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

[brucethemoose]

For me, the sweet spot is a 17" 4k screen with no scaling: I can put a 1080p window in each corner, or expand a window to 1920x2160ish. I got a laptop with this screen format last year, and it's the first time I haven't felt cramped working on just a laptop screen. Interfaces are still designed for 1080p, so everything just works, unlike with a 1440p screen. The battery life sucks, but it's worth it for the increased productivity.

I ended up going with an Intel based system, using the onboard graphics, and no dGPU. I would have preferred an AMD system, but they all seem to come with NVidia GPUs and their driver headaches.

That's the equivalent of 8.6" 1080p... I got 20-20 vision and kinda classify myself as a "pixel peeper," but that would be too small for me without scaling app UIs up.


It would be nice for media work in apps that behave though. You could stack 1080p frames side by side with 1:1 pixel mapping and almost no cropping.

[xhustler]

Help me understand why anyone would buy this vs the tons of polished machines out there at the same price point. Macbook Air anyone (i know glorified toy and all ...) ?

[Mark Rose]

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".

I agree with you: ~265 PPI is perfect for me for a laptop screen. On a desktop, I find about 180 to 190 PPI to be the sweet spot. We're finally in the golden age of displays that are no longer pixelated in appearance, for everyone, including those with 20/10 vision.

But do understand people with poorer visual acuity, say 20/20, are genuinely happy with lower pixel density screens. They truly don't see the jaggies on a 1080p 24" desktop monitor. They're the same people who find 1440p great at 27 or even 30" (which looks like a blocky mess to me). To them, there is no benefit going beyond 1080p on a 15" screen, and choosing more battery life is a no brainer for them.

But I get the frustration: for so long we were stuck with low pixel densities because it's good enough for a majority of people.

[qarium]

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?

Linux friendliness: if you do not buy OpenPOWER,RISC-V as full opensource ISA or at least ARM who has near zero windows marketshare and makes all it sales on linux... with libre-soc GPU as the only option without closed source firmware or the second best option AMD GPU... yes if you dont do this you do not have any linux friendliness.

technologically from the performance and freedom OpenPOWER is the best option much better than RISC-V
ARM is less open but still much more linux friendly than X86_64..

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

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

The AMD Advantage effort has been a huge pile of fail so far. As you said, exactly 1 laptop on the planet with the 6800m, and only half a dozen systems total. The Strix G15 is the only interesting one, but the morons at Asus pulled the same bonehead "no webcam during a pandemic with work/learn from home herp derp" crap as on the G14. I hope they make an updated all AMD G15 this year and add a webcam.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.