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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

#261

Post by iratewizard »

smichel17 wrote: post #246
layer8 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really matter, if the diagonal is roughly the same and you use 200% scaling. The corresponding 16:10 or 3:2 would still be preferable (or even 4:3, which was once the standard aspect ratio for laptops). For a given notebook width, you basically want as much height as possible. For desktop monitors, it can be more of a personal preference regarding FOV and window layout. For me personally, I think a ~30" 16…

I math'd this out recently and decided that ~16:9 actually would be the ideal ratio for me.. On a ~42" 8k monitor, using 2x scaling. I'm optimizing mainly for viewing three documents side by side here. Having your primary document (e.g. text editor or IDE) centered means you're not constantly turning your head one way or another. And it has the added benefit of working well for media (compared to 3 monitors in vertic…

I found the same thing when 4k was first coming out on an inexpensive hisense TV. It would be hard to go back to only 2 or 3 side-by-side editing panes.

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

#262

Post by reilly3000 »

lurtbancaster wrote: post #259

Why is it so hard to find laptops with ECC memory? Surely SO-DIMMs are just as susceptible to bitflips as regular Desktop DIMMs? Am I the only one to care about this?

I believe ECC is incredibly hard to get these days, but I could be out of touch. It certainly was last year. I haven’t seen it in many laptop offerings over the years, except perhaps Dell’s workstation-type offerings as an option.

I’m curious if bitflips have been an issue for you in your experience. I don’t think I’ve encountered it, but I may have misattributed various bugs to software defects when they were in fact due to bit flips.

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

#263

Post by mrinterweb »

lincolnq wrote: post #147
unicornporn wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Saw the lead image with and immediately thought: no buy. No fancy specs in the world can make me accept bad ergonomics.

I’d expect that the ergo costs of using a laptop at all (short key travel, screen down from eye level) would swamp the additional cost of having the keyboard off center. After all, you can just crane your neck down and sideways instead of just down :). Seriously, anyone using a laptop full time for work (who cares about ergo) should invest in an external keyboard and monitor.

It sounds like you're advocating for a desktop system. I usually dock my laptop, but I do like the flexibility of detaching and sitting on the couch. When I'm using my laptop, as a laptop, I like to feel comfortable. To me numpads on laptops have negative value.

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

#264

Post by kcb »

neogodless wrote: post #47
Guest42 wrote: post #33

Would ordering one of these with 32gb of ram lead to a significant decrease in battery performance?

Looks like the increase from 8GB to 32GB is going from ~3W to 12W of power consumption. The CPU likely consumes 30-45W depending on configuration. So it's not trivial, all things considered.

Wouldn't that only really apply while doing intensive memory accessing. Something that you would probably only be doing a very small percentage of time.

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

#265

Post by fnord77 »

kcb wrote: post #264
neogodless wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the increase from 8GB to 32GB is going from ~3W to 12W of power consumption. The CPU likely consumes 30-45W depending on configuration. So it's not trivial, all things considered.

Wouldn't that only really apply while doing intensive memory accessing. Something that you would probably only be doing a very small percentage of time.

no - simply refreshing memory state costs power. The DRAM memory refresh cycle happens about every 60ms. In the background, memory cells are constantly read and rewritten.

Power consumption adds up pretty quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_refresh

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

#266

Post by webmobdev »

flatiron wrote: post #160
webmobdev wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 upgradeabl…

Look at the framework laptop too

Yeah, a big fan of what they've designed - just waiting for version 2 so that all the production bugs are discovered and ironed out. Hopefully v2 will come with an AMD processor.

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

#267

Post by darthrupert »

lighttower wrote: post #216
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…

Before you conclude that Thinkpad have good Linux support, go on over to lenovo's Q&A forum and look up battery issues for the t14. At this point in time I've spent so much time on this that I could have easily saved 5k or 10k by having a machine that just worked!

Yep. That's how Apple hardware is dirt cheap.

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

#269

Post by Mikeb85 »

cbsmith wrote: post #256
Mikeb85 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of cheaper, equivalent laptops have AMD. The new Intel processors and GPUs are nice. The System76 is overpriced.

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

#270

Post by Toadtoad »

msravi wrote: post #268

Nice specs. I wonder why they don't offer 1x16G (instead of 2x8G) or 1x32G (instead of 2x16G) RAM options though - that would leave the other slot free for a future upgrade.

As far as I know, having two equivalent RAM sticks for dual channel mode helps performance, so most people choose that over having single stick, which is often frowned upon in the desktop space, at least.
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