I own one of these as my daily driver. Its... fine.<p>Pros<p>- dead simple to upgrade the hardware. I was able to get 32GB of RAM and 3 1TB hard drives installed with no hassle or voiding of warranty.<p>- its a beast of a machine when you spec it out capable of any workload you throw at it.<p>- linux support is 1st class (obvs)<p>- all aluminum chassis<p>- the display is nice even tho its only 1080p<p>- the keyboard key action is nice. I have a thinkpad for work and they are similar feel.<p>- PopOS is amazing.<p>- the backlit keyboard is cool<p>Cons<p>- you cant use external monitors without the NVIDIA card enabled which requires a reboot. This is the single largest failing IMO and is more annoying than you'd think it is.<p>- you only get about an hour of battery life with the NVIDIA card enabled making it totally useless to keep on unless you plan on using this thing like a desktop all the time.<p>- its a rebranded Clevo laptop and kinda ugly. It feels cheap to me despite the aluminum chassis.<p>- the keyboard layout is weird. The number pad is unnecessary.<p>- the speakers suck. Seriously. Like my headphones lying on my desk sound better<p>- web cam is crappy<p>- the screen itself feels flimsy<p>- I dual boot into windows and its a second rate experience there.
Work bought us System76 Gazelle laptops [1]. Quick thoughts after six months of use, coming from a MacBook Pro user:<p>* Chiclet keyboard feels nice to type on<p>* Plastic fake brushed-metal case is<p>* Battery life is about an hour, almost unusable away from a charger. If I were spending my own money on this laptop, this would be a dealbreaker.<p>* Built-in display sucks. It's allegedly matte, but still has incredibly high reflectiveness. 1080p resolution and just okay LCD color reproduction<p>* Fan noise is a serious issue. I made the mistake of un-muting myself on a video call while the fans were going and other people on the call immediately muted me. They thought I was in a wind tunnel.<p>* Webcam quality is low. Video calls with an open window behind you mean you will be washed out by backlighting<p>* Performance is great. Runs a bunch of simultaneous headless Chrome browsers in Docker and completes our unit test suite pretty quickly.<p>* The trackpad is truly horrendous. I use tap to click on my MBP, and I had to turn that off on the Gazelle real fast. Palm rejection is nonexistent - had false clicks every 15 minutes. That is not an exaggeration.<p>* Keyboard is backlit<p>* USB-A, HDMI, ethernet means it's easy to use it as a desktop<p>* Built-in speakers sound tinny and low-quality<p>* Large and clunky, but weight isn't bad<p>I'm torn: Ubuntu and GNU/Linux generally are excellent developer environments, but the laptop hardware is horrible. It feels like the $600 Windows machines my friends used in college.
I love that this is a professional laptop that comes with a 144hz screen. But 1080p? Not even 1920x1200? Boo..<p>I want to replace my aging MacBook Pro and move to Linux, but finding a non-gaming laptop with a good screen seems to be an impossibility.<p>Edit - To the people recommending laptops in this thread:<p>Thanks for the suggestions, but none of them so far have had a 144hz screen. It's very hard to go back to 60hz after using a higher refresh rate monitor, even for simple things like literally moving a mouse around the screen and looking at the cursor.<p>The only 144hz laptops I've found are 1080p, and that extra 120px of vertical room is a luxury I'm not yet willing to part with.
Really wish they would get rid of the numpad layout and center that touchpad or make it bigger. Really bothers me that the touchpad isn’t centered, makes it awkward.
Up to 64GB RAM (more than more people need), up to 4TB of fast NVMe SSD storage (more than most people use), an NVIDIA 8GB RTX 2080 GPU (you know, for training deep learning models on the road, if you ever feel like it), every port you could ever need and more (includes USB 3.2 Type-C w/Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.2 powered and unpowered, SD Card Reader, Wired Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI w/HDCP, Mini DisplayPort 1.4, regular Thunderbolt 3 -- it can be connected to everything), all in a fairly slim 4-5lb package. Not bad.
It's awesome to see Coreboot on a laptop with discrete graphics.<p>Sadly, though, this is a bittersweet deal imo, since you will get NVIDIA's trademark Linux experience, including binary blobs that occasionally prevent you from updating to the latest stable kernel and practically being stuck with Xorg for the rest of your life. I understand that NVIDIA simply has the best options (or at least, that would be my guess) but it's hard to still not be a little disappointed since I've been having a great time with AMDGPU on my desktop, running Wayland, up-to-date kernels and having great system stability.
System76 is likely going to fab their own laptops (instead of using Clevo as an ODM) within the next 2-3 years (just a hunch I have based on how long it took for them to go from talking about fabricating desktops to doing it).<p>They've started asking people to share what they want here: <a href="https://github.com/system76/laptop-suggestions/issues" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/system76/laptop-suggestions/issues</a><p>If you really want a great Linux-first laptop, copy/paste all of your complaints/desires for hardware from here into that repository.<p>Top of the list for me:<p>- High powered laptop (e.g. 47W TDP CPU) without a graphics card.<p>- Centered keyboard without a numpad.<p>- 14" 1080p option for high-end laptops.<p>Edit - Formatting + I used to work there, but this is NOT based on anything from when I did - just speculation. It was an AWESOME place to work as a Linux nerd though. :)
I know, I know - getting a laptop with linux running natively is great, but seriously folks - just go buy something like an XPS 13 or Razer Blade for the same cost and put Linux on it.<p>You'll get an <i>infinitely</i> better piece of hardware.
I bought a system76, because I didn't want to give MS money. It was janky and broke a year later. It had a lot of problems with the wireless connection dropping.<p>So I bought a zareason laptop. It was basically the same hardware, it was janky and lasted two years.<p>So then I splurged on a Thinkpad via LAC Portland, and it's been pretty wonderful. I just wish I could buy them from Lenovo directly.
> Display: 15.6" or 17.3" FHD (1920x1080) 144 Hz refresh rate, Matte Finish<p>WHY?!? Why do they keep using outdated, low res panels? I want to like system76 but can't with their bad displays.
This is almost ideal for what i'm looking for in a laptop. I wish there was an option to get a better screen and no nvidia.<p>I might be in the small group who wants this, but i wish it was easy to find a 15" laptop with a CPU like the one in oryx but without an NVIDIA gpu. I'd like to have a better cpu and i don't mind a laptop that's larger than the xps 13 or carbon, but i don't need/want a dedicated nvidia gpu. While we are wishing for things, please make more laptops with higher dpi screens. There are a lot of options for 1080p or lower, but very few good options (outside of macbooks or dell xps) that have high quality UHD displays.<p>I'm on the market for a new laptop and the screen quality is the only reason i'm even contemplating a macbook.
What is the difference between buying a Clevo and installing PopOS versus buying a System76 laptop?<p>As a Linux user, I'm generally just looking for a nice piece of hardware with good Linux support, and I have never felt Clevo /Sager were particularly good quality.
I like their OS, but I will be interested in their laptops when they build their own chasis like they did with the Thelio desktop[0] & offer something other than Intel CPUs.<p>[0] <a href="https://system76.com/desktops" rel="nofollow">https://system76.com/desktops</a>
Is this worth it? I've eyed System76 laptops for a while, just to see what the experience is like to run a laptop build with Linux integration in mind.<p>On eBay, you can get a 32GB RAM, mid-range i5/i7, with RTX-2060 6GB for ~$1,300 used.<p>It looks like ~$1,800 for the same specs (though brand new, and with a better CPU since it's 10th gen i7).<p>I'm not a hardware guy, can anyone here weigh in? Would really appreciate it.<p>Don't have a ton of money, I've been using a $650 Acer Nitro 5 with 8GB RAM + GTX 1060Ti (absolute steal) for few years but it's been freezing multiple times a day recently (lots of containers, my IDE, etc) so trying to future-proof best I can for max value.
I do wish System76 could sell a Lenovo P53 and/or the new Dell XPS 17, but with pop installed with all the right drivers etc. It's worth the premium IMO to get a laptop you know will work well with linux.
I worked at a startup and we had three System76 machines. 2 of them were DOA. Mine (a Serval Pro laptop) had a lot of issues with the display and getting support was a nightmare and it took so much work to get a replacement even under warranty. The other machine had a problem with the SSD. That was enough to convince me not to purchase a System76 for my next machine.
Coreboot but Nvidia? Who's the target audience? Open boot firmware fans who also like Nvidia's proprietary driver?<p>Edit: I looked at their website and I still don't understand what the marketing term "linux laptop" actually means. Does it power management that follows specs? Do they offer open source firmware upgrade tools that work on linux?
Drives my anti off-center homonculous up the wall to have the numpad pushing me over to the left (I know, I know). Would pay extra/same for a tenkeyless version.