[HN Gopher] Tuxedo Pulse Gen 3
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tuxedo Pulse Gen 3
        
       Author : rreyes1979
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2023-11-13 02:33 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tuxedocomputers.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tuxedocomputers.com)
        
       | routerl wrote:
       | EUR1100 base price. Not too bad given the specs.
        
       | pixelpoet wrote:
       | This looks like a great deal and makes me regret my recent laptop
       | purchase :/ Bit of a bummer because I rarely use and upgrade
       | them.
       | 
       | At least now I know where to look for the next one, especially in
       | Germany where it's annoyingly difficult to get a US QWERTY kb.
        
       | kstrauser wrote:
       | `var USB-C_charging = true;` in the screenshot isn't valid
       | JavaScript.
        
         | jeffparsons wrote:
         | The `else` badly wants to be in an expression-oriented
         | language, too.
         | 
         | JavaScript would be a strange choice for "fake code for
         | marketing website" even if it was correct code...
        
           | all2 wrote:
           | You could start the "can I sell this with brainfuck?"
           | challenge. Or k. K would be an interesting thing to see on a
           | sales page.
           | 
           | Oh, wait, even better, every time the page loads in the code
           | graphic swaps from one arcane language to another.
        
       | cvccvroomvroom wrote:
       | No ECC RAM: don't care. It also doesn't say not soldered on RAM
       | and SSD which means it probably is.
        
         | akovaski wrote:
         | > It also doesn't say not soldered on RAM and SSD which means
         | it probably is.
         | 
         | > Just like the CPU, the LPDDR RAM is also soldered onto the
         | motherboard [...]
         | 
         | > Another advantage of LPDDR RAM is its space-saving design,
         | which creates room in the ultra compact chassis not only for
         | the performant and quiet cooling system but also for 2x
         | upgradeable M.2 SSDs [...]
        
         | beAbU wrote:
         | What's it with HN's obsession with ECC RAM?
         | 
         | Also, doesn't DDR5 have built-in ECC?
         | 
         | Also, the website talks about M.2 for the SSD form factor. M.2
         | describes a physical connector standard. I would imagine that's
         | enough to imply that it's not soldered SSDs.
        
           | nik736 wrote:
           | ECC RAM has its advantages but I agree it's not a must have
           | for workstations. DDR5 has on-die ECC, which is basically
           | controlled by the RAM itself and not everything around it
           | like with regular ECC.
        
       | ArtemZ wrote:
       | After I experienced ARM chips in macbooks x86 laptops are no more
       | for me.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | Happy paying 3x more?
        
           | fourstepper wrote:
           | I don't think price is the main issue for most people in tech
        
             | spookie wrote:
             | Depends where you were born ig
        
             | ponector wrote:
             | For many people in tech price of the new MacBook is greater
             | than monthly net salary.
        
               | moooo99 wrote:
               | + 1. to get a usable MBP spec (i.e. at least 1TB disk and
               | 24GB RAM) you're looking at a 2,689EUR price tag here in
               | Germany. Not an issue if it's company provided, but
               | outside, this is more than two months worth of rent and a
               | substantial part of a post tax income of a software
               | engineer in Germany.
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | This comment only applies to tech people working in the US,
             | and mostly California.
        
           | xcv123 wrote:
           | Yes
        
           | jeffparsons wrote:
           | Not the person you're replying to, but I'm afraid so.
           | MacBooks are just so far ahead of their "competition" that
           | it's not funny.
           | 
           | The M2 MacBook Pros are about as close as you can get to a
           | perfect laptop. Really, I wish it wasn't so. It would
           | arguably be better for everyone (except Apple) if there was
           | some serious competition at the top end of the market. But
           | there just isn't.
           | 
           | I've still yet to see another laptop that has even passable
           | handling of sleep states / other parts of power management.
           | (A lot of this is an OS integration problem, so Apple is
           | playing on easy mode here.)
           | 
           | I've still yet to see another laptop with an even passable
           | trackpad. (Again, OS integration, plus a stupid amount of
           | heuristics built into the hardware itself to interpret what
           | you actually meant when you touched the trackpad in an
           | awkward way.)
           | 
           | I've still yet to see a laptop with a keyboard as nice as the
           | current generation MacBooks. (The first generation of M1
           | MacBook laptops was awful, but they fixed it. Also this point
           | isn't really fair because I haven't really seriously looked.)
           | 
           | I've still yet to see a laptop with as slick of a chassis and
           | display.
           | 
           | I've still yet to see another laptop that can chew through
           | demanding workloads, remain snappy the whole time, and not
           | simultaneously sounds like a jet engine and throttle itself
           | to a near halt.
           | 
           | But really, just give me proper power management and a decent
           | trackpad and I'll call it a serious competitor.
        
             | jwells89 wrote:
             | That combination of decent performance (even while
             | unplugged), battery life, and silence is hard to come by in
             | x86 laptops, even in ultraportables built with efficiency-
             | focused laptop CPUs where one would expect at least battery
             | life and fan noise to not be issues.
             | 
             | Apple's silicon helps here but I wonder if part of the
             | problem isn't x86 laptop manufacturers trying too hard to
             | juice perf numbers at the cost of all else, as well as
             | penny pinching on heatsink and fan.
        
               | jeffparsons wrote:
               | Ever opened up the average laptop? They look like someone
               | threw the list of component dimensions at a bin packing
               | algorithm, let it run for a couple of minutes, then added
               | some extra plastic struts to fill the dead space.
               | 
               | It feels like nobody* else is even _trying_.
               | 
               | (*Except Framework. Those guys are awesome.)
        
               | all2 wrote:
               | That makes it sound like there's a lot of end on the
               | premium end of the market.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | Apart from Framework, Purism also care about users
               | opening up their laptops: https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_14/
               | Maintenance/Disassembly.html
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | > Except Framework
               | 
               | They are obviously doing a great job at what they set out
               | to do but besides reparability and customization I don't
               | think they are really ahead in anything compared to some
               | premium Windows laptops.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | > efficiency-focused laptop CPUs where one would expect
               | at least battery life and fan noise to not be issues.
               | 
               | AMD laptops seem to be pretty decent at that. You can get
               | something on par or even ahead of MBPs in battery life
               | and performance and just a bit louder fans (IMHO the Air
               | is till unbeatable if it works for your use case though)
        
             | imiric wrote:
             | I agree with some of that, but none of it is worth
             | sacrificing user freedom. Using an Apple product is being
             | forced to use computers in exactly the way Apple designed
             | them, with very little room for customization of the
             | experience. This might be fine if your preferences align
             | with Apple's, or if you just don't care, but for tinkerers
             | and tech enthusiasts it's an oppressive and limited
             | environment. And at the end of the day, it still has its
             | own share of issues, like any device, so it's always a
             | tradeoff.
             | 
             | I'd trade lower build quality and performance per watt for
             | software freedom any day of the week. No, Asahi Linux is
             | not a serious option.
        
               | wilsonnb3 wrote:
               | Why is Asahi not a serious option? Linus Torvalds himself
               | uses Asahi on an Apple Silicon Mac, that is a pretty
               | solid endorsement of it being a serious option.
        
               | a_vanderbilt wrote:
               | The reasons appear idealogical rather than practical,
               | which is interesting given the problem at hand.
        
               | imiric wrote:
               | How did you reach that conclusion? On the contrary, my
               | reasons are purely practical. The fact Linus uses Asahi
               | is far from an endorsement for regular users. He
               | obviously has a much deeper knowledge of Linux compared
               | to a regular user, with the skills to troubleshoot and
               | fix most issues.
               | 
               | My reasons for not considering it:
               | 
               | - As skilled as the Asahi team is, they're a small team
               | going against one of the world's largest corporations.
               | Not only does it take immense effort to reverse engineer
               | every single hardware component, the project will always
               | be at the mercy of Apple, who may break the support at
               | any time with a software or hardware update, whether
               | willing or unwillingly.
               | 
               | - The Linux software ecosystem is sufficiently unstable
               | on its own, but also running it on ARM, _and_ an alien
               | hardware environment, presents even more challenges. As
               | much as the Asahi team has made progress here, expecting
               | them to support all variations of software in this
               | landscape is unreasonable. I definitely don't want to
               | have additional issues to troubleshoot, which I'm tired
               | of doing with Linux to begin with. Cue the replies
               | claiming how Asahi works flawlessly...
               | 
               | That's a whole lot of shaky ground to base my computing
               | on, and I wouldn't consider it even for personal, let
               | alone professional, use. Maybe if Apple started opening
               | up and officially supporting Linux on their hardware, I
               | _might_ consider a project like Asahi, but until then,
               | it's a non-starter for me.
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | > expecting them to support all variations of software in
               | this landscape is unreasonable.
               | 
               | They don't support variations of software at all. They
               | support the hardware. If the drivers work then the
               | software just works. Software is built on APIs. Asahi
               | does not need to support applications.
               | 
               | > always be at the mercy of Apple, who may break the
               | support at any time
               | 
               | Same deal for any other hardware manufacturer. The x86 PC
               | manufacturers are still using proprietary undocumented
               | hardware components to this day, even the ones who you
               | believe are "officially" supporting Linux. It only works
               | because devs are reverse engineering devices without
               | support from the manufacturers.
               | 
               | > but also running it on ARM, _and_ an alien hardware
               | environment, presents even more challenges
               | 
               | ARM is a stable well supported platform for Linux, so the
               | CPU is less of an issue for Asahi devs. Graphics hardware
               | is somewhat "Alien" but is also stable now on Asahi.
        
               | imiric wrote:
               | > They don't support variations of software at all. They
               | support the hardware. [...] Asahi does not need to
               | support applications at all.
               | 
               | From their FAQ page[1]:
               | 
               | > We will eventually release a remix of Arch Linux ARM,
               | packaged for installation by end-users, as a distribution
               | of the same name. The majority of the work resides in
               | hardware support, drivers, and tools, and it will be
               | upstreamed to the relevant projects. The distribution
               | will be a convenient package for easy installation by
               | end-users and give them access to bleeding-edge versions
               | of the software we develop.
               | 
               | As distro maintainers, it is their job to make sure the
               | applications they package work on the hardware they
               | support. This includes submitting patches upstream when
               | that is not the case, as application maintainers likely
               | wouldn't want to support such a niche environment
               | directly. So, yes, they rely on volunteers to fix issues,
               | but they will likely have to support many applications
               | themselves.
               | 
               | There is still a lot of broken software, as this list[2]
               | is surely not exhaustive.
               | 
               | Regardless, all this amounts to less choice of software
               | for the user. The Asahi team has already decided to stop
               | supporting Xorg, and say what you will about Xorg, there
               | will be many applications they realistically can't or
               | won't support for whatever reason.
               | 
               | > Same deal for any other hardware manufacturer. [...]
               | Really not much different to other hardware manufacturers
               | since Linux started.
               | 
               | No, it's very different. First of all, the amount of
               | Linux hackers who volunteered to reverse engineer the
               | wide variety of hardware was orders of magnitude larger
               | than the Asahi team. Even if they limit the amount of
               | devices they support, modern computers are far more
               | complex than in the early days of Linux. Regardless of
               | how talented the Asahi team is, maintaining all the
               | hardware of a modern computer is a sisyphean task for a
               | small group of volunteers.
               | 
               | Secondly, hardware manufacturers could see the benefit of
               | getting their hardware to run in Linux, and many
               | eventually took over support from volunteers. Apple has
               | shown no interest in doing so, and has historically been
               | hostile to open source.
               | 
               | > Asahi devs have made it clear that Apple has chosen to
               | avoid blocking installation of other operating systems.
               | 
               | The fact they allow installation of other operating
               | systems today, doesn't mean that this decision couldn't
               | change in the future. Services are a large part of their
               | business, and allowing a group of hackers to use their
               | hardware without being part of their software ecosystem
               | may seem like a non-issue today, but if this group grows
               | larger assuming projects like Asahi are successful, this
               | might become a considerable loss of income which wouldn't
               | be in their best interest.
               | 
               | > Apple has no issue with it.
               | 
               | Can you point me to an official ackgnowledgment of Asahi
               | Linux by Apple? Or any indication that leaving this door
               | open was a sign of good will, instead of a lack of
               | interest in closing it? What makes you think they
               | wouldn't eventually lock down Macs in the same way they
               | do iPhones and iPads?
               | 
               | > ARM is a stable well supported platform for Linux
               | 
               | It's really not. A lot of software works, but when it
               | doesn't, the user is SOL. As you can see on their Broken
               | Software page[2], the major issue is precisely with
               | AArch64 support. This should improve eventually, and
               | Asahi is certainly a torchbearer in this scenario, but
               | today it's yet another hurdle of using Apple hardware.
               | 
               | [1]: https://asahilinux.org/about/#is-this-a-linux-
               | distribution
               | 
               | [2]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-
               | Software
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | > Can you point me to an official ackgnowledgment of
               | Asahi Linux by Apple?
               | 
               | No but there is this:
               | 
               | https://asahilinux.org/about/
               | 
               | "Does Apple allow this? Don't you need a jailbreak? Apple
               | allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon
               | Macs without a jailbreak! This isn't a hack or an
               | omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into
               | these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple
               | does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs
               | (though they probably won't help with the development)."
               | 
               | > A lot of software works, but when it doesn't, the user
               | is SOL.
               | 
               | Talking about the Kernel (Linux itself). Applications are
               | another story.
               | 
               | You are looking at it all from a very conservative
               | enterprise perspective. Worried about long term support
               | etc for a mission critical system. Asahi is not
               | pretending to be an enterprise solution.
               | 
               | For someone just using it on their laptop, none of this
               | is much of an issue.
               | 
               | If Asahi works today on your M1 Pro, and its good enough
               | for your daily work, then it's fine. If support
               | disappears in a few years, then simply switch to another
               | device at that time. At least you will have had a few
               | years of use out of a decent machine. Life is too short
               | to worry too much about these things as an individual
               | just using their laptop as a workstation or for personal
               | use. Worst case in five years just buy another laptop
               | that works for you, and move on.
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | I'll bite for some of your points.
             | 
             | > I've still yet to see another laptop that has even
             | passable handling of sleep states / other parts of power
             | management.
             | 
             | That's the advantage of Apple where they control both
             | hardware and software. It's hard to replicate, so yeah,
             | they have an edge here.
             | 
             | > I've still yet to see another laptop with an even
             | passable trackpad.
             | 
             | Never understood this comment, if you use keyboards instead
             | for shortcuts the trackpad is hardly something you care
             | about. this seems like a comment from Apple users who
             | justify the trackpad as the key differentiator to not even
             | consider anything else, even though the rest of the world
             | has no problem not using Apple trackpads.
             | 
             | > I've still yet to see a laptop with a keyboard as nice as
             | the current generation MacBooks.
             | 
             | Lenovo Thinkpad line has world-class keyboards that put the
             | Macbook's to shame.
             | 
             | > laptop with as slick of a chassis and display.
             | 
             | display, they certainly have good ones, but most of them
             | are not matte. As for the chassis, there's really nothing
             | special in having a uniform grey chassis - it's a matter of
             | taste rather than anything else.
             | 
             | > I've still yet to see another laptop that can chew
             | through demanding workloads, remain snappy the whole time,
             | 
             | Recent AMD CPUs equipped PC, running Linux, fit that
             | description - they are formidable machines with great
             | performance for a variety of workloads and while you will
             | hear the fan now and then, it's still much better than what
             | you had a few years ago.
        
               | qwqetyr wrote:
               | > Never understood this comment, if you use keyboards
               | instead for shortcuts the trackpad is hardly something
               | you care about. this seems like a comment from Apple
               | users who justify the trackpad
               | 
               | Or as shockingly as it seems other people might have
               | preferences which are different to yours and which are
               | not somehow inherent inferior to yours.
               | 
               | > else, even though the rest of the world has no problem
               | not using Apple trackpads.
               | 
               | If you go few years back same could've been said about
               | appalling battery life, poor screen and build quality and
               | a dozen other things. I had not problem using computers
               | back then because I didn't know it could be better so
               | just had to deal with it. Going back to something
               | objectively inferior is not that easy (e.g. I almost
               | always used an external mouse until the first retina MBP,
               | I haven't really felt the need to since then except
               | occasionally for gaming).
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | > and while you will hear the fan now and then
               | 
               | Never heard the fan on my M1 Pro in a year of ownership,
               | and temperature is never uncomfortably high.
               | 
               | I'll pay double just to never hear a shitty laptop fan.
               | 
               | > but most of them are not matte
               | 
               | It is a matter of preference. Matte reduces contrast,
               | saturation, and sharpness. I noticed Apple uses a higher
               | quality anti-reflective coating than my other (cheap non-
               | Apple branded) glossy desktop LCD. No distracting
               | reflections on the laptop, but the desktop monitor looks
               | like a mirror sometimes.
        
             | a_vanderbilt wrote:
             | It's an "inconvenient truth" that plenty in the saltier
             | circles of the Linux world really don't like. Getting a
             | good *nix environment on a laptop is a struggle. Even on
             | lines like the ThinkPads you still have paper cuts like bad
             | touchpads, DSP-less audio, terrible battery life, or buggy
             | drivers making the experience unpleasant. Nothing single
             | device has brought everything together as well as an M2
             | MacBook Pro, and it's a damn shame.
        
           | Klonoar wrote:
           | It is a literal drop in the bucket.
           | 
           | It's like a mattress: you spend enough time on it that it's
           | worth paying the money and moving on.
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | > It is a literal drop in the bucket.
             | 
             | That's a very first world comment
        
               | Darmody wrote:
               | And in some first world countries that still means the
               | 10% of your annual income.
        
               | Klonoar wrote:
               | Yup. It's not wrong though.
        
           | alphanullmeric wrote:
           | Compared to what? An equivalent framework costs more in
           | Canada when you factor in a student discount.
        
           | qwytw wrote:
           | You're are more than right about memory/storage upgrades but
           | otherwise Macs seem to be priced very competitively
           | considering what they offer.
        
         | latentcall wrote:
         | I wouldn't be able to do it until Asahi Linux is totally done.
         | Paying 1.5k for a laptop that doesn't respect you is quite a
         | big ask. They'd have to pay me to use Mac OS, as someone would
         | have to pay me to use Windows.
         | 
         | I'm glad these options exist such as Tuxedo.
        
           | lopis wrote:
           | > They'd have to pay me to use Mac OS
           | 
           | And for many HN users, they do get paid to use Mac OS and
           | offered a Macbook for work. I personally still use Linux for
           | work but I have to admit it hinders my work in certain ways
           | (e.g. no easy access to testing Safari and no way to test
           | VoiceOver). But I couldn't trade my setup for whatever Apple
           | decides is best for me. So I appreciate companies still
           | pushing for more solid Linux-first laptops.
        
           | tormeh wrote:
           | Got a Mac for work. I'm sure I'm holding it wrong, but to me
           | it just doesn't measure up to Linux/Gnome. Of particular
           | annoyance is that Mac will just ignore my scroll wheel input
           | sometimes. I suspect it's a heuristics thing aimed at
           | trackpads. Lots of other small things where Mac doesn't
           | measure up. And Homebrew is inferior to most Linux package
           | managers. Mac is very focused on the use-case of GUI-only,
           | trackpad-only, no external monitor, unplugged usage. That's
           | fine, but it's really not how I use computers.
        
             | qwqetyr wrote:
             | > will just ignore my scroll wheel input sometimes.
             | 
             | The other day I was trying to set the scroll speed (and
             | have it consistent for all apps) on KDE and it was quite a
             | struggle. AFAIK it just works on Gnome/Wayland but having
             | to chose between something as basic as this and using a DE
             | the UX of which I personally find slightly repulsive (at
             | least in default config) doesn't seem ideal.
        
         | maxhille wrote:
         | Those ARM chips seem really nice but there is not yet much
         | choice if you want a usable OS and more hardware variants.
        
       | akovaski wrote:
       | I was a bit surprised when I read "4x USB, HDMI and 2x Mini
       | DisplayPort". It looks like it doesn't have 2 actual Mini
       | DisplayPorts, but instead the 2 USB-C ports support DisplayPort
       | 1.4.
       | 
       | It's been a while since I was tempted to buy a laptop (granted I
       | don't really look), but this configuration and price seems pretty
       | great.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_DisplayPort
        
       | matheusmoreira wrote:
       | > With the TUXEDO Control Center you are able to control the
       | performance and the behavior of the fans by yourself.
       | 
       | I remember seeing this project years ago when I tried to reverse
       | engineer my own laptop's fan control functions.
       | 
       | https://github.com/tuxedocomputers/tuxedo-control-center
       | 
       | I actually tried to make it work on my laptop back then. Didn't
       | succeed unfortunately.
       | 
       | I'd really enjoy reading about how they figured out the power
       | management and fan control stuff. I couldn't figure it out. Did
       | they have to reverse engineer? As a manufacturer, do they have
       | access to documentation? I emailed Clevo asking for documentation
       | and they didn't send me anything helpful.
        
         | boudin wrote:
         | I can't really confirm if it's the place to look at, but the
         | tuxedo control center works in pair with their kernel module
         | https://github.com/tuxedocomputers/tuxedo-keyboard
         | 
         | As the name wrongly imply, it is not just about controlling the
         | keyboard. At least on my laptop (an aura15 gen 2), a whole
         | chunk of the control center is not available when the module is
         | not loaded. Not sure if it will help but you might want to look
         | into this module as well for your investigation.
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | Oh yeah, I remember that now. Back then I looked up those
           | UUIDs on my laptop but none matched. The keyboard features
           | are also different: they're implemented via ACPI on the
           | Tuxedo laptops and via USB control messages on mine.
           | 
           | It's weird. There's all this Clevo ACPI/WMI stuff in those
           | headers but when I dumped my laptop's DSDT tables there was
           | nothing like that. I found some WMI code in there, ran them
           | through a decompiler I found in a GitHub repository and just
           | got back some empty stub code. I still feel disappointed
           | about it.
           | 
           | https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DSDT
           | 
           | It's really cool that they added sysfs LED controls. I
           | remember looking into that as well. I was planning to send
           | USB LED driver to the kernel but while reading kernel dricer
           | source code and mailing lists to learn how to do it I came
           | across comments saying they prefer to keep stuff in user
           | space whenever possible.
           | 
           | This is my driver in case anyone's interested:
           | 
           | https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x
           | 
           | I just remembered something else. They used to be on
           | bitbucket instead of github. In 2018 I messaged them there.
           | 
           | https://bitbucket.org/tuxedocomputers/clevo-xsm-
           | wmi/issues/4...
           | 
           | They asked me to email them. I did and they actually sent me
           | the control center software before they released it and also
           | some details about how they were interfacing with the
           | laptop's embedded controller. I still have those emails, they
           | were very helpful. Very nice company and people.
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | This looks really good. If I had any reason to buy a laptop
       | today, this design would be at the top of my list.
        
       | lhl wrote:
       | Pretty decent specs if you're OK w/ 32GB of (fast) soldered
       | memory and don't need an ANSI keyboard (there is an EN-US ISO
       | option).
       | 
       | It's interesting to compare to the their Intel Infinity Book Pro
       | Gen8 offering - that has a DDR5 SODIMMs, 99Wh battery, and is
       | actually slightly lighter than the Pulse (also a brighter 400nit
       | vs 300nit display), although you give up 1 M.2 SSD slot, it's 40%
       | more expensive, and even with the much larger capacity runtime
       | and performance is about the same or worse, since Intel.
       | 
       | Another good option for current-gen (7040) Ryzen ultra-portable
       | Linux laptops is the Framework 13. A little pricier, 1 x M.2, but
       | you get 2 x DDR5 SODIMMs, a 400nit+ display, and Framework has
       | made good on their upgrade promises (this is their 4th drop-in
       | replacement motherboard that runs in the same chassis and it
       | seems like they're going to keep going). It has a very active
       | Linux user community on their forums as well.
        
         | dajonker wrote:
         | No ANSI keyboard might be a deal breaker for my muscle memory
         | and external keyboards (mechanical and MX keys that I had to
         | import from the US because Logitech only sells ISO in the EU)
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | Why do you need a "specific keyboard" if your muscle memory
           | is there? Just map it to whatever works for you.
           | 
           | I am typing all the time in us alt international on various
           | physical keyboards that have printed buttons in spanish
           | qwerty, swiss french qwertz and plain ansi us keyboards. It
           | is only a problem for those that have very little
           | experience/use of the keyboard.
        
             | littlecranky67 wrote:
             | Exactly. They even offer a "complete black keyboard" with
             | no letterprints at all - definitely aimed at power users.
        
             | Cu3PO42 wrote:
             | Because muscle memory breaks if the physical layout of the
             | keys is different. The parent is used to ANSI and might hit
             | enter where there's a different key on ISO. I am used to
             | ISO and my layout uses that key as a modifier and is barely
             | usable on ANSI, simply because moving my pinky to the key
             | above enter is uncomfortable for me.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | We are much more adaptive than that. Among all my
               | computers keyboards at home I have 4 different shape of
               | the enter key and among the 2 that have a similar ANSI
               | shape they don't have nearly the same size.
               | 
               | You'll always have your favorite physical layout but
               | muscle memory can also adapt. The same way I don't ride
               | my mountain bikes the same way I ride my road bikes I am
               | naturally and unconsciously adapting to the different
               | keyboards based on how they feel to my hands.
        
             | bjakubski wrote:
             | It is not possible to "just map": Enter key has completely
             | different shape and size and pushes backslash/pipe key to
             | different row. I'm used to ANSI with single row Enter and I
             | don't seem to be able to switch to ISO (in the past I was
             | forced to order and replace keyboard in my laptop because
             | of that)
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | See my other reply above, we are much more adaptive than
               | that.
        
               | FirmwareBurner wrote:
               | Not all of us, "we" are not. If it works for you great,
               | but "we" agree to disagree here.
        
               | justsomehnguy wrote:
               | If "you" are so different species, I'm looking with
               | horror to the day when you need to replace your car.
               | 
               | Come on, button shape and placement (which is _not that
               | different_ , there is no round Caps Lock on Backspace)
               | completely breaking the ability to work on the computer
               | is the most retarded First World Problem.
        
               | FirmwareBurner wrote:
               | _> I'm looking with horror to the day when you need to
               | replace your car_
               | 
               | Which car of yours did ever swap the positions and shapes
               | of the 3 pedals or the steering wheel?
               | 
               | Every (manual) car I ever drove had left pedal always
               | clutch, middle one brake, and right one was the loud
               | pedal and steering wheel was always in front of me and
               | somewhat round shaped.
               | 
               | So what's there to adapt to when changing cars? At least
               | use some good analogies if you want to play this game.
               | 
               |  _> completely breaking the ability to work on the
               | computer is the most retarded First World Problem_
               | 
               | Where did I say it's completely breaking the ability to
               | work on the computer?
               | 
               | It's not, but it's annoying enough to affect my
               | productivity, kind of like a rock in my shoe, and enough
               | for me to prefer to stick to my ISO layout wherever I
               | can.
               | 
               | But you do you, and let me do me. Peace out.
        
               | cardiffspaceman wrote:
               | I borrowed a car that did not have a stick supporting the
               | gear selector. Instead the gear was selected by a slide
               | switch in the plane of the top of the center console. In
               | my muscle memory, that is not where that function is.
               | 
               | What do I win in exchange for getting accustomed to this?
        
             | dajonker wrote:
             | The difference between ISO and ANSI is the physical layout,
             | i.e. the shape of the Enter key and the left shift key.
        
       | Epa095 wrote:
       | Not bad. But I wonder why they went for 7840HS, instead of the
       | lower TDP 7840u.
       | 
       | Spec wise this one is quite close to lenovo t14s/p14s gen 4,
       | which can also be configured with a similar screen (there is also
       | the yoga slim 7 gen 8, but it has a glossy screen).
        
         | fyrn_ wrote:
         | This config is GPU-less so it has the thermal / power budget to
         | handle it. It's kind of meant as developer machine.
         | 
         | As far as I can tell the trend was first started by the
         | Mechrevo code 01. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-
         | ryzen-4000-mechrevo-la... Which actually got a decent amount of
         | press have some initial Twitter hype. Several other Clevo based
         | brands followed like Tuxedo and XMG. Not sure that Clevo
         | actually intended it as a dev focused config originally, but
         | they definitely leaned into it with later revisions after they
         | saw the enthusiasm.
         | 
         | Not for everyone, personally the Framework 16 appeals a lot
         | more to me (I've preorded), but when I was in college the pure
         | CPU maximization probably would have won me over.
        
           | lhl wrote:
           | The Mechrevo Code 01 was a Tong Fang ODM chassis. XMG/Tuxedo
           | (sister companies) have varying laptop models from both Tong
           | Fang (Uniwill now?) and Clevo.
           | 
           | Historically, a lot of devs using Linux laptops have
           | preferred iGPU models both to maximize useful perf/watt
           | (dGPUs models tended to drain power much faster even when
           | idle) and b/c most dGPU laptops are Nvidia-based and the
           | driver issues used to be terrible. I wonder if that calculus
           | will be changing now w/ local LLM code-helpers and other AI
           | apps benefit greatly from stronger GPUs.
        
         | lhl wrote:
         | It might come down to availability, although in general I
         | prefer the higher wattage chips since they will usually have
         | higher specced cooling and if you want to lower power
         | consumption, you can use a tool like ryzenadj to lower power
         | limits (but usually not increase power, which is usually
         | hardware locked).
        
       | cyclever wrote:
       | I bet you can only run Ubuntu and derivatives on this. As a die-
       | hard Arch user Tuxedo is a bad choice.
        
         | boudin wrote:
         | Why do you say that? You can run whatever distribution you
         | want, i run arch on a tuxedo laptop with no issue. Tuxedo
         | laptops are not perfect but i find them a good choice for
         | running Linux, whatever distribution you prefer.
        
           | d--b wrote:
           | What's not perfect about Tuxedo laptops? It's the first time
           | I hear about these, and it seems they have a great spec/price
           | ratio. This is definitely a brand I'd consider buying.
        
             | boudin wrote:
             | On mine (an aura 15 gen 2) the webcam and speakers are
             | really not great. I don't mind as I knew that before buying
             | it, so no disappointment.
             | 
             | On the plus side they really do support Linux, they provide
             | a kernel module and control center app to control things
             | like keyboard leds and power profiles, which does a good
             | job. I find this quite good for a small company like
             | Tuxedo.
             | 
             | I'm happy with my laptop and will consider Tuxedo again
             | next time I need a computer, but I definitely advise to
             | look at reviews beforehand.
        
               | _0ffh wrote:
               | Agreed, I've got an Aura 15 as well a few years ago, and
               | I consider it a good buy price/performance wise.
               | 
               | I had originally ordered a different, slightly more
               | expensive model, and had no trouble at all with customer
               | service to send it back in exchange for the Aura and a
               | refund, which impressed me very positively.
               | 
               | I run Debian on the laptop and had no trouble with it.
        
             | tormeh wrote:
             | Microphone on mine was pretty bad, without exaggerating.
             | The procedure for updating the BIOS was the worst I've ever
             | seen. Maybe if you run TuxedoOS it can be done in a better
             | way. I once left it at full charge on the shelf for a month
             | (possibly two) and the battery inflated. Admittedly not a
             | smart move by me, but still. Support is excellent, though,
             | and I got a free replacement battery. If you can get a Dell
             | with Linux I'd say that was a smoother experience for sure.
             | That said, I don't want to be all negative: It's nice to
             | buy a laptop and 100% know that all the hardware works with
             | Linux. That's worth a lot to me.
        
               | boudin wrote:
               | I would love Tuxedo to release firmware updates via
               | fwupdmgr. The current procedure works but is quite
               | cumbersome indeed (copying file on a usb stick, boot on
               | it and run a couple of command from it)
        
         | ensocode wrote:
         | As a happy Infinity Book 4 Arch user without any issues so far.
         | Where were your problems?
        
         | LanternLight83 wrote:
         | What makes you think so? Have you had or heard of someone
         | having issues like that before?
         | 
         | FFIW, you could probably install Arch (from a TTY, like in the
         | old days :p) with the an Ubuntu kernel and any firmware that
         | was loaded-in at runtime from the stock installation-- I'm not
         | convinced it would be neccessary, but Linux is Linux and (most)
         | differences between (most) distributions are minor enough that
         | someone who knows how to troubleshoot this sort of thing could
         | factor them out.
        
       | chme wrote:
       | Strange, for a company, advertising to the Linux community, to
       | offer only Laptops with Nvidia dGPUs, where you actually have to
       | taint your kernel/userspace with proprietary software in order to
       | use it.
        
         | mariusor wrote:
         | What do you mean "only"? This specific model has a AMD Radeon
         | 780M card.
        
           | chme wrote:
           | But that is a iGPU.
        
             | mariusor wrote:
             | But the laptop does not have an Nvidia graphic card.
        
               | chme wrote:
               | Well, aparantly my comment is not about this laptop then,
               | because this laptop doesn't have a dGPU.
               | 
               | (But you are right, maybe I should have formulated it
               | better. I meant all Laptops with dGPU they offer are with
               | a Nvidia dGPU.)
        
         | Darmody wrote:
         | There are basically no laptops with AMD GPUs. Why? I don't
         | know. I think in the last months I've only seen one and I don't
         | remember it as a laptop someone would buy.
        
           | chme wrote:
           | Well, this is a company that creates Linux laptops. So if
           | they decide to offer laptops with dGPU, they might want to
           | use hardware that is well supported by Linux.
           | 
           | Laptops with Nvidia dGPUs are available from many/most other
           | manufacturers, as you said, so there is no real reason to buy
           | them from them. Especially if they offer sub-par Linux
           | experience.
        
             | Darmody wrote:
             | I get your point but I think this is an AMD problem.
             | 
             | Their can't keep up with the demand on the laptop market.
             | How old are their Zen 4 processors? There are barely
             | laptops with them. We had to wait months for a real use
             | benchmark because it was impossible to get them.
             | 
             | Right now if I see and AMD GPU I wouldn't even know if it's
             | new gen or from 3 years ago.
             | 
             | They are not on the market mobile market.
        
           | wilsonnb3 wrote:
           | Yeah they are quite rare, I bought an ASUS ROG Strix
           | Advantage edition because it has an AMD CPU and GPU and have
           | been quite happy with it.
           | 
           | I don't know if they make them anymore but I highly recommend
           | it.
        
         | qwytw wrote:
         | That's pretty dogmatic. I don't see much issue with proprietary
         | drivers (even if it's not ideal how Linux handles that) if they
         | actually worked properly, which unfortunately they don't..
         | 
         | Not that this is relevant for this laptop.
        
           | chme wrote:
           | This isn't dogmatic, it is practical considerations.
           | 
           | From experience, open-source drivers that are integrated into
           | the kernel and open-source source user space have much better
           | quality, better out-of-box experience, and push the whole
           | ecosystem forward.
           | 
           | Compared to closed-source drivers, which often need to catch
           | up to modern software, and are difficult to debug, they need
           | additional steps to integrate and often have to build their
           | own stuff instead of improving existing solutions that help
           | everyone.
           | 
           | You will not get helpful support for errors in your
           | proprietary driver from the manifacturer in most cases, while
           | you get support and fixes from the open source community. It
           | is much easier to isolate the issues if you can access the
           | code.
        
       | mariusor wrote:
       | I own one of the previous generations of this laptop and I want
       | to say that the batteries are a bit of a sham (hopefully they're
       | better in this new one). I've had to change them once a year,
       | because they drop from 100% health to 60% in less than 12 months.
       | Each replacement was around 80-90EUR.
        
         | luckyshot wrote:
         | I've had similar issues.
         | 
         | At a few months old, the laptop (a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14
         | Gen 6) couldn't hold a meeting.
         | 
         | Their customer service suggested I disabled the graphics card
         | and to throttle the CPU, converting a $2000 laptop into a $1000
         | one spec-wise.
         | 
         | After a year and a half, I've just moved to a Thinkpad at half
         | the cost and I couldn't be happier.
         | 
         | I wanted to support a smaller company rather than Lenovo but
         | that's how it is, there where many other nuances I had to deal
         | with (2 dead pixels, awful sound, microphone was meh, TuxedoOS
         | started giving me kernel problems every update...).
        
       | bflesch wrote:
       | Amazing. I own the Gen2 and am very happy with it. Good to see
       | that now you don't need the stupid dock any more in order to run
       | multiple screens, but you can do it via the 2x USB-C and the HDMI
       | with the new model.
       | 
       | I can only recommend this laptop.
        
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