so either you find a vendor that supports Linux or you YOLO it. Of course, if you YOLO, you're so helping ensure the market continues to make _more_ Windows-only hardware, so you can look forward to even more YOLO.
> I wish there were more competition in the commercial space,
Unlike in previous decades*, you actually can buy laptops with Linux pre-installed, from vendors that actually support it. This is huge.
If you want Linux that Just Works, for the love of God, stop buying Windows hardware. Sometimes I think the smartest thing Apple ever did was require Apple hardware to run OSX.
*Ask this greybeard how he knows.
I have quarter of century experience working on Linux including running it on all my laptops and desktops for 23 years.
Over the years keeping it working started becoming what seems like a full time job and I jumped the ship for M1 MacBook Pro. It still has a lot of problems but at least I have more time to do my actual work.
I understand I might just becoming less tolerant of wasting time on things that should just work (my actual work being more and more distant from tinkering with OS internals).
But, if I with all my experience am spending time keeping it alive, what has to do a person that has no idea about systemd or pulse audio or dealing with failed upgrades or anything else? Essentially -- you are using it until first problem happens and then you can either reinstall it from scratch or switch to Windows or Mac.
I still keep a Linux laptop dedicated for critical security tasks (I don't trust Apple this much) and a number of Linux VMs (I am running small datacenter at home).
Even my stupid obtuse use case is not that heavy.
But if you load up the newest Ubuntu lts on a laptop and never fiddle with configs, switch display managers/ desktops, etc, then there will be zero maintenance required.
I'll give you an example. I am using an external DAC (connected over Toslink). It starts up automatically when it detects digital audio signal and shuts down when the signal stops. Unfortunately, the startup sequence takes couple of seconds (it has a delay of 2s and then slowly increases the volume over 4s, can't be configured).
So in the default configuration, PipeWire insists to turn off the audio whenever there is no client to play anything for more than X seconds.
This is super annoying, every time you try to play youtube video after going to kitchen for coffee you are loosing first couple of seconds of audio.
This can be changed (remove a module that causes automatic suspend), but over last couple of years I had to redo this configuration at least 5-6 times after various PipeWire upgrades because PipeWire developers don't give a shit about user configuration and are happy to override it or in fact do some stupid things like move it from /etc to /usr/share so you are left guessing why your config files no longer do what they were supposed to do.
"PulseAudio will first look for configuration files in the home directory ~/.config/pulse/, and if they are not found, the system-wide configuration from /etc/pulse/ will be applied.
Tip: It is strongly suggested not to edit system-wide configuration files, but rather edit user ones. Create the ~/.config/pulse directory, then copy the system configuration files into it and edit according to your need. Make sure you keep user configuration in sync with changes to the packaged files in /etc/pulse/. Otherwise, PulseAudio may refuse to start due to configuration errors."
"[...]or by creating a new file that includes it with the syntax .include /etc/pulse/name. For simple changes the latter is preferred because the user will not be required to update the file when system-wide defaults change."
So this particular example is moot unless PA somehow disregards the /home config and loads its system-wide config anyway or does some weird overrides. Any details or other examples?
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/pipewire-config-files-just-d...
I normally don't edit the text substantially after somebody responds but this time I corrected Pulse to PipeWire not to slander Pulse developers for no reason.
"The PipeWire configuration template file is located in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf. You can copy and edit the file to /etc/pipewire/ or ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf. Since 0.3.45 you can also copy fragments of the config file to a file in the directories /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/, /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/ or ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/."
TBH, while this is a common pattern across Linux applications, the thought to look for override location in the /home folder comes solely from experience and I am not aware of any place suggesting it. I tend to treat all of root as if it was an immutable file system that is a hassle to edit manually. Saves a lot of headache.
> Over the years keeping it working started becoming what seems like a full time job
These two statements are not unrelated.
I buy high-DPI Dell Precision laptops. They're pricey, and the build-quality is meh, but they come preloaded with Linux. Everything works. I leave all but a few settings on factory defaults, and I never run anything but a "Long Term Support" release of the OS. In case of hardware issues, I buy an on-site service plan.
I won't claim that it's perfect. But I spend less than 20 hours a year "keeping it working." Which is less than some of my MacOS coworkers spend fighting with Docker and other Unix tools on the Mac, so it's a wash. It's not like getting the Python development ecosystem to work on an M1 Mac is all sweetness and joy.
One secret to my success is that I try very hard not to customize anything. To paraphrase Yoda, once you start down that path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
I do not recommend Linux for casual users. But for developers who deploy on Linux, it can be a very reasonable choice.
Linux developers need to start caring about UX if they want the OS to appreciably rise above 1-2% consumer. Users should never ever, for any reason ever, need to open the CLI. Not when I want to install or configure an app, and certainly not when I want to update a driver or setting.
That's because it's written by developers. Devs are generally really poor at explaining things and they rarely have enough empathy to even notice that "normal people" might not necessarily understand (or care) as to why would they be better off compiling software from source. It's a known problem: documentation writing is one of the most hated software engineering-related work. It's a self-defeating but prevalent notion that "you can just read the code, so why would I write the docs?" Also: "nobody reads the docs" -> "why would I put effort into writing something nobody reads?" -> the docs are bad (obviously) -> "nobody reads the docs"...
In this particular case: the docs here are really, really badly structured and the styles/colors/margins/etc make it even less readable. At least, however, the authors of the wiki try to be helpful:
> If you want an easy life, follow this community provided and maintained Easy Install script for a base Debian (Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS) / Ubuntu install.
There's a link to the script below. That's already the best you can expect from developers who are not specifically paid to produce installers (or, alternatively, use a framework that generates the installers automatically). The vast majority of devs never consider that people would like to easily and quickly install their software to try it out, then uninstall it if it's not to their liking.
Also, why would you spend your time on an un-installer? If the user doesn't like their software, the devs assume it's the user's problem, not theirs. It's so irritating that I've set up automatic snapshots on /usr/ and /usr/local/ just to be able to easily get rid of stuff that ends up there with every `make install` I execute.
I know how it sounds - I'm not trying to justify this way of working on and with software, just thought I'll share what little insight I got after working with Linux-y things for two decades...
> The last time I booted up Ubuntu I couldn’t even adjust the mouse acceleration without spending 10 minutes on Google
It doesn't change anything, but I had a pretty horrible experience with Windows and MacOS drivers for Logitech trackballs[1][2]. While the setup on Linux took a few hours, included 3 different applications, 4 different config files, and dozens of man pages to read, it at least enabled me to actually get the most out of the hardware. It was utterly impossible to configure the trackballs to my liking under Windows. I didn't try very hard under MacOS, but the initial research suggested it's even worse there (Logitech seemed to be hell-bent on "Windows first, second, and last" policy for some reason).
> Users should never ever, for any reason ever, need to open the CLI.
Not sure I agree, not fully. Text-based interfaces have their place - they present very different trade-off between accessibility and convenience than GUIs do. There's a reason why the command prompt metaphor is still alive, 30+ years after the hardware got good enough to display a GUI on home computers. Though it's probably better left to people who want to use it, not people who are forced to use it; kind of like regedit.exe was always shipped with Windows, even though 99%[3] of users didn't (need to) know of its existence.
[1] https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025260314--Pro...
[2] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-ergo-wireles...
[3] Well, depending on an era and target demographic.
Then I read the manual and it's totally true: this is some of the least user-friendly documentation I have ever seen! Terribly tough to follow.
I understand this is the fault of the developer, but that's not my problem. I'm a consumer and I want my application to install in under 60 seconds like it does in Windows. Too many developers rely on the CLI in Linux, and this means that, too often, my Linux experience is much worse than my Windows experience. I don't care who is to blame. It just is.
>Though it's probably better left to people who want to use it, not people who are forced to use it; kind of like regedit.exe was always shipped with Windows, even though 99%[3] of users didn't (need to) know of its existence.
I agree. To be clear, the CLI has many benefits. It just has so few, comparatively, in the consumer space, and developers seem adamant to push consumers to use the CLI in Linux. For 99% of my use cases, everything is easier and faster in a GUI.
You already know the answer to this: if you don't like it, you should fix it! It's open source! In other words, the all too familiar blaming the victim.
It's silly, yes. Especially since there are at least 5 ways of making self-contained, one-file or single-directory distributions of software under Linux. Discord comes as a zip file that you need to unpack, then click on the "Discord" executable - and done. Joplin (my note-taking app choice) uses AppImage, where you download a single file and run it, done. It can be done. Yet, it's not done in the vast majority of cases.
You're not interested in reasons why it's not being widely adopted, so let me just talk to myself. Personally, I'd blame package managers. They are too good, too convenient, to the point that not using them is a real hassle. Those of us who remember the dependency hell won't give up package managers until death do us part. Yet, there are too many of them. Having 3 different pkg managers on a single system (deb, snap, flatpak) is sheer madness.
There's also obsession with dynamic linking combined with reluctance to bundle the required libraries with an app (because updates! we would need to actually track development and test new versions of libraries as they appear, who has time for that?!), and a few other problems. As a whole it's a societal problem that won't go away in the foreseeable future. It's also... not a bad problem to have. It guarantees a heavy push-back against app stores, at least.
One example i encounter quite a bit, the instructions for installing python and packages for building cython modules. I have students who are very much intermediate Windows users, but explaining to them how to get the development (they need python for experiment control and analysis) environment going is really painful. They often take days to get in going. On the other hand Linux users are much easier, I just give them the commands to install the packages in an email.
Also, youre basically suggested that users use a GUI (a web browser) to get instructions on how to use a command line.
It makes a lot more sense for there to be a clear and easy to use package manager, and if users are having trouble figuring that out, work needs to be done to rectify that.
Also, if you’re targeting power users who are familiar with the command line, that’s one thing. But right now linux desktop feels like it wants to be everything for everyone and that’s a very hard rope to walk
I think that it depends on who the target audience is. For myself, I heavily prefer the command line for literally everything. But if the goal is for Linux on desktop to be beginner/non-power-user friendly then I agree with the parent comment that you should be able to do everything without opening the CLI.
For me, I will always be happier with CLI tools. :)
There exists a Docker image: https://hotio.dev/containers/radarr/. It does not appear to be absurd: https://github.com/hotio/radarr/blob/release/linux-amd64.Doc....
The most computer illiterate will be fine, but they will not be buying a machine like this. The most advanced people will probably be fine mainly because their expectations will be in check. I'm personally having a hard time getting my 13 year old to debug issues in windows and linux because his expectations are just too high (probably years of ipad use). He expects things should just work and get frustrated too quickly.
Anyway, I think success in linux is more mental than anything. The terminal shouldn't be the frightening thing people like to think it is. It's just FUD. I'm in the terminal all the time on my Mac and no one seems to have an issue with that.
Please persist in your effort. Teaching your kid logical thinking and scientific method ("debugging") and helping him not to be easily frustrated are probably skills that he will need anyway later on.
Or "A mac is not for someone who isn't comfortable with hidden system files".
I.e. things the average user doesn't interact with anyway, and if they have to they'll probably do it by following a couple of steps blindly from the internet and that is that.
Designing a laptop from scratch may be an adventure with a budget close to $200k-$300k, but there are tons, and tons of US brands who can pull this financially. Yet, even the "innovative" Framework laptop is mostly OEM work. It seems no Western brand took risk designing own hardware since nineties.
I've been a privy to Dell's plans for launching a low-end sub-brand for Asia few years ago, before the COVID.
Every contact manufacturer they been considering was exuberant about an opportunity to launch something original under Dell's brand, but Dell's MBAs were horrified of the prospect giving franchisees permission to run own designs: "what if they will make something too good, and compete with our main brand?", "what if they will screw up the design, and degrade our brand?", "how we will square this off with our part suppliers if we will divert them to another party?"
I myself would've eagerly taken an opportunity to spin up my own laptop brand, with original design. It's far, far easier than most these fellows imagine, and certainly shouldn't cost many millions.
Our thing was more custom than the framework, but mid seven figures sounds like a steal. Does that include making Linux be reliable on it? (5 engineers total on the EE/mechanical/industrial engineering and SW bringup teams * 4 year product lifespan is mid seven figures, just for salary. That doesn't include facilities, HW budget, stock, etc)
I've never used a framework, but I assume suspend resume is reliable, it can sleep for a week, the GPU works, sound card doesn't pop/crackle, etc, etc... That stuff is hard to get right over time as distros get updated, which is why the above team needs to stick around over time (hopefully while they make version N+1).
Like System76, the firmware is open source, so perhaps after a while it'll work.
Edit: sure enough. Several little gotchas and obscure commands even with the top-line distro, fedora.
From the crowd sourced setup guide (https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+36+Installation+on+th...)
> If you are seeing high suspend power drain, set "nvme.noacpi=1" in your kernel parameters. In Fedora, you can do this by running the following command: sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="nvme.noacpi=1"
> sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="module_blacklist=hid_sensor_hub"
Yeah, no. This is not what I would consider supporting Linux. Are there more gotchas? Who knows? Nobody's checking until its released!
My impression was that Quanta does way more for Framework than final integration. Well, good to see that somebody takes on the design themselves today.
> The cost of developing a from scratch laptop like ours is closer to the mid seven figures.
With most of that being the cost of buying the reference design, and access to the documentation I believe?
I last worked on a budget Atom laptop back in 2014. Back then the docs were freely available with enough good Googling, as well as commercial quantities of Atom chipsets sold around Intel's channel. Now I believe it's near impossible without going through an Intel approved IDH.
This is not correct. See elsewhere in the thread. However, its not as custom as Apple, but they're also significantly smaller than Apple.
My experience is the opposite. My System76 has better gestures than the MacBook it replaced, particularly since the gestures are easily configurable per-app.
The thing I really miss from my old Apple laptop though is rock-solid suspend behavior. I feel like I can leave my Macbook closed for a week, and it will barely lose any battery life. When I bring home my System76 and leave it in my bag over the weekend, it will always be dead by Monday morning.
You may be interested in this systemd script I found on the Debian wiki[0] that enables hibernation and power off after a preset amount of time in suspend. I've been using it with my Thinkpads and it works great. Any time I close the lid it goes into suspend then if I don't use the computer for an hour (this is configurable in the script) it happily goes into hibernate.
- dual monitors were detected only as one monitor, and we're mirrored.
- USB mouse (I disprefer Bluetooth mice) would have to be unplugged and plugged back in if the laptop went to sleep
- no home/end keys
- I had installed all of my corporate 2FA stuff on safari and safari would randomly drop me from Google meets. No other browser had this issue.
The ctl/option madness definitely tanked my productivity while I had the laptop but I figure I would have learned it eventually.
Yeah agreed with a corded USB mouse, I just have mine plugged into my monitor, one usb c cable to my laptop for video, power, and data. Lemur Pro did this just as good as my Mac, no complaints there.
Home and end I’m pretty sure is just CMD + left arrow, and CMD + right arrow.
Totally agree, safari is a crap shoot. I used Firefox on my Lemur and on my Mac.
I actually ended up remapping my Lemur Pro so that the modifier keys matched the placement of a Mac. I like my main modifier (ctrl on Linux/win, cmd on Mac) to be the key just next to the space bar.
I liked the Lemur Pro a lot. Just trying to give some constructive feedback.
Incorrect. I had several Mac users look at it and none could figure out what was wrong. I suspect apple drivers don't support usb-c to dual display port.
Lemur has no problem with usb-c to dual displayport. Job eventually replaced Mac with a librem (which I don't love), it also had no problems.
> The ctl/option madness definitely tanked my productivity
I am forced to work on a Mac at my job. Buying a Mac-layout mechanical keyboard is a must. It has home/end and it has control in the right place (why on earth would apple put fn in the bottom left??).
Command + left or right will do it. Works great on a laptop or small keyboard where you don’t have home/end.
I believe your understanding of Linux as a desktop is woefully outdated, by perhaps over a decade. As someone who has to use all 3 big desktop operating systems for work (Linux via Pop!_OS, Windows, and macOS) and has used nearly every iteration of each operating system over the past 2 decades, I don't know how you came to this conclusion. The only area I could see macOS beating out Pop is in UX... if I didn't know how to use a computer and wanted the most frustrating experience available but also didn't know better.
This isn't just my take either - older, completely tech-illiterate family members of mine have tried out various laptops over the years that ran all of the operating systems (adding onto those big 3 OSes, they've also tried ChromeOS), and as of right now, every laptop in my family runs Pop!_OS. When it comes time for them to upgrade their laptops, they specifically ask if I'll be able to setup Pop on their new machines. They do not have to muck around in terminals or anything like that - I setup Pop, teach them how to update it and how to perform the basic tasks they need, and the laptop remains operational for years. Compared to when they were on Windows and macOS, I get significantly fewer support calls throughout the year when they're on Pop.
Not only is macOS UX, security, and performance lackluster compared to Linux, but it's also not even close to being as widely adopted as you claim to make it the "Coca Cola of operating systems". Windows holds that title, and that's solely due to how pervasive Windows is throughout schools and businesses, along with the fact that the vast majority of schools (at least in the US) teach students how to use Microsoft-based software like Office.
Even if I had to use a Macbook (which I would never), Pop would be installed onto it from day 1, or else I'd opt to not use the laptop all together. Even if the Macbook has superior hardware to another laptop, if the Macbook has to run macOS and the other laptop runs Pop!_OS, I'd use the other laptop.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that Linux is an open and free operating system (which again, this is a non-negotiable must-have), whereas macOS is heavily locked down and closed source. Nor does it touch on the fact that modern Linux can play nearly every Windows game with little to no issues and it generally just works 'out of the box' or needs a few applications installed, whereas the same cannot be said for macOS - there's much more work required within the terminal to achieve a lesser, often buggier result.
While I agree with you that the overall build quality of the Lemur Pro isn't as polished as a Macbook (which is why I opted for a Framework laptop recently, in fact) and other physical aspects of the machine like its touchpad, I disagree completely with your assessment of the operating systems. Pop!_OS on a M1 Macbook would be a better experience than macOS on a Macbook.
To me it feels like the opposite, Windows is the true Coke Cola just because some things work better and the vast majority of people use it like you suggest, Linux is some fresh Pepsi (to say, I know the other is more popular but I don't care and prefer its unique taste) and macOS is some ok discount cola, which is alright but nothing people should go proud of drinking.
Doesn’t really change anything re: the review though. I had the Lemur Pro for 2 years and used it as my main coding machine. I used it 8+ hours a day for years. It was a solid machine. I bought it because I refused to buy a Touch Bar MacBook. Once the 14” M1 came out… it was over. The M1 is faster, more reliable, has a longer battery life, a higher resolution and brighter screen, and imo has better software. Sure, free software is great, and I contribute to, and use a boatload of OSS, but a lot of times, you get what you pay for, or not.
Ultimately the experience compared to a 14” MBP is, there is no comparison imo, the MacBook hardware blows it out of the water in all aspects.
I would entirely disagree with the statement that my understanding of linux desktop is out of date. That is, unless you consider using Linux Desktop in early 2022 out of date.
You say that linux is a totally open operating system. Yeah… if you know the command line. That is kinda my point. It isn’t great for people unless they are computer power users. I’ve been a Linux user for almost 2 decades, I’ve tried everything under the sun. I run Linux servers all day every day for work. I know how it is.
Sure… you can get your grandpa to use PopOS by saying “only press this website and email icon and you’ll be fine”, and I agree with that. Give my Lemur Pro to my wife, who can use either Windows or Mac, she would be like “how do I <insert some random thing that she is used to doing on a consumer OS>, and when the answer starts with “open terminal”, she would look at me like I am an insane person.
Mac and Linux are as secure (or not) as you make them. Literally neither one is that much more or less secure than the other one.
If you wanna field calls from your family teaching them how to run a Linux desktop, more power to you. As for me, I’ll be getting my family members a PC or Mac (their choice) and calling it a day.
It all depends on how you want to use the computer and what are your daily driver apps.
Gnome Shell and KDE are wonderfully polished and work great also with multiple monitors out of the box, XFCE is pretty fast and functional.
About your wife that can't use it? Mine is using Manjaro+KDE since years and never had problems, the switch from then-Windows 7 world was pretty no-brainer. It all burns down on how you approach a new system.
I found MacOS not any more usable or stable than Windows had been on my prior laptop. The hardware was less reliable than the Thinkpad my MacBook Pro replaced and repairs were outrageously expensive. I have switched back to a Thinkpad which recently had Windows replaced by Pop!_OS because as of kernel 5.17 the laptop finally gets similar battery life running Linux as it does Windows. I would never consider a MacBook again.
Unless you mean _working from the command line_ rather than fixing issues with the OS from the command line?
Genuine question. Did rc-cola make claim that it is same/close as real cola ? Seem more like taste issue than durian-2-durian compare.
Itching to buy a system76 64gb laptop and let go of mbp (good), and the idiotic lenevo and thinkpad (32gb duds.)
disclaimer — I work mostly console.
I've replaced both my personal and work laptops with System76 Meerkat mini PCs both running stock Unbuntu using Regolith for the desktop environment (https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat). They are stacked on top of each other on my desk and take up next to no space.
I work from home (and have since 1999) and don't travel for work (since Covid) so I have no need for laptops now. I have a larger monitor and for now I'm using an old USB switcher to share a wireless connection for my keyboard and mouse and use the input switcher on my monitor to switch between machines. In the future I may get an integrated hdmi/usb switch.
Has anyone else abandoned their laptops in favor of desktop/mini PCs?
I can take the laptop to the kitchen, living room or garden if I so please. I can take it out of town or abroad. A desktop... I mean, i could take with me but not so easily.
So one huge advantage of laptops are a)they run on batteries
b) If you do need to run the laptop of an inverter(i dare not say ups) its much easier to power for longer.
Having your compute/dev take place on a separate box and using these machines as thin clients helps too. My personal machines are mostly just editors now, not running any hefty code processes.
How do you find them for noise? I had an 8th gen NUC that was unbearable under high CPU load - I replaced it with a slightly larger ASRock DeskMini X300 with Ryzen 5750GE and Noctua AM4 cooler that is silent, even under full load.
Not the original poster, but +$200 would be reasonable for me.
The last computer I built was twenty years ago so I would have to do at least a couple hours of research to find out what sites and stores are reliable, read component reviews, etc. None of that information is useful or interesting to me beyond getting the computer up and running. And there's a slight chance that despite my best efforts I would make a mistake end up buying a collection of components that are incompatible, don't work optimally together, are back-ordered, or are missing drivers or something. Then I spend another couple hours on forums trying to get everything working.
On the other hand, for an extra $200 I can spend five minutes configuring a tested configuration that comes with tech support if something is wonky, and kicks a few bucks to people trying to support Linux.
Given the value I place on my free time the latter is significantly cheaper. If you already posses the expertise, enjoy that kind of work, or do not place a high monetary value on your time then the former might be cheaper.
It feels like an odd target market for me considering I would expect people deliberately opting for Linux to already be more adept with that kind of thing - but maybe I'm wrong!
Yep, I think you’re just wrong. I know plenty of people who use Linux but have never built a PC and have no clue how to do so, and may never have even swapped out ram or disk drives.
I’m sure plenty of people also don’t know what a NUC is or where you would research which one to buy. You’re discounting the fact that you happened to know about the Crucial part picker, but most people don’t!
Some people use Linux because they grew up tinkering with computers, but a lot of people use them for other reasons, like greater familiarity with GNU command-line tools, or just not wanting to need a VM to run Docker.
I think the vast majority of people who build their own computer do so for gaming purposes and use Windows.
First, you may be underestimating the value of your expertise and the investment required.
Second, I'm glad we're not gatekeeping Linux as much as we used to.
Third, as I get older I find computer hardware less interesting. Just because someone likes to make music doesn't necessarily mean they like to make instruments.
I don't find the noise bad at all, but again, that may be my hearing going :)
I set one up last week for someone and it’ll drive two 4k displays fine. Granted that was under windows.
It would also have to be silent.
My laptop stopped working and I never got a new one.
Now I have a proper monitor (4k, 27 inch), proper keyboard (Matias quiet click), a proper mouse (Logitech trackball), and a proper webcam (some cheap 1080p one I bought from amazon that beats everything in a laptop).
Don't know where you live but where I do (Austria) nearly all companies, big or small, have employees back into the office.
Personally I don't think I'll ever get a desktop setup.
Bit some cafés are very quiet, have delicious drinks and food, good music and are (IMO) perfect for some light to mild-focused tasks.
So, for me, with my ADHD addled brain, I can be quite productive.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/06/01/virtual-b...
(Using classic desktop Linux machines at work and at home)
Ability to take your computer to couch, bed, terrace, park, etc is irreplaceable.
I do wonder why desktops still exist.
Desktops are more powerful, more upgradeable, and have better display and interface devices.
"Having a computer" is a much higher priority to me than going places. That means "desktop" because it means having all the perks above. The most expensive gaming laptop will suck compared to a mid-tier gaming desktop. You can't squeeze the biggest cards and the best cooling or tons of beefy hard drives in a laptop. Laptops are a fundamental compromise to aforementioned "computerness" for the sake of portability, which to me is a bad deal. Anything that offers more convenience (and marketability) will compromise its core qualities. Phones are the next step down that road from laptops.
It would be nice to magically take my desktop to the couch (I don't own a couch but figuratively), bed, terrace, or park, but not as nice as using a desktop instead of a laptop is in every other way. Wireless headphones help though. :p
They go up
My employer bought me a laptop to work on it during covid.
It really depends on the use-case, and need for convenience. With a laptop (assuming it's not a desktop-replacement style brick) it's easy to use it in a lounge chair outside, or on a couch in the living room, or to take it over to a friend's house to show something.
Many people don't even use computing-intensive tasks.
So, I don't really see the switch to working at home really changing user preferences. I could be wrong, but we'll see.
I personally got the third-cheapest 49" ultrawide.
People's eyesights vary. I need big letters anyways.
I thought it was a gimmick in 2015 before I got my first MBP, these days I can't go back and have my eyes bleed on 96 dpi. You don't even need full Retina, my 27" 4K screen looks gorgeous at double scaling.
>150 dpi monitors are the second best tech upgrade of this millennium after the SSD. Yet, there's still people these days that will try to convince you their 5400 rpm disk is fast enough, just because they have never experienced modern hardware.
I'm shopping for ultawide right now, care to share the link of the monitor you got?
Here's a 2006 laptop review roundup: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptops-of-2006/
There's a 4:3 1680x1050 laptop there (a $2k machine, described as "doesn't come cheap") and the macbook pro (also starting at $2k) was 1440x900.
Use a 13" 4k for a few weeks and try to go back. Actual high-dpi screens are where it's at.
And yes, I've tried smooth fonts and FixedSys/Less Perfect DOS-VGA on both and prefer blocky ones every time. High res screens love to use smoothing and subpixel rendering and I very much prefer none of it.
Edit: point being if you switch to high res displays, you won't always like it more
Quite the opposite! These are hacks for low-res displays to make type look better. Sufficiently high resolution displays disable these because they are high resolution enough that your eye perceives a smooth line/edge already without having to resort to hacks to avoid stairsteps.
I'm using a different hidpi display as well, and don't really care for the difference. The link does discuss real issues, but does not prove anything about "text displayed correctly".
I have an old 2008 jeep rubicon. Its basically a nice red tractor with aircon and radio.
BUT I feel like OptimusPrime(Transformers) everytime i get into my jeep to go buy groceries !
Definitely agree, though.
Using solved and wayland i. the same sentence is just not right !
Source: nvidia+intel laptop owner.
Wayland+Nvidia: Having it work sometimes under some conditions are not the same as solved. X11 is not flawless either but i feel it works more times under more conditions.
Ok rant over, sorry for sounding like a d*k :)
Been programming for decades on 1080p and before 1080 on 1024. My eyesight is quite bad (-5.85) and i can see perfectly fine on 1080p. Sure 2k or 4k might be better. But thats true for 8k as well.
1080p -> 4K is an enormous difference. 4K -> 8K, better but not so dramatic.
The rate of improvement is not linear.
Example: hdd to ssd (huge quantitative improvement if you measure speeds). As you rightly said.
To my eyes(bad eyes) 1080p is enough, 4k might look slightly better but no way near in the same ballpark as hdd to ssd. Maybe its the fonts, workflow or fontsize i use but 4k fonts does not not x5 or x10 better than 1080p fonts. I absolutely sure there are ppl that, that is true for though. YMMV shrug
If you don't see the difference, it doesn't mean there's none.
I said the difference is not meaningful enough (for me and many other ppl, if i read the comments) and that stating that 1080p 'is simply a none starter' and it 'cannot' render text 'correctly' it not true. It can render it more correctly yes.
To be really annoying even 8k wont render text 100% correctly since if there is a circle like section example 'p' or 'b' no pixel based device would be able to give a 'true rendition' of the symbol since you need basically infinite precision to correctly display a circle like concept on gridbased scheme(i.e pixel based display)
Sure a 4k or 8k will approximate it better but(and this is really my point
4k or 8k wil be better(yes) but 1080p it sufficient for a good subset of ppl.
Not really sure how the blind man helps either side of this discussion ?
While higher resolutions look nicer, they provide no real value for a console. I've had 4x xterms on my desktop for 30+ years.
There is zero "extra space" with higher dpi. None.
One sad downside of things looking nicer, is the battery cost.
UHD vs HD means 4x the pixels, and a GPU rendering all those pixels. If you want a 14hr battery, and light weight, you won't be getting it with a UHD screen in 2022.
Ironically, almost all phones I look at have more pixels than I need. Laptops are only recently easily available with reasonable pixel density. For a while, common phones had higher resolution (not just density) than laptops.
For me the lack of pointing stick is also a no go. My first laptop over twenty years ago was a Toshiba with a pointing stick, and I've used Thinkpads ever since.
I often code for 12+ hours straight and the only way to keep up with such a stress on eyes is to use bigger fonts and not focus too much on text (i.e. engage in a slightly defocused vision).
Which means I never use small fonts, though I see a lot of people who code on 13-15 inch screens with super tiny fonts.
Naturally, once you have to use large fonts you end up using large screens (I'm currently on 49 inch ultra-wide Samsung 32:9 screen) and it's the best setup for coding I can imagine.
Still when coding on a laptop, I sacrifice window splits and stuff like that but not the font size. So Macbook Pro resultion is even too high for me, and I'm quite happy with FullHD laptops as well.
Its why I don't really see a need for higher than 1080p on mobile phones, can you even see the difference?
1080 on a 14" screen is not, in any way, going to slow your work down compared to hiDPI on a 14".
You're still going to display the same number of visual elements at 14", after all.
If you look at the top down picture of the keyboard above "tech specs", you'll see that this laptop fails on both accounts. :-(
Edit: A comment says the logo on the System76 laptop is an easy to remove sticker so this might be a non-issue.
In this view, it should therefore not be a hint about the overall quality.
"This truck is tracked and protected by satellite" and have their numberplate painted on the roof.
Would be 'somewat funny' if you get stickers like that for laptops
'This laptop is protected by satellite and rdfi' and have some random macaddrrss as part of sticker.
This would be perfect to hide your ugly laptop logo :)
ok who is buying and how many stickers you all want ??
My only main requirement is the hardware needs to support Slackware and Open/Net BSD.
Laptops with practical 10+ hours battery life usually come with Linux from the factory. Eg the google Pixelbook Go, which gets about 10-12 hours on a battery half as large as the one we are discussing. The System76 has mostly just thrown a gigantic battery at the problem.
Also, when the battery dies, you can replace it easily. Any modern laptop is still going to have battery degradation. This is a much better investment for those that can't afford to replace laptops every 3-4 years.
Linux is core os on top of which you can use a UI of your choosing. If you have something like Ubuntu server installed with just a terminal interface, that system will most likely never lock up from user input unless all the stuff in the background becomes resource constrained.
MacOS has the UI, the kernel, and the programs all tightly coupled together to where you have zero choice on a lot of things in the OS.
Especially with System76. They all have instruction manuals available: https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/lemp11/repairs.html
I actually followed the link and went to the battery section..
"Tools required: Cross-head (Phillips) screwdriver"
"Time estimate: 30 minutes"
"Difficulty: High (red)"
High/Hard == easy
Sure, it's not as easy as an external battery, but I've not seen those in a long, long time. But you also don't need specialist tools nor a 35kg custom kit to replace it (https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi...). And you definitely don't _have_ to send it to them to get it changed.
What does that mean? I've run Linux on all the MacBooks I've owned. I just ordered an M2 Air with the intention of using it primarily as a Linux laptop.
Replaced my precision with a second-hand thinkpad t480s. 3 years old. Haven't replaced the battery it arrived with. Recent popular distro. I get 10 hours of battery life doing programming. Webbrowser open with 20+ tabs, multiple terminals, signal, rhythmbox.
Cost USD$410. Tough to beat that at any price. Maybe a new one with an AMD under the hood? I can get 3+ of these for the same money and is it really actually better? Dell was more money and a lot worse, you see a lot of people with that experience around here.
All that said, PopOS is my distro of choice. They really got a lot right there IMO. If they can get it together on the hardware front, might be worth another look in the future.
But any grandpa or granny who can use YouTube, can do it simply by following instructions shown there.
People should at least be willing to do that.
I’m not aware of any distribution other than Asahi (which is based on Arch) that can boot at all.
And ”What works” section.
Compared to a cheap HP I have, the touchpad is slightly better, but since the touchpad is huge I trigger it more on the Mac, the keyboard is annoying because it has a fn key on the bottom row on the left, rather than ctrl and don't get me started on the touchbar. The fingerprint scanner... mostly works. The SSD is fucking slow, 10k IOPS. The laptop gets unberably hot when connected to an external display, since it cannot use the builtin video card. Fans can be adjusted to be at full speed... until you go into sleep, at which point they reset, so it gets hot again. I'm also not impressed by the battery life, it's probably the same as said 500EUR HP, sometimes even less (yes, fuck zoom, and the 1h battery life it gives me)
stuff like what kde is doing with their "15-Minute Bugs" are great initiatives. this will definitely help the overall linux software become more rugged and idiot friendly
I remember knowing that if I got an IBM ThinkPad, it probably had good Linux driver support.
I still make the assumption that Lenovo ThinkPads have better Linux driver support because hackers prefer them. But I honestly have no idea if that's true any more.
I like the laptop overall but I'll never touch NVidia stuff again. Drivers are among the things I just don't want to deal with.
disclaimer: I've never touched a s76 machine.
I would never run an OS that was pre-installed as the install image can't be verified.
I used to not have the option of buying Linux hardware, and it was terrible. I don't understand why anybody does that to themselves these days, and I sincerely hope we never go back to having to buy Windows hardware, slapping Linux on top of it, and hoping that enough devs had the _exact_ same hardware to minimize the glitches.
You are paying for support and to make it easy.
But scale, as they sell more one assumes the markup will decrease.
Pretending to be a system integrator by buying proprietary Windows hardware and slapping Linux on it is a mug's game.
They were going to start building their own laptops at one point. I'm not sure what happened with that. Of course, nobody except Apple really builds their own hardware these days either (hence the term ODM).
The choices for RAM configuration come down to 8GB, 2x8GB, 8GB + 16GB and 8GB + 32GB.
That makes the second option the only dual channel configuration. Going past 2x8GB is not a real upgrade but more like a side-grade.
What is it with this 8GB soldered, one socket free thing?
If you want the upgradability and ports of a 2011 Thinkpad you need to buy a budget gaming laptop now.
The biggest killer of my laptop's battery life is the dedicated GPU. The second that thing turns on (for example, when I attach an HDMI cable) I can feel the entire laptop heating up. Granted, this laptop is sold as a mobile workstation for about half the price of a Macbook Pro, so it's not really designed for battery life, but it's still quite annoying sometimes.
My previous laptop couldn't get more than two hours out of a charge, it's crazy how much more you can get even out of cheap laptops these days.
I'm not sure how the modern system works because CPU performance characteristics have changed quite significantly over the past few years.
Most desktop chips seem to follow very similar Intel/AMD curves anyway, but I know Apple used to aggressively tweak Intel CPUs to boost high very quickly whenever there was an interactive load (opening a program, clicking a link etc.) to help make the system feel responsive despite their terrible cooling solutions. A lot of their chips really couldn't take a load for too long before slowing down drastically, but most work by most people is in bursts so outside of areas like gaming and simulation you probably can't even notice.
If a laptop gets much worse battery life on Linux that's a good indication that its hardware is not supported. It may be for example a dGPU that is not initialized properly and sips power as a result.
These are very core to the value proposition of laptops, so it makes sense and directly translates to longer battery and reduced fan noise.
Do people like scorching hot laptops that need constant recharging?
The article hints at Linux now using intels new low power cores. Though I’m not sure exactly how.
“Like Windows, Linux had to have some serious tinkering under the hood to prepare for the mix of Performance and Efficiency cores in Alder Lake chips. However, rest assured, efficient hybrid scheduling is taken care of with the two OS options that can be pre-installed on the Lemur Pro.”
https://community.frame.work/t/issues-with-power-usage/12261
https://community.frame.work/t/nixos-power-consumption/6339
However, with some tuning, that can get down to as low as 2.5-3W:
https://community.frame.work/t/linux-battery-life-tuning/666...
https://community.frame.work/t/battery-life-impact-of-ram-me...
To summarize on the configuration options, the biggest gains are probably from powertop/tlp tunings, PSR, settings to get to C9/C10 on idle (PSR is a prereq for this), replacing PulseAudio w/ Pipewire, modifying the EPP values, and fstab options (noatime, relatime).
Of course, some of System76's gains could be spending some extra effort on their EC/BIOS tunings, or on the hardware itself (lots of ways to mess up or to get gains from the motherboard layout/components).
It's also worth noting that some SSDs like the Hynix P31 consume much less power than others, so hardware selection can play a part as well.
So, Clevo is the ODM, just like Compal and some others are for Dell: https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/vn/corporate~corp-comm~en/d...
If I were buying this model I wouldn't mind buying it from System76 if you're not ultra-price sensitive to show support for their coreboot and open-source EC development.
The Intel i7-1255U is about 20% slower than an Intel i7-1260P or an AMD 5800U, so it's performance isn't bad, but personally I'd rather have a >16:9 >1080p >300 nit display (similar alternatives with better displays: Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen2, Slimbook Executive 14, Framework 12th Gen)
- increase screen size to at least 15.5" because small screen is unusable for programming and for browsing modern websites with large font size and large pictures
- use IPS panel (can increase cost)
- make arrow keys full size (doesn't cost anything)
- add 7 keys for additional Cyrillic letters and 2 keys to switch between layouts (doesn't cost anything)
- add 3 USB ports and Ethernet (doesn't noticeably increase cost)
- increase RAM limit to 128 Gb (shouldn't cost anything, it is probably just a software limitation)
- use standard 3.5mm audio jacks
Using a better LCD panel can increase cost, so here is how this can be conpensated:
- use an older cheaper CPU. Newest CPUs usually have lower performance to cost ratio and therefore it doesn't make sense to buy them. Also why pay for 10 cores when most of the time you will be using 1 or 2?
- support cheaper HDD instead of SSD
- remove unnecessary speakers
- remove unnecessary keyboard backlight. Using laptop in darkness is bad for eyes anyway.
Also I am surprised that a modern i7 CPU that costs over $470 has just 12Mb cache. You can (probably) buy an old CPU with more cache for smaller price.
I want to love System76. I really do. But the truth is that I don't think I will ever trust them again.
Happy to answer any questions anyone has about it.
Most of the time this is quite neglible because the Lemur machine I have is tied to a mechanical keyboard and a desktop. But when I have to lug it around it can be quite annoying for serious, long-form work.
I wouldn't assume that. I'd assume this is a mass produced stuff going through an ODM like Clevo.
If it isn't, there certainly isn't any reason to expect system76 to be capable of better production than the "mass produced stuff" coming out of eg Dell's XPS line or Lenovo's Carbon line. Especially when those companies have decades of experience and tooling investments here.
But I also don't think the dismissal of "mass produced stuff" is really even fair here. The Clevo and other ODM designs have been quite good for a long time now.
I also don't get the FHD (16:9) screen, it seems like the Clevo shell has not been updated from past years... :(
Year 2022
maybe they expect those dev compys to be used with external screens, and maybe they also need the Linux computer price points to be lower
If you want to run Windows, there are much better options out there for less money.
laptop industry is dead since apple released their M1