It's just a tweet, I won't hold it against anyone, but if your goal is "quietest yet most performant" you will almost certainly fail.
Someone will outcool you & you will lose, baring some breakthrough in cooling technology. (Solid state cooling could do it but AFAIK hasn't scaled up yet & already takes significant size. https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/23/zotac-pi430aj-pico-m...)
daily driver usable for going on a year, lots of programming across compilers defines my notion of daily driver.
speaking of "driver", some hardware drivers aren't there yet, notably audio, display brightness (either off or on), and i think sleep states aren't quite right.
I read somewhere that the camera also doesn't work, meaning that video calls are out of the question and that's something I use for my personal and professional life.
Good point: i hadn't tried the camera. You know, if macOS fonts an zoom were as compatible with my super fortunate vision, the drivers issues alone really would be a deal breaker. but i keep AsahiLinux on my M2 because the window manager and sharpness of the display is just so much nicer than what MacOS offers (for my eyes, not for everyone).
That's because this is a ThinkPad keyboard. I'll highly doubt that they will get a license to use those by default. They either have to come up with their own design or make it compatible with a ThinkPad keyboard, which you then have to buy and install yourself.
Very interesting. With a good TrackPoint implementation (including getting the buttons right), and a decent touchpad for people who prefer that, I could see standardizing on it for fleet laptops.
They have even better open source thinking than Lenovo (which inherited some good thinking from IBM), and the US provenance is significant to some companies.
(Though I'd probably standardize on Debian Stable rather than PopOS.)
This is very exciting. After Dell and HP dropped out over the past year, I've been waiting for a company other than Lenovo to build a well-designed laptop with a pointing stick. This company being System76 makes the news even better, since I know the hardware will receive first-class support on Linux. I'm glad that System76 is taking the community laptop suggestions seriously (implementing a ThinkPad-style TrackPoint is the top suggestion by number of thumbs up: https://github.com/system76/laptop-suggestions/issues/25).
I don't need the fastest, I want long battery life, which is often opposed to the fastest goal. I'm hoping to get one when it is released, but of course I will need to see the specs first. I'm mostly happy with my pinebookpro, but once in a while it is lacking
Check for "fanless laptops" and for CPUs with low TDP as a lead;
consider if your routine involves a car/t the purchase of an adequate "powerbank", probably a "power station" made of a battery and a good inverter (e.g. Jackery).
A balance is what's best for most people buying laptops — not the fastest, but fast, quiet, cool, and efficient.
Laptop manufacturers have a tendency to lean into the performance aspect at the steep cost of the other three aspects because it's easy to dump more power into the CPU and push the fans harder to make up the difference. Achieving balance takes engineering chops that many of these manufacturers lack or don't care to procure.
I doubt that the HW engineers at Clevo or wherever are categorically that much worse than those at Apple or Lenovo, and the differing places their machines sit in the quality manifold is very much more a question of margins than ability.
I basically want a MacBook equivalent that runs Linux as a first class OS
Which means: great display, battery life, keyboard, light and thin (for couch use), and then to be available to try before I buy in some form. Eg, visiting a store to try the display/keyboard. Or else, free returns.
(nice trackpads are traps: MacOS makes you rely on their great trackpad, but it makes you more prone to RSI in the long run to use a trackpad all the time. Better to use gnome with its great keyboard shortcuts)
I wish system76 would put better displays in their machines. I hope virgo goes with 1440p or higher. This whole in-house laptop project is very encouraging, I cna't wait to see what they're building in 10 years
You won’t get it. Apple makes killer hardware and pretty decent integrated software. Great hardware/software integration is a lot of work and OSS devs just aren’t up to the task.
My favourite desktop environment is gnome, because I almost never need to touch a mouse with it, and it’s nice and minimal (although you need to add a few extensions)
GNOME still, to this day, doesn't handle fractional scaling properly. And don't get me started on its inability to handle something as simple as tray icons and instead go "Whoopsie! Something is running in the background!"
It's eternally 70% complete. The lack of polish drives me nuts.
I'm waiting for my framework laptop specifically for this. easy to swap parts, ryzen and they do support linux. in my book, its the best bet for a premium linux laptop as long as you're not doing heavy ML. (at least not till the 15" version is out)
I heard the first gen had bad power drain issues but the new 13th gen intels are drastically better. The new ryzen has the option of a 60 wh battery. I doubt its as good as a MBP but its on par with other PCs
You forget software. I have great 3-rd party display for my laptop, but with Linux it's often software that doesn't support that. Text looks too small, often times there is no scaling possible. Because of that I use Windows + WSL
You will never get this.
Small companies like System76/Framework don't have even 1% of Apple budget, so hardware and hardware/software integration will never be as good as the MacBook.
I'm very interested in seeing what they come up with. The existing laptops are, IIRC, rebadged Clevo (or some other OEM). It's a big risk, pulling more of that design in-house, but I'm hoping they can do it.
I suspect this isn't the direction that System76 is pursuing with Virgo, but Linux is in a good position to take advantage of Arm CPUs. Linux isn't tied to legacy software that only runs on x86 in the same way that proprietary OS's are. This distinction isn't absolute, but given that most Linux software is open source, it's relatively easier to make this transition.
"Most performant" is a tall order. The traditional benefit of Arm has been efficiency, not compute power, but Apple has shown what's possible with their M1/M2 designs.
It would be interesting if Nvidia went this route. They've got the chops to design a competitive modern ARM core, plus experience with the more difficult GPU/vector processing units. They kinda signaled their interest with the attempted ARM purchase a while ago, but that fizzled out quick.
That ship has sailed, though. The licensing of ARM puts them in an unfavorable position, which only incentivizes Nvidia to focus on GPU sales and RISC-V skunkworks. They've still got their Grace ARM system coming "soon", but I'd be surprised if they bothered to update their current Orin systems. It feels like no one besides Apple and maybe Qualcomm have an incentive to deliver consumer ARM hardware right now. To compete with Apple you need a custom core, and building a custom core takes time and money. The few stakeholders who can deliver a quality ARM experience are probably scheming to cut ARM out of the picture entirely.
There are some Chromebooks with Snapdragons that are somewhat interesting (though half the speed of an M1). And some of the Windows ARM laptops might be decent in this niche. Some of the Samsung Galaxy Books look interesting.
You'd basically be giving up on running really serious stuff on the laptop itself. If you have good wifi/5G, a home server or an AWS rental might do the heavy lifting.
It's a mixed bag, because the whole purpose is for traveling, and that's often when your connectivity is iffy. So, not sure. Battery life would be nice though.
I find the noise to be intolerable on my Adder WS even at idle, but would agree that it's nowhere near the biggest problem. That would be software support. I have been using Linux laptops for ten years and the only one that has ever failed to reliably wake from sleep is my System76.
They're junk by every metric I know of. Expensive, too. They have nothing going for them.
Their build quality feels poor. Sometimes it's hard to tell when an issue is just a vicissitude of using Linux or their fault, but I would overall not recommend.
Build quality is exactly what System76 is improving on by creating their first in-house laptop. All of System76's laptops to date have been adapted from designs from ODMs such as Clevo. When System76 moved their desktops in-house with their Thelio product line, they were well-built and well-received. I'm optimistic about their new Virgo laptop after seeing what they did with their Thelio desktops.
I would be willing to give them a shot one again one day (there are so few purveyors of pre-installed Linux computers), though not for the ~$1k Thelio costs.
Right now, WSL is working great for me, but Windows seems to be getting increasingly aggressive with wanting one to use their search, etc.
I am right now using a Lenovo X1 that has that problem. Previous gen also had that problem. And the one before that. Waking up from sleep is apparently difficult.
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[ 7.3 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadSomeone will outcool you & you will lose, baring some breakthrough in cooling technology. (Solid state cooling could do it but AFAIK hasn't scaled up yet & already takes significant size. https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/23/zotac-pi430aj-pico-m...)
speaking of "driver", some hardware drivers aren't there yet, notably audio, display brightness (either off or on), and i think sleep states aren't quite right.
I read somewhere that the camera also doesn't work, meaning that video calls are out of the question and that's something I use for my personal and professional life.
So, not a daily driver from me just yet.
Thanks for the info.
If it feels the same, that’s a very good thing.
They have even better open source thinking than Lenovo (which inherited some good thinking from IBM), and the US provenance is significant to some companies.
(Though I'd probably standardize on Debian Stable rather than PopOS.)
Check for "fanless laptops" and for CPUs with low TDP as a lead;
consider if your routine involves a car/t the purchase of an adequate "powerbank", probably a "power station" made of a battery and a good inverter (e.g. Jackery).
Laptop manufacturers have a tendency to lean into the performance aspect at the steep cost of the other three aspects because it's easy to dump more power into the CPU and push the fans harder to make up the difference. Achieving balance takes engineering chops that many of these manufacturers lack or don't care to procure.
Which means: great display, battery life, keyboard, light and thin (for couch use), and then to be available to try before I buy in some form. Eg, visiting a store to try the display/keyboard. Or else, free returns.
(nice trackpads are traps: MacOS makes you rely on their great trackpad, but it makes you more prone to RSI in the long run to use a trackpad all the time. Better to use gnome with its great keyboard shortcuts)
I wish system76 would put better displays in their machines. I hope virgo goes with 1440p or higher. This whole in-house laptop project is very encouraging, I cna't wait to see what they're building in 10 years
My favourite desktop environment is gnome, because I almost never need to touch a mouse with it, and it’s nice and minimal (although you need to add a few extensions)
While macOS feels dated, has absolute garbage support for anything Linux releated and awful keyboard layout(just use Ctrl already).
It's eternally 70% complete. The lack of polish drives me nuts.
Okay so I can key shortcuts to move between virtual desktops, but how do I then move a window to a different desktop?
I have to install 3rd party tools, such as Amethyst. The papercuts with the Mac workflow are atrocious.
7 hours? 10,14?
I mean it all sounds cool, but rough edges are everywhere. There is no such thing as "polished graphical experience on Linux".
What sort of resolution is the external display, and do you have (just one would be fine) example of an app that messes up?
It's going to be the only way to fix this.
"Most performant" is a tall order. The traditional benefit of Arm has been efficiency, not compute power, but Apple has shown what's possible with their M1/M2 designs.
That ship has sailed, though. The licensing of ARM puts them in an unfavorable position, which only incentivizes Nvidia to focus on GPU sales and RISC-V skunkworks. They've still got their Grace ARM system coming "soon", but I'd be surprised if they bothered to update their current Orin systems. It feels like no one besides Apple and maybe Qualcomm have an incentive to deliver consumer ARM hardware right now. To compete with Apple you need a custom core, and building a custom core takes time and money. The few stakeholders who can deliver a quality ARM experience are probably scheming to cut ARM out of the picture entirely.
You'd basically be giving up on running really serious stuff on the laptop itself. If you have good wifi/5G, a home server or an AWS rental might do the heavy lifting.
It's a mixed bag, because the whole purpose is for traveling, and that's often when your connectivity is iffy. So, not sure. Battery life would be nice though.
They're junk by every metric I know of. Expensive, too. They have nothing going for them.
Their build quality feels poor. Sometimes it's hard to tell when an issue is just a vicissitude of using Linux or their fault, but I would overall not recommend.
I would be willing to give them a shot one again one day (there are so few purveyors of pre-installed Linux computers), though not for the ~$1k Thelio costs.
Right now, WSL is working great for me, but Windows seems to be getting increasingly aggressive with wanting one to use their search, etc.