System76 Refreshes Ubuntu Linux Laptops With Intel Kaby Lake, NVIDIA GTX 10 Series, and 4K (betanews.com)

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: System76 is refreshing three of its laptops with some high-end parts. The Oryx Pro, Serval WS, and Bonobo WS are now all equipped with 7th generation Intel Kaby Lake processors. In addition, all three can be had with 4K displays and NVIDIA GTX 10 series graphics too. While the Oryx Pro already had the option of 4K and GTX 10, it is the 7th gen Intel chips that are new to it. In fact, all of the company's laptops now come with Kaby Lake standard. The computer seller throws some shade at Apple by saying, "The HiDPI displays that ship on the laptops have 3.1 million more pixels than Apple's 'Retina' displays, enabling sharper text, 4K video, and higher res gaming. Beyond that, the displays give video and photo professionals the ability to work more easily with higher resolution multimedia."

Comments

I Looked at System76

[RobotRunAmok]

...when I sent my daughter off to college last Fall. Figured it might be nice for her to have someone beside Dear Ol' Dad to call if she had some complicated Linux problems (she can handle the simple and medium problems). Then I saw how much they were charging! Could not justify the expense, even with whatever phonecall time it might save me. Bought a Lenovo and had her roll her own OS into it. She, and my wallet, are both way better for it...

Re: I Looked at System76

[Anonymous Coward]

A Lenovo? You're a horrible father.

sudo apt-get new-father

Re:I Looked at System76

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past, System76 laptops were just rebranded Clevos, which are sold in the U.S. by Sager. This is true of most boutique laptop providers. Theoretically, System76 does extra work to insure Linux works seamlessly on these laptops, but I've had zero issues getting Linux to work on the Clevo that I purchased. Certainly, these laptops aren't perfect, but I do believe the Clevo has some of the best value for the dollar in their laptop line. My biggest complaints are that their mechanical components are only OK.

To give an example, a two minute check for their Gazelle:

https://system76.com/laptops/g...

Tells me that it's probably a rebrand from the Clevo W650 line:

http://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_...

Clevo tends to refresh their lines pretty often, so it's sometimes hard to get the exact model, but not impossible. Searching by laptop dimensions is the fastest way to get into the ballpark.

Shade, eh?

[fyngyrz]

The computer seller throws some shade at Apple by saying, "The HiDPI displays that ship on the laptops have 3.1 million more pixels than Apple's 'Retina' displays

You can't "throw shade" at Apple over hardware capabilities in any meaningful way unless you can run OS X / macOS and its applications. Otherwise, you're in the position of a cruise ship boasting that it has roll stabilization in order to try and "shade" a luxury hotel. Pomegranates and kumquats. Irrelevant.

And I say that as a very unhappy Apple hardware user.

Re:Shade, eh?

[amiga3D]

I'm on my last Apple laptop it seems. A 2012 15" MacBook Pro with i7 2.3ghz quadcore. It's fabulous but it's been nothing but downhill for Apple hardware since. Every step they take is backwards. When this one dies I'm going to have to make Linux work for everything I do. I didn't mind paying too much for hardware that was useful. Now you pay too much for crap you didn't want while the stuff you liked is removed.

Re:4K

[RavenLrD20k]

I just designed a Bonobo for shits and giggles with dual 1080 SLI, 16GB DDR4, two 2TB HDDs, and 867 Mbps WiFi, with a 3 year P&L Warranty leaving the rest of the blocks at the defaults. 4K is almost 1K too low. Total came to $4,892.

Num pads on laptops

[afgam28]

One thing that I can't stand about these machines is that they have a num pad, which pushes the main keyboard and the touchpad way to the left of the device. This means you have to sit either with your arms pointing to the left, or your head pointing to the right.

The number of users who would benefit from a num pad are few and far between, and they could just use a USB num pad.

Strangely, there are only a few laptop manufacturers that align the center of the screen with the center of the keyboard and touchpad. I hope System 76 fixes this one day, because I'd love to replace my MacBook with a Linux laptop.

Re:Num pads on laptops

[cfalcon]

I mean, all the laptops I've ever owned, including my two current but now older dudes, have a numpad. I wouldn't personally consider a laptop without one. It really is interesting that it is contentious.

For the people who can buy a nice laptop

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm a potential customer of one of these or new MBP. These seem like the only two options for a high end laptop these days. So I priced them out for a similar config.

I compared as close a config as I could between a optioned up mac and Oryx.
So that means 15", because the Oryx only offers the hires display on 15".
Apple only offer 16GB ram on 15" models, so that's what I set it to on Oryx
Oryx only offer up to 1TB on nvme, where Apple allow 2TB. But on the Oryx you can have second drive, so I added 1 TB SSD.
The graphics card options are not choices since you need the max Orix option for the high res display.

Apple: 15.4" retina display 2880x1800. Radeon 455 4GB. 2.8GHz CPU, 16GB Memory, 2TB Storage, $4299.
Oryx 16.6" hidipi display . Nvidia GTX1070 8GB. 2.9GHz CPU. 1TB NMVe+1TB SSD. :$3154

If you drop back to 1TB (which you might because Apple want $800 for the extra TB. It's Apple $3499, Oryx $2695.

Other things you might care about:
I'm personally ok with either macos or Linux. You may or may not care.
The mac looks ok. The Oryx looks butt ugly.
The Orix lets you option it up further than Apple - 64GB Ram for instance.

In the past, claims that Apple were more expensive tended to ignore the horrible screens or limited storage on the cheaper counterparts.
In this instance the Apple for a similar config is $800-$1000 more expensive.

So the Oryx is looking pretty good, except for the butt ugly case.
   

Re:4K

[cfalcon]

System 76 is a pretty good value for the machine you get. Lets go over your choices to build a ~$5000 machine.

> dual 1080 SLI

Yes, that would be expensive. It's SLI on a friggin laptop. The "low end" option is a GTX 1070, which totally blows away what you can get on, say, an Apple. The dual 1080 SLI option adds 1500 bucks to the price. This is what you would expect, and also, not something you would buy unless you were actually sure you wanted it. This is a top end graphics card, and you're talking TWO of them in a laptop. This alone is 30% of the price.

> two 2TB HDDs

Lets be clear here: included in the price is an 256 GB SSD. You are adding two additional 2.5" HDDs to this.

The 5 thousand dollar machine you built has a top of the line (which commands a VAST premium) Nvidia graphics card, then it has A SECOND ONE OF THOSE. It has THREE storage media- an SSD, and two HDDs. That sounds about right.

Note that in raw power, this machine totally blows away anything offered by Apple, which can't progress beyond a middle of the line Radeon, and I'm pretty damned sure it can't do three media. Heck, I think the option on that is just a big SSD (which the Bonobo also offers in the configurator). I can't even get close to these specs on Alienware, where I couldn't find the option to get TWO friggin GTX 1080s, nor THREE media in the rig.

My view: If you need the hardware you selected, this is a good deal for it, and you'd be hard pressed to find it at most mainstream shops, because the options chosen are wildly excessive for most users. The main name brands don't even offer this sort of stuff, it's super packed with metal.

Re:So straight up ads as articles?

[cfalcon]

Maybe Alienware? System76 is kinda special in the Linux world, right? It is sorta comparable to Apple, broadly.