System76 Rolls Out Lemur Pro Laptops With Core Ultra "Meteor Lake"

[loganj]

will the igpu perform as good as laptops with 7xxxMhz memory? cause i find it strage how they designed the memory part

[dlq84]

I would like to see them offer products in the ultra budget range. Realistically speaking Myself and many others really don't need this class of hardware. Even modern I3 processors are way more than enough for me now. I can easily skirt by with even an atom/pentium processor, or whatever the tier below I3 is now. I know a lot of people are the same now.

There's barely any margin in that segment, you need to push a lot of volume for that to make economical sense. So don't hold your breath.

[sophisticles]

Anyone that has ever read my posts knows I favor Intel over AMD for a number of reasons, but especially for open source because frankly Intel has THE most open source friendly software stack.

People also know that i have a big problem with KDE and the 24+ thousand open bug reports.

Having said this, I can't imagine anyone that wants to buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled would consider buying this thing, or more accurately should consider buying this thing.

Compare the base configuration of the Lemur Pro with the base configuration of KDE's Slimbook:

CPU
Lemur - Core Ultra 5 125U, 4.3ghz, 12C/14T
Slim - Ryzen 7-7840HS, 8C/16T

Base Ram
Lemur - 8gb, 1x8 module, DDR5
Slim - 16gb, 2x8 modules, DDR5

Base Storage
Lemur - 500gb, PCIe M.2 SSD
Slim - 250gb, NVMe

OS
Both Ubuntu based

Monitor
Lemur - 14.0” FHD+ (1920x1200) 16:10
Slim - 16" WQXGA (2560x1600) 16:10 sRGB 100%, 165Hz, 400 nits

Base Price
Lemur - $1399
Slim - 999 Euros or $1085 in dollars, this price includes a 200 Euro discount for ordering before product is available at end of April

I would argue that the KDE Slimbook is a much better deal for those looking for a Linux laptop and in my opinion is a much more aesthetically pleasing design.

[chocolate]

39b.jpg
What a stupid design.

Holy pretzel.
I've never understood the need to bring modifier keys closer to the letters instead of keeping them on the perimeter of the keyboard. They are keys that you press without looking and have to hit reliably 100% of the time. How is feeling the outer perimeter of the keyboard, and thus having a perfect spatial idea of where the modifiers are relative to it, worse than anything else? Same goes for ctrl vs. fn for the bottom left key. How often does one need to hit fn compared to ctrl? Exactly. Therefore ctrl should always have the better spot, in the corner, where it's easy to locate and hit without looking, always.

It's also why I can't get over how unpopular 75% keyboards are on desktop. It's the preferred layout only on business laptops from Dell and the like. The navigation column on the right is simply the easiest thing ever to hit with the pinky finger very reliably.
I've always found the argument for vim bindings and other similar voodoo completely stupid compared to such simple hardware design. Select the rest of the line to the right of the cursor? Left pinky holds shift and right pinky hits end on the right column. Select to the left? Same, but right pinky hits home. Getting there is one key press instead of fn+arrow or other unergonomic tomfoolery.

Thanks for putting up with my ramblings.

[sophisticles]

Marketing Department Head, with bs economics degree:

"This laptop is not for gamers; it is exclusively for software developers. They will love it - streamline development no distraction yada yada"

Meanwhile, on Reddit... "Dude, almost every software developer is a gamer."

You give these people way too much credit, I don't think any of them has ever taken a single business class, much less has a degree in business or economics.

Think about what they are doing:

1) Build aesthetically average looking computers that feature overpriced hardware.

2) Target a very tiny niche market, namely people that know what Linux is, want to use it and for some reason do not want to install it themselves. How many potential buyers can that be, 3 or 4 a month?

3) The base the Os they use on Ubuntu and the final product is slow and sluggish as hell when I tried it, not to mention ugly.

4) They spend 18+ months developing a new DE from scratch, only to desire to give it away for free to everyone so that other distros can create spins featuring COSMIC. Best part? In their mind they think the will somehow stimulate demand for their hardware, LOL!

The sad thing is that i really believe if they had someone running the company that knew what they were doing and was not guided by some silly ideology they could probably be a publicly traded company in 10 years.

From what they have said the upper management are the people that developed Redox OS, the MIT licensed Rust coded OS that is binary compatible with Linux and Unix.

That s their killer app and what could set them apart from everyone.

Since it's MIT licensed, I would make it closed source, exclusive to computers sold by System76 and if they want to tip their hats to their open source ideology, make the source code available to your clients under strict NDA.

The sales pitch would be this is a clean design, coded with a memory safe language that threads well and scales efficiently with greater cores.

Unlike Linux which currently has 464 known exploits listed in the Metasploit DB and 1000+ for Windows, Redox has zero.

You can only get it if you buy a System76 computer.

I think they would sell computers like hot cakes.

[skeevy420]

Base Price
Lemur - $1399
Slim - 999 Euros or $1085 in dollars, this price includes a 200 Euro discount for ordering before product is available at end of April

I would argue that the KDE Slimbook is a much better deal for those looking for a Linux laptop and in my opinion is a much more aesthetically pleasing design.

I'd lean towards the Slim, too. It's $100 less and you get better graphics, double the ram, and a bigger display at the expense of less storage and less processing.

That said, System76 offers the Pangolin for $1299 and it has practically the same processor as the Slim (7840U vs 7840HS), same storage size, same size screen in 1080p, and twice the ram.

Picking between the Slim and Pangolin is a bit tougher. 1440p and possibly better performance from the 7840HS or possibly better battery life from 1080p and the 7840U. That's a real toughie.

Michael ngraham mmstick

I don't know if y'all could just give some laptops to Phoronix, but Slim vs Pangolin would be a rather interesting comparison and then Michael could give them away as a promotion to Phoronix Premium users. Everyone wins

[andyprough]

I can't imagine anyone that wants to buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled would consider buying this thing, or more accurately should consider buying this thing.
...
I would argue that the KDE Slimbook is a much better deal for those looking for a Linux laptop and in my opinion is a much more aesthetically pleasing design.

Those Slimbooks look very nice. I require Coreboot at a minimum and it doesn't appear that AMD is willing to work with Coreboot to get anything going so I don't have any AMD options. But for anyone else that would probably be a good deal.

[sarmad]

39b.jpg
What a stupid design.

At least they didn't go full Commodore 64 style though

image.png

[atmartens]

The sad thing is that i really believe if they had someone running the company that knew what they were doing and was not guided by some silly ideology they could probably be a publicly traded company in 10 years.

Their business model is to sell to people who use Linux at work, on computers provided by their employer. The difference of $1,000 for an employer who pays a software developer $200k a year isn't much, and especially so if it makes that employee more productive. And, guess what, they make enough money to develop all of those projects you mentioned (Cosmic, Redox, Pop OS...). Their business model is clearly working.

[Quackdoc]

There's barely any margin in that segment, you need to push a lot of volume for that to make economical sense. So don't hold your breath.

I am aware, but even with a minor markup of say a hundred dollars on a 300-400 dollar device, I realize thats still a small margin, but it could be enough to keep it viable. and its a price I myself at the very least would be willing to pay, and I know my customers were willing to pay me a 100 markup xD