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I personally try to avoid Nvidia dGPUs since I usually don't need CUDA and they tend to be a PITA even w/ DKMS drivers and are terrible for battery life. I thi

by lhl 5y ago

I personally try to avoid Nvidia dGPUs since I usually don't need CUDA and they tend to be a PITA even w/ DKMS drivers and are terrible for battery life. I think the thing with the currently available Vivobook Pro 14Xs (M4700/N7400) is that they're currently last-gen Ryzen 5000 and Intel 11th gen chips. Even though I'd like to try out the OLED display, I'd probably go w/ the G14 atm - Ryzen 6000 and also you get 1 unsoldered DIMM slot so you could probably get yourself get up to 40GB of DDR5. While Asus doesn't give a crap about Linux, there's a pretty active community (focused mostly on the G/M ROG laptops, maybe another good reason to go w/ the G14): https://asus-linux.org/ https://asus-linux.org/ It seems like these days there are always si0x/s3 or other power drain issues w/ non-validated Linux laptops though. A good reason to support companies like Tuxedo, System76, Slimbook, Starlabs etc that at least make some effort that their EC/BIOSes actually play nice.

akvadrako 5y ago
I agree Linux support would be ideal, but hardware quality is of first importance; many of those companies are just rebranded Clevo. Until recently I agreed about absolutely no Nvidia, though it might be improving. For a few months now the drivers support the standard Wayland interface GBM, which at least means any compositor should work with them.
- lhl 5y ago
  I agree you want good QC, support, and product design/features, but the various Lenovos, HPs, Asus, are just ODM'd machines manufactured by Wistron, Compal, Pegatron, etc so it's not all that different except big brands pay for more exclusivity. As far as repairability goes, you'd be better off with more standard parts, and honestly, lately some of the white label chassis' like the Clevo L141MU or Tong Fang ID4H1 are as good or in many ways better (lighter, unlocked BIOSes, more upgradeable (SODIMM slots!), better cooling, bigger batteries) than what many of the big OEMs have been putting out. Not all configurations one these white labels are the same though since OEMs usually can choose what quality display panel, trackpad, etc they want to use...
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    My concerns are more with chassis quality. Having a good keyboard means having a rigid body. Many reviews of Tuxedo mention mushy keyboards. Even the keyboard on the Stellaris, which they highlight, doesn't fair well in opinions. I agree most OEMs are bad, but the specific ASUS models I've mentioned, along with Thinkpads in general, seem to have better keyboards. Sadly Lenovo is making them worse every generation (with less travel).
3np 5y ago
Hey, I'm the one complaining about the lack of options - the Slimbook Executive seems to check all the major boxes and it's the first time I hear of them. Do you have any experience or anecdotes with it?
- lhl 5y ago
  It looks like the same Tong Fang ID4H1 chassis that Schenker Vision 14/Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 use (also XPG Xenia 14 I believe). If you do a search online, Notebook check, YouTubers (including some Linux-oriented ones) and various subreddits will probably have reviews. Basically looks good to me but ideally for performance/efficiency I'd wait for the 12th gen refresh (this particular chassis is Intel-only, although TF has other AMD models). Below 45W, Ryzen 6000 outperforms, and it's battery-life can be up to twice as good as Intel 12th gen in idle/low intensity tasks like web browsing though, so for a thin and light, my hope is to see a decent AMD model come out in the next couple months. BTW, a couple years ago I did a review of one of the first 4800H Tong Fang systems (versions of this have been available as the Schenker VIA 15 Pro, Tuxedo Pulse 15, KDE Slimbook, and Eluktronics Thinn 15): https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechrevo_code01_tongfang_pf5nu1g_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechr... It was pretty thorough and I answered a lot of questions so maye relevant still. Also, one of the things that I liked about the Ryzen laptops is that while it mostly wasn't possible to exactly undervolt, enthusiasts have done a great job documenting mobile Ryzen's power and thermal behaviors, and you can basically script it to behave how you want, when you want: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide I use a toggle that runs `ryzenadj -f 50` for example, which allows full turbo/speeds, but hard throttles to keep my temps right below my fan hysteresis temp to keep it completely silent. This tends to be my favorite run-mode on battery (I have it attached to a udev script for when unplugged).

by lhl 5y ago

akvadrako 5y ago

I agree Linux support would be ideal, but hardware quality is of first importance; many of those companies are just rebranded Clevo. Until recently I agreed about absolutely no Nvidia, though it might be improving. For a few months now the drivers support the standard Wayland interface GBM, which at least means any compositor should work with them.

lhl 5y ago
I agree you want good QC, support, and product design/features, but the various Lenovos, HPs, Asus, are just ODM'd machines manufactured by Wistron, Compal, Pegatron, etc so it's not all that different except big brands pay for more exclusivity. As far as repairability goes, you'd be better off with more standard parts, and honestly, lately some of the white label chassis' like the Clevo L141MU or Tong Fang ID4H1 are as good or in many ways better (lighter, unlocked BIOSes, more upgradeable (SODIMM slots!), better cooling, bigger batteries) than what many of the big OEMs have been putting out. Not all configurations one these white labels are the same though since OEMs usually can choose what quality display panel, trackpad, etc they want to use...
- akvadrako 5y ago
  My concerns are more with chassis quality. Having a good keyboard means having a rigid body. Many reviews of Tuxedo mention mushy keyboards. Even the keyboard on the Stellaris, which they highlight, doesn't fair well in opinions. I agree most OEMs are bad, but the specific ASUS models I've mentioned, along with Thinkpads in general, seem to have better keyboards. Sadly Lenovo is making them worse every generation (with less travel).

3np 5y ago

Hey, I'm the one complaining about the lack of options - the Slimbook Executive seems to check all the major boxes and it's the first time I hear of them. Do you have any experience or anecdotes with it?

lhl 5y ago
It looks like the same Tong Fang ID4H1 chassis that Schenker Vision 14/Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 use (also XPG Xenia 14 I believe). If you do a search online, Notebook check, YouTubers (including some Linux-oriented ones) and various subreddits will probably have reviews. Basically looks good to me but ideally for performance/efficiency I'd wait for the 12th gen refresh (this particular chassis is Intel-only, although TF has other AMD models). Below 45W, Ryzen 6000 outperforms, and it's battery-life can be up to twice as good as Intel 12th gen in idle/low intensity tasks like web browsing though, so for a thin and light, my hope is to see a decent AMD model come out in the next couple months. BTW, a couple years ago I did a review of one of the first 4800H Tong Fang systems (versions of this have been available as the Schenker VIA 15 Pro, Tuxedo Pulse 15, KDE Slimbook, and Eluktronics Thinn 15): https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechrevo_code01_tongfang_pf5nu1g_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechr... It was pretty thorough and I answered a lot of questions so maye relevant still. Also, one of the things that I liked about the Ryzen laptops is that while it mostly wasn't possible to exactly undervolt, enthusiasts have done a great job documenting mobile Ryzen's power and thermal behaviors, and you can basically script it to behave how you want, when you want: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide I use a toggle that runs `ryzenadj -f 50` for example, which allows full turbo/speeds, but hard throttles to keep my temps right below my fan hysteresis temp to keep it completely silent. This tends to be my favorite run-mode on battery (I have it attached to a udev script for when unplugged).