Alder Lake-Powered Linux Laptop Arrives With 14 Hours of Battery Life (tomshardware.com) 48
System76, the Colorado-based Linux laptop, desktop, and server specialist, has announced a new highly portable laptop with an Intel Alder Lake processor inside. Tom's Hardware reports: The new Lemur Pro(opens in new tab) is a "lighter than Air" 14-inch form factor laptop with excellent battery life and attractions such as open firmware (powered by Coreboot) and a 180-degree hinge. In addition, buyers can choose to go with Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS pre-installed. The new Lemur Pro has many attractive modern features you might see advertised in many rival mainstream thin and light designs. However, the special sauce here is the "System76 Open Firmware with Coreboot." Coreboot, known initially as LinuxBIOS, is significant as it is an open-source BIOS implementation embraced by Linux users. It is lightweight, flexible, and feature-rich. [...]
System76 has designed the Lemur Pro with monitor-based docking in mind. It envisions users connecting to a big screen using the USB-C connection to benefit from the more expansive workspace and laptop charging. Like Windows, Linux had to have some serious tinkering under the hood to prepare for the mix of Performance and Efficiency cores in Alder Lake chips. However, rest assured, efficient hybrid scheduling is taken care of with the two OS options that can be pre-installed on the Lemur Pro.
System76 allows customers to configure and buy Lemur Pro laptops right now. There are many RAM and storage configurations to pick through, and you can add external keyboards and monitors to the bundle. The entry price with an Intel Core i5-1235U, 8GB RAM, 240GB of storage, and no extras is $1,149. However, the Core i7-1255U model is a bit of a stretch, adding $200 to the base price for the faster CPU clocks.
System76 has designed the Lemur Pro with monitor-based docking in mind. It envisions users connecting to a big screen using the USB-C connection to benefit from the more expansive workspace and laptop charging. Like Windows, Linux had to have some serious tinkering under the hood to prepare for the mix of Performance and Efficiency cores in Alder Lake chips. However, rest assured, efficient hybrid scheduling is taken care of with the two OS options that can be pre-installed on the Lemur Pro.
System76 allows customers to configure and buy Lemur Pro laptops right now. There are many RAM and storage configurations to pick through, and you can add external keyboards and monitors to the bundle. The entry price with an Intel Core i5-1235U, 8GB RAM, 240GB of storage, and no extras is $1,149. However, the Core i7-1255U model is a bit of a stretch, adding $200 to the base price for the faster CPU clocks.
lighter than Air (Score:2)
Lighter than Air?
What genius came up with that idea? I want my laptop to stay on my desk when I put it there, glubdarnit.
What am I supposed to do? Buy a heavy mouse to anchor it down?
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Notice the capitalization? They obviously mean it's lighter than his Airness, so less than about 100kg (haven't kept up with MJ's weight so might be off).
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They probably meant "Lighter than a MacBook Air"
That said, it's been a while I've been that excited by a computer. If I hadn't bought my piece of crap Dell XPS last year I'd jump on that one.
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If I compare it with the Mac Air I bought my wife a few month later, it's the same price, the same cpu performance. Hers is twice as light, twice as thin and has 3 times the battery life. And that's only for the things that matter. Not counting instant on for example.
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You need to blow on it to make sure it stays down, and also to provide cooling. Obviously.
Re: lighter than Air (Score:2)
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Don't be a doofus, tie it to an anvil. Don't even put it on your desk, just let it float upward the string tying it to the anvil will hold it in place. It may take some getting used to when it comes to typing on it.
Re: lighter than Air (Score:2)
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So, as long as the lappy is less than that, and it is, it is a true statement.
Great Developer workstation (Score:3)
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Re:Great Developer workstation (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at their open firmware it looks like they have replaced most of the boot process with their own. There are still some bits of proprietary Intel code left, some of it in the Management Engine, which can't be disabled because it is needed for the very early boot up of the CPU. They also seem to be including Intel's microcode blobs, again can't be helped.
Very good effort though, it really is at the limit of what can be done.
Nice, but no ISO keyboard layout. (Score:2)
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Re: Nice, but no ISO keyboard layout. (Score:2)
ANSI vs ISO has nothing to do with printed labels. They're physically different.
Imagine being so misinformed about the two prevailing keyboards.
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ANSI vs ISO has nothing to do with printed labels. They're physically different.
Imagine being so misinformed about the two prevailing keyboards.
Well, minus the snark, you're correct [wikipedia.org].
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Tuxedo Computers has ISO keyboards.
Once you use a Mac screen for a day, you're done (Score:3, Insightful)
This laptop only sports a 1920x1080 display over 14.1 inches. No doubt that has a huge impact on battery life, but at what cost to you?
A 1920x1080 FHD display will produce an image with tiny, yet still visible dots on the screen when viewed from a normal distance. You don't think that will make much of a difference, until you use a high-resolution display such as the Mac Retina for a day. The strain of having to ignore those tiny dots all the time on lesser displays just builds up and up and will leave your head and neck aching.
When you double the physical resolution you also need to double the zoom. This would seem to be counter-intuitive: doesn't doubling the zoom produce an image half the size? Yes, it does. But it also means that all those fine details and curved edges can now be better rendered because there are twice the number of physical dots available. The end result is your brain is fooled just enough to think it's seeing a continuous, unbroken line.
So on the whole, while 14 hours of battery is phenomenal, in the trade-off between better viewing and better battery, better viewing wins. I can always just plug in a battery. I can't do anything to fix my eyes.
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1920x1080 on a 14" screen is 157 PPI. That's almost exactly the same as a 4k 28" monitor.
I guess the question is if you sit closer to your laptop screen than your desktop screen. While I wouldn't say 4k is the be-all and end-all for 28" monitors, I can still see some pixels, but it isn't bad by any means.
1440p would get you about 210 PPI on a 14" laptop. 4k would be 315 PPI.
300 PPI is "retina" or the point where the human eye can't distinguish individual pixels.
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For a monitor at normal desktop distances, somewhere in the 220PPI range is considered 'Retina' by Apple's standards. The designation has always been something that accounts for normal vision at a specific distance, so if the monitor is normally further away, the PPI can be lower. Phones need a higher PPI because they're assumed to be at a distance CLOSER than arm's length.
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Text-per-inch theoretically would be the same in both cases. However, you should actually experience increased text-per-inch, reduced eye strain, and reduced fatigue.
If someone like System76 wants me to purchase one of their computers, they need to offer increased resolution.
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I don't get that at all. Worst case is you scale the text on the higher DPI screen to match the same physical size to what the 1920x1080 screen would show. You'll get the same amount of text, but it'll be clearer and easier to read.
Since the text is clearer and easier to read, typically I can scale it down a bit in size and while reading it fine, and therefore ending up with more text on the same size screen.
From a usability and image quality standpoint, I want the screen to have the highest resolution po
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Maybe for you, but not for my tired old eyes, even up close with my reading glasses on.
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A 1920x1080 FHD display will produce an image with tiny, yet still visible dots on the screen when viewed from a normal distance.
How close are you putting your face to the display?! It's a serious question because you are either eagle-eyed or getting up close and personal with the display.
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I think if all you read is text and the only images you look at are pictures/video, then it may not be apparent how much your brain may be working overtime to ignore the dots. That's why I suggested using a high-quality, high-resolution screen for a day. My experience was I was noticeably less tired, my neck muscles were noticeably more relaxed, heck, even my brow was less furled. A completely different experience.
However, if you have to look at anything in detail and especially with curved edges, the dots
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FWIW (Score:3)
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Sounds like decent resolution. Maybe you see dots, but most people won't. First thing I did was scale down my laptop's resolution. And much of ht etime the laptop is plugged into a monitor for real work (where I use 1920x1200). Too many bros with their pixel measuring contests...
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Why would you say it has a huge impact on battery life? Macbook 2015 had a "retina" panel and got 8-10 hours on old cell tech.
I'm currently driving a 2013 Clevo "gaming" laptop with a WUXGA IPS panel and 16GB RAM and can't imagine downgrading. I knew a dude in 2002 who had the same resolution on a top-end ($3.5K) Dell laptop so I thought I was getting a heck of a deal in 2014 on my closeout machine. But that's 20 years ago! If you told me in 2002 that most laptops couldn't even get WUXGA in 2022 I would h
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Obvious reason System76 doesn't sell better: (Score:5, Funny)
Their site is only loading scripts from half a dozen or so domains. It's not bad; maybe they can get that up to at least several dozen like the larger laptop makers, but they are certainly on their way.
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I'd be interested in one but they don't seem to sell them in Europe.
Maybe their next generation Ryzen model with a 6000 series CPU and USB 4 support. It would need USB C charging as well, the current one seems to lack it.
Only other thing is the SSD. They don't give any detail on the model or features. Would need to support OPALv2 self encryption.
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It is annoying when parts designed to be replaced have to be included with the purchase. Why not an option to purchase the computer with no drives? The most extreme example was Dell, et al, not allowing a desktop/tower purchase without a FDD, keyboard, and mouse. Go to any ewaste collector and you'll discover something like 100x ratio of [FDD,keyboard,mouse] to (tower+desktop).
My weak understanding of OPAL is that it is some OS-like thing performing encryption/decryption on the drive, itself. If I understan
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The Dell thing might have been Microsoft's fault. To sell the OEM version of Windows the computer has to have some kind of storage. Some Japanese retailers would let you buy an OEM Windows licence cheap, as long as you also bought a floppy drive.
As for OPAL, almost all SSD controllers encrypt data before writing it to flash memory. They usually use an internally generated key, but if they support OPALv2 (also called eDrive by Microsoft) then the user can set their own key. Since the drive was doing the encr
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About a year ago I decided that unfortunately I could no longer use my old Lenovo laptop. Since I have been on a GNU/Linux desktop for over 20 years now I thought maybe I will get a System76 machine. So I went ahead and ordered the biggest, most expensive one they had with all the upgrades, Bonobo WS. What I absolutely did NOT understand that I had to use 2 power supplies with it ( literally 2 power supplies at the same time, both are gigantic bricks, it was a totally insane, I could not believe this, I
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So they're behind the times and making money by selling products instead of selling tracker information to advertisers?
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Because a Windows OEM license is literally $10.
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The price is high because they can't buy production runs on the same scale as bigger players. Even there, I don't know how someone can justify paying over $1000 for a basic laptop with soldered ram.
yes, but...? (Score:1, Redundant)
Does it have a trackpoint and classic thinkpad keyboard (or similar)? Until then, I'm sticking with my ancient thinkpad x220.
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Closest you'll get to something like that would be the t700 project which puts a tiger lake board/cpu inside a thinkpad t60 chassis for around $1200 USD.
Hard to justify IMO, but an interesting project nonetheless: https://www.xyte.ch/t700-crowd... [www.xyte.ch]
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thx for the pointer, I'll have a look. Would be nice to get a faster laptop one of these days.
Only 1080p display (Score:2)
While I am not currently looking for a laptop, all their models, even the biggest ones, only come with 1080p display.
I hope that changes sometime in the future. I run Linux for my desktop and Mac for my laptop, and when that gives out I want a high resolution display!