[HN Gopher] System76 Virgo Aims to Be the Quietest yet Most Perf...
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System76 Virgo Aims to Be the Quietest yet Most Performant Linux
Laptop
Author : mikece
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-05-29 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.phoronix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.phoronix.com)
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't need the fastest, I want long battery life, which is
| often opposed to the fastest goal. I'm hoping to get one when it
| is released, but of course I will need to see the specs first.
| I'm mostly happy with my pinebookpro, but once in a while it is
| lacking
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| A balance is what's best for most people buying laptops -- not
| the _fastest_ , but fast, quiet, cool, and efficient.
|
| Laptop manufacturers have a tendency to lean into the
| performance aspect at the steep cost of the other three aspects
| because it's easy to dump more power into the CPU and push the
| fans harder to make up the difference. Achieving balance takes
| engineering chops that many of these manufacturers lack or
| don't care to procure.
| jfb wrote:
| I doubt that the HW engineers at Clevo or wherever are
| categorically that much worse than those at Apple or Lenovo,
| and the differing places their machines sit in the quality
| manifold is very much more a question of margins than
| ability.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I want long battery life_
|
| Check for "fanless laptops" and for CPUs with low TDP as a
| lead;
|
| consider if your routine involves a car/t the purchase of an
| adequate "powerbank", probably a "power station" made of a
| battery and a good inverter (e.g. Jackery).
| smabie wrote:
| Just buy a m2 mac then?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| I basically want a MacBook equivalent that runs Linux as a first
| class OS
|
| Which means: great display, battery life, keyboard, light and
| thin (for couch use), and then to be available to try before I
| buy in some form. Eg, visiting a store to try the
| display/keyboard. Or else, free returns.
|
| (nice trackpads are traps: MacOS makes you rely on their great
| trackpad, but it makes you more prone to RSI in the long run to
| use a trackpad all the time. Better to use gnome with its great
| keyboard shortcuts)
|
| I wish system76 would put better displays in their machines. I
| hope virgo goes with 1440p or higher. This whole in-house laptop
| project is very encouraging, I cna't wait to see what they're
| building in 10 years
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| You forget software. I have great 3-rd party display for my
| laptop, but with Linux it's often software that doesn't support
| that. Text looks too small, often times there is no scaling
| possible. Because of that I use Windows + WSL
| 7e wrote:
| You won't get it. Apple makes killer hardware and pretty decent
| integrated software. Great hardware/software integration is a
| lot of work and OSS devs just aren't up to the task.
| gigatexal wrote:
| I'm hoping the Asahi folks get us there. Which is why I help
| support their efforts with a monthly donation.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I'm waiting for my framework laptop specifically for this. easy
| to swap parts, ryzen and they do support linux. in my book, its
| the best bet for a premium linux laptop as long as you're not
| doing heavy ML. (at least not till the 15" version is out)
| loudmax wrote:
| I suspect this isn't the direction that System76 is pursuing with
| Virgo, but Linux is in a good position to take advantage of Arm
| CPUs. Linux isn't tied to legacy software that only runs on x86
| in the same way that proprietary OS's are. This distinction isn't
| absolute, but given that most Linux software is open source, it's
| relatively easier to make this transition.
|
| "Most performant" is a tall order. The traditional benefit of Arm
| has been efficiency, not compute power, but Apple has shown
| what's possible with their M1/M2 designs.
| gigatexal wrote:
| I wish they'd take RISC-V and made a formidable laptop from
| that. A fully, 100% open one.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It would be interesting if Nvidia went this route. They've got
| the chops to design a competitive modern ARM core, plus
| experience with the more difficult GPU/vector processing units.
| They kinda signaled their interest with the attempted ARM
| purchase a while ago, but that fizzled out quick.
|
| That ship has sailed, though. The licensing of ARM puts them in
| an unfavorable position, which only incentivizes Nvidia to
| focus on GPU sales and RISC-V skunkworks. They've still got
| their Grace ARM system coming "soon", but I'd be surprised if
| they bothered to update their current Orin systems. It feels
| like no one besides Apple and maybe Qualcomm have an incentive
| to deliver consumer ARM hardware right now. To compete with
| Apple you need a custom core, and building a custom core takes
| time and money. The few stakeholders who _can_ deliver a
| quality ARM experience are probably scheming to cut ARM out of
| the picture entirely.
| wmf wrote:
| Orin is close to a laptop processor already.
| ss108 wrote:
| As someone who owned 2 System76 machines, I would not say that
| noise ranks very high among issues they should tackle.
| rektide wrote:
| It's just a tweet, I won't hold it against anyone, but if your
| goal is "quietest yet most performant" you will almost certainly
| fail.
|
| Someone will outcool you & you will lose, baring some
| breakthrough in cooling technology. (Solid state cooling could do
| it but AFAIK hasn't scaled up yet & already takes significant
| size. https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/23/zotac-pi430aj-
| pico-m...)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| just a datapoint, but AsahiLinux on my M2 is super fast. if
| Apple were to help them with drivers, i suspect that would be
| tough to surpass.
| jfb wrote:
| I'm very interested in seeing what they come up with. The
| existing laptops are, IIRC, rebadged Clevo (or some other OEM).
| It's a big risk, pulling more of that design in-house, but I'm
| hoping they can do it.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| I came here to make a snarky comment about their keyboards, but
| the keyboard shown in the article looks extremely good.
| skavi wrote:
| It's interesting that it looks exactly like a ThinkPad's, with
| the concave keycaps and red trackpoint/buttons.
|
| If it feels the same, that's a very good thing.
| wander_homer wrote:
| That's because this is a ThinkPad keyboard. I'll highly doubt
| that they will get a license to use those by default. They
| either have to come up with their own design or make it
| compatible with a ThinkPad keyboard, which you then have to
| buy and install yourself.
| rektide wrote:
| Definitely a Lenovo TrackPoint. I use a Bluetooth version quite
| regularly.
| aigoochamna wrote:
| It is a think pad keyboard, it even has the windows key logo
| on it.
| sharms wrote:
| It is a Thinkpad keyboard because it fits the tracepoint module
| they are looking to integrate:
| https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1662551130768044032
| neilv wrote:
| Very interesting. With a good TrackPoint implementation
| (including getting the buttons right), and a decent touchpad
| for people who prefer that, I could see standardizing on it
| for fleet laptops.
|
| They have even better open source thinking than Lenovo (which
| inherited some good thinking from IBM), and the US provenance
| is significant to some companies.
|
| (Though I'd probably standardize on Debian Stable rather than
| PopOS.)
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