Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

system76.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 448 posts

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#91

Post by akvadrako »

ngngngng wrote: post #27
abledon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't 1080p way better for battery life + its mostly indistinguishable in pixels? unless you are like, looking really close at the pixels? remember its 1080p inside a 15" monitor, not a 24" monitor a PC has.

I have a 4k x1 Carbon and I can confirm that it's dumb. I would prefer the battery life but also the iGPU isn't powerful enough to run an external monitor while the display is using 4k so I have to scale it down for that anyway.

Maybe older generations weren't powerful enough, but I use the 7th gen (2019) to run a 2nd 4K external display and it works fine.

4K is a little overkill for 14", but I wouldn't consider a laptop below 3K. Definitionally not dumb.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#92

Post by jbluepolarbear »

neogodless wrote: post #10

Obviously the "Linux-first" is a big value-add for this brand, but the hardware for the price isn't amazing. $1200 gets you a Zen 2 (previous generation) 6-core, 12-thread CPU[0], 8GB RAM, 240 GB NVME, 15" 1080p (did not see brightness/color accuracy mentioned.) But I like my laptops to come with fast refresh and a dedicated GPU, and I run Windows, so I'm not their target audience. Would love to hear how this is rece…

I just recently got this: https://www.newegg.com/pine-gray-asus-zenbook-14-um425ua-ns7... and it’s a great laptop. The equivalent pangolin is nearly double the price.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#93

Post by overgard »

johnzim wrote: post #8
protomyth wrote: post #2

I wish a person could order one of these without the numeric keypad. I deeply hate being off-center to the screen when typing on these larger portables.

I have no idea who thought this was a good idea. The trackpad is even off to the left to accommodate it. I'm not a fan of symmetry for symmetry's sake, but I do think some affordances for the human body might be a good idea. How do southpaws enjoy this keyboard setup? The ergonomics of laptops are bad enough without stuff like this.

Might just be a personal preference, I have two laptops (one of them a system 76) with numpads because I highly prefer having them. Macbook keyboards without them really annoy me. Obviously peoples mileage will vary.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#94

Post by jbluepolarbear »

neogodless wrote: post #76
mariushn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$906 gets you Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM, 14", no numpad: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/search?fq={!ex=733}lengs_Screen...

That's not accurate. If you click through, it's a set of laptops starting at $906. The model at that price is * AMD Ryzen™ 3 Pro 5450U Processor (4 cores) * 8 GB RAM * 128 GB storage

Here’s a better comparison. https://www.newegg.com/pine-gray-asus-zenbook-14-um425ua-ns7...

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#95

Post by bscphil »

cupofjoakim wrote: post #29
ruined wrote: post #12

1080p screen is a no-go. come on yall, it's 2021

Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. The upsides of not wasting battery and just performance of not having to push more pixels makes it worth it. Even gaming channels like LTT talk about this a bit. That being said - if you're coming from the macbooks retina it's definitely a downgrade. My guess however is that this device won't have a screen that is that good either way though.

At 15.6 inches I think it depends pretty heavily on how good your operating system's font rendering is.

If you're stuck on Windows I can't imagine using anything lower than 4k at that size. On the other hand, I'm using a 17.x inch laptop currently, only about a foot and a half from my face, at only 1080p, and it's fine. (Before you blame my vision - I'm actually nearsighted. My vision is near-perfect at this distance.)

I certainly wouldn't accept this DPI from a current laptop, of course; the font rendering certainly could be a lot better and more density would be nice for easier photo editing and so on, but I think a lot of people have forgotten just how good 1080p can be if it's handled well in software. A whole generation spent most of their time on crappy CRTs. Compared to that almost any HD screen is an enormous improvement.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#96

Post by sofixa »

zozbot234 wrote: post #62
Koshkin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and 4 GB of RAM

Nothing wrong with that for a lightweight Linux dev/browsing machine. More than that just goes unused.

Depends on your browsing habits. I often end up with hundreds of Chrome tabs, which can easily result in 16GB of RAM being consumed by it alone. Thankfully there are plugins to automatically suspend unused tabs which help with that.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#98

Post by dragontamer »

scintill76 wrote: post #75
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i deeply hate being without a numpad. I understand it's duplicated space, but typing numbers on a numpad is just a million times faster than going above the alphabet keys.

How many digits long does it have to be to pay for the time to move your hand to the numpad and back?

About 4 digits IMO.

The "5" key on most numpads has a bump so I can reach it without even looking at a keyboard I'm familiar with. Any 4-digit security pin I use is entered from numpads.

I always buy a laptop with a numpad. Its my preferred method of typing numbers. There are also a whole slew of video game applications, as well as Blender movement (camera angles, camera movement, etc. etc.) that's highly intuitively mapped to the numpad.

------

I should note that when I was practicing for the video-game community "Blazblue", all movements were discussed in terms of numpad. 236 is quarter-circle forward. 69874123 is "360-degree circle, counterclockwise, starting with right".

Needless to say, typing a combo such as 5b 5c 2d 28d 28 b c b 8 b c 236c 2d was much easier with a numpad.

Anyone who wants to "decode" the button pushes only needs to look at their numpad to see how their left-hand should move, with "b, c, d" being the keywords for the right-hand buttons in Blazblue. Street Fighter players use lp, mp, hp (light punch, medium punch, heavy punch) instead. So those bits get game specific, but the numpad approach to discussion is basically considered superior.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#99

Post by john_yaya »

Rd6n6 wrote: post #39

What are system76 keyboards and trackpads like? I wish I could touch one before having to decide whether to buy

I have a System76 Gazelle. The trackpad tends to freak out when I reboot, issuing random clicks and cursor jitters - so I usually have to reboot again, or deactivate the trackpad in Ubuntu. Multiple firmware and OS updates haven’t fixed this.

Re: System76 Pangolin Linux-first laptop with AMD internals now in stock

#100

Post by aendruk »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #30
protomyth wrote: post #2

I wish a person could order one of these without the numeric keypad. I deeply hate being off-center to the screen when typing on these larger portables.

i deeply hate being without a numpad. I understand it's duplicated space, but typing numbers on a numpad is just a million times faster than going above the alphabet keys.

A virtual numpad via a modifier key can be the best of both worlds; no extra space is used and your hands stay in the center.

Example with image: https://andrew.kvalhe.im/2021-03-19

With this method you can customize the location and surrounding mathematical operators.

Post reply on HN