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StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

starlabs.systems

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Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#161

Post by bradwood »

lucb1e wrote: post #93
saltminer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xorg has a lot of accumulated hacks that make scaling work ok-ish. It falls apart when you have multiple monitors with different scaling, but for a laptop, just close the lid when you dock it and it should be good enough. Wayland, after much feet dragging (why this wasn't a day-1 feature for a supposed Xorg replacement is beyond me), finally managed to cobble together basic support for non-integer scaling [0], so it…

> It falls apart when you have multiple monitors with different scaling Yeah that's my colleagues! This is why half the monitors in the office are not being used :D. Someone thought it was a great idea to get three or four 4k screens but only one person actually wants them; everyone wants their laptop as a second or third screen. (Personally I'm a single-screen type of person anyway, but what made me commandeer a 108…

Running an xrandr script with ’--scale’ when you plug in the externals works okay for me. I have a 4k laptop monitor and 2 X 1k externals. It's perfectly fine for work use cases.

This is on i3wm btw

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#162

Post by ajb »

chx wrote: post #54
hedora wrote: post #2

This Linux laptop looks too good to be true. It's available with an AMD or Intel processor, there aren't any strange ergonomic decisions (other than the stow-able web-cam). In particular, they centered they trackpad + keyboard, and it looks like it has decent thermals. The battery is rated for 18 hours. You can choose between a medium resolution, high frame rate display (UHD @ 165Hz) or a 4K 60Hz display. The screen…

> Am I missing something? Yeah. The company is three people with practically no money at hand. I can't imagine this being real. Check "full accounts made up to 28 February 2022" https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... with cash at hand being just 13,887 pounds. How on earth are you making a laptop from that? Framework started with a nine million seed round and had the former head of hardware a…

They have 400k of stock, though. It's common for a company not to keep a lot of cash around and borrow as needed against stock, which I would guess they are doing as they have 200k+ of creditors.

So, my guess is that they used income to build up stock of their clevo lines in order to reduce delivery times and increase their market to delivery sensitive customers, and now they are leveraging that to invest in the custom versions. If they are doing their own sw and there product is an integration of off the shelf parts, maybe it's doable.

Edited to add:

Actually I misread the statement, they have 200k falling due in a year and a further 700k of debt. So that's nearly 1M of investment, which seems easily enough to do this development, given it's much less complex than the framework devices.

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#163

Post by localplume »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #150

Intel i3-1215U, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 4K display for €1.565,81, which is the cheapest that I could select feels a bit expensive... A quick look on Geizhals[1], gives many alternatives, with better CPU and storage. The only thing that's probably different is the Linux aspect of the laptop. [1] https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nb&xf=12_16384~2991_480~6752_Core+i... But 240GB of storage... That's so little, even my phone (POCO X…

Yeah I was looking at those specs, and these seems very overpriced no?

If you spec a Tuxedo Aura 15 Gen2 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...) to the same level (not sure what the equivalent to the CPU is for Ryzen though), and although the display isn't 4K its still much less (just over 700, so around half the price...). There are nice features that the StarFighter has than the Aura 15 Gen2 doesn't, but are those features worth basically 2x the price..?

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#164

Post by okasaki »

hedora wrote: post #2

This Linux laptop looks too good to be true. It's available with an AMD or Intel processor, there aren't any strange ergonomic decisions (other than the stow-able web-cam). In particular, they centered they trackpad + keyboard, and it looks like it has decent thermals. The battery is rated for 18 hours. You can choose between a medium resolution, high frame rate display (UHD @ 165Hz) or a 4K 60Hz display. The screen…

- A 16" laptop with no dedicated graphics card.

- Matte only option is a weird default over a glossy screen with an optional matte screen protector

- Corporate pricing (+324 gbp to go from 32gb to 64gb ram)

- Keyboard looks like crap

- Only 1 year warranty

- Like you said, 4-5 month lead time

- Plastic?

Basically, you can get better for less, with next day delivery

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#165

Post by mihaaly »

chx wrote: post #54
hedora wrote: post #2

This Linux laptop looks too good to be true. It's available with an AMD or Intel processor, there aren't any strange ergonomic decisions (other than the stow-able web-cam). In particular, they centered they trackpad + keyboard, and it looks like it has decent thermals. The battery is rated for 18 hours. You can choose between a medium resolution, high frame rate display (UHD @ 165Hz) or a 4K 60Hz display. The screen…

> Am I missing something? Yeah. The company is three people with practically no money at hand. I can't imagine this being real. Check "full accounts made up to 28 February 2022" https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... with cash at hand being just 13,887 pounds. How on earth are you making a laptop from that? Framework started with a nine million seed round and had the former head of hardware a…

They seem to be real entrepreneurs running the thing from a farm in rural settings [1] where the director lives (same personal address declared). If I read it right they are in ca. 400k debt so far, working it down slowly. I am wishing them quick success as their product looks great. Perhaps if I will be patient enough waiting 5 month for delivery after payment and will not worry about if warranty (or even shipment) could be ever fulfilled by a tiny new company I will make a try myself. On paper this is a quality laptop that is so hard to find in the sea of trash. But perhaps will wait until more experiences are gained by other customers in a year or so (considering the half year delivery lag). I also wish they used less pompous text in the very first two senences of the headline in the style of hustlers with more mouth than content: "exquisitely crafted", "sets a new standard", "groundbreaking technology", "ultimate choice", "users who demand the very best". It is off-putting for me. No need to sugar the honey this hard.

I genuinely root for them.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863...

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#166

Post by TylerE »

kodah wrote: post #110
ahoya wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have their latest starbook, just arrived a couple months ago and it is stellar. Covid delayed it almost a whole year, but in that time they upgraded frob adwertised 11th gen intel to 12th gen for free, quadrupling cores. It runs extremeley well with latest coreboot and everything. I considered canceling my pre-order because of the long delay, but Support was extremely quick and receptive and it turns out the trust…

I just spec'd one out and it was pretty similar to the I9 MBP. Personally, I'd pay that price for a Linux laptop that's on par with a MBP.

Do we really think the build quality of these is even in the same state, much less the same ballpark, as a MBP?

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#167

Post by pmontra »

There are many great features in this laptop, mainly no numberpad and 16:10 screen. I didn't check weight and user serviceability. They don't have the keyboard layout for my county (Italy) but I can live with that because my fingers know where keys are and I work with the USA layout most of the time. The only showstopper is the touchpad without physical buttons. I copy and paste text the X11 way by selecting and clicking the middle button. How do you do that effectively without buttons? I always took care of buying laptops with three buttons above and/or below the touchpad.

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#168

Post by nicolaslem »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #83
cmeacham98 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the main "catch" is the price. Laptops with similar specs and features (minus coreboot) are available 25% to 50% cheaper from vendors that care a lot less about Linux support.

Do you have an example of a such a laptop at 25-50% cheaper? The models I've seen from Dell and Lenovo with 4k screens and 64 GB ram tend to be in the 2500 EUR range. And, for some reason, you usually can't get this much RAM and a 4k screen with an AMD CPU. HP has EliteBooks with upgradeable RAM (both slots!) so you could do your own upgrade, but you'd have to put up with a ridiculously crappy screen. I also don't kn…

> HP has EliteBooks with upgradeable RAM (both slots!) so you could do your own upgrade, but you'd have to put up with a ridiculously crappy screen. I also don't know if they've upgraded to ryzen 6000.

They have, I'm typing on one. The display I have is crappy BUT they have four or five different displays in the 14" 16:10 format and swapping one for another is relatively simple.

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#169

Post by nicolaslem »

commoner wrote: post #147
fmajid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HP DevOne has one. Shame about that washed-out glossy screen (some say it has a built-in privacy filter).

The HP Dev One follows the HP EliteBook's poor design of pairing the pointing stick with 2 mouse buttons instead of 3. Without the middle mouse button, you can't scroll with the pointing stick and you'll need to use the trackpad (or apply some hack to the 2 available buttons), which makes the pointing stick a less effective tool.

I guess this design problem is no more because the latest elitebooks got rid of the trackpoint entirely.

Re: StarFighter 16 inch: 4K Coreboot/Ryzen Linux laptop

#170

Post by bombela »

pmontra wrote: post #167

There are many great features in this laptop, mainly no numberpad and 16:10 screen. I didn't check weight and user serviceability. They don't have the keyboard layout for my county (Italy) but I can live with that because my fingers know where keys are and I work with the USA layout most of the time. The only showstopper is the touchpad without physical buttons. I copy and paste text the X11 way by selecting and clic…

3-finger click

I do that often even on thinkpad with physical buttons.

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