System76 Announces "Kudu" AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX Powered Laptop

[torsionbar28]

1080p is the sweet spot for laptops IMO. 1:1 app scaling is acceptable (especially in 15.6"),

This 100%. I just bought a 15" Dell Precision 7560. Total price was north of $3600 with the Xeon and 32 GB ECC memory and a few TB's of NVMe. I opted for the 1080p panel even though higher res ones were available. Higher res makes no sense on a screen that small. To utilize the rez you'd have to sit hunched over like an ape with your face 6 inches from the display. No thanks. I'll take normal res, better performance, and longer battery life of 1080p.

I'll take 4k on a 27" desktop display all day, but for a 15" laptop screen, 1080p is perfection.

[quikee]

This 100%. I just bought a 15" Dell Precision 7560. Total price was north of $3600 with the Xeon and 32 GB ECC memory and a few TB's of NVMe. I opted for the 1080p panel even though higher res ones were available. Higher res makes no sense on a screen that small. To utilize the rez you'd have to sit hunched over like an ape with your face 6 inches from the display. No thanks. I'll take normal res, better performance, and longer battery life of 1080p.

I'll take 4k on a 27" desktop display all day, but for a 15" laptop screen, 1080p is perfection.

1080p is good enough? OK - and then the same people cry when new font rendering doesn't do hinting and sub-pixel positioning anymore (which aren't possible to implment when you render on the GPU) and the fonts look blurry. And also HiDPI scaling - ever heard of that? The physical size of the UI on a 4k at 2x scaling is the same as 1080p, however everything is sharper because of double the resolution.

1080p on a 15 inch display is about 140DPI that's just not good enough - it wasn't good enough in 2018 and it isn't good enough in 2022. Today you can pretty much get a 4k TV for a reasonable price, you can also get good 4k monitor for a reasonable low price, and even the budget Smartphones have screen resolution over 250DPI, but laptops? no .. you want a higher than 1080p and you pay the a double premium price and this is all because "1080p is good enough".

Apple is the only one that gets this and doesn't offer a low DPI screen - why? because they can do the all the UI rendering on the GPU without the fonts looking blurry. Rendering on the GPU also means LESS power is needed as CPU isn't involved in the rendering and there is no need to transfer textures from to main memory and GPU memory, so longer battery life and better performance.

[torsionbar28]

i just can't understand why people buying is kind of product. That's pretty much a rebranded cheap laptop from china. Is it for linux support? I doubt that, considering the hardware it has. It doesn't live up "linux laptop" gimmick.

All consumer laptops are made in China, HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. No, I don't like it either, but that's what we're stuck with. Good luck getting any kind of support buying direct from the Chinese manufacturer. Ever tried shipping something to China and back? It'll either cost $hundreds to go quickly, or you'll be waiting 6 to 12 weeks for the slow boat to arrive. And you'll need a translator. And you'll be lucky if you don't get scammed in the process or otherwise spend money to not get what you expected.

Having owned System76 machines in the past, I can state from experience (had to RMA one once) that they have top notch US-based tech support for both software and hardware warranty problems. Very fast turn around and overnight US shipping = happy customers. Their online tech support is great too, for software and configuration questions. Arriving with Linux pre-installed, fully vendor supported (to include bios and firmware updates), and all hardware working out-of-the-box, I'm not sure what else you're looking for in a "linux laptop". Care to elaborate?

[Paradigm Shifter]

It's a start. Hopefully it's a success and more follow... but I think that'll depend more on the ODM than System76 themselves...

As for the resolution debate, at least the industry seems to be finally moving away from 1366x768, which was a horrible resolution even on the 11.6" screen which was the only laptop I've ever had with a res that low. I prefer to get a higher resolution than a lower one, although my previous "portable monster" laptop was 4K and was microscopic on a 15" screen. I had a brief detour to 2560x1600 on a 17" ultralight (for travelling, then SARS-Cov-2 happened so travelling didn't!) and am currently using a 1440p 15.6" screen, which is probably the best screen I've ever used on a laptop.

4K on a <28" panel is a touch too small for me; on a 32" panel it's just right.

[torsionbar28]

1080p on a 15 inch display is about 140DPI that's just not good enough - it wasn't good enough in 2018 and it isn't good enough in 2022. Today you can pretty much get a 4k TV for a reasonable price, you can also get good 4k monitor for a reasonable low price, and even the budget Smartphones have screen resolution over 250DPI, but laptops? no .. you want a higher than 1080p and you pay the a double premium price and this is all because "1080p is good enough".

DPI is meaningless without also discussing viewing distance and display size. You're ignoring two thirds of the equation. I don't think 1080p is good enough - I think it's the best choice for a 15" laptop. Cost is not even part of my equation. You do you boo.

[Sonadow]

DPI is meaningless without also discussing viewing distance and display size. You're ignoring two thirds of the equation. I don't think 1080p is good enough - I think it's the best choice for a 15" laptop. Cost is not even part of my equation. You do you boo.

Not to mention that most people using a 4K display run it at 200% scale which effectively produces the same outcome as a 1080p display because fractional scaling in Gnome and Plasma under Wayland is still a complete clusterfuck to the point where Gnome is still hiding it behind a gsettings variable for years.

[RejectModernity]

That's a steaming pile of crap for 1799$. No coreboot and no GPU that actually works on Linux without problems. Where is that legendary System76 Linux friendliness?

[rlkrlk]

Not to mention that most people using a 4K display run it at 200% scale which effectively produces the same outcome as a 1080p display because fractional scaling in Gnome and Plasma under Wayland is still a complete clusterfuck to the point where Gnome is still hiding it behind a gsettings variable for years.

I run at 100% scaling and pick font sizes and such to taste. On WUXGA screens I used the ancient 6x10 font in emacs and xterm, while on 2160p (my 17" laptop and pair of 28" desktop monitors) I use 9x15, so I suppose that's effectively 150% scaling.

Personally, I like big, beefy laptops. My Thinkpad P70 has 2 SATA SSDs and 2 NVMe sticks. I have many TB of photos and videos, so I want lots of storage. I never minded the 8 lb weight even pre-pandemic, even carrying a lot of stuff around.. Unfortunately, they don't make a lot of those big brutes any more. Well, that 4.5 year old beast is still going strong.

[mirmirmir]

All consumer laptops are made in China, HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. No, I don't like it either, but that's what we're stuck with. Good luck getting any kind of support buying direct from the Chinese manufacturer. Ever tried shipping something to China and back? It'll either cost $hundreds to go quickly, or you'll be waiting 6 to 12 weeks for the slow boat to arrive. And you'll need a translator. And you'll be lucky if you don't get scammed in the process or otherwise spend money to not get what you expected.

Having owned System76 machines in the past, I can state from experience (had to RMA one once) that they have top notch US-based tech support for both software and hardware warranty problems. Very fast turn around and overnight US shipping = happy customers. Their online tech support is great too, for software and configuration questions. Arriving with Linux pre-installed, fully vendor supported (to include bios and firmware updates), and all hardware working out-of-the-box, I'm not sure what else you're looking for in a "linux laptop". Care to elaborate?

i don't know. fully open-source software that support latest linux desktop features, currently, nvidia dont support all the wayland features, or even open-source at all.

for the price they ask, it's fair to compare to macbook, in terms of performance, thermal, energy efficiency, material quality, ect. which is, we all know, popos offering is not even close for the price, even to other brand with same price.

also, looks like you are not really clever on spending your money on computer. Pretty much any mainstream brand laptop has better support than clevo laptop. Like where do you go when you want to service your laptop? Do they have an offline support in your city?

Linux support? Even on my old laptop has better support than this laptop. I can imagine every laptop with amd/intel graphics without broadcom wifi works better than this brick on linux.

[FireBurn]

FFS what's with these companies obsession with nVidia? I mean there's still only one laptop out there with the 6800M FFS, yet there's plenty of laptops with AMD CPUs paired with every bloody nVidia card