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

[V1tol]

Brick is good - usually it means more durability, better battery and (whats important) good cooling system. I am already sick of "notebooks" that are thin as sheet of paper and have a 15W parody on CPU for a price of a good laptop. And I don't have any problem with brick weight, since any notebook needs a bag or backpack for transportation.

[tildearrow]

What an ugly brick..

The uglier the better. It's meant for hard work; not to win a beauty contest.

[tildearrow]

I wouldn't say System76 "missed" the opportunity as much as the opportunity never existed because they have to buy from an ODM and this is what is available.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't options out there with AMD GPUs, but something tells me System76 couldn't get those options.

But Clevo now provides AMD configurations, so..... (maybe not that one tho)

[chuckula]

Missed opportunity to include an AMD graphics option

Even if NVIDIA is the gold standard in computing (due to CUDA), AMD should be an option as the Linux community has a large base of AMD seekers...

I wouldn't say System76 "missed" the opportunity as much as the opportunity never existed because they have to buy from an ODM and this is what is available.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't options out there with AMD GPUs, but something tells me System76 couldn't get those options.

[GruenSein]

Anyway, yeah, that's quite a premium for explicit linux support. Systems76 kinda feels like the Apple of linux laptops.

I don't think this is similar to Apple in any way. Even my eight year old MacBook Pro has a high quality 2880x1800px display (which I personally wouldn't want to miss) and cost about the same. I am willing to bet that basically anything non-compute (chassis, keyboard, speakers, battery) is of higher quality, too. Of course, the CPU, GPU and such cannot be compared due to the age. The "Kudu" seems more like a rebranded noname laptop with pretty random components and an enormous price premium for first party Linux support. If you pick your device carefully in terms of Linux support you can certainly get a much better deal...

[NateHubbard]

1080p is the sweet spot for laptops IMO.

1080p is low resolution crap IMO, but I'm not a gamer, and this isn't aimed at me I suppose.

[Mark Rose]

1080p is the sweet spot for laptops IMO. 1:1 app scaling is acceptable (especially in 15.6"), it uses less power at idle than 1440p, and... its cheaper. You can (theoretically) put the money into other useful features like a wider gamut, higher refresh, better backlights, or VRR. And the sharpness jump from 1080p to 1440p doesn't feel as big as it does in a desktop monitor or TV.

Only other res I would want is 4K, where integer scaling can be used when needed, and otherwise non-native resolutions don't look as "fuzzy" thanks to sheer brute force.

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.

[guara]

1.8 kUSD is a lot for a laptop that is probably a Clevo. Nice specs, though.

[om26er]

Does it come with working suspend/resume ? Previous experience with the Ryze 5XXX series hasn't been good on Ubuntu

[brucethemoose]

"high-end"
"1080p"
Well, I guess it will be fast enough.

1080p is the sweet spot for laptops IMO. 1:1 app scaling is acceptable (especially in 15.6"), it uses less power at idle than 1440p, and... its cheaper. You can (theoretically) put the money into other useful features like a wider gamut, higher refresh, better backlights, or VRR. And the sharpness jump from 1080p to 1440p doesn't feel as big as it does in a desktop monitor or TV.

Only other res I would want is 4K, where integer scaling can be used when needed, and otherwise non-native resolutions don't look as "fuzzy" thanks to sheer brute force.



Anyway, yeah, that's quite a premium for explicit linux support. Systems76 kinda feels like the Apple of linux laptops.