6 ms·
System76 Virgo Aims to Be the Quietest yet Most Performant Linux Laptop
- jfb 3y agoI'm very interested in seeing what they come up with. The existing laptops are, IIRC, rebadged Clevo (or some other OEM). It's a big risk, pulling more of that design in-house, but I'm hoping they can do it.
- rektide 3y agoIt's just a tweet, I won't hold it against anyone, but if your goal is "quietest yet most performant" you will almost certainly fail. Someone will outcool you & you will lose, baring some breakthrough in cooling technology. (Solid state cooling could do it but AFAIK hasn't scaled up yet & already takes significant size. https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/23/zotac-pi430aj-pico-mini-pc-features-airjet-solid-state-active-cooling-chips/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/23/zotac-pi430aj-pico-m...)
- jjtheblunt 3y agojust a datapoint, but AsahiLinux on my M2 is super fast. if Apple were to help them with drivers, i suspect that would be tough to surpass.
- ranguna 3y agoHow usable is Asahi right now?
- jjtheblunt 3y agodaily driver usable for going on a year, lots of programming across compilers defines my notion of daily driver. speaking of "driver", some hardware drivers aren't there yet, notably audio, display brightness (either off or on), and i think sleep states aren't quite right.
- ranguna 3y agoUgh no brightness control would kill my eyes. I read somewhere that the camera also doesn't work, meaning that video calls are out of the question and that's something I use for my personal and professional life. So, not a daily driver from me just yet. Thanks for the info.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoGood point: i hadn't tried the camera. You know, if macOS fonts an zoom were as compatible with my super fortunate vision, the drivers issues alone really would be a deal breaker. but i keep AsahiLinux on my M2 because the window manager and sharpness of the display is just so much nicer than what MacOS offers (for my eyes, not for everyone).
- BaculumMeumEst 3y agoI came here to make a snarky comment about their keyboards, but the keyboard shown in the article looks extremely good.
- skavi 3y agoIt’s interesting that it looks exactly like a ThinkPad’s, with the concave keycaps and red trackpoint/buttons. If it feels the same, that’s a very good thing.
- wander_homer 3y agoThat's because this is a ThinkPad keyboard. I'll highly doubt that they will get a license to use those by default. They either have to come up with their own design or make it compatible with a ThinkPad keyboard, which you then have to buy and install yourself.
- rektide 3y agoDefinitely a Lenovo TrackPoint. I use a Bluetooth version quite regularly.
- aigoochamna 3y agoIt is a think pad keyboard, it even has the windows key logo on it.
- sharms 3y agoIt is a Thinkpad keyboard because it fits the tracepoint module they are looking to integrate: https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1662551130768044032 https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1662551130768044032
- neilv 3y agoVery interesting. With a good TrackPoint implementation (including getting the buttons right), and a decent touchpad for people who prefer that, I could see standardizing on it for fleet laptops. They have even better open source thinking than Lenovo (which inherited some good thinking from IBM), and the US provenance is significant to some companies. (Though I'd probably standardize on Debian Stable rather than PopOS.)
- bluGill 3y agoI don't need the fastest, I want long battery life, which is often opposed to the fastest goal. I'm hoping to get one when it is released, but of course I will need to see the specs first. I'm mostly happy with my pinebookpro, but once in a while it is lacking
- mdp2021 3y ago> I want long battery life Check for "fanless laptops" and for CPUs with low TDP as a lead; consider if your routine involves a car/t the purchase of an adequate "powerbank", probably a "power station" made of a battery and a good inverter (e.g. Jackery).
- smabie 3y agoJust buy a m2 mac then?
- kitsunesoba 3y agoA balance is what's best for most people buying laptops — not the fastest, but fast, quiet, cool, and efficient. Laptop manufacturers have a tendency to lean into the performance aspect at the steep cost of the other three aspects because it's easy to dump more power into the CPU and push the fans harder to make up the difference. Achieving balance takes engineering chops that many of these manufacturers lack or don't care to procure.
- jfb 3y agoI doubt that the HW engineers at Clevo or wherever are categorically that much worse than those at Apple or Lenovo, and the differing places their machines sit in the quality manifold is very much more a question of margins than ability.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoI basically want a MacBook equivalent that runs Linux as a first class OS Which means: great display, battery life, keyboard, light and thin (for couch use), and then to be available to try before I buy in some form. Eg, visiting a store to try the display/keyboard. Or else, free returns. (nice trackpads are traps: MacOS makes you rely on their great trackpad, but it makes you more prone to RSI in the long run to use a trackpad all the time. Better to use gnome with its great keyboard shortcuts) I wish system76 would put better displays in their machines. I hope virgo goes with 1440p or higher. This whole in-house laptop project is very encouraging, I cna't wait to see what they're building in 10 years
- gigatexal 3y agoI’m hoping the Asahi folks get us there. Which is why I help support their efforts with a monthly donation.
- 7e 3y agoYou won’t get it. Apple makes killer hardware and pretty decent integrated software. Great hardware/software integration is a lot of work and OSS devs just aren’t up to the task.
- jacooper 3y agoHonestly software is the last thing i will buy a Mac for, macOS is garbage, I would rather use windows.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoHow so? My favourite desktop environment is gnome, because I almost never need to touch a mouse with it, and it’s nice and minimal (although you need to add a few extensions)
- jacooper 3y agoI love gnome too, but its way better than macOS, its way more advanced, doesn't lack basic features(que KDE crowd...) and extensions fill any gaps. While macOS feels dated, has absolute garbage support for anything Linux releated and awful keyboard layout(just use Ctrl already).
- loudmax 3y agoI suspect this isn't the direction that System76 is pursuing with Virgo, but Linux is in a good position to take advantage of Arm CPUs. Linux isn't tied to legacy software that only runs on x86 in the same way that proprietary OS's are. This distinction isn't absolute, but given that most Linux software is open source, it's relatively easier to make this transition. "Most performant" is a tall order. The traditional benefit of Arm has been efficiency, not compute power, but Apple has shown what's possible with their M1/M2 designs.
- gigatexal 3y agoI wish they’d take RISC-V and made a formidable laptop from that. A fully, 100% open one.
- smoldesu 3y agoIt would be interesting if Nvidia went this route. They've got the chops to design a competitive modern ARM core, plus experience with the more difficult GPU/vector processing units. They kinda signaled their interest with the attempted ARM purchase a while ago, but that fizzled out quick. That ship has sailed, though. The licensing of ARM puts them in an unfavorable position, which only incentivizes Nvidia to focus on GPU sales and RISC-V skunkworks. They've still got their Grace ARM system coming "soon", but I'd be surprised if they bothered to update their current Orin systems. It feels like no one besides Apple and maybe Qualcomm have an incentive to deliver consumer ARM hardware right now. To compete with Apple you need a custom core, and building a custom core takes time and money. The few stakeholders who can deliver a quality ARM experience are probably scheming to cut ARM out of the picture entirely.
- wmf 3y agoOrin is close to a laptop processor already.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoThere are some Chromebooks with Snapdragons that are somewhat interesting (though half the speed of an M1). And some of the Windows ARM laptops might be decent in this niche. Some of the Samsung Galaxy Books look interesting. You'd basically be giving up on running really serious stuff on the laptop itself. If you have good wifi/5G, a home server or an AWS rental might do the heavy lifting. It's a mixed bag, because the whole purpose is for traveling, and that's often when your connectivity is iffy. So, not sure. Battery life would be nice though.
- ss108 3y agoAs someone who owned 2 System76 machines, I would not say that noise ranks very high among issues they should tackle.
- sdfhoajdionio 3y agoI find the noise to be intolerable on my Adder WS even at idle, but would agree that it's nowhere near the biggest problem. That would be software support. I have been using Linux laptops for ten years and the only one that has ever failed to reliably wake from sleep is my System76. They're junk by every metric I know of. Expensive, too. They have nothing going for them.
- johntyree 3y agoI am right now using a Lenovo X1 that has that problem. Previous gen also had that problem. And the one before that. Waking up from sleep is apparently difficult.
- ss108 3y agoI agree re: junk. Their build quality feels poor. Sometimes it's hard to tell when an issue is just a vicissitude of using Linux or their fault, but I would overall not recommend.
- commoner 3y agoBuild quality is exactly what System76 is improving on by creating their first in-house laptop. All of System76's laptops to date have been adapted from designs from ODMs such as Clevo. When System76 moved their desktops in-house with their Thelio product line, they were well-built and well-received. I'm optimistic about their new Virgo laptop after seeing what they did with their Thelio desktops.
- ss108 3y agoOh interesting. I would be willing to give them a shot one again one day (there are so few purveyors of pre-installed Linux computers), though not for the ~$1k Thelio costs. Right now, WSL is working great for me, but Windows seems to be getting increasingly aggressive with wanting one to use their search, etc.
- martingalex2 3y agoSystem76 should manufacture and distribute direct in Canada. Ordering across the border is nonsense.