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Kubuntu Focus Offers The Most Polished KDE Laptop Experience We've Seen Yet

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  • #31
    Originally posted by deppman View Post
    Quite frankly, this is the laptop I've wanted for years as a software architect but could never get from any vendor. And I've been buying and advocating S76 for many years.
    You wanted a laptop that has very low battery life?(and presumably a bit weighty?)

    That's more of a portable desktop at the expense of performance being throttled compared to equivalent desktop parts(which would be cheaper too). With some of the newer laptops crossing 20 hours in battery life and being thin/light, there's two very different markets there. I'm a developer too, and understand the desire for performance, especially for compiling. The dGPU unless actually relevant for the work, probably isn't helping? I used to buy bulkier laptops with such but found it better just to delegate anything that'd need that to a desktop machine, or if thunderbolt 3 is supported with x4 lanes(and eventually USB4), use an eGPU which in many cases is a far better solution(since you're not really aiming for much portability/travel on ~3 hours battery life and the bandwidth bottleneck usually isn't a problem).

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    • #32
      Originally posted by deppman View Post
      It is also tuned for the hardware through kernel modules and other settings. Things that happen when you load Kubntu on the p960rd directly (like sound not working, or show desktop grid hanging for 20s, or crashing file indexing, no keyboard RGB controls, or dozens of other big and little niggles) are fixed on the Focus. Quite frankly, this is the laptop I've wanted for years as a software architect but could never get from any vendor. And I've been buying and advocating S76 for many years.
      Thanks for the information.

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      • #33
        Originally posted by polarathene View Post

        You wanted a laptop that has very low battery life?(and presumably a bit weighty?)

        That's more of a portable desktop at the expense of performance being throttled compared to equivalent desktop parts(which would be cheaper too). With some of the newer laptops crossing 20 hours in battery life and being thin/light, there's two very different markets there. I'm a developer too, and understand the desire for performance, especially for compiling. The dGPU unless actually relevant for the work, probably isn't helping? I used to buy bulkier laptops with such but found it better just to delegate anything that'd need that to a desktop machine, or if thunderbolt 3 is supported with x4 lanes(and eventually USB4), use an eGPU which in many cases is a far better solution(since you're not really aiming for much portability/travel on ~3 hours battery life and the bandwidth bottleneck usually isn't a problem).
        Many companies in SV buy only laptops that their developers choose - no desktops allowed. They must have full disk encryption, VPN, and they benefit from support for a total of 4 concurrent displays, 3 of them at 4k at 60Hz or 120Hz. They also benefit from having a Linux environment that is the same as their deployment targets (Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS) with no fussing around with home brew and Mac's dated and frustratingly incompatible BSD shell environment, or working with the clumsy WSL.

        In these environments, the only time developers are away from the mains is when they are in meetings doing little more than taking notes - and often shutting the lids for a half hour at a time. We maximize battery life for this type of use: turbo boost is disabled on battery and suspend/resume takes 3 seconds and is highly reliable. That results in 4 or 5 hours of battery life, which isn't "very low" and is plenty for this type of use.

        We feel the complexity of an egpu and procurement of such is a non-starter in many organizations. As an all around enterprise desktop replacement we feel this is very good and certainly superior to Macs and W10 devices in many cases. And it's hardly any larger than a MBP, and (unlike the MBP) it runs at full tilt for hours at a stretch because it actually has decent cooling, and it's $1k less with over double the GPU power.


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        • #34
          Originally posted by Paradigm Shifter View Post
          Thanks for the information.
          Hey no problem. Thanks for the interest!

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          • #35
            Originally posted by deppman View Post
            In these environments, the only time developers are away from the mains is when they are in meetings doing little more than taking notes - and often shutting the lids for a half hour at a time. We maximize battery life for this type of use: turbo boost is disabled on battery and suspend/resume takes 3 seconds and is highly reliable. That results in 4 or 5 hours of battery life, which isn't "very low" and is plenty for this type of use.
            Ok, so the audience being targeted is not really one where decent battery life is important since they're primarily intended to be docked to a desk or used within the office. That's fine, just not the type of laptop for my needs, such as when I have long haul flights that last 10+ hours(as in on the plane, not counting any layovers where access to power socket is available or power banks permitted.

            Originally posted by deppman View Post
            We feel the complexity of an egpu and procurement of such is a non-starter in many organizations. As an all around enterprise desktop replacement we feel this is very good and certainly superior to Macs and W10 devices in many cases. And it's hardly any larger than a MBP, and (unlike the MBP) it runs at full tilt for hours at a stretch because it actually has decent cooling, and it's $1k less with over double the GPU power.
            What sort of complexity? If the company is buying the laptop through you as a vendor, surely you could already provide advice to what eGPU enclosures are recommended, perhaps with partnership to said eGPU vendors, as well as selling the dGPUs to put in them. If your laptop can offer a thunderbolt 3 port(pref x4 lanes) which has uses for other things beyond eGPU, or the eventual support for USB4 in future, seems like a no brainer to offer?

            Such organizations might not be well educated about eGPUs, but could appreciate the benefits/savings(although for SV companies this is chump change I guess) in many cases where decoupling the dGPU from the laptop has - They can share a more powerful dGPU to the staff when actually needed, and they can upgrade the dGPU if needed without having to replace the entire laptop, which has sometimes been a main reason for upgrading to new models. Educate and upsell on that, if your competitors are offering similar specced hardware, this is one way to gain a notable price advantage.

            For me, less weight and potential power drain from a dGPU(which Linux seems to suffer from, at least until 5.6/5.7 kernel) in such situations is a nice benefit(last laptop I had with dGPU also had terrible cooling bringing the CPU temps near 100C with the GPU at 80C), rarely will I have a need for a dGPU when on the go. If I do it's likely at a place like office or home(wherever that may be) where an eGPU can wait to be connected.

            Windows or macOS, if I have the option I'd replace the OS with Linux. Sometimes that doesn't go as smoothly as one would like, so vendors like yourself catering to the Linux audience is fantastic and worth paying for, even if I'm comfortable tuning the system appropriately, some aspects can't really be known upfront until I or someone else has attempted to setup Linux on a new laptop..


            BTW, with the Focus, are users stuck to Kubuntu if they want your improvements/fixes? Or does your support assist with applying/supplying any changes to other Plasma(or other DE) distros? I use Manjaro for example. Referring to this:

            It is also tuned for the hardware through kernel modules and other settings. Things that happen when you load Kubntu on the p960rd directly (like sound not working, or show desktop grid hanging for 20s, or crashing file indexing, no keyboard RGB controls, or dozens of other big and little niggles) are fixed on the Focus.

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            • #36
              Originally posted by polarathene View Post
              BTW, with the Focus, are users stuck to Kubuntu if they want your improvements/fixes? Or does your support assist with applying/supplying any changes to other Plasma(or other DE) distros? I use Manjaro for example. Referring to this:
              We don't support anything but the shipping OS. If you want a Manjaro laptop, then you can get one loaded now from Tuxedo computers now. Of course, you could get the Focus and load whatever you want on it. But our organization is focused on a fantastic KDE experience on Kubuntu, and that's what we and the computer is optimized for. Supporting more distros on a Kubuntu branded laptop isn't only a bit silly, but it also introduces unwanted complexity and distracts us from our mission.

              Many Linux VARs offer tons of choices and modest support. We're going the other way: few choices but with fantastic support and reliability. We want MBP and W10 converts, and we need ease-of-use, reliability, software support, OS compatibility with Cloud deployments, disk encryption, and all the other enterprise-y things we mentioned above. That's why Kubuntu 18.04.3 LTS is an excellent option for our market segment.

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              • #37
                Originally posted by Charlie68 View Post

                I agree, yesterday after reading the article, I installed in a free partition Kubuntu 18.04, I then installed the applications that I normally use (almost all QT applications), at some point everything became unusable, I had to press the key to force shutdown, not even ctrl + alt + stamp + reisub worked. No proprietary driver, AMD graphics and this occurred 3 times, in 3 years of openSUSE it had never happened to me, some crash happened when I changed some settings, but never the pc completely blocked. I then installed KDE Neon and had the exact same problem. I also noticed that Baloo broke often, while in Tumbleweed it happened to me only once in three years, due to a file with strange characters.
                This is just my experience, which certainly isn't the norm, at least I hope so, however it still makes me prefer openSUSE to Kubuntu or Neon. But I have to admit that Kubuntu and KDE Neon is slightly faster on startup, but for me this is not a priority.
                KDE Neon has been quite good to me, I just moved away because it is based on Kubuntu LTS and it had old packages of everything. Though on a fresh Arch install, bootchart reported less than 4s for startup.
                I believe OpenSUSE Tumbleweed comes with debug stuff enabled which will slow it down a bit (can be disabled). I have no experience with official OpenSUSE.

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by bug77 View Post

                  KDE Neon has been quite good to me, I just moved away because it is based on Kubuntu LTS and it had old packages of everything. Though on a fresh Arch install, bootchart reported less than 4s for startup.
                  I believe OpenSUSE Tumbleweed comes with debug stuff enabled which will slow it down a bit (can be disabled). I have no experience with official OpenSUSE.
                  KDE Neon is a good distribution and I also believe Kubuntu, I have only reported my experience, but it does not mean that it is a bad distribution, using it in these days I have actually had no problems, so the accidents were perhaps just random.
                  I never judge a distribution for some accident and I judge only after at least a month of continuous use.
                  The impression I got was that Tumbleweed offers a great KDE experience for being a rolling release, which is rarely found around. But it's just my opinion and experience.

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                  • #39
                    I was not able to found next specs:
                    - what dimensions does it have?
                    - what about laptop weight?

                    Can anyone post this info here?

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by deppman View Post

                      Three 4k external monitors over HDMI, mDP, and USB C. See the specs on http://kfocus.org.
                      Right, but it does matter how the ports are configured on hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia...#Linux_support

                      In any case, swimming against the stream with nvidia on linux is a losing battle for users. In the end, either go with Windows + nvidia or linux + anything-other-than-nvidia. Of course it's nice to have the option to use the binary blob if you realize after you purchased a system with nvidia GPU that you're screwed. If, however, you are trying to decide what to buy that's going to work with linux out of the box, then nvidia is definitely a deal-breaker for most people that have had to deal with linux laptops using nvidia.

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