11 ms·

System76's Lemur Pro Laptop Is Just a Nice Linux Laptop

176 points by pbui 3y ago

rossdavidh 3y ago
I've used System76's products for a decade now, and always been happy. Recently, my (non-techie) wife and teenage daughter started using them as well, and they're happy as well.
tivert 3y ago
https://system76.com/laptops/lemur https://system76.com/laptops/lemur: > Display 14.1″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish I'll pass. It has a 16:9 display.
- giancarlostoro 3y ago
  I'm still using 1080p monitors in 2023, with the exception of my Surface Book 2 which I don't use nearly as much (I prioritize my personal desktop way more). I game on 1080p I just don't have desk space for 32" 4k monitors, and I dont see any value in having 4k under a 14" monitor.
  - eviks 3y ago
    There are resolutions between 4k and 1080p, as well as monitor sizes bellow 32
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    I agree, but the complaint is about aspect ratio, or more specifically about the wasted space / unnecessarily smaller screen within the chassis. Similar to op, I won't buy a 16:9 laptop anymore. It can be 1920x1200, though, that's still sufficient for smaller laptops.
    - redundantly 3y ago
      1920x1200 is 16:10. Huge difference from 16:9, amazingly enough.
    - giancarlostoro 3y ago
      Interesting, I have been stuck in 1080p land so I have not tried 1200, maybe if I get the chance I'll check that resolution out. I am debating making a small jump to "2k" since its between 4K and 1080p, but I get the feeling those monitors are not quite as common as the other two resolutions, and I'm not sure if it'll be truly worth it. This is in terms of a desktop, not a laptop, but I could see the argument for 1920x1200 for a laptop, seems more reasonable to me.
  - treis 3y ago
    I notice a big difference with 2K at 13". Text looks much nicer and there's a lot more useable real estate.
rbanffy 3y ago
$1150 for an 8GB PC laptop is very high. It’s the price of a 13” MacBook Air with twice the storage. A better option would be a low-end Dell that works just as well with Linux and costs perhaps half as much. I am yet to see a low-end Dell that doesn’t excel with Linux.
- portmanteaufu 3y ago
  EDIT: The parent post originally said "$1,500 for 8GB". I'll leave this anyway. > The Lemur Pro *starts at $1,150 for an Intel i5 machine with 8 GB of RAM* and a 256-GB SSD. For $179[1], you can upgrade it to 40GB of RAM for a total of $1,329. [1] https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
  - arein3 3y ago
    Do they just stick a 32gb in the other slot? Seems like dual channel will not work correctly if one stick is 8gb and the other 32
    - pprotas 3y ago
      It's possible that there is no dual channel, so the laptop would not take a performance hit due to mismatched sticks. I can not tell the configuration of the slots from their specs page [0]. Their configuration page [1] confirms that it's 8GB+32GB to get the 40GB. Why wouldn't they just offer 2x16GB to get the dual-channel memory? Unless, of course, the laptop does not support dual-channel memory... -- [0]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs [1]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
      - turminal 3y ago
        Most likely the motherboard has 8GB soldered on, they do that with a lot of laptops these days unfortunately.
baby_souffle 3y ago
It’s ok. Webcam is potato, speakers are webcam sized and only one usb c port right next to the dc charge jack. Ditch the barrel jack, give me a thunderbolt port on both sides and increase the trackpad size and I’ll overlook the webcam speakers and cramped display.
camjohnson26 3y ago
It’s a nice computer but calling it “repairable” is a farce, and System76’s customer support is unfortunately woefully inadequate. I have one of these and spilled a drink on my keyboard, getting it replaced was $300 of parts and labor, but the worst thing was it took almost 2 months pressuring their support reps to actually complete the process and they would frequently just not respond to messages, or ignore information I provided or clarified. Pop_OS! is really nice to be fair. I’ve also had issues with build quality. My Gazelle’s screen stopped working when the computer ran out of power and had a bent wire when I opened it up. Again they wanted hundreds of dollars to fix it, even though it was clearly a manufacturing defect. When they sent the computer back the chassis was cracked.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  Counterpoint: my keyboard on my lemur pro died and they shipped me a new part in like 2 days and I had it swapped in 40 mins. https://partofthething.com/thoughts/replacing-the-keyboard-on-my-2020-system76-lemur-pro-lemp9-laptop/ https://partofthething.com/thoughts/replacing-the-keyboard-o...
- Errsher 3y ago
  I have also had very poor customer support from them, closing tickets randomly on me with no follow up.
- runamuck 3y ago
  I had a good experience with System76 customer Support. I contacted them on Wednesday July 13th and they responded that Monday July 18th. They sent me a label immediately, I shipped it to them and with shipping time both ways I got my laptop back on the following Friday, July 29th.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- tech_ken 3y ago
  I've replaced the battery once and the wifi card twice, the second time in SFO at a cafe table with some random screwdriver I stole from the office. The internal layout is SO easy to open up and put back together, and all the parts and instructions for repair are posted on their website (and are super easy to navigate!). Idk why you would say "farce" but that seems extremely strong. I guess it's kind of inconvenient that they didn't fix the laptop you broke in a timespan you liked, but that's got nothing to do with the thing's "repairability".
FFP999 3y ago
Given my experience with System76 laptops, I know they can make a good impression at first, but after seeing how flimsy they are in long-term use, I can't justify the markup. You can get a better sturdier laptop with good Linux compatibility cheaper elsewhere.
- AndyPa32 3y ago
  I have one running almost all the time. Bought it three years ago and it just works. When I bought it, there was the option to not include a separate Graphics card. Onboard is just fine for me. And that brought down the price considerably. However, they currently don't have that many AMD options for Laptops, so my next one probably won't be System76. PopOS never did it for me. Not once did it survive a system upgrade. So I just switched back to Debian.
  - FFP999 3y ago
    I've had two System76 machines, so I'm one anecdote ahead of you here.
- troyvit 3y ago
  My anecdata is that I used a galp6 since 2013 as a daily driver for years. It stayed in service in one way or another for ten years. The battery became useless but everything else was rock solid.
- winkwinkwink 3y ago
  After almost 10 years of wanting a computer from System76, I was finally able to afford one and bought a Galago Pro 5 (galp5) in 2022. Since then I've come to deeply regret that decision. I've replaced the keyboard within the first month because it shipped warped. It recently started to "ignore" key presses and needs to be replaced again (according to support without any diagnostics). $90 for the part that saw minimal use? No thanks. The machine doesn't handle undocking well so it stays plugged all the time. Image burn even with power saving enabled? You betcha! I hate to gripe. I really want them to succeed but it's just been one disappointment after another. Before buying I had read the posts referencing build quality and should have taken heed.
amir734jj 3y ago
I have a System 76 laptop that I bought it 4 years ago. It has reliable. Although PopOS has not been reliable. Their support and customer service is great. Drivers work and I'm happy with it.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  I stuck with PopOS for a bit after getting my Lemur Pro, but in the end switched back to debian. IMO PopOS just isn't a serious OS focused on stability. The laptop is pretty good though.
minzi 3y ago
In my opinion, if you have the money, a Razer or Asus laptop is the highest quality machine that you can get to run Linux. Of course there is also Framework, but those are not as well built in my opinion. Personally, I have the new Blade 14 and it is great. Large trackpad, 16:10, 6 hours of battery life (pretty good for linux) and an RTX 4070. That said, it is absurdly expensive.
- redundantly 3y ago
  In my experience both ASUS and Razer are terrible brands. Poor support. Poor build qualities. Getting drivers for Razer is like pulling teeth, especially for previous gen hardware. Keyboard lighting controls for Razer requiring cloud connected software. Hard pass on both for me.
  - minzi 3y ago
    I think you are correct about the history of Razer products, but this latest line up has been very solid. I had issues with the first laptop I got. It turned out to be a software issue and I got support within a day and they patched the problem within a week. I should also add that they have battery limiting features now and a two year battery warranty. Those two improvements protect you from 90% of the bad experiences people report with these laptops. Asus I have had consistently bad experiences with and that is why I tried Razer. Of course this is all just my personal experience and I doubt either is perfect. As far as needing cloud connected software to configure Razer hardware: that is simply false. The laptop is configured via an embedded usb interface that you can send reports to in Linux. There are open source projects that make this particularly easy to do.
    - redundantly 3y ago
      I should have clarified, the cloud integration requirement for adjusting the keuboard's RGB settings is under Windows. It's software Razer developed themselves and require for basic functionality on their shipped product. It left a terrible impression with me.
  - 3y ago
nasso_ 3y ago
> Among other things, this means that modern forms of suspend work out of the box That sounds very promising. That has always been a major annoyance to me. I don't think i have every owned a laptop with linux where I actually trusted that it would still have battery the day after if I just closed the lid.
- bgribble 3y ago
  I may have misunderstood, but I did not read this as saying "S3 suspend works". I read it as "'Modern suspend' works, so I don't have to keep trying to get S3 suspend working". That is basically the opposite of what you want. 'Modern suspend' is why you burn battery with the lid closed, overheat your laptop when it's closed in a backpack, etc. It sucks. It's not sleeping in any real sense and can power up to full power if a fly farts too close to the microphone. For better or worse (worse IMO), I think that what we knew as "suspend to RAM" or S3 is gone forever. It was apparently just too hard to get working reliably with all the peripheral hardware and they gave up. Everything I have read says that for any recent laptop, if you want reliable suspending that won't burn battery you have to always "hibernate" or "suspend to disk". It takes longer to start back up but initializes all the peripherals from "off" so it can be more reliable. I'm still working with my older HP laptop that has legit S3 and am dreading an upgrade to a "modern" one.
  - Cu3PO42 3y ago
    I have the same experience with various Lenovo laptops running Windows. However, whatever Apple does on MacBooks works. I can close the lid, slide it into my backpack on Friday and open it on Monday with virtually the same battery level.
    - mkesper 3y ago
      You can set it to "non-Windows" (aka real) standby in the BIOS settings. If you can't find it in settings, this might help: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_disable_modern_sleep_and_enable_s3_sleep/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_disab...
haspok 3y ago
Please someone show this to the Tuxedo guys, as their supplier is the same (Clevo), but apparently it IS possible to get the Lenovo-style 6-button cursor arrangement in this form factor, and as a bonus, with separate Home/End/Ins/Del! I will never buy a laptop without this. Does System76 ship laptops with an ISO keyboard layout? I don't see this as a configuration option.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Clevo is one of System76s suppliers, many of the newer ones aren't as far as I understand. Not sure about the Lemur specifically.
thatcherc 3y ago
> System76 claims 14 hours, and I managed 11 hours in our battery drain test (looping a 1080p video). In real-world use, I frequently eked out over 13 hours. That’s off the charts better than any other Linux laptop I’ve tested recently. This is the most intriguing part to me. I've been mulling a Framework for a while but what's held be back so far is that the battery life is 9-10 hours after tuning, and I'd love it to be longer. 11 hours of continuous video on this laptop is pretty impressive for a Linux laptop I think. My Dell XPS 13 feels like it needs to go onto the charger every 4 hours so this would be a huge improvement.
- cassepipe 3y ago
  They have a new battery with more capacity on their marketplace now I believe.
- jwells89 3y ago
  If battery life is a focal point, one model that may be worth considering is the HP Dragonfly G4, which from the reviews I’ve seen gets 13-20 hours depending on the test. That’s under Windows though, not sure how it’d fare with Linux. I’ve been underwhelmed with my ThinkPad’s performance in this aspect and have been considering trading it in for a G4 for this reason.
buster3000 3y ago
Why in god's name are they _still_ using 1080p displays?
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  Looks good to me on that size screen, helps with long battery life?
  - buster3000 3y ago
    1080p even on a 13" (XPS) is too small for me and has been for a long time (IBM X31). My X1 Carbons (2nd gen) 1440p is the bare minimum for me and thats almost 10yrs old!
- prmoustache 3y ago
  battery life.
  - buster3000 3y ago
    Fair enough. If that's what's important to them.
discmonkey 3y ago
Figure I might as well drop a quick review after 2 years with the lemur pro 11 Pros: * Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one usb-c cable. That being said I think things have generally gotten better in the space so this may not be as much of a selling point anymore. Additionally this laptop doesn't have an nvidia gpu, which means its job is easier. * Great compatibility for building software between my desktop and this laptop, makes my personal dev work a lot more portable. * It's quite small and very portable. * Nice keyboard * Moral points for supporting a small company that focuses on security (whether this is actually significant is up to the reader) Cons: * Battery life is a lie, especially since it drains almost as much battery closed as it does open. * Not great screen, terrible trackpad, and silly webcam considering the price of the laptop. * As mentioned no gpu, while costing about the same as razor laptop. Overall, I think I am probably going to switch back to a macbook after this, not being able to go a day without charging and your laptop always being on low battery is a bit anxiety inducing. Also (and this doesn't matter to a lot of people) I really value a laptop trackpad and this one is just plain bad.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  > Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one usb-c cable. I think any laptop sold in the last 4 or 5 years or so is plugged and charged with an usb-c cable and can be docked that way.
  - jhtrgefh 3y ago
    you'd think so, but my two year old msi delta 15 gaming laptop can't. it has a 240w barrel plug and two usb-c ports. one usb-c port can be used for displayport, neither for charging.
    - all2 3y ago
      Arguably it needs that 240W barrel plug. My current business class laptop also has one of those barrel plugs.
pimterry 3y ago
Why on earth have they shipped with a USB-C that you can charge from _and_ a barrel charging connector? Article says exactly the same power delivery on both. Anybody know what's going on there? Why not drop the barrel and put something else there (like another USB)? Seems bizarre.
- deleted 3y ago
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- canadianwriter 3y ago
  If you use the barrel jack you now have an extra USB port you can use for stuff! If you forget your barrel jack connector you can borrow a USB charger and it'll work! Win-win!
  - pimterry 3y ago
    Couldn't you replace it with another USB-C though? Then you'd always have an extra USB you can use for stuff!
    - Cu3PO42 3y ago
      I'm sure you could, but another USB-C port is certainly more expensive than a barrel plug. How significantly this affects the BOM I can't say, but due to the complexity of USB-C I assume it's not totally negligible. If you want the port to handle PD, various (display) alt modes, high speed data transfer, maybe even TB, you may need a few additional controllers. OTOH having multiple USB-C ports with varying capabilities can be quite confusing.
- fulafel 3y ago
  Don't know their reasons but seems wise to me: USB-C tends to get clogged with lint easily. Also charging port breakage due to handling accidents is pretty common eg by accidentally pulling/twisting the connector sideways, good to have redundancy there.
ben7799 3y ago
Last time I tried a System 76 laptop it was great when I was plugged in at my desk doing dev work. Better than a Macbook Pro. But when I had to unplug it in the office to go to a meeting it was just terrible... support for plugging/unplugging external monitors/docks was atrocious, I had wifi issues, and doing something like a Zoom meeting (Webex at the time) would reduce it's battery life to 1 hour or less. Stuff just got messed up using it as a laptop that was getting used at the desk and then not at the desk. That was quite some time ago, I hope the software has gotten better. I stopped using it cause I was messing with linux too much instead of doing my work. That was depressing, cause it was kind of the same story as every time I've tried to use linux on the desktop back to the 90s.
noobermin 3y ago
I'm team barrel connector after having broken many usb-c ports. That's a plus not a minus.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I'm team usb-c after having broken many barrel connector ports. That's a plus not a minus. I'm also team usb-c because it is extremely nice having one charger that can charge any of my devices instead of needing a charger for my laptop, a charger for my phone, a charger for my tablet, on and on
- m463 3y ago
  It is also pretty open - you can probably get a power supply from any number of vendors. Seems like every other laptop vendor has a proprietary super-special just-for-me connector, that ends up being the same voltage (not that USB-C isn't open)
mortallywounded 3y ago
I have been using a Lemur Pro (lemp11) for ~14 months as my daily driver (coming from a Macbook Pro). It's my main machine and has been running constantly the entire time (auto suspends at night). I have powered it off a few times since purchasing it. I use the Lemur Pro with a USBC dock, two external monitors, a keyboard and a mouse when at my desk. I did a few manual upgrades. I added 32GB of RAM (maxed at 40GB). I also added a second NVMe I purchased (4TB). So far it's my favorite laptop. Here's some pros and cons: Pros: - Screen is nice and clear with great color. For a non-Apple screen it's great. - Battery life has been great. I get about 11-13 hours of coding (Firefox, Terminal w/tmux+vim @ quarter screen brightness). I have used it on full airplane rides, etc. Awesome battery life, especially for Linux. - Video playback is good, even w/1440p@60fps (hardware acceleration in Firefox, no frame loss). However, it does get the fan blowing. - Suspend/wake works and detects the dock and connects everything perfectly again (mouse, keyboard, monitors, etc). - Disk speed is amazing. I feel like my old Macbook used to chug on disk reads/writes. However, this machine/nvme is blazingly fast. - Pop_OS has been nice. I have no complaints. I used to use a bare bones Debian netinstall with a custom DWM setup, but I decided to give Pop a try for a year and I have stuck with it. It's stable and everything just works. Cons: - Fan can be annoying when playing videos or scrolling quickly on Youtube. - When doing a reboot while attached to the USBC dock, it doesn't appear to re-connect to the dock post-reboot. I have to turn the dock off and back on (or unplug the USBC/re-plug it). - Webcam is meh-- but I don't use it anyway. I don't see myself going back to a Macbook. If anything, I may take the plunge back into my old custom Debian+DWM setup, but I am happy with everything as it is.
- austhrow743 3y ago
  I wonder how much screen brightness plays on to people’s varying battery life results. You’re the first person I’ve seen say they use a laptop at quarter brightness. I keep my screens either at full brightness or close to it. Never below 75%. Prior to your comment if id seen a laptop maker advertise a certain battery life and then have “at quarter brightness” in the fine print id consider them deceptive but apparently there’s at least one of you that it’s accurate for.
tech_ken 3y ago
Been using a lemp9 since 2020 and I will say that it's good but not great. Came to it from an X1 Carbon and it's felt like a lateral move, but if you're trying to replace an MBP or something I don't think you'll be satisfied. _Pros_ * The battery life is incredible, that's the one thing they totally nailed. For Linux especially that's huge, and is in my opinion the absolute selling point of the device. With that said, after about 2 years I did notice a steep drop-off in performance, going down to like 4-6 hours in the span of a few weeks. Replaced the battery and the performance is again A+ * Hardware support is fire, I hop distros a lot and have never once had any issues with getting firmware for anything. IIRC there was one firmware setting I needed to flip before Arch would run properly, but customer support actually talked me through it over email which was cool. * A pretty nice selection of ports (they have port-heavier alternatives if that's your thing). The lemp9 just came with standard USB-C, which was kind of a hassle for finding a compatible docking station, but I believe lemp10+ upgraded to thunderboltt. * Chassis feels pretty premium, comparable to what I was using before. No deck flex, hinges are smooth, moderately slow to accumulate fingerprints. _Cons_ Go to /r/system76 and you'll get a lot. Top culprits I've seen and experienced are: * Speakers are very, very bad. * Keycaps have a coating that erodes over time, which is ugly. Can't replace individual keycaps * Intel options only * You're using Linux, so be ready for compatibility stuff. PopOS is well managed, but at the end of the day you still have to contend with ex. the linux audio stack
mgkimsal 3y ago
Slightly OT, but was looking at system76 mini recently: https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat Can't get any sense of whether the memory is baked in at build time, or if I can swap out later. The 'tall' option seems to imply there's more room, and that's what I'd need to get to manage my own memory, but ... I can't tell. There's no FAQ page, and... I was going to send in a question today, but since there's a system 76 topic here, thought I'd ask here and see if anyone else can shed their experience with the meerkat and after-market upgrades.
- ilikepi 3y ago
  The hardware docs list the memory as DDR4 SODIMMS... https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/meer7/repairs.html#replacing-the-ram https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/meer7/repairs.html#rep... I've been strongly eyeing this model as well, but in the end I decided to trade money for risk and acquire a used Dell OptiPlex micro from eBay. :crossed_fingers:
zamalek 3y ago
As a AMD fanboy, I have been using the Pangolin for a few months now. I can't currently use PopOS (Intune only works on LTE Ubuntu), so I'm not getting the full benefits of the laptop - notably the battery life. I get about 5hr with a pretty big stack of containers running, as well as working in Rider. This is strictly less than the M1 that I was using prior to this laptop. A flight-safe Anker battery pack bumps it up to the 10hr I was hoping for. Performance-wise? It makes the M1 look like a complete joke. Our MITM proxy (ZScaler, a truly terrible product) is CPU-bound, and the M1 would stutter during large container image pulls. I don't notice pulls on the Pangolin - I just keep working while they happen in the background. Builds are on the order of 30% faster. It also handles two external monitors. Something is strange with secure boot and the System76 kernel; I just couldn't get it working. Monitor is average, definitely less usable in sunlight (by virtue of being actually unusable) than Apple's offerings. Keyboard and touchpad are great. I did have some issues with the touchpad, and support told me to (gasp!) open the laptop and make sure the ribbon cable was seated properly - 10/10 repairability.
driverdan 3y ago
I'll say the same thing I always say when System76 hardware is posted here. A 1080p screen should be a non-starter in 2023. How they are still selling these with low DPI screens doesn't make sense to me.
- innocenat 3y ago
  I love 1080p panel on 13-14" laptop and plan to choose do so if given choice. Until 2160p panel become common at least, so I don't have to rely on non-integer scaling.
- deleted 3y ago
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- waynesonfire 3y ago
  does the window manager support a high dpi screen? I don't mind spending money on a high dpi screen; but each time I've been disappointed by the poor scaling support. Not sure what the point it.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  If it reduces costs I'm all for a 1080p screen. I usually pick them when I have the option.
- Saris 3y ago
  What's the advantage of more than 1080p on a 13-14" screen? Genuine question. I have 4k for my desktop but that's a 27" monitor. Wouldn't pushing 4k on a laptop reduce the battery life even more?
  - jckahn 3y ago
    The advantage is crisper text. My eyes aren’t the best but I can see the difference on my 3.5K 13-inch display.
- mortallywounded 3y ago
  I am quite happy with the 1080p resolution on 13/14". Fonts are crisp, colors are great. Black is black. I don't see any pixels. Also, battery life is great. I don't need to do any xrandr/crazy ENV configs for high DPI guis/etc.
culebron21 3y ago
I'm glad they didn't put power button on the keyboard as Mac copycats do. But there are no home/end/pgup/pgdn keys, but couple of them cramped with cursor keys (I assume home/end and pgup/dn must be pressed with Fn).
kfogel 3y ago
Very happy user of a System76 Lemur Pro laptop (i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) for the past year, FWIW. I'm running stock Debian on it, not System76's Pop!_OS. I get the kind of battery life the review mentions if I put the laptop into "Power Saver" mode. In "Balanced" or especially in "Performance" mode the battery doesn't last as long, of course. So when I can't be plugged in, I put it into Power Saver mode (this is super easy via the Gnome upper-right settings popup panel; I assume it would be just as easy in other window managers). I got great customer service from System76 when I ran into a hitch at the start of my Debian installation process (TL;DR: see Debian bugs #1024346 and #1024720 -- the file ".disk/info" existed on the pre-installed Pop!_OS partition; getting rid of that enabled the installation to continue). System76 support went above and beyond the call of duty in tracking this down and solving it, considering that I was installing an OS that wasn't even officially supported by them. Happy customer; would buy again; I get no commission for any of this -- I just want to see the company flourish so they're still there when it's time for me to upgrade my laptop!
throw555chip 3y ago
It's great there are companies focused on delivering great Linux hardware. For context though, every Dell and HP laptops and desktops I've had the past 12 years has been really great with Linux. The several Lenovo laptops I've had the past 12 years have been great with Linux.
maerF0x0 3y ago
System76 is doing us all a favor by showing what a Macbook could be if it were actually "Pro". Do a spec for price comparison and System76 is blowing them out of the water. * More cores on wider supported chips * Nvidia Graphics cards that are far better supported for machine learning than the M1, M2, M3 series (as i understand, it's not my specialty) * Discrete memory instead of unified * Market similar prices to storage upgrades (eg $200 for .5 -> 2TB instead of $600 Ok a couple cons -- $190 for an extra charger is a bit much, but likely due to 330w vs 140w. Also pointing out power draw is much higher.
neilv 3y ago
Needs TrackPoint. ThinkPads were an early favorite of Linux. Brands like System76, Purism, and Framework are appealing today. But we require our TrackPoints.
pylua 3y ago
The reason I don’t have a Linux laptop is simple. There is not one that has a touch pad as nice as a mac’s. It needs to be large and very responsive. My attempt at Linux at a Chromebook was ruined because of a terrible trackpad.
deleted 3y ago
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digitallis42 3y ago
My biggest beef with it is the arrow keys are nestled among the page up/page down keys. I'm constantly miss-striking PgUp when I'm just trying to arrow around. Secondary issues are bad multi-display support. It kind-of works, but often at least one screen glitches out if there's not at least one window maximized on it. And all the USB ports, C included all run into the same host controller, so you've just got the one bus-worth's of bandwidth which is a bit rough if you're docking into multiple screens, a good camera, audio, network, etc.

176 points by pbui 3y ago

I've used System76's products for a decade now, and always been happy. Recently, my (non-techie) wife and teenage daughter started using them as well, and they're happy as well.

tivert 3y ago

https://system76.com/laptops/lemur https://system76.com/laptops/lemur: > Display 14.1″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish I'll pass. It has a 16:9 display.

giancarlostoro 3y ago
I'm still using 1080p monitors in 2023, with the exception of my Surface Book 2 which I don't use nearly as much (I prioritize my personal desktop way more). I game on 1080p I just don't have desk space for 32" 4k monitors, and I dont see any value in having 4k under a 14" monitor.
- eviks 3y ago
  There are resolutions between 4k and 1080p, as well as monitor sizes bellow 32
  - deleted 3y ago
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- The_Colonel 3y ago
  I agree, but the complaint is about aspect ratio, or more specifically about the wasted space / unnecessarily smaller screen within the chassis. Similar to op, I won't buy a 16:9 laptop anymore. It can be 1920x1200, though, that's still sufficient for smaller laptops.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    1920x1200 is 16:10. Huge difference from 16:9, amazingly enough.
  - giancarlostoro 3y ago
    Interesting, I have been stuck in 1080p land so I have not tried 1200, maybe if I get the chance I'll check that resolution out. I am debating making a small jump to "2k" since its between 4K and 1080p, but I get the feeling those monitors are not quite as common as the other two resolutions, and I'm not sure if it'll be truly worth it. This is in terms of a desktop, not a laptop, but I could see the argument for 1920x1200 for a laptop, seems more reasonable to me.
- treis 3y ago
  I notice a big difference with 2K at 13". Text looks much nicer and there's a lot more useable real estate.

rbanffy 3y ago

$1150 for an 8GB PC laptop is very high. It’s the price of a 13” MacBook Air with twice the storage. A better option would be a low-end Dell that works just as well with Linux and costs perhaps half as much. I am yet to see a low-end Dell that doesn’t excel with Linux.

portmanteaufu 3y ago
EDIT: The parent post originally said "$1,500 for 8GB". I'll leave this anyway. > The Lemur Pro *starts at $1,150 for an Intel i5 machine with 8 GB of RAM* and a 256-GB SSD. For $179[1], you can upgrade it to 40GB of RAM for a total of $1,329. [1] https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
- arein3 3y ago
  Do they just stick a 32gb in the other slot? Seems like dual channel will not work correctly if one stick is 8gb and the other 32
  - pprotas 3y ago
    It's possible that there is no dual channel, so the laptop would not take a performance hit due to mismatched sticks. I can not tell the configuration of the slots from their specs page [0]. Their configuration page [1] confirms that it's 8GB+32GB to get the 40GB. Why wouldn't they just offer 2x16GB to get the dual-channel memory? Unless, of course, the laptop does not support dual-channel memory... -- [0]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs https://system76.com/laptops/lemur#specs [1]: https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure https://system76.com/laptops/lemp12/configure
    - turminal 3y ago
      Most likely the motherboard has 8GB soldered on, they do that with a lot of laptops these days unfortunately.

baby_souffle 3y ago

It’s ok. Webcam is potato, speakers are webcam sized and only one usb c port right next to the dc charge jack. Ditch the barrel jack, give me a thunderbolt port on both sides and increase the trackpad size and I’ll overlook the webcam speakers and cramped display.

camjohnson26 3y ago

It’s a nice computer but calling it “repairable” is a farce, and System76’s customer support is unfortunately woefully inadequate. I have one of these and spilled a drink on my keyboard, getting it replaced was $300 of parts and labor, but the worst thing was it took almost 2 months pressuring their support reps to actually complete the process and they would frequently just not respond to messages, or ignore information I provided or clarified. Pop_OS! is really nice to be fair. I’ve also had issues with build quality. My Gazelle’s screen stopped working when the computer ran out of power and had a bent wire when I opened it up. Again they wanted hundreds of dollars to fix it, even though it was clearly a manufacturing defect. When they sent the computer back the chassis was cracked.

acidburnNSA 3y ago
Counterpoint: my keyboard on my lemur pro died and they shipped me a new part in like 2 days and I had it swapped in 40 mins. https://partofthething.com/thoughts/replacing-the-keyboard-on-my-2020-system76-lemur-pro-lemp9-laptop/ https://partofthething.com/thoughts/replacing-the-keyboard-o...
Errsher 3y ago
I have also had very poor customer support from them, closing tickets randomly on me with no follow up.
runamuck 3y ago
I had a good experience with System76 customer Support. I contacted them on Wednesday July 13th and they responded that Monday July 18th. They sent me a label immediately, I shipped it to them and with shipping time both ways I got my laptop back on the following Friday, July 29th.
- deleted 3y ago
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tech_ken 3y ago
I've replaced the battery once and the wifi card twice, the second time in SFO at a cafe table with some random screwdriver I stole from the office. The internal layout is SO easy to open up and put back together, and all the parts and instructions for repair are posted on their website (and are super easy to navigate!). Idk why you would say "farce" but that seems extremely strong. I guess it's kind of inconvenient that they didn't fix the laptop you broke in a timespan you liked, but that's got nothing to do with the thing's "repairability".

FFP999 3y ago

Given my experience with System76 laptops, I know they can make a good impression at first, but after seeing how flimsy they are in long-term use, I can't justify the markup. You can get a better sturdier laptop with good Linux compatibility cheaper elsewhere.

AndyPa32 3y ago
I have one running almost all the time. Bought it three years ago and it just works. When I bought it, there was the option to not include a separate Graphics card. Onboard is just fine for me. And that brought down the price considerably. However, they currently don't have that many AMD options for Laptops, so my next one probably won't be System76. PopOS never did it for me. Not once did it survive a system upgrade. So I just switched back to Debian.
- FFP999 3y ago
  I've had two System76 machines, so I'm one anecdote ahead of you here.
troyvit 3y ago
My anecdata is that I used a galp6 since 2013 as a daily driver for years. It stayed in service in one way or another for ten years. The battery became useless but everything else was rock solid.
winkwinkwink 3y ago
After almost 10 years of wanting a computer from System76, I was finally able to afford one and bought a Galago Pro 5 (galp5) in 2022. Since then I've come to deeply regret that decision. I've replaced the keyboard within the first month because it shipped warped. It recently started to "ignore" key presses and needs to be replaced again (according to support without any diagnostics). $90 for the part that saw minimal use? No thanks. The machine doesn't handle undocking well so it stays plugged all the time. Image burn even with power saving enabled? You betcha! I hate to gripe. I really want them to succeed but it's just been one disappointment after another. Before buying I had read the posts referencing build quality and should have taken heed.

amir734jj 3y ago

I have a System 76 laptop that I bought it 4 years ago. It has reliable. Although PopOS has not been reliable. Their support and customer service is great. Drivers work and I'm happy with it.

CogitoCogito 3y ago
I stuck with PopOS for a bit after getting my Lemur Pro, but in the end switched back to debian. IMO PopOS just isn't a serious OS focused on stability. The laptop is pretty good though.

minzi 3y ago

In my opinion, if you have the money, a Razer or Asus laptop is the highest quality machine that you can get to run Linux. Of course there is also Framework, but those are not as well built in my opinion. Personally, I have the new Blade 14 and it is great. Large trackpad, 16:10, 6 hours of battery life (pretty good for linux) and an RTX 4070. That said, it is absurdly expensive.

redundantly 3y ago
In my experience both ASUS and Razer are terrible brands. Poor support. Poor build qualities. Getting drivers for Razer is like pulling teeth, especially for previous gen hardware. Keyboard lighting controls for Razer requiring cloud connected software. Hard pass on both for me.
- minzi 3y ago
  I think you are correct about the history of Razer products, but this latest line up has been very solid. I had issues with the first laptop I got. It turned out to be a software issue and I got support within a day and they patched the problem within a week. I should also add that they have battery limiting features now and a two year battery warranty. Those two improvements protect you from 90% of the bad experiences people report with these laptops. Asus I have had consistently bad experiences with and that is why I tried Razer. Of course this is all just my personal experience and I doubt either is perfect. As far as needing cloud connected software to configure Razer hardware: that is simply false. The laptop is configured via an embedded usb interface that you can send reports to in Linux. There are open source projects that make this particularly easy to do.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    I should have clarified, the cloud integration requirement for adjusting the keuboard's RGB settings is under Windows. It's software Razer developed themselves and require for basic functionality on their shipped product. It left a terrible impression with me.
- 3y ago

nasso_ 3y ago

> Among other things, this means that modern forms of suspend work out of the box That sounds very promising. That has always been a major annoyance to me. I don't think i have every owned a laptop with linux where I actually trusted that it would still have battery the day after if I just closed the lid.

bgribble 3y ago
I may have misunderstood, but I did not read this as saying "S3 suspend works". I read it as "'Modern suspend' works, so I don't have to keep trying to get S3 suspend working". That is basically the opposite of what you want. 'Modern suspend' is why you burn battery with the lid closed, overheat your laptop when it's closed in a backpack, etc. It sucks. It's not sleeping in any real sense and can power up to full power if a fly farts too close to the microphone. For better or worse (worse IMO), I think that what we knew as "suspend to RAM" or S3 is gone forever. It was apparently just too hard to get working reliably with all the peripheral hardware and they gave up. Everything I have read says that for any recent laptop, if you want reliable suspending that won't burn battery you have to always "hibernate" or "suspend to disk". It takes longer to start back up but initializes all the peripherals from "off" so it can be more reliable. I'm still working with my older HP laptop that has legit S3 and am dreading an upgrade to a "modern" one.
- Cu3PO42 3y ago
  I have the same experience with various Lenovo laptops running Windows. However, whatever Apple does on MacBooks works. I can close the lid, slide it into my backpack on Friday and open it on Monday with virtually the same battery level.
  - mkesper 3y ago
    You can set it to "non-Windows" (aka real) standby in the BIOS settings. If you can't find it in settings, this might help: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_disable_modern_sleep_and_enable_s3_sleep/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_disab...

haspok 3y ago

Please someone show this to the Tuxedo guys, as their supplier is the same (Clevo), but apparently it IS possible to get the Lenovo-style 6-button cursor arrangement in this form factor, and as a bonus, with separate Home/End/Ins/Del! I will never buy a laptop without this. Does System76 ship laptops with an ISO keyboard layout? I don't see this as a configuration option.

panick21_ 3y ago
Clevo is one of System76s suppliers, many of the newer ones aren't as far as I understand. Not sure about the Lemur specifically.

thatcherc 3y ago

> System76 claims 14 hours, and I managed 11 hours in our battery drain test (looping a 1080p video). In real-world use, I frequently eked out over 13 hours. That’s off the charts better than any other Linux laptop I’ve tested recently. This is the most intriguing part to me. I've been mulling a Framework for a while but what's held be back so far is that the battery life is 9-10 hours after tuning, and I'd love it to be longer. 11 hours of continuous video on this laptop is pretty impressive for a Linux laptop I think. My Dell XPS 13 feels like it needs to go onto the charger every 4 hours so this would be a huge improvement.

cassepipe 3y ago
They have a new battery with more capacity on their marketplace now I believe.
jwells89 3y ago
If battery life is a focal point, one model that may be worth considering is the HP Dragonfly G4, which from the reviews I’ve seen gets 13-20 hours depending on the test. That’s under Windows though, not sure how it’d fare with Linux. I’ve been underwhelmed with my ThinkPad’s performance in this aspect and have been considering trading it in for a G4 for this reason.

buster3000 3y ago

Why in god's name are they _still_ using 1080p displays?

acidburnNSA 3y ago
Looks good to me on that size screen, helps with long battery life?
- buster3000 3y ago
  1080p even on a 13" (XPS) is too small for me and has been for a long time (IBM X31). My X1 Carbons (2nd gen) 1440p is the bare minimum for me and thats almost 10yrs old!
prmoustache 3y ago
battery life.
- buster3000 3y ago
  Fair enough. If that's what's important to them.

discmonkey 3y ago

Figure I might as well drop a quick review after 2 years with the lemur pro 11 Pros: * Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one usb-c cable. That being said I think things have generally gotten better in the space so this may not be as much of a selling point anymore. Additionally this laptop doesn't have an nvidia gpu, which means its job is easier. * Great compatibility for building software between my desktop and this laptop, makes my personal dev work a lot more portable. * It's quite small and very portable. * Nice keyboard * Moral points for supporting a small company that focuses on security (whether this is actually significant is up to the reader) Cons: * Battery life is a lie, especially since it drains almost as much battery closed as it does open. * Not great screen, terrible trackpad, and silly webcam considering the price of the laptop. * As mentioned no gpu, while costing about the same as razor laptop. Overall, I think I am probably going to switch back to a macbook after this, not being able to go a day without charging and your laptop always being on low battery is a bit anxiety inducing. Also (and this doesn't matter to a lot of people) I really value a laptop trackpad and this one is just plain bad.

prmoustache 3y ago
> Most things "just work", which you only appreciate after working with other linux laptops. For example, I can seamlessly plug this laptop in place of my work macbook with just one usb-c cable. I think any laptop sold in the last 4 or 5 years or so is plugged and charged with an usb-c cable and can be docked that way.
- jhtrgefh 3y ago
  you'd think so, but my two year old msi delta 15 gaming laptop can't. it has a 240w barrel plug and two usb-c ports. one usb-c port can be used for displayport, neither for charging.
  - all2 3y ago
    Arguably it needs that 240W barrel plug. My current business class laptop also has one of those barrel plugs.

pimterry 3y ago

Why on earth have they shipped with a USB-C that you can charge from _and_ a barrel charging connector? Article says exactly the same power delivery on both. Anybody know what's going on there? Why not drop the barrel and put something else there (like another USB)? Seems bizarre.

deleted 3y ago
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canadianwriter 3y ago
If you use the barrel jack you now have an extra USB port you can use for stuff! If you forget your barrel jack connector you can borrow a USB charger and it'll work! Win-win!
- pimterry 3y ago
  Couldn't you replace it with another USB-C though? Then you'd always have an extra USB you can use for stuff!
  - Cu3PO42 3y ago
    I'm sure you could, but another USB-C port is certainly more expensive than a barrel plug. How significantly this affects the BOM I can't say, but due to the complexity of USB-C I assume it's not totally negligible. If you want the port to handle PD, various (display) alt modes, high speed data transfer, maybe even TB, you may need a few additional controllers. OTOH having multiple USB-C ports with varying capabilities can be quite confusing.
fulafel 3y ago
Don't know their reasons but seems wise to me: USB-C tends to get clogged with lint easily. Also charging port breakage due to handling accidents is pretty common eg by accidentally pulling/twisting the connector sideways, good to have redundancy there.

ben7799 3y ago

Last time I tried a System 76 laptop it was great when I was plugged in at my desk doing dev work. Better than a Macbook Pro. But when I had to unplug it in the office to go to a meeting it was just terrible... support for plugging/unplugging external monitors/docks was atrocious, I had wifi issues, and doing something like a Zoom meeting (Webex at the time) would reduce it's battery life to 1 hour or less. Stuff just got messed up using it as a laptop that was getting used at the desk and then not at the desk. That was quite some time ago, I hope the software has gotten better. I stopped using it cause I was messing with linux too much instead of doing my work. That was depressing, cause it was kind of the same story as every time I've tried to use linux on the desktop back to the 90s.

noobermin 3y ago

I'm team barrel connector after having broken many usb-c ports. That's a plus not a minus.

vel0city 3y ago
I'm team usb-c after having broken many barrel connector ports. That's a plus not a minus. I'm also team usb-c because it is extremely nice having one charger that can charge any of my devices instead of needing a charger for my laptop, a charger for my phone, a charger for my tablet, on and on
m463 3y ago
It is also pretty open - you can probably get a power supply from any number of vendors. Seems like every other laptop vendor has a proprietary super-special just-for-me connector, that ends up being the same voltage (not that USB-C isn't open)

mortallywounded 3y ago

I have been using a Lemur Pro (lemp11) for ~14 months as my daily driver (coming from a Macbook Pro). It's my main machine and has been running constantly the entire time (auto suspends at night). I have powered it off a few times since purchasing it. I use the Lemur Pro with a USBC dock, two external monitors, a keyboard and a mouse when at my desk. I did a few manual upgrades. I added 32GB of RAM (maxed at 40GB). I also added a second NVMe I purchased (4TB). So far it's my favorite laptop. Here's some pros and cons: Pros: - Screen is nice and clear with great color. For a non-Apple screen it's great. - Battery life has been great. I get about 11-13 hours of coding (Firefox, Terminal w/tmux+vim @ quarter screen brightness). I have used it on full airplane rides, etc. Awesome battery life, especially for Linux. - Video playback is good, even w/1440p@60fps (hardware acceleration in Firefox, no frame loss). However, it does get the fan blowing. - Suspend/wake works and detects the dock and connects everything perfectly again (mouse, keyboard, monitors, etc). - Disk speed is amazing. I feel like my old Macbook used to chug on disk reads/writes. However, this machine/nvme is blazingly fast. - Pop_OS has been nice. I have no complaints. I used to use a bare bones Debian netinstall with a custom DWM setup, but I decided to give Pop a try for a year and I have stuck with it. It's stable and everything just works. Cons: - Fan can be annoying when playing videos or scrolling quickly on Youtube. - When doing a reboot while attached to the USBC dock, it doesn't appear to re-connect to the dock post-reboot. I have to turn the dock off and back on (or unplug the USBC/re-plug it). - Webcam is meh-- but I don't use it anyway. I don't see myself going back to a Macbook. If anything, I may take the plunge back into my old custom Debian+DWM setup, but I am happy with everything as it is.

austhrow743 3y ago
I wonder how much screen brightness plays on to people’s varying battery life results. You’re the first person I’ve seen say they use a laptop at quarter brightness. I keep my screens either at full brightness or close to it. Never below 75%. Prior to your comment if id seen a laptop maker advertise a certain battery life and then have “at quarter brightness” in the fine print id consider them deceptive but apparently there’s at least one of you that it’s accurate for.

tech_ken 3y ago

Been using a lemp9 since 2020 and I will say that it's good but not great. Came to it from an X1 Carbon and it's felt like a lateral move, but if you're trying to replace an MBP or something I don't think you'll be satisfied. _Pros_ * The battery life is incredible, that's the one thing they totally nailed. For Linux especially that's huge, and is in my opinion the absolute selling point of the device. With that said, after about 2 years I did notice a steep drop-off in performance, going down to like 4-6 hours in the span of a few weeks. Replaced the battery and the performance is again A+ * Hardware support is fire, I hop distros a lot and have never once had any issues with getting firmware for anything. IIRC there was one firmware setting I needed to flip before Arch would run properly, but customer support actually talked me through it over email which was cool. * A pretty nice selection of ports (they have port-heavier alternatives if that's your thing). The lemp9 just came with standard USB-C, which was kind of a hassle for finding a compatible docking station, but I believe lemp10+ upgraded to thunderboltt. * Chassis feels pretty premium, comparable to what I was using before. No deck flex, hinges are smooth, moderately slow to accumulate fingerprints. _Cons_ Go to /r/system76 and you'll get a lot. Top culprits I've seen and experienced are: * Speakers are very, very bad. * Keycaps have a coating that erodes over time, which is ugly. Can't replace individual keycaps * Intel options only * You're using Linux, so be ready for compatibility stuff. PopOS is well managed, but at the end of the day you still have to contend with ex. the linux audio stack

mgkimsal 3y ago

Slightly OT, but was looking at system76 mini recently: https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat Can't get any sense of whether the memory is baked in at build time, or if I can swap out later. The 'tall' option seems to imply there's more room, and that's what I'd need to get to manage my own memory, but ... I can't tell. There's no FAQ page, and... I was going to send in a question today, but since there's a system 76 topic here, thought I'd ask here and see if anyone else can shed their experience with the meerkat and after-market upgrades.

ilikepi 3y ago
The hardware docs list the memory as DDR4 SODIMMS... https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/meer7/repairs.html#replacing-the-ram https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/meer7/repairs.html#rep... I've been strongly eyeing this model as well, but in the end I decided to trade money for risk and acquire a used Dell OptiPlex micro from eBay. :crossed_fingers:

zamalek 3y ago

As a AMD fanboy, I have been using the Pangolin for a few months now. I can't currently use PopOS (Intune only works on LTE Ubuntu), so I'm not getting the full benefits of the laptop - notably the battery life. I get about 5hr with a pretty big stack of containers running, as well as working in Rider. This is strictly less than the M1 that I was using prior to this laptop. A flight-safe Anker battery pack bumps it up to the 10hr I was hoping for. Performance-wise? It makes the M1 look like a complete joke. Our MITM proxy (ZScaler, a truly terrible product) is CPU-bound, and the M1 would stutter during large container image pulls. I don't notice pulls on the Pangolin - I just keep working while they happen in the background. Builds are on the order of 30% faster. It also handles two external monitors. Something is strange with secure boot and the System76 kernel; I just couldn't get it working. Monitor is average, definitely less usable in sunlight (by virtue of being actually unusable) than Apple's offerings. Keyboard and touchpad are great. I did have some issues with the touchpad, and support told me to (gasp!) open the laptop and make sure the ribbon cable was seated properly - 10/10 repairability.

driverdan 3y ago

I'll say the same thing I always say when System76 hardware is posted here. A 1080p screen should be a non-starter in 2023. How they are still selling these with low DPI screens doesn't make sense to me.

innocenat 3y ago
I love 1080p panel on 13-14" laptop and plan to choose do so if given choice. Until 2160p panel become common at least, so I don't have to rely on non-integer scaling.
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waynesonfire 3y ago
does the window manager support a high dpi screen? I don't mind spending money on a high dpi screen; but each time I've been disappointed by the poor scaling support. Not sure what the point it.
bcrosby95 3y ago
If it reduces costs I'm all for a 1080p screen. I usually pick them when I have the option.
Saris 3y ago
What's the advantage of more than 1080p on a 13-14" screen? Genuine question. I have 4k for my desktop but that's a 27" monitor. Wouldn't pushing 4k on a laptop reduce the battery life even more?
- jckahn 3y ago
  The advantage is crisper text. My eyes aren’t the best but I can see the difference on my 3.5K 13-inch display.
mortallywounded 3y ago
I am quite happy with the 1080p resolution on 13/14". Fonts are crisp, colors are great. Black is black. I don't see any pixels. Also, battery life is great. I don't need to do any xrandr/crazy ENV configs for high DPI guis/etc.

culebron21 3y ago

I'm glad they didn't put power button on the keyboard as Mac copycats do. But there are no home/end/pgup/pgdn keys, but couple of them cramped with cursor keys (I assume home/end and pgup/dn must be pressed with Fn).

kfogel 3y ago

Very happy user of a System76 Lemur Pro laptop (i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) for the past year, FWIW. I'm running stock Debian on it, not System76's Pop!_OS. I get the kind of battery life the review mentions if I put the laptop into "Power Saver" mode. In "Balanced" or especially in "Performance" mode the battery doesn't last as long, of course. So when I can't be plugged in, I put it into Power Saver mode (this is super easy via the Gnome upper-right settings popup panel; I assume it would be just as easy in other window managers). I got great customer service from System76 when I ran into a hitch at the start of my Debian installation process (TL;DR: see Debian bugs #1024346 and #1024720 -- the file ".disk/info" existed on the pre-installed Pop!_OS partition; getting rid of that enabled the installation to continue). System76 support went above and beyond the call of duty in tracking this down and solving it, considering that I was installing an OS that wasn't even officially supported by them. Happy customer; would buy again; I get no commission for any of this -- I just want to see the company flourish so they're still there when it's time for me to upgrade my laptop!

throw555chip 3y ago

It's great there are companies focused on delivering great Linux hardware. For context though, every Dell and HP laptops and desktops I've had the past 12 years has been really great with Linux. The several Lenovo laptops I've had the past 12 years have been great with Linux.

maerF0x0 3y ago

System76 is doing us all a favor by showing what a Macbook could be if it were actually "Pro". Do a spec for price comparison and System76 is blowing them out of the water. * More cores on wider supported chips * Nvidia Graphics cards that are far better supported for machine learning than the M1, M2, M3 series (as i understand, it's not my specialty) * Discrete memory instead of unified * Market similar prices to storage upgrades (eg $200 for .5 -> 2TB instead of $600 Ok a couple cons -- $190 for an extra charger is a bit much, but likely due to 330w vs 140w. Also pointing out power draw is much higher.

neilv 3y ago

Needs TrackPoint. ThinkPads were an early favorite of Linux. Brands like System76, Purism, and Framework are appealing today. But we require our TrackPoints.

pylua 3y ago

The reason I don’t have a Linux laptop is simple. There is not one that has a touch pad as nice as a mac’s. It needs to be large and very responsive. My attempt at Linux at a Chromebook was ruined because of a terrible trackpad.

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digitallis42 3y ago

My biggest beef with it is the arrow keys are nestled among the page up/page down keys. I'm constantly miss-striking PgUp when I'm just trying to arrow around. Secondary issues are bad multi-display support. It kind-of works, but often at least one screen glitches out if there's not at least one window maximized on it. And all the USB ports, C included all run into the same host controller, so you've just got the one bus-worth's of bandwidth which is a bit rough if you're docking into multiple screens, a good camera, audio, network, etc.