[HN Gopher] System76's Lemur Pro Laptop Is Just a Nice Linux Laptop
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System76's Lemur Pro Laptop Is Just a Nice Linux Laptop
Author : pbui
Score : 141 points
Date : 2023-11-09 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I've used System76's products for a decade now, and always been
| happy. Recently, my (non-techie) wife and teenage daughter
| started using them as well, and they're happy as well.
| tivert wrote:
| https://system76.com/laptops/lemur:
|
| > Display 14.1'' 1920x1080 FHD, Matte Finish
|
| I'll pass. It has a 16:9 display.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I'm still using 1080p monitors in 2023, with the exception of
| my Surface Book 2 which I don't use nearly as much (I
| prioritize my personal desktop way more). I game on 1080p I
| just don't have desk space for 32" 4k monitors, and I dont see
| any value in having 4k under a 14" monitor.
| eviks wrote:
| There are resolutions between 4k and 1080p, as well as
| monitor sizes bellow 32
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I agree, but the complaint is about aspect ratio, or more
| specifically about the wasted space / unnecessarily smaller
| screen within the chassis.
|
| Similar to op, I won't buy a 16:9 laptop anymore. It can be
| 1920x1200, though, that's still sufficient for smaller
| laptops.
| redundantly wrote:
| 1920x1200 is 16:10. Huge difference from 16:9, amazingly
| enough.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Interesting, I have been stuck in 1080p land so I have not
| tried 1200, maybe if I get the chance I'll check that
| resolution out. I am debating making a small jump to "2k"
| since its between 4K and 1080p, but I get the feeling those
| monitors are not quite as common as the other two
| resolutions, and I'm not sure if it'll be truly worth it.
| This is in terms of a desktop, not a laptop, but I could
| see the argument for 1920x1200 for a laptop, seems more
| reasonable to me.
| treis wrote:
| I notice a big difference with 2K at 13". Text looks much
| nicer and there's a lot more useable real estate.
| rbanffy wrote:
| $1150 for an 8GB PC laptop is very high. It's the price of a 13"
| MacBook Air with twice the storage.
|
| A better option would be a low-end Dell that works just as well
| with Linux and costs perhaps half as much. I am yet to see a low-
| end Dell that doesn't excel with Linux.
| portmanteaufu wrote:
| EDIT: The parent post originally said "$1,500 for 8GB". I'll
| leave this anyway.
|
| > The Lemur Pro *starts at $1,150 for an Intel i5 machine with
| 8 GB of RAM* and a 256-GB SSD.
|
| For $179[1], you can upgrade it to 40GB of RAM for a total of
| $1,329.
|
| [1] https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
| arein3 wrote:
| Do they just stick a 32gb in the other slot? Seems like dual
| channel will not work correctly if one stick is 8gb and the
| other 32
| pprotas wrote:
| It's possible that there is no dual channel, so the laptop
| would not take a performance hit due to mismatched sticks.
|
| I can not tell the configuration of the slots from their
| specs page [0].
|
| Their configuration page [1] confirms that it's 8GB+32GB to
| get the 40GB.
|
| Why wouldn't they just offer 2x16GB to get the dual-channel
| memory? Unless, of course, the laptop does not support
| dual-channel memory...
|
| --
|
| [0]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs
|
| [1]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
| turminal wrote:
| Most likely the motherboard has 8GB soldered on, they do
| that with a lot of laptops these days unfortunately.
| redleader55 wrote:
| This is my guess too. It's a very weird design decision,
| especially for a developer targeted laptop. I would
| probably be less unhappy with a 16 GB RAM chip soldered,
| but than an 8 GB one.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > so the laptop would not take a performance hit due to
| mismatched sticks.
|
| My impression is that it would take a performance hit
| because it can't "RAID-0" the memory sticks as it'd do if
| they were the same size.
| pprotas wrote:
| My wording is confusing, by "not taking a performance
| hit" I mean that the performance of the 32GB stick is not
| limited to the lesser 8GB stick, like it would have been
| with dual channel.
|
| Of course, dual channel is always better than single
| channel, and it gives you a performance boost if you have
| 2 of the same stick.
| macNchz wrote:
| Upgrading beyond the base spec is a very different game between
| the two: a base 13" MBA with maxed memory and disk (24GB/2TB)
| is $2300, whereas machine with the same upgrades is $1470.
| runamuck wrote:
| You get an artisanal laptop created by passionate Linux
| enthusiasts that work for a Small Business in Oregon.
| ebb_earl_co wrote:
| It's Denver, CO, not Oregon:
| https://system76.com/manufacturing
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I paid 700 euros for a Samsung Ibook two years ago. i5, 16GB,
| 256GB SSD, intel iris xe graphics. Not a performance monster,
| obviously and I use a mac book for work. But I can run Manjaro
| on it and I can even do some lightweight gaming on it via
| steam. All the important stuff works. And it even manages to
| not look cheap (even though it is). Nice aluminium, quiet and
| effective cooling, etc.
|
| So, this thing seems a bit expensive for what is effectively
| yet another generic laptop with the usual underwhelming meh
| screen, crappy trackpad, etc. Exactly the weak points of my
| setup as well. But a lot more reasonably priced.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Even the XPS 13 developers edition does have issues.
|
| After the way netbooks went down, I have either used OS X, or
| Windows with VMWare/Virtual Box when needed.
|
| Now with WSL there is one thing less to install, although with
| managed languages I hardly care as they abstract the underlying
| OS for the most part, or I just connect to a cloud instance.
|
| Stil own an aging Asus 1215B, though.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| It's ok.
|
| Webcam is potato, speakers are webcam sized and only one usb c
| port right next to the dc charge jack.
|
| Ditch the barrel jack, give me a thunderbolt port on both sides
| and increase the trackpad size and I'll overlook the webcam
| speakers and cramped display.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| It's a nice computer but calling it "repairable" is a farce, and
| System76's customer support is unfortunately woefully inadequate.
|
| I have one of these and spilled a drink on my keyboard, getting
| it replaced was $300 of parts and labor, but the worst thing was
| it took almost 2 months pressuring their support reps to actually
| complete the process and they would frequently just not respond
| to messages, or ignore information I provided or clarified.
|
| Pop_OS! is really nice to be fair. I've also had issues with
| build quality. My Gazelle's screen stopped working when the
| computer ran out of power and had a bent wire when I opened it
| up. Again they wanted hundreds of dollars to fix it, even though
| it was clearly a manufacturing defect. When they sent the
| computer back the chassis was cracked.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Counterpoint: my keyboard on my lemur pro died and they shipped
| me a new part in like 2 days and I had it swapped in 40 mins.
|
| https://partofthething.com/thoughts/replacing-the-keyboard-o...
| Errsher wrote:
| I have also had very poor customer support from them, closing
| tickets randomly on me with no follow up.
| runamuck wrote:
| I had a good experience with System76 customer Support. I
| contacted them on Wednesday July 13th and they responded that
| Monday July 18th. They sent me a label immediately, I shipped
| it to them and with shipping time both ways I got my laptop
| back on the following Friday, July 29th.
| tech_ken wrote:
| I've replaced the battery once and the wifi card twice, the
| second time in SFO at a cafe table with some random screwdriver
| I stole from the office. The internal layout is SO easy to open
| up and put back together, and all the parts and instructions
| for repair are posted on their website (and are super easy to
| navigate!). Idk why you would say "farce" but that seems
| extremely strong. I guess it's kind of inconvenient that they
| didn't fix the laptop you broke in a timespan you liked, but
| that's got nothing to do with the thing's "repairability".
| troyvit wrote:
| That's only one side of the "repairable" coin though. They
| offer a deep list of thorough manuals for those who want to DIY
| their repair.[1]
|
| I agree though that getting the parts for the repairs can be a
| hassle.
|
| [1] https://support.system76.com/articles/guides/
| ekimekim wrote:
| Chiming in with my customer support experience: My battery
| started to inflate after a bit over a year. I did some research
| and knew their warranty didn't cover this, but I contacted
| support anyway for help with finding a replacement.
|
| They weren't able to ship me a replacement battery due to
| international shipping restrictions but were very helpful by
| giving me the part number to look for and linking to their very
| good docs on how to do a battery replacement yourself. In the
| end I was able to have them ship a replacement battery to a
| friend with a US address, and doing the actual replacement was
| very easy.
| acomjean wrote:
| I had similar. Contacted them, they didn't have the part but
| had the Clevo part # for the fan which was easy to buy and
| replace.
| saltminer wrote:
| That's unfortunate. I got a Lemu4 (Lemur Ultra) back in 2012
| and one of the biggest reasons I went with them as opposed to a
| Dell or another laptop considered to run Linux well was because
| their support staff were well-trained and quick to respond
| (usually replied to my support messages same-day and their
| phone support consistently had <5 minute hold times).
|
| That said, I never had to send my laptop off to them, as they
| were more than happy to send replacement parts to me when the
| fan bearings failed. They even sent me an optical drive caddy
| for free well after I had purchased the device (there was no
| hardware fault, I just wanted to install another drive and they
| didn't sell the caddy as a standalone part).
| FFP999 wrote:
| Given my experience with System76 laptops, I know they can make a
| good impression at first, but after seeing how flimsy they are in
| long-term use, I can't justify the markup. You can get a better
| sturdier laptop with good Linux compatibility cheaper elsewhere.
| AndyPa32 wrote:
| I have one running almost all the time. Bought it three years
| ago and it just works.
|
| When I bought it, there was the option to not include a
| separate Graphics card. Onboard is just fine for me. And that
| brought down the price considerably.
|
| However, they currently don't have that many AMD options for
| Laptops, so my next one probably won't be System76.
|
| PopOS never did it for me. Not once did it survive a system
| upgrade. So I just switched back to Debian.
| FFP999 wrote:
| I've had two System76 machines, so I'm one anecdote ahead of
| you here.
| troyvit wrote:
| My anecdata is that I used a galp6 since 2013 as a daily driver
| for years. It stayed in service in one way or another for ten
| years. The battery became useless but everything else was rock
| solid.
| winkwinkwink wrote:
| After almost 10 years of wanting a computer from System76, I
| was finally able to afford one and bought a Galago Pro 5
| (galp5) in 2022. Since then I've come to deeply regret that
| decision.
|
| I've replaced the keyboard within the first month because it
| shipped warped. It recently started to "ignore" key presses and
| needs to be replaced again (according to support without any
| diagnostics). $90 for the part that saw minimal use? No thanks.
|
| The machine doesn't handle undocking well so it stays plugged
| all the time. Image burn even with power saving enabled? You
| betcha!
|
| I hate to gripe. I really want them to succeed but it's just
| been one disappointment after another. Before buying I had read
| the posts referencing build quality and should have taken heed.
| amir734jj wrote:
| I have a System 76 laptop that I bought it 4 years ago. It has
| reliable. Although PopOS has not been reliable. Their support and
| customer service is great. Drivers work and I'm happy with it.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I stuck with PopOS for a bit after getting my Lemur Pro, but in
| the end switched back to debian. IMO PopOS just isn't a serious
| OS focused on stability.
|
| The laptop is pretty good though.
| minzi wrote:
| In my opinion, if you have the money, a Razer or Asus laptop is
| the highest quality machine that you can get to run Linux. Of
| course there is also Framework, but those are not as well built
| in my opinion. Personally, I have the new Blade 14 and it is
| great. Large trackpad, 16:10, 6 hours of battery life (pretty
| good for linux) and an RTX 4070. That said, it is absurdly
| expensive.
| redundantly wrote:
| In my experience both ASUS and Razer are terrible brands. Poor
| support. Poor build qualities. Getting drivers for Razer is
| like pulling teeth, especially for previous gen hardware.
| Keyboard lighting controls for Razer requiring cloud connected
| software. _Hard_ pass on both for me.
| minzi wrote:
| I think you are correct about the history of Razer products,
| but this latest line up has been very solid. I had issues
| with the first laptop I got. It turned out to be a software
| issue and I got support within a day and they patched the
| problem within a week. I should also add that they have
| battery limiting features now and a two year battery
| warranty. Those two improvements protect you from 90% of the
| bad experiences people report with these laptops.
|
| Asus I have had consistently bad experiences with and that is
| why I tried Razer. Of course this is all just my personal
| experience and I doubt either is perfect.
|
| As far as needing cloud connected software to configure Razer
| hardware: that is simply false. The laptop is configured via
| an embedded usb interface that you can send reports to in
| Linux. There are open source projects that make this
| particularly easy to do.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| ASUS used to be my goto for quality on some items long time
| ago, but it has changed drastically in recent years. Sadly,
| it is just a reminder that one should not rely on brand
| recognition. Things change. Do research. Talk to people.
| leeman2016 wrote:
| Personally, I find ThinkPads and any of the Dell laptops
| without discrete graphics cards, reliable for Linux.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Same here.
| nasso_ wrote:
| > Among other things, this means that modern forms of suspend
| work out of the box
|
| That sounds very promising. That has always been a major
| annoyance to me. I don't think i have every owned a laptop with
| linux where I actually trusted that it would still have battery
| the day after if I just closed the lid.
| bgribble wrote:
| I may have misunderstood, but I did not read this as saying "S3
| suspend works". I read it as "'Modern suspend' works, so I
| don't have to keep trying to get S3 suspend working".
|
| That is basically the opposite of what you want. 'Modern
| suspend' is why you burn battery with the lid closed, overheat
| your laptop when it's closed in a backpack, etc. It sucks. It's
| not sleeping in any real sense and can power up to full power
| if a fly farts too close to the microphone.
|
| For better or worse (worse IMO), I think that what we knew as
| "suspend to RAM" or S3 is gone forever. It was apparently just
| too hard to get working reliably with all the peripheral
| hardware and they gave up.
|
| Everything I have read says that for any recent laptop, if you
| want reliable suspending that won't burn battery you have to
| always "hibernate" or "suspend to disk". It takes longer to
| start back up but initializes all the peripherals from "off" so
| it can be more reliable.
|
| I'm still working with my older HP laptop that has legit S3 and
| am dreading an upgrade to a "modern" one.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| I have the same experience with various Lenovo laptops
| running Windows. However, whatever Apple does on MacBooks
| works. I can close the lid, slide it into my backpack on
| Friday and open it on Monday with virtually the same battery
| level.
| mkesper wrote:
| You can set it to "non-Windows" (aka real) standby in the
| BIOS settings. If you can't find it in settings, this might
| help: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_t
| o_disab...
| ahoneybun wrote:
| It's a tough spot since you need S0ix (modern suspend) for
| Windows 11 to work but you need S3 for Intel ME to be turned
| off so you would have to pick one or the other.
| fulafel wrote:
| "Modern suspend" is a specific technical term for the suspend
| system from Intel and MS that's supposed to supersede S3
| suspend. It's supposed to let the OS do stuff like poll emails
| and download software updates while in the suspend state.
| Modern suspend typically has the problem you describe with both
| Windows and Linux since its teething problems have continued
| for a long time.
| haspok wrote:
| Please someone show this to the Tuxedo guys, as their supplier is
| the same (Clevo), but apparently it IS possible to get the
| Lenovo-style 6-button cursor arrangement in this form factor, and
| as a bonus, with separate Home/End/Ins/Del! I will never buy a
| laptop without this.
|
| Does System76 ship laptops with an ISO keyboard layout? I don't
| see this as a configuration option.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Clevo is one of System76s suppliers, many of the newer ones
| aren't as far as I understand. Not sure about the Lemur
| specifically.
| thatcherc wrote:
| > System76 claims 14 hours, and I managed 11 hours in our battery
| drain test (looping a 1080p video). In real-world use, I
| frequently eked out over 13 hours. That's off the charts better
| than any other Linux laptop I've tested recently.
|
| This is the most intriguing part to me. I've been mulling a
| Framework for a while but what's held be back so far is that the
| battery life is 9-10 hours after tuning, and I'd love it to be
| longer. 11 hours of continuous video on this laptop is pretty
| impressive for a Linux laptop I think. My Dell XPS 13 feels like
| it needs to go onto the charger every 4 hours so this would be a
| huge improvement.
| cassepipe wrote:
| They have a new battery with more capacity on their marketplace
| now I believe.
| jwells89 wrote:
| If battery life is a focal point, one model that may be worth
| considering is the HP Dragonfly G4, which from the reviews I've
| seen gets 13-20 hours depending on the test. That's under
| Windows though, not sure how it'd fare with Linux.
|
| I've been underwhelmed with my ThinkPad's performance in this
| aspect and have been considering trading it in for a G4 for
| this reason.
| buster3000 wrote:
| Why in god's name are they _still_ using 1080p displays?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Looks good to me on that size screen, helps with long battery
| life?
| buster3000 wrote:
| 1080p even on a 13" (XPS) is too small for me and has been
| for a long time (IBM X31).
|
| My X1 Carbons (2nd gen) 1440p is the bare minimum for me and
| thats almost 10yrs old!
| prmoustache wrote:
| battery life.
| buster3000 wrote:
| Fair enough. If that's what's important to them.
| discmonkey wrote:
| Figure I might as well drop a quick review after 2 years with the
| lemur pro 11
|
| Pros:
|
| * Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after
| working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly
| plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one usb-c
| cable. That being said I think things have generally gotten
| better in the space so this may not be as much of a selling point
| anymore. Additionally this laptop doesn't have an nvidia gpu,
| which means its job is easier.
|
| * Great compatibility for building software between my desktop
| and this laptop, makes my personal dev work a lot more portable.
|
| * It's quite small and very portable.
|
| * Nice keyboard
|
| * Moral points for supporting a small company that focuses on
| security (whether this is actually significant is up to the
| reader)
|
| Cons:
|
| * Battery life is a lie, especially since it drains almost as
| much battery closed as it does open.
|
| * Not great screen, terrible trackpad, and silly webcam
| considering the price of the laptop.
|
| * As mentioned no gpu, while costing about the same as razor
| laptop.
|
| Overall, I think I am probably going to switch back to a macbook
| after this, not being able to go a day without charging and your
| laptop always being on low battery is a bit anxiety inducing.
| Also (and this doesn't matter to a lot of people) I really value
| a laptop trackpad and this one is just plain bad.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after
| working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly
| plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one
| usb-c cable.
|
| I think any laptop sold in the last 4 or 5 years or so is
| plugged and charged with an usb-c cable and can be docked that
| way.
| jhtrgefh wrote:
| you'd think so, but my two year old msi delta 15 gaming
| laptop can't.
|
| it has a 240w barrel plug and two usb-c ports. one usb-c port
| can be used for displayport, neither for charging.
| all2 wrote:
| Arguably it needs that 240W barrel plug. My current
| business class laptop also has one of those barrel plugs.
| bitwize wrote:
| Any of the super-thin ones, sure. But there are portable
| workstations and gaming rigs still hench enough to need a
| floor wart.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Agree with your pros, but not your cons. Mine is a bit newer,
| so it might be a bit different (?).
|
| Feel the trackpad and screens are totally fine. (Although low
| res for the 13' version).
|
| Very happy with mine, specially how small and light it is. This
| is my 3rd "ultra portable", and it might be the lightest one
| yet.
| discmonkey wrote:
| Glad you are! I don't want to be overly negative. I am
| comparing my M2 work macbook trackpad with my 2 year old
| lemur pro trackpad - it's not really a fair comparison. The
| problem is that the pricing is similar enough where it's hard
| to justify the hardware downgrade.
|
| I should also mention that my free time to work on projects
| has dramatically decreased in the past few years, so I am
| valuing the ability to seamlessly switch between my desktop
| and laptop on personal projects less than I used to.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _* Nice keyboard_
|
| Hang on, I thought this was still Clevo stuff. I bought a
| Clevo-ODM laptop a decade or so ago, the keyboard was atrocious
| in feel (no click left _at all_ on most keys, just linearish
| sponginess) and activation (e.g. _Space_ was quite difficult to
| activate, _A_ would very regularly double-activate) within two
| years. And I know I've heard similar complaints regularly since
| then from others.
| discmonkey wrote:
| yeah - as seen from a few comments on my post, everyone has
| different opinions on non-objective stuff related to
| keyboard/trackpad. I feel like the keyboard is pretty
| responsive while the trackpad isn't, but the only way for you
| to know is to have tried it I guess.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Keyboards don't have to be non objective. I think everyone
| agrees that ThinkPad keyboards were great (though since the
| T14s gen3 they too have lost their quality)
| powersnail wrote:
| A friend back in college absolutely hated the ThinkPad
| keyboards, (thought they were too deep and bouncy) and
| loved Macbook's butterfly keyboard when it came out,
| marveling at the short travel and crisp feeling of it.
| It's indeed quite subjective.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Ugh, I considered those butterfly keyboards literally
| unusable. I refused a new Macbook from work over it.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I'm not talking about subjective things, I'm talking about
| keyboards objectively wearing out 3-10x as fast as _any_
| reputable brand's. I've deliberately filtered for objective
| cases like my own, including querying specifically on the
| nature of what was bad in at least a couple of cases. I'm
| not talking about opinions, I'm talking about a keyboard
| becoming decidedly spongy in less than one year (compare
| the feel of the least- and most-frequently-used keys--on
| ones like ASUS and Microsoft, it's taken _much_ longer than
| that before I can readily discern any difference), and and
| almost uselessly bad within two years, in ways that other
| companies' haven't failed in four years (... though others
| haven't been without their problems, but I've never had one
| get anywhere near as bad in general in three or four years
| as the Clevo one was after a little over one year).
| panick21_ wrote:
| System76 is working with Clevo but increasingly with other
| vendors where they have some more input. Most new products
| aren't Clevo is my understanding.
| klooney wrote:
| I mean, maybe they're better after a decade
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Use gnome and your IDEs keyboard shortcuts and you'll almost
| never need to touch your trackpad. Until it's time to use a web
| app anyway
| jbeard4 wrote:
| Agree, battery life is atrocious. I get typically get 1.5-2
| hours on a charge, after 2.5 years of ownership. I always have
| anxiety about plugging it in. It's the biggest problem with
| this machine.
|
| Other than that, I have been very happy with it. Keyboard,
| trackpad, screen - all adequate for me. In every way other than
| the battery, it pretty much gets out of the way and gets the
| job done.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I wonder why. I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell Latitude and
| battery life hasn't been an issue for me. I probably don't
| really do power-hungry stuff but just browsing, editing code,
| ssh, email, etc. it's been fine.
| all2 wrote:
| I think this might have to do with aggressive CPU
| throttling and backlight brightness. I've noticed both of
| those play a pretty big role in the discharge duration of
| my Dell Latitude.
| ekimekim wrote:
| I've had the complete opposite experience (I replaced their
| Pop OS with Arch Linux). With light usage I get about 10
| hours, if I'm playing games or something then yeah it drops a
| bit but not that much. It easily lasts the duration of an
| intercontinental plane flight which is my primary use-case.
|
| Maybe it's because I don't actually use it all that much, so
| my battery hasn't had many cycles put on it. I only use my
| laptop for travel, normally I have a desktop. That's why I
| went for a small, highly portable model.
| conor- wrote:
| My experience is the same. I replaced Pop with Arch running
| a pretty low-resource desktop setup (i3 and generally
| lightweight programs) and I can get roughly 10 hours with
| very heavy usage: Firefox with a handful of windows/dozens
| and dozens of tabs open, Docker, Spotify, etc.
|
| Not terribly impressive compared to something like the
| newer Apple silicon MacBooks but also not terribly
| offensive considering I don't often work far from an
| available power source for super long stretches.
| tech_ken wrote:
| After about 2 years my battery also lost a lot of it's
| charge-retention, but I replaced it and got back up to the
| >11 hours I was seeing before
| jbeard4 wrote:
| I'm planning to send it in to them this week for some
| repairs (USB-C port stopped working, replace the rubber
| feet, and replace the battery). I have to pay for the
| battery replacement (~$100 I think). Hopefully it improves
| the battery life. IIRC, I was getting 4-5 hours when I
| first got the machine. Never got anywhere close to 11.
| Maybe it's how I'm using it.
| warner25 wrote:
| Wow, I'm surprised to hear this about the battery from you
| guys, as that appears to be one of their top selling points:
| "Most battery life!"
|
| I see that the article describes it as repairable, but is it
| really easy to get and put in a new battery? I don't see them
| for sale on system76.com/components
|
| I _almost_ bought one of these in late 2021 when I was in the
| market for a new Linux machine. They were one of the few
| manufacturers that actually had stuff ready to ship. But I
| wasn 't interested in PopOS and Framework seemed to be
| offering a slightly better deal, so I ended up waiting a
| month for a Framework DIY edition. I've been happy with it
| despite Framework not being truly Linux-first.
| belthesar wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, every System76 laptop is a rebadged
| OEM laptop with an opinionated set of expansion components
| that they've effectively certified as functional in Pop!_OS
| by ensuring good driver and DWM compatibility. I think the
| OEM is Sager, but I'm not confident on that, or if that's
| uniform. Anywho, because of this, it should be reasonably
| possible to source replacement components upstream.
| dooglius wrote:
| Re: Battery life, are you using stock Pop OS or did you put
| something else on? I have also gotten bad battery life but I'm
| pretty sure it is because I installed over it; the battery life
| claimns come as a result of power-saving features built into
| Pop OS.
| jbeard4 wrote:
| I have been using stock PopOS, and my battery life has been
| poor.
| sdtrhub892 wrote:
| >Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after
| working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly
| plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one
| usb-c cable. That being said I think things have generally
| gotten better in the space so this may not be as much of a
| selling point anymore. Additionally this laptop doesn't have an
| nvidia gpu, which means its job is easier.
|
| This might be your experience with System76, but it hasn't been
| mine. My Adder WS had infuriating software problems.
|
| * It would regularly hang when disconnecting from AC. The only
| fix I ever found was a hard-boot.
|
| * When disconnecting from AC, the CPU would sometimes get stuck
| at 800 MHz. The only procedure I found to reliably fix this was
| to reconnect to power, wait a few seconds, disconnect, wait a
| few seconds, and then reconnect.
|
| * It would regularly fail to wake from sleep.
|
| * The screen randomly flashed bright white when suspended, so I
| had to get in the habit of shutting the lid at night to keep it
| from waking me up.
|
| * The fan would get stuck at 100% even when the temperatures
| were at 30deg. Fixing this required sleeping and waking the
| machine.
|
| Maybe some of the problems were caused by Nvidia, but I don't
| much care. The fact remains that I've been using Linux laptops
| since I was in high school and I've never had problems like
| these. Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora all worked well on Dell,
| Framework, IBM, and Lenovo hardware (Yoga, not Thinkpad), as
| well as on my home-built desktops with Nvidia GPUs.
|
| Also some hardware problems:
|
| * The barrel connector was cheap and the power cable would
| regularly fall out. This exacerbated the software problems. The
| machine would get stuck at 800 MHz at least once a day and hang
| every few days.
|
| * The machine was generally cheaply-built. The rubber feet fell
| off, the case creaked and flexed, several keys cracked, small
| plastic bits broke off, etc.
|
| Credit where it is due, System76 support was responsive and
| replaced the mainboard promptly and free of charge. But that
| didn't fix the problems, so not all that much credit is due.
|
| I wound up installing Windows on my System76 and giving it to
| my cousin as a gaming machine. I owned it less than two years.
|
| >Moral points for supporting a small company that focuses on
| security (whether this is actually significant is up to the
| reader)
|
| System76 rebadges Clevo machines and isn't very forthright
| about it. I find that questionable enough to outweigh my
| preference for small businesses.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Want to also add that unless you want to stick with Pop OS!,
| custom firmware will need to be installed, that custom
| firmware conflicts with packages from many distros. Without
| that custom firmware, your fans won't scale properly and you
| will struggle with hardware sleep, battery life, performance
| in general, etc.
|
| Ironic that distro hopping on a linux-first laptop becomes
| difficult. But, priorities, I guess.
|
| Maybe being stuck on Pop isn't an issue for some, but for
| those of us who don't like a UI locked in brown and teal that
| isn't being updated because they are writing their own entire
| (also ugly) DE, it is a problem.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Usb-C connections being unstable in Linux is definitely still a
| thing. My Asus laptop (amd cpu/gpu) works about 50% of the
| time, and the other 50 it keeps blinking the monitor on and
| off.
|
| I can fix this by plugging in hdmi first, then back to usb-c.
| Some sort of hardware reset gets executed that way, I suppose.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > As mentioned no gpu, while costing about the same as razor
| laptop.
|
| Consider the lack of GPU a blessing. You absolutely do not want
| a hybrid NVIDIA GPU laptop, unless you want to sit with it
| plugged in at a desk while the fans try and keep the GPU from
| melting through the case. Worse battery life. With absolutely
| not a single other tangible benefit.
|
| Unless you are using the GPU for machine learning or w/e, in
| that case, the only utility it has.
| ipdashc wrote:
| Interesting, I've found hybrid GPU laptops to be pretty
| practical. I've had two over the years and on my newer one I
| installed PopOS, and there's a setting which puts it in
| hybrid mode, so by default the discrete GPU stays off, but
| you can run a program with some environmental vars and get it
| to use the Nvidia GPU.
|
| When I'm not running a game, I get plenty of battery life out
| of it (4-6 hours or so?) and when I run a game I get decent
| performance. Exactly what I wanted. I haven't tried ML yet
| but I don't see why it'd be any different.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > but you can run a program with some environmental vars
| and get it to use the Nvidia GPU
|
| Other than for gaming, which isn't worth it to do on a
| laptop anyway, I have seen no reason for this. Most
| discrete GPUs do a better job with drawing UI elements than
| a GPU anyway.
| acomjean wrote:
| I have a system pangolin (AMD 6800) and I can get 5-8 hours
| routinely. Daily driving for work and it's been great.
|
| My 6 year old oryx pro gets about 2 hours (on nvidia). It can
| game though... (steam is kinda amazing)
|
| I really like matt screens which all these laptops have.
| pimterry wrote:
| Why on earth have they shipped with a USB-C that you can charge
| from _and_ a barrel charging connector? Article says exactly the
| same power delivery on both.
|
| Anybody know what's going on there? Why not drop the barrel and
| put something else there (like another USB)? Seems bizarre.
| canadianwriter wrote:
| If you use the barrel jack you now have an extra USB port you
| can use for stuff!
|
| If you forget your barrel jack connector you can borrow a USB
| charger and it'll work!
|
| Win-win!
| pimterry wrote:
| Couldn't you replace it with another USB-C though? Then you'd
| always have an extra USB you can use for stuff!
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| I'm sure you could, but another USB-C port is certainly
| more expensive than a barrel plug. How significantly this
| affects the BOM I can't say, but due to the complexity of
| USB-C I assume it's not totally negligible.
|
| If you want the port to handle PD, various (display) alt
| modes, high speed data transfer, maybe even TB, you may
| need a few additional controllers. OTOH having multiple
| USB-C ports with varying capabilities can be quite
| confusing.
| fulafel wrote:
| Don't know their reasons but seems wise to me: USB-C tends to
| get clogged with lint easily. Also charging port breakage due
| to handling accidents is pretty common eg by accidentally
| pulling/twisting the connector sideways, good to have
| redundancy there.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Last time I tried a System 76 laptop it was great when I was
| plugged in at my desk doing dev work. Better than a Macbook Pro.
|
| But when I had to unplug it in the office to go to a meeting it
| was just terrible... support for plugging/unplugging external
| monitors/docks was atrocious, I had wifi issues, and doing
| something like a Zoom meeting (Webex at the time) would reduce
| it's battery life to 1 hour or less. Stuff just got messed up
| using it as a laptop that was getting used at the desk and then
| not at the desk.
|
| That was quite some time ago, I hope the software has gotten
| better. I stopped using it cause I was messing with linux too
| much instead of doing my work. That was depressing, cause it was
| kind of the same story as every time I've tried to use linux on
| the desktop back to the 90s.
| noobermin wrote:
| I'm team barrel connector after having broken many usb-c ports.
| That's a plus not a minus.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm team usb-c after having broken many barrel connector ports.
| That's a plus not a minus.
|
| I'm also team usb-c because it is extremely nice having one
| charger that can charge any of my devices instead of needing a
| charger for my laptop, a charger for my phone, a charger for my
| tablet, on and on
| mortallywounded wrote:
| I have been using a Lemur Pro (lemp11) for ~14 months as my daily
| driver (coming from a Macbook Pro). It's my main machine and has
| been running constantly the entire time (auto suspends at night).
| I have powered it off a few times since purchasing it.
|
| I use the Lemur Pro with a USBC dock, two external monitors, a
| keyboard and a mouse when at my desk. I did a few manual
| upgrades. I added 32GB of RAM (maxed at 40GB). I also added a
| second NVMe I purchased (4TB).
|
| So far it's my favorite laptop. Here's some pros and cons:
|
| Pros:
|
| - Screen is nice and clear with great color. For a non-Apple
| screen it's great.
|
| - Battery life has been great. I get about 11-13 hours of coding
| (Firefox, Terminal w/tmux+vim @ quarter screen brightness). I
| have used it on full airplane rides, etc. Awesome battery life,
| especially for Linux.
|
| - Video playback is good, even w/1440p@60fps (hardware
| acceleration in Firefox, no frame loss). However, it does get the
| fan blowing.
|
| - Suspend/wake works and detects the dock and connects everything
| perfectly again (mouse, keyboard, monitors, etc).
|
| - Disk speed is amazing. I feel like my old Macbook used to chug
| on disk reads/writes. However, this machine/nvme is blazingly
| fast.
|
| - Pop_OS has been nice. I have no complaints. I used to use a
| bare bones Debian netinstall with a custom DWM setup, but I
| decided to give Pop a try for a year and I have stuck with it.
| It's stable and everything just works.
|
| Cons:
|
| - Fan can be annoying when playing videos or scrolling quickly on
| Youtube.
|
| - When doing a reboot while attached to the USBC dock, it doesn't
| appear to re-connect to the dock post-reboot. I have to turn the
| dock off and back on (or unplug the USBC/re-plug it).
|
| - Webcam is meh-- but I don't use it anyway.
|
| I don't see myself going back to a Macbook. If anything, I may
| take the plunge back into my old custom Debian+DWM setup, but I
| am happy with everything as it is.
| tech_ken wrote:
| Been using a lemp9 since 2020 and I will say that it's good but
| not great. Came to it from an X1 Carbon and it's felt like a
| lateral move, but if you're trying to replace an MBP or something
| I don't think you'll be satisfied.
|
| _Pros_ * The battery life is incredible, that's the one thing
| they totally nailed. For Linux especially that's huge, and is in
| my opinion the absolute selling point of the device. With that
| said, after about 2 years I did notice a steep drop-off in
| performance, going down to like 4-6 hours in the span of a few
| weeks. Replaced the battery and the performance is again A+
|
| * Hardware support is fire, I hop distros a lot and have never
| once had any issues with getting firmware for anything. IIRC
| there was one firmware setting I needed to flip before Arch would
| run properly, but customer support actually talked me through it
| over email which was cool.
|
| * A pretty nice selection of ports (they have port-heavier
| alternatives if that's your thing). The lemp9 just came with
| standard USB-C, which was kind of a hassle for finding a
| compatible docking station, but I believe lemp10+ upgraded to
| thunderboltt.
|
| * Chassis feels pretty premium, comparable to what I was using
| before. No deck flex, hinges are smooth, moderately slow to
| accumulate fingerprints.
|
| _Cons_
|
| Go to /r/system76 and you'll get a lot. Top culprits I've seen
| and experienced are:
|
| * Speakers are very, very bad.
|
| * Keycaps have a coating that erodes over time, which is ugly.
| Can't replace individual keycaps
|
| * Intel options only
|
| * You're using Linux, so be ready for compatibility stuff. PopOS
| is well managed, but at the end of the day you still have to
| contend with ex. the linux audio stack
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Slightly OT, but was looking at system76 mini recently:
| https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat
|
| Can't get any sense of whether the memory is baked in at build
| time, or if I can swap out later. The 'tall' option seems to
| imply there's more room, and that's what I'd need to get to
| manage my own memory, but ... I can't tell. There's no FAQ page,
| and... I was going to send in a question today, but since there's
| a system 76 topic here, thought I'd ask here and see if anyone
| else can shed their experience with the meerkat and after-market
| upgrades.
| ilikepi wrote:
| The hardware docs list the memory as DDR4 SODIMMS...
|
| https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/meer7/repairs.html#rep...
|
| I've been strongly eyeing this model as well, but in the end I
| decided to trade money for risk and acquire a used Dell
| OptiPlex micro from eBay. :crossed_fingers:
| zamalek wrote:
| As a AMD fanboy, I have been using the Pangolin for a few months
| now. I can't currently use PopOS (Intune only works on LTE
| Ubuntu), so I'm not getting the full benefits of the laptop -
| notably the battery life. I get about 5hr with a pretty big stack
| of containers running, as well as working in Rider. This is
| strictly less than the M1 that I was using prior to this laptop.
| A flight-safe Anker battery pack bumps it up to the 10hr I was
| hoping for.
|
| Performance-wise? It makes the M1 look like a complete joke. Our
| MITM proxy (ZScaler, a _truly_ terrible product) is CPU-bound,
| and the M1 would stutter during large container image pulls. I
| don 't notice pulls on the Pangolin - I just keep working while
| they happen in the background. Builds are on the order of 30%
| faster. It also handles two external monitors.
|
| Something is strange with secure boot and the System76 kernel; I
| just couldn't get it working.
|
| Monitor is average, definitely less usable in sunlight (by virtue
| of being actually unusable) than Apple's offerings. Keyboard and
| touchpad are great. I did have some issues with the touchpad, and
| support told me to (gasp!) open the laptop and make sure the
| ribbon cable was seated properly - 10/10 repairability.
| driverdan wrote:
| I'll say the same thing I always say when System76 hardware is
| posted here. A 1080p screen should be a non-starter in 2023. How
| they are still selling these with low DPI screens doesn't make
| sense to me.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| does the window manager support a high dpi screen? I don't mind
| spending money on a high dpi screen; but each time I've been
| disappointed by the poor scaling support. Not sure what the
| point it.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If it reduces costs I'm all for a 1080p screen. I usually pick
| them when I have the option.
| innocenat wrote:
| I love 1080p panel on 13-14" laptop and plan to choose do so if
| given choice. Until 2160p panel become common at least, so I
| don't have to rely on non-integer scaling.
| Saris wrote:
| What's the advantage of more than 1080p on a 13-14" screen?
| Genuine question.
|
| I have 4k for my desktop but that's a 27" monitor.
|
| Wouldn't pushing 4k on a laptop reduce the battery life even
| more?
| jckahn wrote:
| The advantage is crisper text. My eyes aren't the best but I
| can see the difference on my 3.5K 13-inch display.
| mortallywounded wrote:
| I am quite happy with the 1080p resolution on 13/14". Fonts are
| crisp, colors are great. Black is black. I don't see any
| pixels.
|
| Also, battery life is great. I don't need to do any
| xrandr/crazy ENV configs for high DPI guis/etc.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| 1080 @ 14" is above 96 so it's high DPI, but it's not "High DPI
| / HiDPI", terms that imply comfortable 2x scaling.
|
| I spent $150 on my last 1080 14", and the panel is phenomenal.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > A 1080p screen should be a non-starter in 2023
|
| I'm at a point where the screen and battery are essentially the
| only parts of the laptop that matter. Everyone offers a
| selection of ram, storages, CPU, etc. But a good screen and
| battery are hard to find without going to the bigger brands.
| culebron21 wrote:
| I'm glad they didn't put power button on the keyboard as Mac
| copycats do.
|
| But there are no home/end/pgup/pgdn keys, but couple of them
| cramped with cursor keys (I assume home/end and pgup/dn must be
| pressed with Fn).
| kfogel wrote:
| Very happy user of a System76 Lemur Pro laptop (i7, 32 GB RAM, 1
| TB SSD) for the past year, FWIW. I'm running stock Debian on it,
| not System76's Pop!_OS.
|
| I get the kind of battery life the review mentions if I put the
| laptop into "Power Saver" mode. In "Balanced" or especially in
| "Performance" mode the battery doesn't last as long, of course.
| So when I can't be plugged in, I put it into Power Saver mode
| (this is super easy via the Gnome upper-right settings popup
| panel; I assume it would be just as easy in other window
| managers).
|
| I got _great_ customer service from System76 when I ran into a
| hitch at the start of my Debian installation process (TL;DR: see
| Debian bugs #1024346 and #1024720 -- the file ".disk/info"
| existed on the pre-installed Pop!_OS partition; getting rid of
| that enabled the installation to continue). System76 support went
| above and beyond the call of duty in tracking this down and
| solving it, considering that I was installing an OS that wasn't
| even officially supported by them.
|
| Happy customer; would buy again; I get no commission for any of
| this -- I just want to see the company flourish so they're still
| there when it's time for me to upgrade my laptop!
| throw555chip wrote:
| It's great there are companies focused on delivering great Linux
| hardware.
|
| For context though, every Dell and HP laptops and desktops I've
| had the past 12 years has been really great with Linux.
|
| The several Lenovo laptops I've had the past 12 years have been
| great with Linux.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| System76 is doing us all a favor by showing what a Macbook could
| be if it were actually "Pro". Do a spec for price comparison and
| System76 is blowing them out of the water.
|
| * More cores on wider supported chips
|
| * Nvidia Graphics cards that are far better supported for machine
| learning than the M1, M2, M3 series (as i understand, it's not my
| specialty)
|
| * Discrete memory instead of unified
|
| * Market similar prices to storage upgrades (eg $200 for .5 ->
| 2TB instead of $600
|
| Ok a couple cons -- $190 for an extra charger is a bit much, but
| likely due to 330w vs 140w. Also pointing out power draw is much
| higher.
| neilv wrote:
| Needs TrackPoint.
|
| ThinkPads were an early favorite of Linux.
|
| Brands like System76, Purism, and Framework are appealing today.
|
| But we require our TrackPoints.
| pylua wrote:
| The reason I don't have a Linux laptop is simple. There is not
| one that has a touch pad as nice as a mac's. It needs to be large
| and very responsive.
|
| My attempt at Linux at a Chromebook was ruined because of a
| terrible trackpad.
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