4 ms·

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 comp

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.
        mattl 4y ago
        Well the quality seems to have ramped up considerably.
        pxc 4y ago
        I can believe that! But I am still excited about the eventual release of a Linux-first laptop equal in quality to their desktops. :D On the note of high-quality hardware produced by other manufacturers, the HP Dev One which ships with Pop!_OS might be attractive to people who are looking for a supported system with very nice hardware: https://www.wired.com/review/hp-dev-one-linux-laptop/ https://www.wired.com/review/hp-dev-one-linux-laptop/
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Each of their lines are geared towards a specific market. The Lemur is the "portable" model, where weight and battery life are the top priority. They do also emphasize that it is a capable device in its own right, but it has a slightly smaller screen and lower max specs than the more powerful lines (14", up to 40gb ram vs 64 for others). I wouldn't doubt that the claims are real; I can easily go a whole day of programming without needing a recharge on my lg gram, which was likewise advertised as having oodles of hours. If I'm careful with my usage, I could easily push 16. As it is, I've got two instances of chrome (different profiles), three instances of VS code, a server running, docker and postgres in the background, sitting at around 48% battery remaining and I haven't plugged in to charge in about 8 hours or so.
hanifvirani 4y ago
I have a XPS 13 and I had arch on it but it would drain power while sleeping. The laptop would be dead overnight. Tried a lot of things but couldn't fix it. Had to go back to Windows.
- smallerfish 4y ago
  XPS 13 w/ Kubuntu and I don't have this issue.
  - atomicnumber3 4y ago
    I don't have it either, but I have heard of it. It's something to do with the kernel not being set to allow the s2idle power level. I don't know what triggers it, but setting some kernel flag forces it to show that sleep level which will then be used for sleeping. A such-afflicted laptop will be missing the s2idle that you see querying /sys here: https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/sleep-modes.html https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/sleep-modes.html

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.
        mattl 4y ago
        Well the quality seems to have ramped up considerably.
        pxc 4y ago
        I can believe that! But I am still excited about the eventual release of a Linux-first laptop equal in quality to their desktops. :D On the note of high-quality hardware produced by other manufacturers, the HP Dev One which ships with Pop!_OS might be attractive to people who are looking for a supported system with very nice hardware: https://www.wired.com/review/hp-dev-one-linux-laptop/ https://www.wired.com/review/hp-dev-one-linux-laptop/
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Each of their lines are geared towards a specific market. The Lemur is the "portable" model, where weight and battery life are the top priority. They do also emphasize that it is a capable device in its own right, but it has a slightly smaller screen and lower max specs than the more powerful lines (14", up to 40gb ram vs 64 for others). I wouldn't doubt that the claims are real; I can easily go a whole day of programming without needing a recharge on my lg gram, which was likewise advertised as having oodles of hours. If I'm careful with my usage, I could easily push 16. As it is, I've got two instances of chrome (different profiles), three instances of VS code, a server running, docker and postgres in the background, sitting at around 48% battery remaining and I haven't plugged in to charge in about 8 hours or so.

hanifvirani 4y ago

I have a XPS 13 and I had arch on it but it would drain power while sleeping. The laptop would be dead overnight. Tried a lot of things but couldn't fix it. Had to go back to Windows.

smallerfish 4y ago
XPS 13 w/ Kubuntu and I don't have this issue.
- atomicnumber3 4y ago
  I don't have it either, but I have heard of it. It's something to do with the kernel not being set to allow the s2idle power level. I don't know what triggers it, but setting some kernel flag forces it to show that sleep level which will then be used for sleeping. A such-afflicted laptop will be missing the s2idle that you see querying /sys here: https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/sleep-modes.html https://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/sleep-modes.html