System76 Begins Offering Serval WS Laptop With AMD Ryzen

[tildearrow]

They clearly don't read the Phoronix forums

They do. I remember once upon a time they responded.

System76 Engineer and Kernelstub developer here.

[pal666]

Depends. Given Michael's aforementioned review of Ubuntu 20.04 on Lenovo Ideapad, would you pay System76 Yankee Dollars just for Linux support?

i certainly wouldn't pay them for novideo gpu. and that's even without considering availability of laptops with novideo

[pipe13]

i certainly wouldn't pay them for novideo gpu. and that's even without considering availability of laptops with novideo

Fair enough. But would you pay them for an otherwise-identical Serval WS with an AMD GPU?

Inquiring System76 marketoids want to know...

[DanglingPointer]

Workstation customers are not buying these systems for gaming. They're buying them because they have heavy duty system RAM and computing time needs. I wouldn't buy this for school, nor work because my needs for a laptop in those cases aren't demanding. If I still wrote programs for HPC or I were heavily into 3D rendering, this product would be right down my ally because AMD GPUs have almost no presence in that market. It's nearly entirely Nvidia compute clusters and Nvidia support for 3D rendering either for traditional polygons or ray tracing.

Rubbish!!!! Heard of Apple, Macbook Pros? Mac Pro? Apple the largest market cap company in the world?
It's ALL AMD graphics!!!! And last I checked well ahead of Linux usage in the workstation market outside Windows!

This is a beast!... https://www.apple.com/au/mac-pro/
Imagine that with linux!

[skeevy420]

Let's put it this way, garbagemouth: not that your opinion matters any more than mine, but would you rather System76 be just another Lenovo-Dell-Asus wannabe, or go their own way with something unique?

I'd like a high performing AMD CPU + AMD GPU + Linux combination that isn't done with an APU and a seemingly intentionally limited setup*. Outside of maybe Birdie, I don't know who on Phoronix would want that laptop....basing that on what's posted in most Nvidia threads since AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU is a spit in the face for a Linux purist.

APU, CPU+GPU, APU+GPU....I don't really care which is offered. Pick one and don't limit it* like a lot of AMD systems seem to be.

If they want some design ideas....Simply quit it with the minimalist designs. Pair a full sized keyboard with either an ultra wide (21:9) to keep the form factor smaller or a wide screen (16:9) for a larger form factor..or :10 for media player controls . If they really wanna surprise me, provide the laptop with a display that can rotate 90 degrees. The internet is so much nicer to browse and there's a lot of extra lines available on text editors for all those programmers and developers on vertically oriented wide screens.

*meaning not with single channel ram or soldered/fixed ram

[Jabberwocky]

Rubbish!!!! Heard of Apple, Macbook Pros? Mac Pro? Apple the largest market cap company in the world?
It's ALL AMD graphics!!!! And last I checked well ahead of Linux usage in the workstation market outside Windows!

Since the G4 Apple mostly sells phones. Tablets and laptops are second and workstations is basically nothing. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/...ta-Summary.pdf

Apple's choice of going with AMD was not related to performance or performance/watt or performance/price. Nvidia screwed Apple over in the past and would never share as much as the IP that AMD does.

This is a beast!... https://www.apple.com/au/mac-pro/
Imagine that with linux!

The I/O isn't bad and looks as usual is really good, but my desktop (Phanteks Enthoo Primo + Seasonic SS-1050XP3) has more room for better parts. Not that I can justify buying parts like a Radeon Pro Vega II Duo.

Back on topic: I also won't mind if they release a laptop without a discrete GPU. Go one step further and remove PSP then I will buy it no questions asked.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I still remember my first "workstation" class laptop, which tipped the scales at 3.8KG, and came with the added bonus of a power brick weighing a further 1.4KG...

Then four years later, its replacement weighed 2.6KG and have a power brick weighing something in the region of 1.3KG.

What does the power brick weigh for this thing?

[tuxd3v]

The machine is not bad for the price seems ok..
But indeed, a 4800H, would make it more attractive..
As per the Graphics card, anybody can change it by a AMD part later if they want too..

I would like yet to see a sane AMD laptop, with a 4600U APU, dual SODIM for Ram(dual channel), and it be 14" or as last resort 15.6" FHD Mate finish, ofcourse with Ethernet port..

[stormcrow]

Rubbish!!!! Heard of Apple, Macbook Pros? Mac Pro? Apple the largest market cap company in the world?
It's ALL AMD graphics!!!! And last I checked well ahead of Linux usage in the workstation market outside Windows!

This is a beast!... https://www.apple.com/au/mac-pro/
Imagine that with linux!

Apple is NOT in the Linux market. They don't give two shits about any market outside of their own walled garden. The HPC market and very high end rendering market runs Linux/Nvidia backends. The Apple workstations are front ends for editing and creativity. It's not for HPC development and the rendering farms are always Linux clusters.

[Mez']

These are probably standard devices.
Manjarobook started offering AMD laptops too with similar specifications (Ryzen 3600 and Geforce GTX 1660 Ti) and Manjaro or Kali pre-installed.