30 ms·
KDE Slimbook
- rocky1138 10y agoThis is great. The only trouble is that it's only got two USB ports and no Ethernet. Secondarily, the USB ports are only 3.0 not 3.1. Other than that, having a stable KDE Neon hardware platform is really exciting to me. I run KDE Neon full-time on my Macbook Pro. Any other KDE Neon fans out there?
- cies 10y agoYups. Neon is pretty solid at the moment, and just getting started. I run it on an XPS13 and have had no issues yet (but did not try working with an external monitor yet, which is known as sometimes giving issues)
- zubi 10y agoI really like KDE and installed Neon a few weeks ago. However, I encountered bunch of issues, sudden chain-crashes of software, some settings not being saved, plasmoids and wallpapers not being downloaded and most notably the digital clock displaying incorrect time (tried everything to no avail). For some reason it didn't work properly on my laptop. I ended up installing Kubuntu.
- distances 10y agoThere are always some personal preferences, such as that I would wish the i7 was quad-core. But I'm a big fan of KDE Neon, and would very likely get this one if I was in the market for a new laptop at the moment.
- nmca 10y agoThis looks great; may well be my next laptop.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agohttps://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-intel-i7-comprar https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-intel-i7-compr... Feel like for the price, you could get a comparable laptop that's a hair lighter and just throw KDE onto it. The only thing I see on there that makes it inherently more FOSS-friendly is the inclusion of an Intel wifi card, that has a kernel-supported driver in Linux. I'm also not too keen on the bezel size. I guess I've been spoiled by my XPS 13.
- pvdebbe 10y agoThere's Dell, sure, but by the looks I think this is trying to draw the Aluminum Apple crowds closer.
- cies 10y agoI have an XPS13 with an Intel wifi card; still has the occasional issues (wifi not picking up networks after waking up from suspend). I'd say it happens to me on average once every one or two months, seemingly at random.
- snuxoll 10y agoFor as well-supported Intel wireless NIC's are, I've found they are utter garbage. The Intel 7260 in my work-issued W540 randomly flakes out on me and has giant latency spikes, I actually ended up saying to hell with the one in my personal XPS 13 and swapped it with a Broadcom card that's worked much better.
- cies 10y agoGood to know. I kind of assumed they'd be like Intel graphics: most open among its competition.
- snuxoll 10y agoYou're not wrong, which is why I said they are well-supported. But that doesn't mean anything when the hardware itself is awful, I have the same issues regardless of whether I'm using Linux or Windows. I may need a proprietary kernel module for my Broadcom NIC, but the damned thing actually works consistently.
- NTripleOne 10y ago>16GB: +190,00 € Jesus christ that is absolutely absurd.
- DeepYogurt 10y agoThere seems to be no mention of firmware on the site. Can someone in the know comment on if coreboot is supported?
- cies 10y agoslimbook.es is down, anyone has the pricing info?
- distances 10y ago729€ for i5 and 849€ for i7.
- sabaton 10y ago... and specs? ram, screen res, battery claims ... I'm potentially interested!
- optimog 10y agoFound the specs on the OMGubuntu website (1): KDE Slimbook i5 Intel i5-6200U @ 2.3GHz Intel Graphics HD 520 4GB, 8GB or 16GB RAM 120GB SSD (upgradeable) Priced from €729 Full HD 13" KDE Slimbook i7 Intel i7-6500U @ 2.5GHz Intel Graphics HD 520 4GB, 8GB or 16GB RAM 120GB SSD (upgradeable) Priced from €849 Full HD 13" 1: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/01/kde-slimbook-laptop-specs-price http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/01/kde-slimbook-laptop-specs...
- alexeldeib 10y agoHere's a slightly fuller overview than the commenter above: Slimbook KDE i7: Base=879 euro Slimbook KDE i5: Base=729 euro Memory: 4gb=base; 8gb=+60; 16gb=+190 SSD: 120gb=base; 250gb=+110; 500gb=+200 WiFi: Intel 7265N=base; Intel 7265AC=+29
- 77pt77 10y agoCache: https://archive.is/ve28m https://archive.is/ve28m
- brudgers 10y agoKDE announcement: https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-laptop-kde-fans https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-lapt... Slimbook site seems to have collapsed under the internet's hug.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoThe announcement gives a more understandable purpose to the laptop, namely: get the KDE developers and enthusiasts onto a uniform piece of hardware. It's much easier to do Apple-levels of QA when you have Apple-level hardware control.
- cJ0th 10y agoThe picture provided isn't big enough to be 100% sure but as far as I can tell the super key features the windows logo...
- tsdgeos 10y agoAccording to OMG Ubuntu http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/slimbook-tux-key-1-750x610.jpeg http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/slimbo...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- prawn 10y agoWhy is the opening hero image so small? Aren't they trying to showcase the product?
- gravypod 10y agoWebsite isn't loading for me but seems to be cached. Text only: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kde.slimbook.es&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kde.sli... Full cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Akde.slimbook.es&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Akde.s...
- asciimo 10y agoHere's another source. https://liliputing.com/2017/01/kde-slimbook-linux-powered-laptop-780.html https://liliputing.com/2017/01/kde-slimbook-linux-powered-la... the i7 upgrade with 16mb looks good, though I'd prefer better screen resolution.
- pavanky 10y agoNot sure if that's a typo in the post but 6,800 mAH for a laptop is tiny. EDIT: Nevermind, I was thinking of WHr. If it is using a 12V adapter, that is plenty.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoThat's about what it is in my mid 2014 13" rMBP and I regularly get 8 hours coding on it.
- kogepathic 10y agoThe appropriate measure of capacity would be watt-hours, not milliamp hours. IIRC the MacBook Pro has a 3 cell battery, meaning that you'll get around ~76Wh from the battery (11.2V * 6800mAh). It's not safe to assume that all laptops will have a 3 cell battery. They might have chosen to install a 2 cell battery, in which case the capacity would only be ~50Wh (7.4V * 6800mAh). That's 35% less capacity!
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoTrue. But is anyone shipping laptop with a Voltage that low? I see them up around 10.8 - 11.1.
- kogepathic 10y agoI don't know about laptops, but I would expect a lot of these "2 in 1" devices to ship with a 1 or 2 cell battery. Tablets frequently have lower voltage batteries. The iPad 4 for example has 3 cells but they're all in parallel, so the voltage is only 4.2V. For laptops the sweet spot seems to be 3 cells, and I'm not entirely sure why, apart from higher voltages requiring smaller traces/wires. Maybe due to the LCD backlight? The LCD from the iPad 4 actually requires ~12V for the backlight, so there's a buck boost converter somewhere on the iPad logic board for this.
- johnnycarcin 10y agoI was super excited about this until I saw it was another 13" screen. Does anyone enjoy using a screen that small (honest question)? To me anything under 15" just doesn't make sense, especially if 50% of my time is spent without an external monitor.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoI prefer it for mobile, it's a nice balance. Even though I use a 27" monitor at home, I adjust easily enough.
- bsharitt 10y agoFor me anything bigger that 13" is anchored to the desktop and I don't consider it mobile. 11"-13" is mobile for me or 20+" for desktop. In between are useless screen sizes for me because I'm not going to lug around a 15" or 17" laptop and if it's going to be on my desk, I'm going bigger.
- makmanalp 10y agoI suspect this is a different strokes for different folks thing. 13" is just ideal for me. Also I've adjusted my workflow so that with multiple desktops, having one screen is not that big an issue. 15 means it's heavy enough that I can't just forget that it's even in my bag.
- azakai 10y agoYes, the small screen is great on flights and other cramped conditions. When at a desk, I sometimes connect to a large screen, but honestly I often just don't bother.
- khedoros1 10y agoI've got an 11.6" netbook-class computer to use in really cramped situations, but it always feels cramped to me. 17" feels like an unwieldy beast of a machine, so I've never had one. 15" is what I consider the minimum for anything beyond e-mail and internet, and simultaneously the maximum that I'd actually like to carry around with me. That doesn't seem like the most popular opinion, though. 13" seems like it's considered the portability+productivity sweet spot for most of the people I've talked to.
- Roritharr 10y agoPlease give me a 32GB Ram option. If not possible, please tell me why. :(
- RazrFalcon 10y agoCan you explain your use-case? PS: 8GB user
- jlarocco 10y agoI have 16 Gb in the MBP I use for photo editing, and more memory would be really nice. I'll sometimes have Capture One, DxO Optics, and PixelMator open at the same time, and I notice a performance impact versus only having one of them open. They don't die outright, but performance suffers when there's not enough memory to hold many preview and thumbnail images in memory. I have Linux running on an old iMac, also with 16 Gb, and I've hit the boundary there a few times, too, but usually only when I'm playing with 3D graphic rendering. More memory never hurts, and often speeds things up. There's also the psychological aspect that if I'm buying a new machine I want it to be bigger and better than the ones I already have.
- azinman2 10y agoBecause of the energy needs, and the limits of intel processors with specific DRAM types. There was a good ars technica article on this posted to HN a month or two ago (about the new MBP).
- pbnjay 10y agoHere's a good technical description: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/59yrxg/the_true_reason_the_mbp_doesnt_come_with_ddr4_or/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/59yrxg/the_true_reas...
- ge96 10y agoMaybe those system 72 laptops, I remember there was an animation talk about Finding Dory and the guy was using one but it's Ubuntu-oriented I think. 32GB sounds nuts haha.
- tormeh 10y agoI would be a lot more interested in a laptop from Red Hat or Canonical.
- olympus 10y agoThis looks remarkably similar to the HP Envy that I bought in 2015: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015AD1ZFA/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015AD1ZFA/ The HP has a slightly different port arrangement on the sides and a higher resolution screen. I'm sure the cost supports the KDE project, but you could buy the HP, install Linux yourself (if you're buying one of these you are probably capable of installing your own OS), and donate $50 to the KDE project and come out ahead-- assuming you live in the USA and can get the old Envy for $715.
- distances 10y agoThe big benefit of Slimbook would be the tested hardware "where any potential hardware-related issues have already been ironed out before a new version of our software is shipped to them", according to the KDE announcement: https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-laptop-kde-fans https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-lapt...
- brilliantcode 10y ago> 729,00 € = $1021 CAD! There's just no way this is going to compete with Chromebook which you can install Ubuntu as well or buying any slightly older laptops and installing ubuntu. what is the minimum cost of such "slim" devices? I'm optimistic that Chromebook will come down in prices and armed with built in cellular connectivity with ARM processor for that all day battery life is the ultimate dev tool. I enjoy using last year's macbook but I equally enjoyed using Ubuntu on my older laptop for development purposes.
- shmerl 10y agoKDE is great, though it feels like things take a long time to implement (such as move to Wayland).
- distances 10y agoKDE has the extra layer of Qt in between. That brings a load of benefits thanks to an array of paid professional hands developing the toolkit, but the downside of course is that some of the issues just have to be fixed on the Qt level. For example, it took a while before the multi-screen support in Qt 5 was mature enough to provide a stable foundation for a desktop environment. I'm sure KDE could solve these problems somehow in-house too, but the fact is that development power is limited so it makes all the sense to solve the issues in the correct layer in the first place.
- shmerl 10y agoYeah, multiscreen was a complete mess until very recently. Not just because of Qt, but because of several Plasma bugs. It's much better now.
- Splendor 10y agoVery nice. I would buy this over a MacBook Air assuming two things: * The trackpad isn't terrible * The battery life is decent (6+ hours)
- tedmiston 10y agoJust curious if anyone considering this has compared it to the Chromebook Pixel 2015 model. The Pixel is discontinued now but still available (and for half of its retail price). It seems like the two machines target a similar audience.
- ris 10y agoNot again. I do wish the KDE project would stop getting distracted by quixotic hardware and/or mobile projects and concentrate on building a killer desktop. I hate to say it but parts of KDE today do feel worse than what we had ten years ago e.g. kmail2/akonadi which causes me pain on a daily basis.
- sydd 10y agoAlso this thing feels like a cheap knockoff. Whats with the shitty website (looks like a mobile only site on my desktop) and the low quality graphics/photos? Also isnt this supposed to be a Linux machine? Why does it have a Windows key then? http://kde.slimbook.es/images/galeria/resizedimages/4_machine.jpg http://kde.slimbook.es/images/galeria/resizedimages/4_machin... Sorry, but the whole thing feels fake.
- dguaraglia 10y agoI don't mean to diss the KDE project, but my experience with KDE, ever since around 2., has been that it feels optimized for screenshots: Everything looks gorgeous* out of the box, but when you start actually using the destkop, a lot of things feel clunky, cluttered, buggy or they just don't make sense in the current world (Plasma, I'm looking at you.) I also can't understate the "buggy" part. I've never experienced as many crashes as when using applications in the KDE suite of utilities.
- flukus 10y agoIt seems like KDE has always been too broadly focused instead of just trying to be a kickass desktop. Things like KOffice just seem to be unneccesary replication of effort to get prettier qt widgets. 10 years ago I KDE groupie, but on my latest install of gone with gnome and found the default themes (especially dark mode) to be much better. Also the fonts, I'm a programmer that wouldn't normally notice the difference between a serif and san-serif font, but whatever the gnome guys are doing looks absolutely gorgeous.
- jpetso 10y agoThere are a number of people who thought that having a KDE office suite was a good idea, they worked on it, KDE gladly welcomed them into the project and provided infrastructure & announcements. Those same people might have not worked on the bits that you value yourself even if they were forced off of KOffice (now Calligra). They likely contributed a number of bugfixes and expanded use cases for KDE libraries along the way. KDE still has a well-defined desktop environment project, you just can't force people into it that have a different agenda to begin with.
- dotancohen 10y agoWhy does the KDE Slimbook have a Windows key? http://kde.slimbook.es/images/xheader.png.pagespeed.ic.WfFJLBvEwO.png http://kde.slimbook.es/images/xheader.png.pagespeed.ic.WfFJL... Could they not get a Tux or even the KDE Gear icon printed on the keyboard?
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoBecause they sell Slimbooks with either Linux or Windows: https://slimbook.es/caracteristicas https://slimbook.es/caracteristicas
- throwaway91111 10y agoWhy not make it something brand less? They allow customizations by language; it's not crazy to put thought into the keyboard at that point.
- Snowe 10y ago"Meta" would be a good name.
- majewsky 10y ago"Meta" usually refers to Alt on Linux systems with IBM-PC-derived keyboards. When I look at `xmodmap -pm` on my system, the Windows key is referred to as "Super".
- throwaway91111 10y agoThat's a rather arbitrary binding; some keyboards have a discrete meta key. No reason to use super if you're not targeting windows!
- zumu 10y agoAlt had already been used to replace meta by the time the windows key came about. Therefore they mapped the windows key to super. You can blame Emacs users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)
- pbnjay 10y agoIs there anything like this with 3x3 MIMO wifi and a hi-dpi screen? my 13" macbook pro is great but not sure if I could go backwards on those 2 points right now.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoAre there Linux users out there that would actually use a pre-installed OS?
- IE6 10y agoIf someone sold hardware that came with some guarantee that a major linux distro had 100% support of all the hardware I would definitely consider buying it. I use ThinkPads because their support is pretty good (and I like the physical device) but there is always some trade off when it comes to hardware and the drivers.
- nkantar 10y agoProbably not (many), but I'd wager a thing like this is largely aimed at current non-Linux users anyway. Alternately, Linux by default could be seen as a sign that hardware is reasonably well supported, so rolling one's own may be less effort than otherwise.
- distances 10y agoThe KDE announcement does promise that hardware issues for this device are sorted out before pushing out updates.
- RazrFalcon 10y ago>CD-ROM/DVD - Not available >Package Contents - 1 x drivers disk Why?!
- euyyn 10y agoI wonder why they used a Spanish TLD.
- mentat2737 10y agoBecause it's a Spanish company.
- hysan 10y agoWhile this sounds interesting, unless there is: - a user friendly support/bug reporting channel - some sort of promise that actual found bugs will be resolved with a higher priority - sane configurations + nice themes out of the box Unless all of those are offered, I don't see any draw to buying this. The way I see it, this is something only early adopters would get. There's no guarantee that things will work smoothly out of the box. If I'm going to be paying for a KDE branded device, then I'd need to be convinced that the experience would be better than buying a nice, "Linux compatible" (per reviews, whatever) notebook and just installing Neon on it myself. This is what Apple and Microsoft (with their Surface line) do and while neither are perfect, everyone I know feels safer buying those brands. And in the end, that's the biggest driving force in decision making for normal consumers.
- aphextron 10y agoI see an overpriced Chinese ultra-book with a weird laser etched logo. I was mildly interested until seeing the price point. 4GB ram and a dual core i5 for $800 is crazy in 2017. Not sure who they're expecting to buy this.
- ramenmeal 10y agoLooks identical to a macbook air, down to the screws.
- qplex 10y agoI had now clue "KDE Neon" was an operating system.
- jpetso 10y agoIt's made by the same people that ran Kubuntu before they got disappointed in some of Canonical's decisions and decision-making process, so now they have their own OS that works closer with KDE upstream.
- vermaden 10y agoNo go. Shitty keyboard. Learn from Thinkpad T400 how good keyboard looks like.
- veli_joza 10y agoMy Asus UX303 looks almost identical to this (the only difference I could find is small bevel underneath touchpad). Is UX303 then also a rebrand of some generic model? My current experience is that it's great linux laptop even though it's not supported (comes with Windows). It's fast and snappy, very light, robust and nice to use. Keyboard is bad, touchpad is meh. Screen is very sharp and comfortable. Speakers are surprisingly useful.