4 ms·

I've owned three System76 desktops. Highly recommended if you want a Linux desktop computer.

rebeccaskinner 4y ago
I've had two system 76 laptops and I've been happy with them. The company seems to do a decent amount of work on upstreaming fixes they make to software and they generally seem to be good members of the open source community. I'm looking to buy my first new desktop in a long time as soon as the 4090's are available, and was originally planning to go with System76, but I've heard some people say the cooling in the desktop systems is really bad, to the point that it causes stability or thermal throttling issues. Since I've only seen a couple of data points, I'm curious if you have anything to add about the thermals and whether it's something worth considering as I'm looking around for a new desktop.
atomicnumber3 4y ago
I had one of their systems, a gazelle professional 4 if I recall right, it must've been around, oh say, 2013? And it was quite a nice machine, great linux compat, the 4-core i7 in it performed quite well and it let me load it up with RAM. It wasn't too heavy or anything and I liked the display. But the battery life. Good lord. 45 minutes, 55 if I messed and fussed with power settings and such. Basically gaming-laptop-tier "more like a UPS than a battery" battery performance. My next laptop was a thinkpad T440s and it had similarly good linux compat and it performed much better for battery life - I got an i5 in that one and saw 8ish hours of battery life, and it had a hot-swap feature where I could swap in a big-ass battery once I depleted the slim one and get an additional 20(!!) something hours of battery life on a single boot. Great for car trips and heavy all-day use like at conferences. But then superfish and I swore Lenovo had lost me for-ever. So my current laptop is an XPS13 and I get 8-10ish hours off one charge with it, and it is super thin and the only Linux issue I've had is needing a very new kernel when I bought it new a year and a half or so ago, new enough that Linux Mint didn't ship it OOTB and the live ISO couldn't get WiFi, so I installed Arch instead, where their latest install image did indeed have a sufficiently new kernel. So I'm a happy XPS user right now and I've found I like the 13" form factor. Would I be disappointed on battery performance if I went with a system76 machine for my next laptop?
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  I am on a Lemur Pro from them, and it gets 14 hours of battery life.
  - arthurcolle 4y ago
    That's amazing. Are you for real?
    - acidburnNSA 4y ago
      Yeah, I find it's totally as advertised. Charged it up for a flight last week. Worked the whole time. Turned it on in the hotel afterwards and it had 70% left. https://system76.com/laptops/lemur https://system76.com/laptops/lemur
      - mattl 4y ago
        How’s the rest of it? The trackpad, the sound, microphones, webcam, etc? If I had one of these would I need a bunch of external stuff to make it decent?
        seibelj 4y ago
        The only issue I’ve had is randomly the trackpad will stop working, then I reboot. I think I also made a few tweaks a while ago to some config for them. Otherwise, top notch machine.
        mattl 4y ago
        That’s good to hear. In the past their laptops have been rebadged affairs and not great while their desktops were very solid.
        pxc 4y ago
        They haven't released their first in-house laptop yet. Some of their new laptops are reportedly quite good, but they're still rebadged Clevos with custom UEFIs and other firmware mods.
jrootabega 4y ago
I would have bought one long ago if they hadn't included binding arbitration in their terms of sale. It looks like they still do. https://system76.com/terms https://system76.com/terms (In that spirit, I need to look into moving off Ubuntu in response to self-promotion being added to system commands.)

I've had two system 76 laptops and I've been happy with them. The company seems to do a decent amount of work on upstreaming fixes they make to software and they generally seem to be good members of the open source community. I'm looking to buy my first new desktop in a long time as soon as the 4090's are available, and was originally planning to go with System76, but I've heard some people say the cooling in the desktop systems is really bad, to the point that it causes stability or thermal throttling issues. Since I've only seen a couple of data points, I'm curious if you have anything to add about the thermals and whether it's something worth considering as I'm looking around for a new desktop.

atomicnumber3 4y ago

I had one of their systems, a gazelle professional 4 if I recall right, it must've been around, oh say, 2013? And it was quite a nice machine, great linux compat, the 4-core i7 in it performed quite well and it let me load it up with RAM. It wasn't too heavy or anything and I liked the display. But the battery life. Good lord. 45 minutes, 55 if I messed and fussed with power settings and such. Basically gaming-laptop-tier "more like a UPS than a battery" battery performance. My next laptop was a thinkpad T440s and it had similarly good linux compat and it performed much better for battery life - I got an i5 in that one and saw 8ish hours of battery life, and it had a hot-swap feature where I could swap in a big-ass battery once I depleted the slim one and get an additional 20(!!) something hours of battery life on a single boot. Great for car trips and heavy all-day use like at conferences. But then superfish and I swore Lenovo had lost me for-ever. So my current laptop is an XPS13 and I get 8-10ish hours off one charge with it, and it is super thin and the only Linux issue I've had is needing a very new kernel when I bought it new a year and a half or so ago, new enough that Linux Mint didn't ship it OOTB and the live ISO couldn't get WiFi, so I installed Arch instead, where their latest install image did indeed have a sufficiently new kernel. So I'm a happy XPS user right now and I've found I like the 13" form factor. Would I be disappointed on battery performance if I went with a system76 machine for my next laptop?

acidburnNSA 4y ago
I am on a Lemur Pro from them, and it gets 14 hours of battery life.
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  That's amazing. Are you for real?
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    Yeah, I find it's totally as advertised. Charged it up for a flight last week. Worked the whole time. Turned it on in the hotel afterwards and it had 70% left. https://system76.com/laptops/lemur https://system76.com/laptops/lemur
    - mattl 4y ago
      How’s the rest of it? The trackpad, the sound, microphones, webcam, etc? If I had one of these would I need a bunch of external stuff to make it decent?
      - seibelj 4y ago
        The only issue I’ve had is randomly the trackpad will stop working, then I reboot. I think I also made a few tweaks a while ago to some config for them. Otherwise, top notch machine.
        mattl 4y ago
        That’s good to hear. In the past their laptops have been rebadged affairs and not great while their desktops were very solid.
        pxc 4y ago
        They haven't released their first in-house laptop yet. Some of their new laptops are reportedly quite good, but they're still rebadged Clevos with custom UEFIs and other firmware mods.

jrootabega 4y ago

I would have bought one long ago if they hadn't included binding arbitration in their terms of sale. It looks like they still do. https://system76.com/terms https://system76.com/terms (In that spirit, I need to look into moving off Ubuntu in response to self-promotion being added to system commands.)