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System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

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Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you find appealing about regolith? it seemed kinda heavy to me

The main appeal for me is it just works how I want it to work with little to no tweaking.

I think you'd also like instantwm then

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#313

I'm wondering with the (permanent?) switch to work from home if laptop sales will go down. I've replaced both my personal and work laptops with System76 Meerkat mini PCs both running stock Unbuntu using Regolith for the desktop environment ( https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat ). They are stacked on top of each other on my desk and take up next to no space. I work from home (and have since 1999) and don't travel fo…

But a laptop still gives you the option to go work in a park or a café. Anything taxing can be done on a remote server anyway so raw power hardly matters. Personally I don't think I'll ever get a desktop setup.

Without gaming I don’t think I would ever use a desktop or windows again.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#314
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh !? No one said 'the difference is not there'. I said the difference is not meaningful enough (for me and many other ppl, if i read the comments) and that stating that 1080p 'is simply a none starter' and it 'cannot' render text 'correctly' it not true. It can render it more correctly yes. To be really annoying even 8k wont render text 100% correctly since if there is a circle like section example 'p' or 'b' no pi…

The whole argument is silly. People coded on 21" CRT and LCD monitors at 640×480 even, and yes ... they still live! While higher resolutions look nicer, they provide no real value for a console. I've had 4x xterms on my desktop for 30+ years. There is zero "extra space" with higher dpi. None. One sad downside of things looking nicer, is the battery cost. UHD vs HD means 4x the pixels, and a GPU rendering all those pi…

Pointing at the GPU is an excuse. That thing doesn't need to go over 1% load to make good text happen.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#315
post #204

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It's impossible to generalize across a broad range of use because each person's needs are different and non-negotiable. We've had plenty of examples of totally tech illiterate people using linux with zero problems since 1999 but they're totally irrelevant because they happen to be the people who are on the narrow set of rails that don't touch linux's rough edges. To make a convincing case, you have to move beyond ane…

Can you name one thing that a NOOB-friendly Linux requires the command line for that a technically illiterate user can accomplish in MacOS / Windows?

As mentioned in a parent thread, compare the installation instructions between Windows/OSX/Linux for Radarr: https://wiki.servarr.com/radarr/installation

Radarr needs functionality that is more specialized than most apps so there's special instructions and edge cases on all three platforms. But the Linux version is significantly more complicated because Linux doesn't provide as many out of the box tools for installation that works across all distributions like Windows or Mac.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#316
post #219

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Agree. It’s a shame the Linux community is so set in its ways. All I really want is decent, grown-up looking Arch Linux laptop with reasonable battery life and performance that boots to CLI and has retina resolution (>200ppi). People imagine retina must be all about graphics, but for me it’s 90% for sharp text. It doubles the amount of time I can use a computer before my brain starts flagging. I use a MacBook Pro bec…

If all the apple hardware including their gpu (maybe except particularly proprietary things like Touch ID / Secure Enclave) were supported well on Linux and power management we’re sufficiently figured out to not bea total disaster, would that be ok or is it unacceptable that the thing came with nonfree software or to risk apple’s future hardware being unsupportable?

That would be more than OK. I have no hard rules about free vs non-free, I’m pragmatic. But I don’t see that happening. Apple don’t want to put time into helping support other OSes on their hardware, it’s not something they want to do and that’s their call. At least they design good computers. What frustrates me is that no one else in the industry gives the slightest f** about pixel density, even when Apple has demonstrated for years that people really value sharpness. Other manufacturers don’t even mention pixel density, it feels like they’re denying reality. Anyone who looks at an Apple screen can see the difference. My elderly mother said ‘wow’ when she saw her first retina laptop screen. It’s just a different experience. It’s weird how this has been the situation for so many years now.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#317

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I don't want to comment much on the rest, but the whole trope of: a Linux machine is not for someone who isn't comfortable with the cli" needs to die. My partner is essentially computer illiterate (she didn't know about keyboard shortcuts, even for copy paste before we met and still doesn't really use them) and has been using my old Ubuntu laptop for years. The only thing I do is tell her from time to time not just t…

No one is claiming Linux is bad for very basic users. It’s fine for people who only ever use bowsers. Linux is also great for developers. It’s most of us in between who struggle. The last time I booted up Ubuntu I couldn’t even adjust the mouse acceleration without spending 10 minutes on Google and more time installing an additional tool. I tried to install Radarr - a very popular home media server app. The instructi…

> I tried to install Radarr - a very popular home media server app. The instruction manual required is absurd: https://wiki.servarr.com/radarr/installation

That's because it's written by developers. Devs are generally really poor at explaining things and they rarely have enough empathy to even notice that "normal people" might not necessarily understand (or care) as to why would they be better off compiling software from source. It's a known problem: documentation writing is one of the most hated software engineering-related work. It's a self-defeating but prevalent notion that "you can just read the code, so why would I write the docs?" Also: "nobody reads the docs" -> "why would I put effort into writing something nobody reads?" -> the docs are bad (obviously) -> "nobody reads the docs"...

In this particular case: the docs here are really, really badly structured and the styles/colors/margins/etc make it even less readable. At least, however, the authors of the wiki try to be helpful:

> If you want an easy life, follow this community provided and maintained Easy Install script for a base Debian (Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS) / Ubuntu install.

There's a link to the script below. That's already the best you can expect from developers who are not specifically paid to produce installers (or, alternatively, use a framework that generates the installers automatically). The vast majority of devs never consider that people would like to easily and quickly install their software to try it out, then uninstall it if it's not to their liking.

Also, why would you spend your time on an un-installer? If the user doesn't like their software, the devs assume it's the user's problem, not theirs. It's so irritating that I've set up automatic snapshots on /usr/ and /usr/local/ just to be able to easily get rid of stuff that ends up there with every `make install` I execute.

I know how it sounds - I'm not trying to justify this way of working on and with software, just thought I'll share what little insight I got after working with Linux-y things for two decades...

> The last time I booted up Ubuntu I couldn’t even adjust the mouse acceleration without spending 10 minutes on Google

It doesn't change anything, but I had a pretty horrible experience with Windows and MacOS drivers for Logitech trackballs[1][2]. While the setup on Linux took a few hours, included 3 different applications, 4 different config files, and dozens of man pages to read, it at least enabled me to actually get the most out of the hardware. It was utterly impossible to configure the trackballs to my liking under Windows. I didn't try very hard under MacOS, but the initial research suggested it's even worse there (Logitech seemed to be hell-bent on "Windows first, second, and last" policy for some reason).

> Users should never ever, for any reason ever, need to open the CLI.

Not sure I agree, not fully. Text-based interfaces have their place - they present very different trade-off between accessibility and convenience than GUIs do. There's a reason why the command prompt metaphor is still alive, 30+ years after the hardware got good enough to display a GUI on home computers. Though it's probably better left to people who want to use it, not people who are forced to use it; kind of like regedit.exe was always shipped with Windows, even though 99%[3] of users didn't (need to) know of its existence.

[1] https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025260314--Pro...

[2] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-ergo-wireles...

[3] Well, depending on an era and target demographic.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#318
post #242

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What a tiring trope. I use a high resolution macbook for work and a 1366x768 13 inch laptop for personal use. Like OP, I greatly prefer the font blockiness the latter provides especially in terminals. And yes, I've tried smooth fonts and FixedSys/Less Perfect DOS-VGA on both and prefer blocky ones every time. High res screens love to use smoothing and subpixel rendering and I very much prefer none of it. Edit: point…

> High res screens love to use smoothing and subpixel rendering and I very much prefer none of it. Quite the opposite! These are hacks for low-res displays to make type look better. Sufficiently high resolution displays disable these because they are high resolution enough that your eye perceives a smooth line/edge already without having to resort to hacks to avoid stairsteps.

If we're talking about actual smoothing, anti-aliasing, then that's not a hack, that's a necessity for non-bitmap fonts until you reach extreme resolutions. If you want your eye to perceive a stairstep as a smooth line you need to start talking about 16K screens.

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#319
post #219
post #196

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I think the issue is much less shiny/matte and much more high-res/low-res. It seems to be a point of pride in the Linux community that low-res screens are sufficient. Maybe it's because only Apple has figured out how to do both high-res and long battery life/low weight in a single system. The ultrabooks (air clones) are all struggling to replicate it. My 4k XPS13 has atrocious battery life. The only way that this mac…

Agree. It’s a shame the Linux community is so set in its ways. All I really want is decent, grown-up looking Arch Linux laptop with reasonable battery life and performance that boots to CLI and has retina resolution (>200ppi). People imagine retina must be all about graphics, but for me it’s 90% for sharp text. It doubles the amount of time I can use a computer before my brain starts flagging. I use a MacBook Pro bec…

100% agreed. My dream machine would be an M2+ Air running a stable release of Debian with full hardware support. (And I mean full hardware support, including the fingerprint scanner, trackpad gestures, properly handling the notch where applicable, etc.)

Apparently Asahi recently published their first alpha release. Does anyone know how close it is to being usable as a daily driver?

Also, has anyone tried the Tuxedo laptop that came up in another recent thread? I'd be surprised if the trackpad entirely held up, and I'm personally against including USB-A or proprietary charging ports in any new hardware, but it is at least the first Linux laptop I've seen with a high-DPI screen. Inclusion of a Dvorak layout option is also a nice touch (Apple still forces me to pop out and rearrange the keys, which feels like a ridiculous kludge for such expensive devices). If Ryzen 7 is halfway competitive with M1's efficiency, I could see this being a very attractive option for a lot of people.

[1]: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...

Re: System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

#320
post #128
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 'correctly' is not the right word here. I often code for 12+ hours straight and the only way to keep up with such a stress on eyes is to use bigger fonts and not focus too much on text (i.e. engage in a slightly defocused vision). Which means I never use small fonts, though I see a lot of people who code on 13-15 inch screens with super tiny fonts. Naturally, once you have to use large fonts you end up using…

You should take breaks.

Yes but that doesn't change the argument very much. Even if breaks mitigate strain very well, I'd still want to minimize the strain in the first place, in the vast majority of situations.
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