System76 Serval Professional Notebook

While the System76 Serval Professional was beat out by the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 in the CPU-bound tests, our review unit had their slowest configured processor. The Serval Professional can be configured with a T9660, P9600, or T9800, all of which would surely beat out the Core 2 Duo T9300 found in the T61. Of course, this will cost you more money.

This is our first time reviewing a System76 product, but we are pleased with this notebook. The Serval Professional was designed well and has a great build quality, there is a nice selection of hardware around which this notebook can be configured, and it ships with Ubuntu! With System76 being a low-volume vendor at this time and ensuring Ubuntu compatibility with their products, customers will pay a premium. The base model for the Serval professional is $1,399.00 USD and it can go up to over $3,100.00 if opting for the higher-end hardware. These prices are noticeably more than similarly configured notebooks from any of the tier one vendors.

Beyond just ensuring their hardware is compatible with Ubuntu and installing a few extra packages by default to improve the user experience, System76 does offer technical support to its Ubuntu users. A one year warranty and technical support for the same length is included with the Serval Professional while it can be extended to two years for an additional $170 or $295 for three years.

If you don't mind paying more for a notebook that ships with Ubuntu and is guaranteed to run nicely with Linux -- along with supporting a vendor that is centered around the Linux ecosystem -- the System76 Serval Professional is a notebook worth considering for your next purchase.