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

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

#101

Post by caslon »

Cederfjard wrote: post #65
caslon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southpaw here! I'd never buy a laptop without a number pad. The track pad being off-center is also good. Gaming? 78462 make for the best movement, and the number pad also has seven non-numerical buttons to bind things to. It also puts your index finger right next to lENTER, which is so useful for games that make use of it. Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an I…

> Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an IDE. Mind sharing some examples of your bindings?

My favorite (and the one I find myself getting the most joy from using) is /, which I have bound to tangle and weave my currently-open project (dbus, yay) into /tmp, apply a stylesheet to the output of it, determine languages used within, embed Emscripten-compiled interpreters for the languages being used into the generated pages (its file system API is incredible, "I Can't Believe It's Not UNIX!"-worthy), and launch a Mozilla instance so I can interactively play with/debug my programs while reading their documentation in the same window.

If this sounds like a convoluted REPL with fancier in-line documentation, you're kind of right. It's basically just interactive and automated literate programming, though.

The rest of my bindings range from pretty simple (running an open project's tests, displaying results from the last 10 commits, etc.) to significantly more complex. I have a few different xkb layouts depending on what I'm doing, and a few different languages get dedicated ones, but for the ones I most-commonly use, they all share one.

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

#102

Post by edoceo »

heurisko wrote: post #58
jagger27 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For graphics, the 5500U has 7 CUs at 1800 MHz. The 5700U has 8 CUs at 1900 MHz. They're both ancient Vega APUs so they're really nothing special.

I have the 4500u with the AMD Radeon RX Vega 6. I know it's not the latest architecture, but I've found it very capable for integrated graphics.

Can you write code and use a terminal and web, two displays? Can you use one big (4k?)

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

#103

Post by bscphil »

Aeolos wrote: post #73
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, (it's been a while so this might be really false now) Linux might have not-so-great support for HiDPI screens. Either way, I can't really see the difference between 1080p and 4K, so it wouldn't matter for me .

That might be correct when talking about _video_, but is factually incorrect when talking about _text_. To understand why, just print an identical piece of text on 600, 300, 150 and 75 dpi on your printer and look at the printouts side by side. There is a significant downgrade in quality between each step, and anything below 300 dpi looks quite bad. 15.6" at 1080p is ~141 ppi[1] which is in the "not good" range. Your…

> both of which are imperfect workarounds for the lack of resolution

Imperfect, certainly, but they are pretty good workarounds that usually generate perfectly readable text. In my experience, when text looks bad at 1080p, it is more often because hinting has been done badly, heavily distorting the letter forms, rather than the inherent limitations of the resolution.

To be clear, I certainly prefer reading text at higher DPIs, but at should be seen as one particular tradeoff to be weighed against the heavier battery and graphics demands of higher pixel count screens.

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

#104

Post by webmobdev »

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…

Price does seem to be on the higher side. It does satisfy most of my checklist though:

- Does the hardware fully support Linux? Yes.

- Does it have the latest AMD Ryzen CPU? Kind of (last gen is decent too).

- Can you run other OS on it? Yes.

- Is the screen glossy? No (is matte / anti-glare).

- Is the RAM soldered? No.

- Is the RAM upgradeable? Yes, upto 64 GB.

- Is the SSD soldered? No.

- Is the SSD upgradeable? Yes.

- Can the battery be easily replaced? Yes.

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

#105

Post by amelius »

caslon wrote: post #57
johnzim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Southpaw here! I'd never buy a laptop without a number pad. The track pad being off-center is also good. Gaming? 78462 make for the best movement, and the number pad also has seven non-numerical buttons to bind things to. It also puts your index finger right next to lENTER, which is so useful for games that make use of it. Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an I…

Ok, so the conclusion is that the keyboard should be customizable.

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

#106

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

Aeolos wrote: post #73
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, (it's been a while so this might be really false now) Linux might have not-so-great support for HiDPI screens. Either way, I can't really see the difference between 1080p and 4K, so it wouldn't matter for me .

That might be correct when talking about _video_, but is factually incorrect when talking about _text_. To understand why, just print an identical piece of text on 600, 300, 150 and 75 dpi on your printer and look at the printouts side by side. There is a significant downgrade in quality between each step, and anything below 300 dpi looks quite bad. 15.6" at 1080p is ~141 ppi[1] which is in the "not good" range. Your…

I understand what you're saying, but antialiasing, despite its being a flawed workaround, seems to work well enough for me that even when reading text on a 4K display it's not a huge difference that I can notice it so much that it bothers me (I used a 4K monitor for a couple of years). Sure, 4K for text might be better, but it doesn't mean that I notice a difference.

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

#107

Post by LAC-Tech »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #60
caslon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southpaw here! I'd never buy a laptop without a number pad. The track pad being off-center is also good. Gaming? 78462 make for the best movement, and the number pad also has seven non-numerical buttons to bind things to. It also puts your index finger right next to lENTER, which is so useful for games that make use of it. Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an I…

Yes the numpad comes in useful when I’m calculating all day

If you were a real hacker you'd use it for playing roguelikes in the terminal.

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

#108

Post by wmf »

techrat wrote: post #80
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…

It's all Clevo based anyway. System76 doesn't go much beyond what they source. It's a shame, if they actually made the effort to design a laptop that went beyond its foundation, I'd be more interested. But instead it's Clevo guts, Clevo problems. Looking at the AMD laptop linked... Lots of empty space that could have been slightly optimized for a larger battery. It just seems basically thought out... not like conside…

System76 can afford to design their own laptops after enough people order the existing models.

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

#109

Post by avodonosov »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #92
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.

What OS do you use with it?

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

#110

Post by georgewsinger »

If you're into "Linux-first" computing, you might also be interested in SimulaVR's "Linux-first" portable VR headset: www.simulavr.com

It will run with an 11th gen Intel compute pack (x86 ), and have premium specs (roughly double the resolution of the Valve Index).

Turning it on will boot you into SimulaVR's VR window manager (built over the Godot game engine) with hand tracking. All open source.

It's intended to be more comparable to a Linux laptop (like System76) than a VR gaming device like the Quest.

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