6 ms·

If you are thinking about getting a Tuxedo, I suggest to get something else. I got one because they promised fwupd support, upstreamed drivers and maybe coreboo

• timeon 1y ago
  > If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application. That is unfortunate. I hoped they were more like System76.
  • juliangmp 1y ago
    Having to use their specific drivers is a bit annoying, but I honestly prefer that over drivers that dont work or dont exist at all. I really hope they can bring their stuff upstream at one point, but I can't deny that using their laptops hasn't been good experiences.
• TheJCDenton 1y ago
  Very informative, thank you. I was about to buy one of their products but this made me pause. What you think would be the alternative in Europe ?
  • pentamassiv 1y ago
    Unfortunately I don't know about a good alternative from Europe. I'd probably get a Framework if my device stops working. They seem to work hard at upstreaming things and use Linux standards. They also connected with the GNOME foundation, so there might be some collaboration in the future
  • mariusor 1y ago
    Basically the same things happened to my tuxedo also. With the addition of having to change batteries once a year, because it would drop to half it's factory charge, which wasn't really sufficient. I also gave up on them when they wanted so much money for a screen change (which died after about 3-4 years). I've replaced it with the new framework 13 inch, which so far works well, but I've only had it for 4-5 months. ( well, but not perfect, because the new AMD AI CPU has issues with suspend on linux)
    • ekianjo 1y ago
      at least with framework you know exactly how much the replacement parts will cost ahead of time.
    • wyldfire 1y ago
      > issues with suspend on linux Oh? I'd seriously considered buying the 13 w/this AMD CPU and I guess I naively thought it would be ideal. What sort of problems with suspend are you seeing?
      • mariusor 1y ago
        I haven't spent time investigating if my specific setup is the problem, or an actual bug in the drivers, but after I resume from suspend, the btrfs root fs is in a read-only state. The only solution is to reboot/shutdown, but it takes a long time and there are some scary fs checks running. Luckily no lost data so far. Currently I'm just shutting down the machine every time because it the boot times are quite fast.
      • oDot 1y ago
• pjmlp 1y ago
  Two of the reasons I eventually gave up on Desktop Linux, were virtualization getting good enough for just keep using Windows instead, back in the day with VMware Workstation and Virtual Box, nowadays with WSL (macOS is anyway UNIX enough for me to care otherwise). And exactly the same experience with OEM vendors that were supposed to be Linux friendly, on my case the whole netbooks effort, where graphics, video decoding and wlan never worked as well on Windows, even though they were supposed to. Dell XPS also had their issues for something that was supposed to be Canonical certified as running GNU/Linux properly. It seems Android, ChromeOS and WebOS are the only ones where OEMs actually care to make it work properly, naturally the cloud and IoT vendors with their custom distros as well.
  • sofixa 1y ago
    I ran a Dell XPS (not even the Canonical certified version) for a few years at a past job, and everything worked pretty well under Ubuntu. But it's always a matter of which exact hardware combination has mainstream support, and if the version you get doesn't e.g. have a shitty WiFi chip with bad support.
    • npodbielski 1y ago
      Yes. This is why I rather check Linux support od chips in a machine that I am planning to buy. Not that much work but you will not get unpleasant surprise when Wi-Fi do not work.
  • pimeys 1y ago
    I've been running Linux on my laptop and on my workstation since the 90's. Still using it as my main driver. Fedora Kinoite is my distro of choice, and Lenovo AMD Thinkpad T14s the laptop. Everything works flawless, and it's still pretty fast even though it's two years old already. And I do not miss at all the Microsoft bullsh*t on tracking and advertising. Or the general sluggishness of Windows.
    • bornfreddy 1y ago
      Can attest - Thinkpads and Linux go great together. Used for 2 years, then was forced into Windows crap by corporate policy. No, WSL is not the same.
• tom89999 1y ago
  There are parts in the industry that are not meant for end users. I service copiers and printers. The fixing unit is not meant to be installed by a handyman, thats why you dont get to buy it. You can cook yourself, it works with 230V.... Toner and drum unit are sold to customers.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • simonjgreen 1y ago
    Respectfully, nothing about that applies to a laptop. This has been well proven over the years, that with good forethought and making parts available laptops can be highly repairable.
    • tom89999 1y ago
      The display unit is nothing an enduser should replace. Does every user know how to handle the delicate display and how to carefully install the LVDS cable? In most modern cars you cant replace the windscreen with cameras, heating wires in your backyard without the calibration software. You can try it, but you will fail.
      • bombela 1y ago
        So what you are saying, is that it is all designed to be impossible to fix without special equipment and exquisite motor skills?
      • MSFT_Edging 1y ago
        Displays are absolutely end user repairable if the end user has experience. Allowing an end user to perform repairs shouldn't mean the repair should be doable by every single end-user. If that was the case we wouldn't be allowed to replace AA batteries.
      • rcxdude 1y ago
        Take a look at the framework laptop for how accessible replacing parts on a laptop can be if you put even a little bit of effort into it. Most people are entirely capable of the manual dexterity, they just lack clear instructions, or things artificially require specialized equipment and software and more fiddly, difficult, and risky steps because it's either not a priority or it's actively a priority to discourage it.
• userbinator 1y ago
  From your 2nd link: The entire software stack of TUXEDO is tightly integrated, instead of working on a generic solution. That sounds like the same situation with smartphones, which are nearly all ARM but every SoC or variation of one is different enough that the software is customised for each one. If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application. WTF. I thought Android being Java was already going too far, but they seem to have gone to a whole new level of insanity.
  • charcircuit 1y ago
    Android is not Java
    • pjmlp 1y ago
      While sadly true, it is close enough for a Java 17 LTS subset, even though it is Google's .NET with Kotlin having a C# like role. Didn't went out the same way as with J++, unfortunately.
• MarcusE1W 1y ago
  I think it's great that a company tries to support ARM Linux and brings what looks to me like a Linux first ARM Laptop.
• pacifika 1y ago
  The first link does not mention blacklisting, just resolving a license compatibility issue.
  • pentamassiv 1y ago
    "The patches check for the gxtp7380, ite_8291, ite_8291_lb, ite_8297, ite_829x, stk8321, tuxedo_compatibility_check, tuxedo_io, tuxedo_nb02_nvidia_power_ctrl, tuxedo_nb04_keyboard, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_ab, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_bs, tuxedo_nb04_sensors, tuxedo_nb04_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb04_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_keyboard, tuxedo_nb05_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb05_ec, tuxedo_nb05_sensors, tuxedo_nb05_fan_control, tuxi_acpi, tuxedo_tuxi_fan_control, clevo_wmi, tuxedo_keyboard, clevo_acpi, and uniwill_wmi kernel modules and will taint if they are present." That's not what I would describe as "resolving a license compatibility issue"
    • rhaps0dy 1y ago
      I would describe it as exactly "resolving a license compatibility issue". Taint in linux kernel refers to marking this kernel as not supported, which often just means not purely GPLv2 compatible anymore. Proprietary AMD and nVidia drivers also cause taints. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/118117/251582 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/118117/251582
      • deaddodo 1y ago
        Yeah, the person you're responding to is taking "taint" to mean a literal ban situation; versus the very real status that exists in Linux Kernel development. "TAINTing" a driver/code doesn't mean it's blacklisted, it means it can't be upstreamed into the GPL codebase. It means that if you build a Kernel with it, it's no longer considered OSS-friendly. There are plenty of legitimate and viable codebases that use TAINTed kernels. The DoD, various government entities around the world, some commercial interests, etc.
    • matheusmoreira 1y ago
      > ite_829x Huh, so Tuxedo developed their own ITE 829x kernel driver. I have a Clevo based laptop, similar to the ones they sell. Years ago I reverse engineered the keyboard's features and wrote a user space driver. https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x I interacted with Tuxedo quite a few times back then while I was figuring this stuff out. They even sent me source code for a pre-release version of their Electron app. It didn't help much in the end but they proved to be much nicer and more responsive than other manufacturers and even Clevo itself. Wish they'd emailed me about their driver. I could have helped develop it, especially if they had given me documentation. I briefly explored the idea of turning it into a kernel module and contributing it to the kernel. While reading Linux driver source code, some comments gave me the impression they'd prefer code remained in user space if possible. Since I already had a working user space driver, I decided not to contribute it. I wrote the above program because Clevo's app was Windows only and so aggravating to use it defies description. Looks like Tuxedo ran into the same problem with their Electron app, if the complaints in this thread are any indication... Déjà vu.
• avoid_tuxedo 1y ago
  Seconded. Stay away from Tuxedo. You get better hardware support with many other vendors.
  • mort96 1y ago
    Which ones? System76 presumably, but do you get better support from any of the mainstream vendors?
• mzur 1y ago
  I'm a happy user of my second Tuxedo laptop after using the first for over 7 years, repairing several parts. I found their support very responsive and spare parts affordable. Your points are valid though. If you don't like their custom stuff, the device also works fine with a stock Linux install (Ubuntu in my case).
  • matheusmoreira 1y ago
    They're also the only OEM that replied to me when I was trying to reverse engineer a similar laptop to theirs. I think that alone should put them into a league of their own. Only two companies have ever properly replied to me when I asked about source code or hardware documentation: one is a chinese company, the other is Tuxedo.
• bfrog 1y ago
  So Qualcomm continues its Qualcomm behavior.
• ndiddy 1y ago
  Frankly it's bizarre that a Linux focused vendor thinks it's better to keep their device drivers outside of the kernel. Why would I buy a rebadged Clevo laptop from Tuxedo where I'm stuck either running their special Tuxedo distro or fiddling around with compiling kernel modules on other distros, when I could buy a much better laptop for the same price from a vendor who doesn't even advertise Linux support and get full out of the box hardware support on any distro I choose?
  • jeppester 1y ago
    I bought a Tuxedo machine. While the situation is not perfect (I had to install driver packages on Fedora), everything works perfectly - including standby. My last machine was a Thinkpad, and I never got it to work nearly as well. Standby mostly didn't work and when docking it, external screens would be arranged incorrectly unless I rebooted. USB ports also did not activate when docked, so I had a script for resetting the USB devices. Sometimes a new kernel version would come along and cause it to start freezing. I did check out other laptops before buying the tuxedo (t14s g6 amd, zenbook s14), but according to the information available at the time, those machines had lots of issues. They were also more expensive. Therefore I'm very curious about which laptop that you think is both better and cheaper than tuxedo, and has full hardware support out of the box?
    • ghostpepper 1y ago
      Which thinkpad was the one you had so many issues with, and which dock? I’ve had a few issues with my caldigit ts3 and ryzen 7840 p14s thinkpad but on the whole everything works pretty well. Worst issue has been a dumb regression with the Qualcomm ath12k firmware that wasn’t backed out for months.
      • kubav027 1y ago
        I have the same thinkpad as working computer and InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen 9 with 8845 as home computer. Lenovo has better upstream linux support but I was able to make both work without issues. I use debian testing/unstable. Lenovo pros: - better case - better keyboard Tuxedo pros: - significantly cheaper price - two fan setup enables faster performace (it is stable with 90W power consumption) - almost twice as long battery life (tuxedo has bigger batery with similar weight and size) - two nvme slots If you want more powerful notebook with slightly worse build quality, tuxedo is good choice.
• kubav027 1y ago
  You are right that tuxedo has some issues. But also take into account price of their notebooks. Even lenovo, hp, dell etc. are not without issues in the similar price category. I take it as cheap HW for advanced users. But you are right that not having drivers upstream is really strange decision.
• matheusmoreira 1y ago
  > If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application. > It's so bad, volunteers created an alternative. Years ago I wrote my own Linux user space driver for the keyboard on my Clevo based laptop. The Clevo application was so terrible I reverse engineered it and made my own Linux free software replacement. https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x It seems some Tuxedo laptops have the same keyboard. Maybe Tuxedo users will find it useful.