10 ms·

I can't speak to the 4700u or the pangolin specifically, but I can offer this perspective on PopOS/AMD: I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus

I can't speak to the 4700u or the pangolin specifically, but I can offer this perspective on PopOS/AMD: I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web) The battery life is comparable to Windows (on integrated graphics mode, it has graphics switching available)at 7-10 hours with 70% brightness and balanced power settings using VScode and firefox. The g14 has a 75wh battery vs the pangolin's 49wh, so I would expect less battery life from the pangolin despite the 4700u having a lower default tdp, since the 4800hs likes to sit at around 6-10 watts when doing non-intensive tasks anyway. In 2021 I'm not missing any major programs. It's pretty incredible how much is cross-platform now.

isoos 6y ago
I was considering to buy a G14, but got distracted with other stuff. Can you please share a few details on how you use it? - What kind of external webcam do you use? Does it have any problem with any video-conferencing software? - Do you access any streaming service (with DRM)? Any issues? - Any issues with drivers, returning from sleep/hybernation? Thanks!
- gbrown 6y ago
  I use it with Fedora happily, and for work I have to use Zoom daily. I did have to replace a fan with one from Aliexpress due to rattle, but haven’t had issues since.
- shaicoleman 6y ago
  I have the Dell G5 4800H (AMD iGPU+AMD dGPU), there are a couple of graphic driver issues under Linux. I'm using the USB-C connection which is connected to the iGPU. * Locks up on suspend/resume * Locks up when inserting an external USB-C monitor * Requires a recent kernel to work properly (5.8 or later) * Locks up without amdgpu.runpm=0 kernel command line * dGPU can't be turned off, so increases power consumption * Locks up with vsync on with the dGPU * Kernel warning on startup, but doesn't affect stability Besides these issues (which can be worked around), it's very solid.
  - artificialLimbs 6y ago
    Wow. I've got a Dell Latitude 5505 with a 4700u. It's worked great so far except for plugging into Dell's USB-c dock in the morning. This is a guessing game of which (of 3) monitors are going to work, often requiring opening/closing the lid a time or two or turning on/off screens. Battery life is decent (VERY good if you turn down brightness and ssh to your work) and it's blazing fast. It does get egg cooking hot when unplugged and running the GPU (games). Running Win10 currently, but trying to figure out which Linux is going to run with 3 monitors without doing hours of research. Suggestions welcome. Guess I'll try PopOS next.
    - Nagyman 6y ago
      I have a Dell monitor which has a built-in USB-C hub. I experience similar issues when plugging in my MacBook Pro - the monitor part works fine, but the keyboard/mouse usually takes a few attempts at plugging in ("docking"). Might not be your laptop so much as Dell's USB-C dock acting up.
- unknown2374 6y ago
  I had a G14 that I ended up returning. for points 2 and 3, I had no issues at all in the few months I used it. A side note: the build quality was extremely disappointing, coming from an XPS 13.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  I've have a G14 with RTX2060 and I'm very happy. Battery life is good (4-6h work with IDE etc) and webcams work as intended. DRM is mostly a non-issue, at least not more than on any other Linux install. The nvidia driver is a bit of a pain to set up, especially if you're on wayland or if you want to use displays via USB C (reverse prime does not work yet due to an nvidia driver bug, so you need to use the nvidia gpu as primary when docked). Other than that, everything works and the community (arch wiki and rog-core) provide good support for getting everything up and running. A bit of configuration and a somewhat recent kernel will be needed (it's pretty new hardware after all), but it's not that hard if you either know Linux or are willing to spend some time. I'm running this config for 8 months now, so the situation from a fresh install might be even better. Similar to the sister comment, I came from an XPS 13, but I'm happy. The laptop is a bit heavier, but in exchange you get a lot more power, far more RAM (up to 48GB), more ports and, subjectively, a dar better keyboard. Initially I wanted to stay with an XPS, but now I'm happy I made the jump. EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage.
  - acoard 6y ago
    >EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage. Can you speak more to this? Does Pop_OS! configure this (more-or-less) out of the box? Would it work with any Nvidia card or are there restrictions? I'm interested in such a setup and have done research from afar. I've developed on Linux for years, but have heard GPU passthrough can be difficult unless you wrangle drivers a bit. EDIT: I'd also like to use it for CUDA in Linux. Do you have to reboot when enabling GPU passthrough (not a dealbreaker, just curious)?
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      > Can you speak more to this? Sure! Regards working out of the box, you'll probably have no luck with that. VFIO is still somewhat of a niche and VFIO on a laptop is a niche of a niche, so you'll need to expect some command line usage and a bit of config file editing. This being said, getting it to work is not too hard and, if you've done VFIO in the past, you should feel right at home. For the initial setup, you can mostly follow the guide on the arch wiki [0]. You might need to adapt it a bit on ubuntu(-based) systems, but the major points are the same. The only difference to the usual setup is that you need to include an APCI-table [3] to get the laptop driver to work in the VM. This reddit thread [1] describes it quite well. The author of that thread also has a repo [2] where he published his files and on which I based my scripts on. Note that you need the usual CPUID work-around (see the "Error 43" section on the arch vfio page). Also, you'll need an USB C to HDMI/DisplayPort/... cable and a monitor for the initial setup, after that you can use a dummy plug [5] and looking glass (also described on the arch wiki) to use pass through without external monitor. The setup is also very stable for me, with the exception of the looking glass part - if you absolutely depend on the setup, having a monitor handy will save you a bit of headache, but you can always revert to a VM display in the worst case. Regarding GPU support: It should support all GPU configurations, but you should check reddit etc to be sure. If you're talking about other laptops, the situation is a bit different. The big advantage of the G14 is (1) that the GPU has its own IOMMU group and is therefore easy to isolate and (2) that the display ports are well split between the two GPUs (the HDMI out and the internal display are connected to the AMD iGPU and the USB C DP-channel is connected to the RTX). This is rather rare, but makes setting this up (comparatively) easy. Note that the USB channel of the USB C out is not routed via the GPU, so if you're connected to a docking station, its display ports will be used by the VM, but the USB ports are on the host, still. This, however, comes with the drawback that you can not pass through an USB controller, as the groups for those do not work out. The ACS override patch (see arch wiki) might fix this, but unless you need to use audio interfaces, the "normal" USB redirector will suffice anyway. Rebooting is semi-required. In order to change from VM to Linux and back, you'll need to [un-]bind the nvidia driver and switch to vfio-pci. Going from Linux to VM is only possible when nothing uses the nvidia driver, which either needs a restart of your display server or only using the iGPU for all apps (quite easy on sway/wayland, haven't tried on X). The reverse should work as well - the author of the reddit threads above has scripts to do so, but this did not work out for me. Leaving the vfio-pci driver for the GPU is not an option either, as this will prevent it from going into the low power state and therefore heat up the laptop and use up the battery. Because of this, I usually simply reboot. In summary, if you don't mind rebooting, having the GPU bound to vfio-pci via kernel parameter on a secondary boot option is by far the easier way :) But it should be possible without, it'll just be a bit of work. To work with CUDA, you'll need to have the nvidia driver loaded, but you'll want to have that anyway to enable low-power states, as mentioned above. Using only the iGPU for display is possible in combination with CUDA, you'll simply need to stop your CUDA-apps before unbinding the driver. That's actually the setup I use, too :) Hope this helps! [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/hx5j8q/success_with_laptop_gpu_passthrough_on_asus_rog/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/hx5j8q/success_with_l... [2] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu [3] Since the original link is down for me: You need the ACPI table [4] and include it like this in the `<domain>`-part: <qemu:commandline> <qemu:arg value='-acpitable'/> <qemu:arg value='file=/home/cole/vfio/acpitable.bin'/> </qemu:commandline> See: https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/win10.xml#L272 https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/win10.xml... [4] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/acpitable.bin https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/acpitable... [5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MKR9WH https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MKR9WH - no affiliation, anything should work
indymike 6y ago
Would buy in a heartbeat if it had a 4k display. Hard to go back to 1080p after six years of Retina and 4K displays.
- the-nozzle 6y ago
  I know, eh ? Why is every linux laptop manufacturer insistent on using panels that they fished out of a dumpster behind a 7-11 ?
- Macha 6y ago
  Honestly find it hard to notice much difference in the display quality between my 1080p 2018 XPS laptop and my 1800p 2019 Mac laptop. Actually the XPS is slightly preferable to me because the matte vs glossy finish outweighs the extra resolution at that size for me. I guess that could just be my sight, but the reviews for the XPS laptop vs the 4k model of the same were pretty much unanimous on the 4k variant being a waste of battery for a neglible return on image quality, so it's at least not a fringe view
  - justaguy88 6y ago
    > could just be my sight It is 1080p to 4k is such a large difference
    - eertami 6y ago
      Really? On a 13" display? I bet in a blind AB test at a normal viewing distance you wouldn't even be able to accurately tell me which is which.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        I would bet money on you being wrong at 2-3 feet away
      - bscphil 6y ago
        There's no need to bicker about this. A 13 inch display at 4K has about 340 pixels per inch along the diagonal. At 1080p it would have about 170 pixels per inch. Perfect vision is usually understood to be the ability to discern details of about 1/60 of a degree, or 0.29 milliradians. By the arc length formula (s=rθ), we find that the distance needed to precisely align this angle with the level of detail provided by a 1080p screen is about 20 inches. In other words, if you sit closer than 20 inches away from your screen (perhaps not that unlikely for a laptop), you might be able to discern details beyond the 1080p level. This would only be possible for extremely contrast sensitive small details, like text in a small font size at 1:1 (no DPI scaling). So... it's a bit complicated, but I suspect 1080p would be good enough for nearly everyone at 13 inches, but move up to 15 inches and I could see many people preferring 1440p.
gnufied 6y ago
Does graphics switching in popos works without full system restart or at least without restarting X11? I didn't think there was a way to make switching graphics work in linux without either restarting X11 session or restarting the machine completely. On related note - does external display works without nvidia GPU? A lot of manufactures have lately decided to hardwire external HDMI connection to descrete GPU and hence it has been pretty painful to use NVIDIA powered Laptops on Linux. :(
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  I have an older system76/galago laptop(Intel graphics). I use it with 2 external 4k(HP/Z27) monitors with no issues. Previously used with 1 4k, 1 1920xSomething/Portrait. Resolution switching works fine. Also, PopOS gnome UI comes with build-in tiling, feels like slightly nerfed i3. It also works fine across monitors/virtual desktops and so on. PopOS desktop is X11 based and I havent played with Wayland on that laptop
Tade0 6y ago
> I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web) Thank you for the pointer. I have the exact same laptop and tried Ubuntu on it - couldn't even change the screen brightness.
- e12e 6y ago
  Ubuntu 20.04 lts?
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Yes.
- Fergusonb 6y ago
  You won't be able to change the brightness or use the keyboard shortcuts by default, but it's pretty easy to use mainline to get the latest kernel which will support those features. This would also work for Ubuntu. https://github.com/bkw777/mainline https://github.com/bkw777/mainline
macksd 6y ago
Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life is quite overrated for many people. I have a Serval Workstation (i.e. high-power laptop) from System76 and absolutely love it. The battery doesn't last very long especially if I'm doing heavy-lifting on the GPU, but I very rarely go somewhere I can't plug in. I need to be able to fold up my "workstation" and take it with me, sure. But I can work from the airport, many planes, from my couch, from most coffee shops, etc. I just have to plug in when I get there. I would rather plug in when I get somewhere and have a much more powerful machine at my desk.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Indeed, LG's 32wh battery laptop rated at 23 hours instantly comes to mind. For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically the only thing making a difference in battery life for laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery. Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD + WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if working full speed.
- officeplant 6y ago
  For me battery life means I can go outside somewhere to get some fresh air/inspiration (hobby computer music production). It doesn't frustrate me to have to take the power brick along, but it is nice when I can replace that weight in my bag with a small midi controller.
- acdha 6y ago
  Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop — in part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20 years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd had any significant amount of on-the-go work which I couldn't do on my phone.
  - 6y ago
wazoox 6y ago
I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 520 with a Ryzen 5 3500 running Pop_OS. It works great, but battery life hovers around 4 hours (I have no idea how long it is supposed to last under Windows, though).
lumost 6y ago
I'm really unclear on the motivation for sticking a 50wh battery in a machine which can easily burn 25+wh in normal operation. If the computer can only hold up a 1.5 hour battery it really doesn't satisfy the use case of a laptop, doubling the battery up to 99 wh really allows for a 3-4 hour minimum battery life and a longer battery life for non-GPU work.
- f6v 6y ago
  You can still carry it in your bag and plug it in at home/work.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    This. I have a laptop that I rarely use on battery. It spends most of its life on a desk tethered to an external monitor. The advantage of being a laptop is that I can take it to my parents' house on the weekend, carry it back and forth to the office, etc. But then, at the office, they got some HP Elitedesk minis, which are very small - but use regular desktop CPUs - and I bought one for myself. Now the laptop spends most of its days in a drawer because the desktop is much beefier and just as portable. Of course, there are use-cases that a computer requiring an external screen and AC to even work can't handle. That's why I would be much more interested in having a "big" laptop, as in powerful CPU, tons of RAM, glorious screen. Could even be tempted to throw in a dedicated GPU. Don't care about it being 1 cm thin, featherweight and all-day battery. I do care about it not spinning up its fans when I'm just running vim in a console. I don't mind lugging around 2-3 kg of copper if that means the CPU can do a lot of work in silence. I have a friend who's moving much more around, in meetings, etc. Her old macbook air is perfect for what she does. Also, the latest and greatest AMD wouldn't make a difference for her job, but she would clearly hate to lug around a heavy, bulky beast. I think the issue is that, with today's technology, there's clearly no one size fits all. And there seems to be a trend in laptops to optimize for size and battery-life. Luckily, there are people for whom this is the right compromise. Don't know if they're the majority, but clearly there are other use-cases for which choices are more limited.
api 6y ago
It's so unfortunate that it's called Pop! OS. That name is unspeakably awful. It screams "toy not suitable for anything serious." It wouldn't turn me off from System76 if the hardware were good, but it's just... bad... real bad.
- ansible 6y ago
  Any more, all I care about is how searchable the name is. That's something to like with Debian and Ubuntu.
amanzi 6y ago
I run Pop!_OS on my T480 and it's amazing - really stable with great battery life. They've struck a nice balance between the stability of Debian and the modern-nature of Ubuntu. The only apps I miss from Windows are Office (mostly Excel) and OneDrive.
dartharva 6y ago
Strange. I tried using Pop!_OS on my Acer Aspire E15 and my experience was quite the opposite experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113962

isoos 6y ago

I was considering to buy a G14, but got distracted with other stuff. Can you please share a few details on how you use it? - What kind of external webcam do you use? Does it have any problem with any video-conferencing software? - Do you access any streaming service (with DRM)? Any issues? - Any issues with drivers, returning from sleep/hybernation? Thanks!

gbrown 6y ago
I use it with Fedora happily, and for work I have to use Zoom daily. I did have to replace a fan with one from Aliexpress due to rattle, but haven’t had issues since.
shaicoleman 6y ago
I have the Dell G5 4800H (AMD iGPU+AMD dGPU), there are a couple of graphic driver issues under Linux. I'm using the USB-C connection which is connected to the iGPU. * Locks up on suspend/resume * Locks up when inserting an external USB-C monitor * Requires a recent kernel to work properly (5.8 or later) * Locks up without amdgpu.runpm=0 kernel command line * dGPU can't be turned off, so increases power consumption * Locks up with vsync on with the dGPU * Kernel warning on startup, but doesn't affect stability Besides these issues (which can be worked around), it's very solid.
- artificialLimbs 6y ago
  Wow. I've got a Dell Latitude 5505 with a 4700u. It's worked great so far except for plugging into Dell's USB-c dock in the morning. This is a guessing game of which (of 3) monitors are going to work, often requiring opening/closing the lid a time or two or turning on/off screens. Battery life is decent (VERY good if you turn down brightness and ssh to your work) and it's blazing fast. It does get egg cooking hot when unplugged and running the GPU (games). Running Win10 currently, but trying to figure out which Linux is going to run with 3 monitors without doing hours of research. Suggestions welcome. Guess I'll try PopOS next.
  - Nagyman 6y ago
    I have a Dell monitor which has a built-in USB-C hub. I experience similar issues when plugging in my MacBook Pro - the monitor part works fine, but the keyboard/mouse usually takes a few attempts at plugging in ("docking"). Might not be your laptop so much as Dell's USB-C dock acting up.
unknown2374 6y ago
I had a G14 that I ended up returning. for points 2 and 3, I had no issues at all in the few months I used it. A side note: the build quality was extremely disappointing, coming from an XPS 13.
Sebb767 6y ago
I've have a G14 with RTX2060 and I'm very happy. Battery life is good (4-6h work with IDE etc) and webcams work as intended. DRM is mostly a non-issue, at least not more than on any other Linux install. The nvidia driver is a bit of a pain to set up, especially if you're on wayland or if you want to use displays via USB C (reverse prime does not work yet due to an nvidia driver bug, so you need to use the nvidia gpu as primary when docked). Other than that, everything works and the community (arch wiki and rog-core) provide good support for getting everything up and running. A bit of configuration and a somewhat recent kernel will be needed (it's pretty new hardware after all), but it's not that hard if you either know Linux or are willing to spend some time. I'm running this config for 8 months now, so the situation from a fresh install might be even better. Similar to the sister comment, I came from an XPS 13, but I'm happy. The laptop is a bit heavier, but in exchange you get a lot more power, far more RAM (up to 48GB), more ports and, subjectively, a dar better keyboard. Initially I wanted to stay with an XPS, but now I'm happy I made the jump. EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage.
- acoard 6y ago
  >EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage. Can you speak more to this? Does Pop_OS! configure this (more-or-less) out of the box? Would it work with any Nvidia card or are there restrictions? I'm interested in such a setup and have done research from afar. I've developed on Linux for years, but have heard GPU passthrough can be difficult unless you wrangle drivers a bit. EDIT: I'd also like to use it for CUDA in Linux. Do you have to reboot when enabling GPU passthrough (not a dealbreaker, just curious)?
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    > Can you speak more to this? Sure! Regards working out of the box, you'll probably have no luck with that. VFIO is still somewhat of a niche and VFIO on a laptop is a niche of a niche, so you'll need to expect some command line usage and a bit of config file editing. This being said, getting it to work is not too hard and, if you've done VFIO in the past, you should feel right at home. For the initial setup, you can mostly follow the guide on the arch wiki [0]. You might need to adapt it a bit on ubuntu(-based) systems, but the major points are the same. The only difference to the usual setup is that you need to include an APCI-table [3] to get the laptop driver to work in the VM. This reddit thread [1] describes it quite well. The author of that thread also has a repo [2] where he published his files and on which I based my scripts on. Note that you need the usual CPUID work-around (see the "Error 43" section on the arch vfio page). Also, you'll need an USB C to HDMI/DisplayPort/... cable and a monitor for the initial setup, after that you can use a dummy plug [5] and looking glass (also described on the arch wiki) to use pass through without external monitor. The setup is also very stable for me, with the exception of the looking glass part - if you absolutely depend on the setup, having a monitor handy will save you a bit of headache, but you can always revert to a VM display in the worst case. Regarding GPU support: It should support all GPU configurations, but you should check reddit etc to be sure. If you're talking about other laptops, the situation is a bit different. The big advantage of the G14 is (1) that the GPU has its own IOMMU group and is therefore easy to isolate and (2) that the display ports are well split between the two GPUs (the HDMI out and the internal display are connected to the AMD iGPU and the USB C DP-channel is connected to the RTX). This is rather rare, but makes setting this up (comparatively) easy. Note that the USB channel of the USB C out is not routed via the GPU, so if you're connected to a docking station, its display ports will be used by the VM, but the USB ports are on the host, still. This, however, comes with the drawback that you can not pass through an USB controller, as the groups for those do not work out. The ACS override patch (see arch wiki) might fix this, but unless you need to use audio interfaces, the "normal" USB redirector will suffice anyway. Rebooting is semi-required. In order to change from VM to Linux and back, you'll need to [un-]bind the nvidia driver and switch to vfio-pci. Going from Linux to VM is only possible when nothing uses the nvidia driver, which either needs a restart of your display server or only using the iGPU for all apps (quite easy on sway/wayland, haven't tried on X). The reverse should work as well - the author of the reddit threads above has scripts to do so, but this did not work out for me. Leaving the vfio-pci driver for the GPU is not an option either, as this will prevent it from going into the low power state and therefore heat up the laptop and use up the battery. Because of this, I usually simply reboot. In summary, if you don't mind rebooting, having the GPU bound to vfio-pci via kernel parameter on a secondary boot option is by far the easier way :) But it should be possible without, it'll just be a bit of work. To work with CUDA, you'll need to have the nvidia driver loaded, but you'll want to have that anyway to enable low-power states, as mentioned above. Using only the iGPU for display is possible in combination with CUDA, you'll simply need to stop your CUDA-apps before unbinding the driver. That's actually the setup I use, too :) Hope this helps! [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/hx5j8q/success_with_laptop_gpu_passthrough_on_asus_rog/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/hx5j8q/success_with_l... [2] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu [3] Since the original link is down for me: You need the ACPI table [4] and include it like this in the `<domain>`-part: <qemu:commandline> <qemu:arg value='-acpitable'/> <qemu:arg value='file=/home/cole/vfio/acpitable.bin'/> </qemu:commandline> See: https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/win10.xml#L272 https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/win10.xml... [4] https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/acpitable.bin https://git.deck.sh/shark/g14gpu/src/branch/master/acpitable... [5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MKR9WH https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MKR9WH - no affiliation, anything should work

indymike 6y ago

Would buy in a heartbeat if it had a 4k display. Hard to go back to 1080p after six years of Retina and 4K displays.

the-nozzle 6y ago
I know, eh ? Why is every linux laptop manufacturer insistent on using panels that they fished out of a dumpster behind a 7-11 ?
Macha 6y ago
Honestly find it hard to notice much difference in the display quality between my 1080p 2018 XPS laptop and my 1800p 2019 Mac laptop. Actually the XPS is slightly preferable to me because the matte vs glossy finish outweighs the extra resolution at that size for me. I guess that could just be my sight, but the reviews for the XPS laptop vs the 4k model of the same were pretty much unanimous on the 4k variant being a waste of battery for a neglible return on image quality, so it's at least not a fringe view
- justaguy88 6y ago
  > could just be my sight It is 1080p to 4k is such a large difference
  - eertami 6y ago
    Really? On a 13" display? I bet in a blind AB test at a normal viewing distance you wouldn't even be able to accurately tell me which is which.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      I would bet money on you being wrong at 2-3 feet away
    - bscphil 6y ago
      There's no need to bicker about this. A 13 inch display at 4K has about 340 pixels per inch along the diagonal. At 1080p it would have about 170 pixels per inch. Perfect vision is usually understood to be the ability to discern details of about 1/60 of a degree, or 0.29 milliradians. By the arc length formula (s=rθ), we find that the distance needed to precisely align this angle with the level of detail provided by a 1080p screen is about 20 inches. In other words, if you sit closer than 20 inches away from your screen (perhaps not that unlikely for a laptop), you might be able to discern details beyond the 1080p level. This would only be possible for extremely contrast sensitive small details, like text in a small font size at 1:1 (no DPI scaling). So... it's a bit complicated, but I suspect 1080p would be good enough for nearly everyone at 13 inches, but move up to 15 inches and I could see many people preferring 1440p.

gnufied 6y ago

Does graphics switching in popos works without full system restart or at least without restarting X11? I didn't think there was a way to make switching graphics work in linux without either restarting X11 session or restarting the machine completely. On related note - does external display works without nvidia GPU? A lot of manufactures have lately decided to hardwire external HDMI connection to descrete GPU and hence it has been pretty painful to use NVIDIA powered Laptops on Linux. :(

AzzieElbab 6y ago
I have an older system76/galago laptop(Intel graphics). I use it with 2 external 4k(HP/Z27) monitors with no issues. Previously used with 1 4k, 1 1920xSomething/Portrait. Resolution switching works fine. Also, PopOS gnome UI comes with build-in tiling, feels like slightly nerfed i3. It also works fine across monitors/virtual desktops and so on. PopOS desktop is X11 based and I havent played with Wayland on that laptop

Tade0 6y ago

> I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web) Thank you for the pointer. I have the exact same laptop and tried Ubuntu on it - couldn't even change the screen brightness.

e12e 6y ago
Ubuntu 20.04 lts?
- Tade0 6y ago
  Yes.
Fergusonb 6y ago
You won't be able to change the brightness or use the keyboard shortcuts by default, but it's pretty easy to use mainline to get the latest kernel which will support those features. This would also work for Ubuntu. https://github.com/bkw777/mainline https://github.com/bkw777/mainline

macksd 6y ago

Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life is quite overrated for many people. I have a Serval Workstation (i.e. high-power laptop) from System76 and absolutely love it. The battery doesn't last very long especially if I'm doing heavy-lifting on the GPU, but I very rarely go somewhere I can't plug in. I need to be able to fold up my "workstation" and take it with me, sure. But I can work from the airport, many planes, from my couch, from most coffee shops, etc. I just have to plug in when I get there. I would rather plug in when I get somewhere and have a much more powerful machine at my desk.

baybal2 6y ago
Indeed, LG's 32wh battery laptop rated at 23 hours instantly comes to mind. For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically the only thing making a difference in battery life for laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery. Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD + WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if working full speed.
officeplant 6y ago
For me battery life means I can go outside somewhere to get some fresh air/inspiration (hobby computer music production). It doesn't frustrate me to have to take the power brick along, but it is nice when I can replace that weight in my bag with a small midi controller.
acdha 6y ago
Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop — in part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20 years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd had any significant amount of on-the-go work which I couldn't do on my phone.
- 6y ago

wazoox 6y ago

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 520 with a Ryzen 5 3500 running Pop_OS. It works great, but battery life hovers around 4 hours (I have no idea how long it is supposed to last under Windows, though).

lumost 6y ago

I'm really unclear on the motivation for sticking a 50wh battery in a machine which can easily burn 25+wh in normal operation. If the computer can only hold up a 1.5 hour battery it really doesn't satisfy the use case of a laptop, doubling the battery up to 99 wh really allows for a 3-4 hour minimum battery life and a longer battery life for non-GPU work.

f6v 6y ago
You can still carry it in your bag and plug it in at home/work.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  This. I have a laptop that I rarely use on battery. It spends most of its life on a desk tethered to an external monitor. The advantage of being a laptop is that I can take it to my parents' house on the weekend, carry it back and forth to the office, etc. But then, at the office, they got some HP Elitedesk minis, which are very small - but use regular desktop CPUs - and I bought one for myself. Now the laptop spends most of its days in a drawer because the desktop is much beefier and just as portable. Of course, there are use-cases that a computer requiring an external screen and AC to even work can't handle. That's why I would be much more interested in having a "big" laptop, as in powerful CPU, tons of RAM, glorious screen. Could even be tempted to throw in a dedicated GPU. Don't care about it being 1 cm thin, featherweight and all-day battery. I do care about it not spinning up its fans when I'm just running vim in a console. I don't mind lugging around 2-3 kg of copper if that means the CPU can do a lot of work in silence. I have a friend who's moving much more around, in meetings, etc. Her old macbook air is perfect for what she does. Also, the latest and greatest AMD wouldn't make a difference for her job, but she would clearly hate to lug around a heavy, bulky beast. I think the issue is that, with today's technology, there's clearly no one size fits all. And there seems to be a trend in laptops to optimize for size and battery-life. Luckily, there are people for whom this is the right compromise. Don't know if they're the majority, but clearly there are other use-cases for which choices are more limited.

api 6y ago

It's so unfortunate that it's called Pop! OS. That name is unspeakably awful. It screams "toy not suitable for anything serious." It wouldn't turn me off from System76 if the hardware were good, but it's just... bad... real bad.

ansible 6y ago
Any more, all I care about is how searchable the name is. That's something to like with Debian and Ubuntu.

amanzi 6y ago

I run Pop!_OS on my T480 and it's amazing - really stable with great battery life. They've struck a nice balance between the stability of Debian and the modern-nature of Ubuntu. The only apps I miss from Windows are Office (mostly Excel) and OneDrive.

dartharva 6y ago

Strange. I tried using Pop!_OS on my Acer Aspire E15 and my experience was quite the opposite experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113962