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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

#351

Post by jlokier »

okasaki wrote: post #311
LtdJorge wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 16" laptop with no dedicated graphics card is exactly what I would prefer. I would also prefer glossy, tho. But yeah, I don't get why there are no laptops with high power CPUs that don't include a dGPU, for compiling and many other CPU heavy tasks, there's absolutely no need to go over an iGPU, with a Radeon 680m being almost level with an RX 6400.

> A 16" laptop with no dedicated graphics card is exactly what I would prefer. OK, so you are not interested in games, machine learning, 8k60, or any other thing that depends on a dedicated GPU. But you are willing to blow $2000 on a laptop. That's a very niche situation.

I bought a high end MBP nearly 10 years ago with discrete GPU, thinking I would use it for numerical physics simulations, graphics development (I used to be a game engine dev), and maybe even games.

Turns out in that nearly 10 years I've hardly used the dGPU at all. The only time I have it enabled is because it's necessary for driving an external display. The things I've run on it in practice just don't use much GPU.

For compute-intensive things I ended up using big, rented servers, which got faster while my laptop aged. For desktop graphics the iGPU has been adequate, and I ended up not really playing games or doing any ML, simulations or video encoding on it. Compiling, editing, filesystem things, code analysis, data storage and indexing, those don't need GPU at all. The browser does but in practice it's so CPU and memory bound, the dGPU vs iGPU difference is not something I've noticed affect browsing.

One game I played for a while, Tux Racer, did work better with dGPU enabled, but that's not enough reason to buy one if it's an optional and expensive feature. However in practice on a MBP you needed the dGPU to get max specs for the other components, which I needed (in fact the RAM was never enough), so it was still a good choice.

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

#352

Post by DoreenMichele »

ryanisnan wrote: post #350
DoreenMichele wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, if it's three people, you're lucky it's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors. If "we aren't polished at PR" is your big criticism, it's a nit. If they are successful, they'll eventually hire someone and likely get some polish on those details.

I think this criticism is missing the point of the OP. It’s not simply “PR”, it’s how the company views or thinks about their products that matters. It’s disingenuous at best to make such claims with presumably almost no laptops shipped, fraudulent at worst.

I'm a freelance writer and blogger. I see it as a noob mistake sometimes made by sincere, well-meaning but naive folks who don't know anything about PR.

It's, yes, potentially also fraudulent if they don't remotely live up to the claims. In a world of "fake it til you make it" where most small shops have little hope of competing with people with VC money, it's counterintuitive for most people that click bait style PR can come back to bite you.

/2 cents

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

#353

Post by commoner »

heavyset_go wrote: post #182
commoner wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can scroll with the Dev One's pointing stick. Just hold down both mouse buttons, as two buttons emulate a middle click.

I've tried that, and it was so uncomfortable to hold down both mouse buttons with one thumb that I did not find this workaround worthwhile. It was awkward using both thumbs to do the same.

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

#354

Post by commoner »

rejectfinite wrote: post #160
commoner wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbranded laptops are something I'd also prefer, even though the corporate environment you're describing is very employee-hostile when it comes to technology choice. (Sorry about your situation.) I know that Schenker sells some of their laptops with their logo on the laptop lid by default and offers a choice to remove the logo for an additional charge. Example (VIA 15 Pro): https://bestware.com/en/schenker-via-15-pro…

Yea random alixpress brand laptop. Sounds good lmao

Schenker is a German company. Like with all branded versions of ODM laptops (such as models from Tongfang and Clevo), customer support for Schenker laptops is handled by Schenker and not the ODM.

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

#355

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

Key travel is not specified. I wonder if it's decent.

Other than that it looks good. Kudos for the matte screen the framework doesn't offer.

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

#356

Post by wkat4242 »

stevehawk wrote: post #259
komali2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm thinking about whether I could CNC a laptop case from a brick of aluminum...

isn't that what apple did/does?

It is exactly, yes.

However doing this at small scale is very difficult to do cost-effectively.

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

#357

Post by wkat4242 »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #112
userbinator wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've clearly learned some things from Apple.

Unfortunately low power ddr4 (lpddr4) does not come on SODIMs, soldered ram is the only way to get it. I know everyone likes to shit on apple about this, (and they definitely should about soldered storage) but there are practical engineering reasons for soldered ram. Note that the framework laptop has abysmal battery life relative to the competition.

But why doesn't it come on SODIMMS? Is there a technical reason for that or does nobody make the modules because all vendors use soldered?

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

#358

Post by Brian_K_White »

nicoburns wrote: post #276
smoldesu wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I tend to err on the side of hardware that can take a fall from waist-height and not set me back $600. To each their own though, I guess.

What kind of computer hardware meets that criteria? Toughbooks?

at least Thinkpad and Gram just from my own direct experience.

But in years past a mbp and an imac that never fell an inch killed themselves from the bad video chips, which Apple and their supposedly gold standard support refused to warranty and by the time they lost in court years later the damage was already done and cost various friends the price of new machines.

Other that those famous examples like that and the keyboards, just in general among all the machines I intersect with, the Apples don't fare any better. They all get busted screens, busted ports, busted hinges, exploded batteries. In fact HP and Apple seem to have to most cases of glued in batteries that expand and break the rest of the machine.

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

#359

Post by toastal »

All the Linux-y/FOSS-y things are great. I wish my laptop had Coreboot. Luckily you can switch the keyboard to ANSI too.

The biggest flaws are this is the tail-end of these CPUs being current gen with the newer chips already announced & the display panel only covers sRGB in a world that's been transitioning to DCI-P3. With the former, it's a shame smaller ODMs & OEMs can't get access to the latest chips like the bigger players. With latter, I just don't know—we have the tech and the eyeballs to perceive more colors but most laptops still aren't embracing it even if phones have latterly moved to wider gamut (which makes using them for content creation subpar).

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

#360

Post by toastal »

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…

Three-finger click is common for middle click.
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