I wish a person could order one of these without the numeric keypad. I deeply hate being off-center to the screen when typing on these larger portables.
Uhh I understand that good Linux support is valuable, but the price premium for that is just too high.<p>For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb):<p>Pangolin - 1200$<p>Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1]<p>For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb):<p>Pangolin - 1542$<p>HP 15z - 640$[2]<p>I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support).<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-3-15-15-6-AMD-Ryzen-5-5500U-8GB-256GB-NVMe-TLC-SSD-AMD-Radeon-7-Graphics-Windows-10-Home-82KU003NUS/773741305" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-3-15-15-6-AMD-Ryze...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laptop-15z-ef2000-touch-optional-2k3t2av-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laptop-15z-ef2000-touch...</a>
I have a System76 Serval WS with AMD Ryzen 9 3900 and Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti manufactured last year. The laptop's internal display went wonky late last week but an external display still works fine. It's annoying to reboot -- the GPU drivers aren't loaded yet when the boot disk passphrase prompt is shown, so the external display doesn't show the passphrase prompt (and importantly: whether unlocking succeeded). It's within a 1-year warranty for parts & labor. I'm currently talking to with System76 support staff to ship it back for repair. The process has, so far, been easy and straightforward.<p>In the past they had pushed a driver update that disabled the laptop display when multiple monitors are connected. I had recognized the problem since their system drivers are open source and was able to recommend & review a PR to fix [0]. It was nice to see that patch go in.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/pop-os/system76-driver/pull/182" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pop-os/system76-driver/pull/182</a>
I say it every time every time one of these threads pop up and I’ll say it again here: if it’s not 16:10 or 3:2 I’m simply not interested.<p>I buy devices like this for productivity. I don't care about black bars when watching videos because I don't watch videos on it. What I absolutely care about is the extra inch of text in my terminal or text editor.<p>I didn't think this was a controversial opinion.
I love System76, and I use and love Pop!_OS (despite the offensive and undignified name). I tried to buy their beefy Thelios desktop with wood paneling (but they don't ship to my country). But... on what planet is a 1080p screen still OK for a mid-range or higher laptop in 2021?<p>For laptops, I've used Apples and Dells over the past 7 years and I don't think any of them were that low resolution.<p>I want to buy their shit; I even bought their insanely expensive $300 keyboard just because I think they are awesome. But I wouldn't buy a 1080p laptop in this day and age for any price.<p>Pop OS (as sane people call it) also happens to work <i>fabulously</i> on high resolution monitors! I run it on a 4-year-old 32" 8K Dell UP3218K monitor at 200% pixel doubling, and it looks fantastic — much better and way crisper text than any Mac (e.g., my work M1 Mac Mini with hyperexpensive 6K XDR Display or my 27" 5K iMac Pro).<p>For that Dell display, 200% is perfect, but Reddit says fractional scaling also works great on Pop OS. So it's not like they have some technical reason they need to use blurry low-res displays.<p>It's just kind of weird. I would absolutely buy this otherwise, but the weird retro display is a deal-breaker.<p>(I don't give a shit about the off-center keyboard or numpad though, so I guess we all have our own individual deal-breakers....)<p>As an aside: Pop OS is really awesome, though — a great distro for those of us who were always <i>rooting</i> for Linux, preferred open source and felt like we were the kind of person who wanted that approach to win out and would likely use Linux, but mainly ended up usually buying Macs for purposes of convenience and just getting our shit done. Pretty much works great and stays out of your way. :-D
The specs page is a bit vague in places.<p><pre><code> Graphics AMD Radeon™ Graphics
Storage 1 x M.2 SSD(SATA or PCIe NVMe). Up to 2TB total.
</code></pre>
In the configurator you have to pay attention to the read speeds to figure out if you are getting a SATA or PCIe drive. There is no indication for which brand of drive they are using. I have a few SSD controllers that are on my do not buy list, like anything made by Sandforce[1] after we lost almost an entire lot of computers to premature firmware failures and got absolutely no support from the vendor for even just resetting the firmware and starting over.<p>[1] <a href="https://computerlounge.it/how-to-unbrick-sandforce-ssd/" rel="nofollow">https://computerlounge.it/how-to-unbrick-sandforce-ssd/</a>
Just to add my anecdatum: I am on my third or fourth System76 laptop, the others are all still working just after a few years I need to upgrade. One is now the living room stereo and one is the gaming room stereo. The point I'm making is that they last for years, I think my oldest is a decade old and still works fine. So, just one person's experience but there it is.
Obviously the "Linux-first" is a big value-add for this brand, but the hardware for the price isn't amazing.<p>$1200 gets you a Zen 2 (previous generation) 6-core, 12-thread CPU[0], 8GB RAM, 240 GB NVME, 15" 1080p (did not see brightness/color accuracy mentioned.)<p>But I like my laptops to come with fast refresh and a dedicated GPU, and I run Windows, so I'm not their target audience. Would love to hear how this is received by those in the right market segment!<p>[0] A bunch of $600-700 laptops with this CPU: <a href="https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-5500u" rel="nofollow">https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-5500u</a>
The price is a bit too high (as always with System76). Last year, for the same price ($1,199) on sale, I bought a ASUS Zephyrus G14 with a Ryzen 4900HS and RTX 2060. Right now, you get it (for a bit more) with a 5900HS and RTX 3060.<p>Both the 5900HS and the 4900HS will beat the low-wattage 5700U in performance handily. The G14 has a 76 Wh, so despite the “higher”-power (35 Watt) CPU, it’ll still get a LOT of battery life.
This is an huge deal : the 5700U is faster than the Mac M1 at the same wattage
<a href="https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MHz-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-5700U/4104vs4156" rel="nofollow">https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH...</a>
If you're into "Linux-first" computing, you might also be interested in SimulaVR's "Linux-first" portable VR headset: www.simulavr.com<p>It will run with an 11th gen Intel compute pack (x86 ), and have premium specs (roughly double the resolution of the Valve Index).<p>Turning it on will boot you into SimulaVR's VR window manager (built over the Godot game engine) with hand tracking. All open source.<p>It's intended to be more comparable to a Linux laptop (like System76) than a VR gaming device like the Quest.
There's no mention of the color gamut on that display. Necessary 1080p complaints aside, I couldn't buy a Linux laptop last year because all of the displays are trash. If you're lucky you can find 100% sRGB, but I and many others need 100% DCI-P3 and it's just not on offer. My 2-year-old $450 phone has P3 coverage, but almost nothing in the laptop space does.
who buys these instead of Lenovos for running Linux on?<p>Lenovo T14's are going for 65% of the asking price of one of these, if you don't care about intel vs amd.
The thing about Lenovo is one can get a 4 year, on site, service contract for less than $500. If a keyboard key breaks, no problem, they swap it and come to your house.<p>Over the hears I've had monitor pixels die. They don't care, they'll replace it.<p>And unlike with Apple Lenovo doesn't mind if you replace the hard drive or other components yourself, the warranty is not voided.
When typing, my right fingers always resting covering 4 arrow keys (provided it's a full-sized keyboard and arrow keys are separated from the rest with enough blank space). I use right fingers to reach Home/End/PgUp/PgDn buttons, INSERT/DEL on numeric. So it's quite useful to have them all close-by.
I’ll briefly share the link to much more detailed system documentation. Including tear down/repair instructions:<p><a href="https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/pang11/README.html" rel="nofollow">https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/pang11/README.html</a>
I had a NUC(NUC6i7KYK) that no matter what I tried, I couldn't make WiFi work reliably. Tried Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, tries upgrading the driver blobs from Intel, nothing worked!<p>Then one time for fun I tried Pop!_OS, and lo and behold, never had a problem with WiFi again!<p>Good job System76!
System76 seems to be making good laptops but on side I’m happy with my zephyrus it’s amd 3900HS it has a 3070 for AI and it’s 200/300 $ more and has a great Linux community. Not sure what system76 value prop is on that market.
I really appreciate how affordable upgrades (RAM, Storage etc) are. I am not used to it. Apple adds a hefty premium on these upgrades (I understand this is not a 1:1 comparison). Configuration looks really solid and affordable!
Is it coreboot-based? Modern laptops firmware is bigger than Linux kernel and has too much crap inside. Intel is openly hostile to the open source firmware, while it's theoretically possible to do that on AMD systems.
The DIY laptop (fixable) are also here:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28375184" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28375184</a>
Unfortunately, it looks like <<a href="https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/pang10/README.html" rel="nofollow">https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/pang10/README.html</a>> the Pangolin line has several non-open blobs in the firmware, so it's unclear if you can disable the AMD Platform Security Processor.<p>The only available tech specs seem to be for pang10 not pang11 hardware, maybe this will change.
Pretty much no details about the display. What kind of panel is this? What's the maximum brightness? How fast is the refresh rate? How large is the color gamut?
One thing I notice in this and Framework's laptop is how much space we are trading for upgradability. Both SO-DIMM and M2 are massive. I guess for 2TB option you need M2 2280 rather than the 2242 variant. But SO-DIMM is just huge, and you need two of them. Compared to M1 which has LPDDR5 within the package, and SSD Controller Built in.<p>We need something that combined the Dual Channel Support within one Slot and at least half the width of SO-DIMM.
How well can it be repaired?<p>To be completely honest, the framework laptop makes me realize I'd rather buy a laptop that can be repaired rather than a linux laptop...
Kinda interesting that this has a 49 Wh battery while the smaller and less powerful Lemur Pro has a 73 Wh one [1]. I have the 2020 Lemur Pro and love the ridiculously long battery life. I guess this is more of a plug it in most of the day machine vs. an ultralight.<p>[1] <a href="https://system76.com/laptops/lemur" rel="nofollow">https://system76.com/laptops/lemur</a>
Would have been a go-to viable option had it not been for the Framework Laptops and the Apple Silicon lineup.<p>I doubt the battery life on this thing is going to last a single day or even more than 12 hours compared with the Apple Silicon laptops out there or even the upcoming M1X Laptops.<p>Hence this, I am in no hurry to rush into buying this contraption and will just skip it for the alternatives.
Does anyone know how much power this draws when idle? With a 49WH battery and assuming 5W idle (which is what you can get the 4k series ryzen mobile down to on windows on a good day), that's just under 10 hours. Anyone have any tighter numbers? I would seriously consider buying this if I could actually expect 10 hours battery pretty consistently.
Why is it so hard to find laptops with ECC memory?<p>Surely SO-DIMMs are just as susceptible to bitflips as regular Desktop DIMMs?<p>Am I the only one to care about this?
I wonder about AMD support, I've been running Pop OS on a Thinkpad A285 for a while and the computer freezes pretty consistently. I'm not sure if it's related to video playback but it seems like it might be a pattern.<p>I've tried multiple kernel versions to no avail.
I love the idea of System76. But the low budget keyboards on their rebranded hardware don’t do it for me.<p>I heard they planned to manufacture their own machines recently, but I’d rather buy a ThinkPad for the awesome keyboard than gamble on whatever keyboard they’re using now.
I like and support anyone trying to do a Linux laptop, but sorry System76 -- I hate, hate, hate your keyboard layout. Awful!<p>Take a look at the keyboard layout before you decide to purchase a system. Also, ask yourself if you shouldn't just be getting a Dell instead.
What's up with these designs? Their laptops look like they are a few years behind, compared to MacBooks/XPS/Surface/etc.<p>1080p on 15" is quite criminal, do they think people look at this at 2 meter distance or something?
Nice specs. I wonder why they don't offer 1x16G (instead of 2x8G) or 1x32G (instead of 2x16G) RAM options though - that would leave the other slot free for a future upgrade.
Disappointed at display resolution. I'm forever waiting for a laptop with AMD CPU, no dedicated GPU, 4K built-in display, enough RAM, a few USB port and a Ethernet.
I find it a little weird when integrated graphics is mentioned as prominently as such in marketing copy. "Ryzen CPU + Radeon graphics = Mobile AMD laptop."