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

251–260 of 448 posts

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

#251

Post by mixmastamyk »

mercutio2 wrote: post #213
arnaudsm wrote: post #200

This is an huge deal : the 5700U is faster than the Mac M1 at the same wattage https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH...

If you have embarrassingly parallel loads, sure. But: CPU Single Thread Rating Apple M1 - 3,778 AMD 5700U - 2,636 suggests that "is faster" is going to depend on your perspective. Most loads I care about are single threaded. The 5700U is 8% faster on a synthetic multi-core benchmark vs. 30% slower on a single core benchmark. I know which CPU I'd choose if I had a choice.

We're lucky now to be in the ballpark.

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

#252

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #192
sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read this workflow a lot and it absolutely boggles my mind how people can have some many tabs open. You can’t possibly be able to make sense of all those tabs at once. And if your not using the tab, why not just bookmark it? Seems the only purpose of 100+ tabs is wasting ram.

With a browser that allows customization, you can configure vertical tabs to fill up excess wide screen real estate. Then you can credibly manage dozens of tabs.

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

#253

Post by ncphil »

vbuterin wrote: post #215
Fatalist_ma wrote: post #181

Uhh I understand that good Linux support is valuable, but the price premium for that is just too high. For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb): Pangolin - 1200$ Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1] For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb): Pangolin - 1542$ HP 15z - 640$[2] I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAI…

> Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support) My own experience with thinkpads has been one of non-stop frustration with battery life. The T495 advertises something like 14h of battery life; the actual battery life I got running stock Ubuntu on it was.... less than 3 hours, and that's with power optimization packages that do things like making USB no longer work installed. I recentl…

My experience too: until I got an X250 (i5, 2 core) earlier this year that lasts around 10 hrs on a charge. Cost $160 in mint condition. Noticeably less powerful than my old T430, but can still do some real work on the go. Screen and keyboard are seriously cramped though, so it gets uncomfortable over long stretches. Still, there's something to be said for small and light. My work laptop is a big heavy Dell workstation machine that could double as an offensive weapon in a pinch.

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

#254

Post by ayushnix »

chrismorgan wrote: post #225
ayushnix wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling. I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.

15.6″ 1366×768: 100ppi. It could be improved by 90% scaling, but that doesn’t tend to work quite so well. Basically everyone uses it at 1×. 15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×. 15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 14…

Hmm, I guess I didn't think about the 15.6 inch size in laptops. I have a 14 inch laptop so I was thinking in terms of that size. 1080p on my laptop needs 1.2 — 1.3 scaling to look "normal". I know people dismiss this as personal taste but 1) IINM, Windows defaults to 125% automatically on such a display and 2) I have a hard time reading text without scaling my 14 inch 1080p display.

Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small.

Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me.

But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.

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

#256

Post by cbsmith »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #196
Fatalist_ma wrote: post #181

Uhh I understand that good Linux support is valuable, but the price premium for that is just too high. For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb): Pangolin - 1200$ Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1] For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb): Pangolin - 1542$ HP 15z - 640$[2] I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAI…

Yup. Hard to pick this over a Dell XPS or a ThinkPad with Linux. Nevermind many other options that Linux can be installed onto.

The XPS won't have AMD, and the Thinkpads with Linux pre-installed are pretty limited.

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

#257

Post by ayushnix »

slantyyz wrote: post #149
ayushnix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said that, most people probably set the text magnification on a 4K screen to be the same as a 1080p screen, so any real estate gains tend to be a wash. If someone's buying a laptop with a 4K display for real estate, he's probably misinformed. You buy a 4K display on a laptop for the pristine ~293 PPI vs a mediocre ~146 PPI on a 1080p display which would look even worse considering it would need fractional sc…

> 1080p display which would look even worse considering it would need fractional scaling That depends on the OS though, right? I don't know about Linux or Mac, but I'm pretty sure that if you scale on Windows, you're still running at the native resolution, but the UI elements get scaled. Nothing should look weird. At least that has been my experience on Windows... outside of apps that don't follow Microsoft's scaling…

Yes, that might be the case, but I don't want to be dependent on the implementation differences of different operating systems.

I like Apple's approach in this case. Enforce the usage of HiDPI displays by default with at least ~200 PPI which needs integer scaling. Instead of trying to work around the issue, they simply bypass it, which is what I'll do in the future.

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

#258

Post by ayushnix »

viraptor wrote: post #222
ayushnix wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling. I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.

What do you mean by " need fractional scaling"? This really depends on what you prefer, but I'm on 15" with 100% scale and enjoy it.

Yes, I didn't take 15 inch laptops into account because I have a 14 inch laptop.

See my reply here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008

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

#260

Post by reilly3000 »

amelius wrote: post #105
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…

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

Yes. I don’t know what trade offs that would entail or if that should be something the user or factory would do, but yes, absolutely.
Post reply on HN