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System76 – Pangolin

371 points| digdigdag | 5 years ago |system76.com | reply

381 comments

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[+] turblety|5 years ago|reply
> Display: 15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish

I really wish system76 would start giving options for 4k displays. I have a FHD display from them, only a few months old, and it's noticeably worse than my old macbook pro display.

[+] sgtnasty|5 years ago|reply
This is MY experience. I have run 4k on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme with Linux. Its not been a good experience for me. I am getting old and having vision issues, so I decided to get the 4k screen because my old MacBookPro 2015 had the high res and worked well with my eyes, it just didn't have the 15" screen.

Display Managers: When Linux boots in a 4k screen, the GRUB menu is impossible to read, so I have it memorized. I have tried many Display Managers, some recognize 4k and adapt with no issue, many do not. GDM and SDDM work well, XDM not so much, fonts are all over the place.

X11 (it has an NVIDIA card) There are some apps which refuse to adapt to 4k if you are running GNOME (and yes I use the QT_SCALE_FACTOR). Then there are apps written in WXWIDGETS. Steam menus and items are unreadable to me. Some Window Managers barely support HiDPI displays (XFCE I am looking at you). It goes on and on, by the end of the day its a very frustrating experience. GNOME (and it's derivatives) do it the best so far, KDE has issues with icon sizes and the panel. XFCE has multiple issues, so much that I gave up on it quickly and can't remember them all (and it looked awful). i3 was a little tricky at first but it can be configured to work well, but you need to adapt all the apps and bars too.

Other OSes: Even MS Windows has frequent problems with the screen magnification. macOS just gets it right, and I never had ANY of these issues, except small fonts in the firmware screen.

For my next laptop I will go back to 1920x1080 and avoid all these problems and start using AMD GPU's so I dont have to turn off secure boot and stop using X11.

[+] skavi|5 years ago|reply
The MacBook Pro display is better in many more ways than just resolution. It's also has a wide gamut, excellent factory calibration, good contrast, and an effective antireflective coating on its glossy panel. I'd prioritize each of these over increasing the resolution from 1080p.
[+] reissbaker|5 years ago|reply
I agree with some other posters here that I don't need it to be 4k, but 1080p is bad enough to be a deal killer for me. The only reason I don't buy System76 laptops is their terrible displays — I love PopOS (so much that I donate monthly to it) and would buy their hardware in a heartbeat otherwise.
[+] freetime2|5 years ago|reply
It would be nice to have the option.

But given that Linux still doesn't have perfect support for display scaling (compared to macOS, for example) and the fact that it's a 15" screen, I would still probably opt for the 1080p if given the option.

[+] tubularhells|5 years ago|reply
4k is overkill at this size. 1440p is better for battery size and you would scale 4k up to 1440p effective anyway.
[+] 3np|5 years ago|reply
I could take or leave 4k, but at least 2k (~2560x1440)? Having their 2020 high-end 15.6" maxing out at 1080p is just ridiculous and I'd probably have bought at least one of their laptops if they had a sub-2kg model with just one step up in resolution.
[+] IE6|5 years ago|reply
AFAIK they just resell commodity generic laptops under their brand and they do some System76 specific things to them such as open source bios firmwares. I may be wrong but when I looked into them years back thats what I uncovered. I think if they want to differentiate themselves as a high end ubuntu/developer machine they're going to need the things people want (or don't know they want). My personal needs are high res, bright, color accurate, crisp displays (currently loving my Samsung Galaxy Chromebook) and high quality keyboards. I don't really know of a device that has both.
[+] copperx|5 years ago|reply
It's crazy that many laptops are 1080p in 2020. Such low resolution is unacceptable to the majority of users.
[+] jillesvangurp|5 years ago|reply
Yep, kind of a deal breaker for me, which is a bummer because this almost looks perfect for me. It seems this is a weakness across their product range.

AMD integrated graphics needs a bit of explaining to me is this the performance monster variety or Intel graphics is actually faster type of deal. How many external screens can I drive with this setup? My main use case for this would be using Darktable. For the same reason I want a good HDPI screen. Otherwise, this would be a development machine (docker, misc jetbrains stuff, homebrew, some data engineering, and all the usual stuff). So looking for ram and CPU that is faster than what I have today (2018 15" MBP).

My mac book pro is literally falling apart (keyboard) at this point and I'm not eager to jump on the ARM bandwagon yet as it will mess up my tool workflow short term (Java, docker, intellij, homebrew) and cause me compatibility headaches I just don't need in my life right now. I am liking the performance though. All the software that I use runs fine on Linux. So, not a hypothetical option for me. I'd be up and running in a few hours with little to no loss of functionality.

I don't care about legacy ports; USB-C dongles are cheap and effective and I have a few in my bag. Likewise with hdmi to usb-c. What I do care about is being able to connect my Thunderbolt USB-C phone, fuji camera, hard drives, external screen, etc. I'm thinking of adding a headphone to that mix. 2 USB-3.2 ports seems like it's limited.

[+] yaomtc|5 years ago|reply
The Adder has a 4K display, and the Bonobo has the option.
[+] jeanaimarre|5 years ago|reply
For a 14" display, I think that a 2k display is a better option.
[+] mark_l_watson|5 years ago|reply
I bought a Oryx Pro about 2 1/2 years ago to get a laptop with an NVidia GPU. I bought the high resolution version, but sometimes run it at the lower 1920x1080 resolution.

I just looked and they don’t seem to offer the higher resolution right now on that model.

Anyway, it is a fine laptop.

[+] pg4|5 years ago|reply
I would prefer 2K res on a laptop. On a 15 inch screen, 4K is overkill - I have to increase desktop scaling to read text, so there's no increase in screen real estate. Higher res drains the battery faster as well.
[+] jeromenerf|5 years ago|reply
The marketing is weird on this product.

- named "pangolin" and illustrated with a bull - the bull is disturbingly ugly - the introduction makes no sense to me? Is team red the Democrat party?

[+] sdfjkl|5 years ago|reply
I can't deal with these 16:9 screens. Especially when almost all models have a plastic "chin" at the bottom of the screen where the missing pixels (to make it a full 16:10 screen) would be - there's clearly room for it, so put it there.

16:9 is optimized for watching video and not much else. Give me back my pixels. Luckily some vendors have finally begun to see the light on this issue (Dell XPS, Huawei Mate, LG Gram - Microsoft even goes 3:2).

[+] nikki93|5 years ago|reply
I'm on a System76 Lemur Pro these days and really love it. It's light, keyboard feels good, battery life is great. Echo the desire expressed in other comments here of wanting nicer / higher res screens. But having been on Arch+xmonad/dmenu/i3 etc. before for a while then main-ing mac since then, PopOS on this laptop feels like a good convenience combo (Bluetooth setup etc. works easily) with something like Regolith. The hardware being actually supported the way System76 does it is comforting, esp. with the open source firmware code (I don't ever do anything with that but it's just comforting in some way I guess).
[+] tsuru|5 years ago|reply
As a recent owner of a Lenovo Flex 5 14 with AMD4700U, I recommend verifying that USB-C alternate mode / Display Port capability is available. On the Flex 5 it isn't and it's quite annoying that docking for multiple displays, etc. is nerfed.

It's mystifying that there's pretty much no availability of competitive spec'd machines for such a great performing processor / GPU on the market. This Pangolin is slightly amazing for allowing up to 64GB of RAM -- all other options using AMD Ryzen 4XXX I've seen are limited to 8GB of soldered RAM, 1080p display, and 720p webcam. I was somehow lucky and got a 16GB version of the Flex 5 in July. Now it's completely disappeared from the market.

It just feels like dark market forces are preventing good options that people really want to buy.

[+] sim_card_map|5 years ago|reply
> Display 15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish

It's 2021 ffs...

Can we get a high res display 9 years after apple's first retina macbook?

[+] Wowfunhappy|5 years ago|reply
If you're not doing design work (either targeted at print, or for users of high-res displays), I still think 1080p screens are the sweet-spot on laptops. This is different from desktops, where additional pixels can be used to add screen real-estate.

All of those additional pixels require additional battery and CPU power to drive. By contrast, black-levels, backlight-uniformity, color accuracy, and pixel fill can be improved without trade-offs. Most laptops have a lot of room for improvement in these areas, and IMO they lead to a better picture overall versus increasing the resolution. As a bonus, you also get to side-step a ton of unfortunate software weirdness.

And while adding HDR and increasing the refresh rate does come with battery/CPU/software trade-offs, I still think they're more worthwhile upgrades than merely jacking up the resolution on a small screen.

I have no idea whether the Pangolin screens are terrible on these metrics too, I'd just like to see a lot less focus on resolution. It's actually really hard (impossible?) to find an HDR panel that isn't 4K, and IMO that's a shame. We live in a world where Samsung phones run below their native screen resolution by default in order to conserve battery[1], which makes no sense whatsoever. If the native resolution of the screen was lower to begin with, battery life would be even better, and visuals would be improved overall due to lack of scaling!

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-lowers-default-scree...

[+] RandyRanderson|5 years ago|reply
Every 2 or 3 years I think to myself: maybe this year? I check System and other laptop vendors in their tier. Disappointment.

I'm sure there are a lot of economic issues that I don't understand but here is my request:

. all the ram possible . pretty good CPU w/ lots of cores . a good keyboard (no numpad) . a good 4k-ish screen . a big battery (if you make this laptop, ppl will optimize the software to make it last) . decent speakers . is it too much to ask for a decent GPU?

Overall: please just make a premium laptop and charge a lot. There are more ppl on the Internet like me than you realize.

Things no one cares about:

. thin

[+] JeremyNT|5 years ago|reply
Just get a Dell.

System 76 is more of a "lifestyle" brand that targets Linux users. They're one of many resellers that just rebadge Clevo laptops and market to different segments.

Nothing against Clevo, mind you, but there's no reason you should limit your shopping to them versus the more established brands if they don't meet your requirements.

[+] lliamander|5 years ago|reply
I think FHD is plenty fine for subnotebooks (<= 14"). WQHD is ideal for full sized laptops, but the problem is that most laptop vendors have to depend upon what display manufacturers are building.

Most of the display manufacturers are building 4K for marketing reasons (few people outside of gamers really know about WQHD) but those displays consume too much power to replace FHD across the board. An intermediate resolution between FHD and 4K might be more expensive at this point.

LG, which makes their own laptops and displays, did it right with their 2560 x 1600 laptop panels.

[+] asciimov|5 years ago|reply
Linux needs good HiDpi scaling support before I'd be willing to by a high res linux laptop.
[+] mackrevinack|5 years ago|reply
I went back to using a 1080p screen last year, mainly because a few old programs i use some work well on high res displays. this was on windows. I honestly didn't even think about it until now and even didn't notice when I got the laptop first. maybe if you sit really close to the screen you might notice something
[+] j1elo|5 years ago|reply
Wouldn't that cut the battery autonomy by 4? Is it really that different having 4K in just a measly 15" surface? (I get it on a 32" screen or a living room TV, but a 15" computer screen?)

Also note the Apple Retina screens were great due to more features apart from just resolution.

[+] kec|5 years ago|reply
Not until the market is willing to pay MacBook prices for white box hardware.
[+] enriquto|5 years ago|reply
Display resolution is alright for a laptop. What some of us want is more battery life and humongous disk space and ram.
[+] lscotte|5 years ago|reply
It's still 2020 and actually I find 1920x1080 to be plenty sufficient in a 15" laptop.
[+] skavi|5 years ago|reply
This has half the battery capacity of the more compact XPS 15. Is Dell really that far ahead with in their engineering ability?
[+] nostrademons|5 years ago|reply
It's back?

I have a 2013 Pangolin. Not a bad machine - it's still going after several Ubuntu updates, and currently powers the kid's screen time. There were some annoyances that kept it from being my main coding machine - it was bulky, battery life is nowhere near as good as a MBP, the keyboard felt like it was off-center (probably because it, unlike many other laptops, has a numpad), and the trackpad gives next to no feedback. But it's a well-made machine that's kept going.

It disappeared from System76's lineup for several years. I wonder how the new ones compare with the old.

[+] wly_cdgr|5 years ago|reply
You can have 64gb of RAM but you can't have a 1080p webcam in 2020, AKA the year remote went mainstream
[+] redrox4me|5 years ago|reply
Bought an Oryx Pro a few years ago, had to replace the LCD, keyboard twice. Terrible build quality, poor battery performance. I would not recommend these laptops.
[+] satysin|5 years ago|reply
Sadly this is the same experience a friend of mine had with a System76 laptop. When I used it I thought it was fine but not great. The keyboard was usable but didn't feel especially great. Not up there with the likes of a ThinkPad, HP or even the new MacBook keyboards.

The thing that puts me off buying them is that they get quite expensive when you start speccing them up but the quality does not match the $1500+ price tag. On the plus side you can save money doing some after purchase upgrades but that doesn't address the overall build quality issues.

[+] saurabhnanda|5 years ago|reply
Low value comment: WTF is with the marketing copy? Red, AMD, Bull, what?!
[+] greggyb|5 years ago|reply
AMD is colloquially referred to as "Team Red" in computer hardware circles. Intel is "Team Blue" and Nvidia is "Team Green."

The phrase "seeing red" is a fairly common idiom in my experience in American English. This refers to the matador's traditionally red sash used in bull fighting. Red is believed to draw inordinate amounts of bull attention and make them angry.

The use of "seeing red" is a bit strange, as the idiom is typically associated with anger and a pending bull charge, potentially metaphorical.

Thus, AMD -> Team Red -> seeing red -> bulls.

[+] francislavoie|5 years ago|reply
Right now I have an HP Spectre laptop that I'm running Linux on. It's showing its age as my daily-driver for work (only like 4 years old). It can manage to pump out the 3440x1440p60 signal over USB-C thunderbolt that I need, but just turning on youtube or a video call makes it slow to a crawl, it can barely keep up.

I've been eyeing an upgrade to a Dell XPS because it ticks pretty much all the boxes for me, but it's Intel. I'd much rather go AMD, but thunderbolt support is a huuuge plus for me because I have a Dell monitor with USB-C that acts like a KVM. Button on the monitor to switch from my windows desktop to my linux laptop, swaps over all my USB devices at the same time, charges the laptop through the monitor; only one cable to do it all! It's AMAZING.

So I'm wondering what kind of support for Displayport over USB-C this System76 laptop will have. I realize I won't be able to do the whole "one cable to do everything" approach here (omg can we please standardize on USB 4 already so everything can do this? gah!) but if I went in this direction, how much would I need to do to plug in everything?

[+] Symmetry|5 years ago|reply
Now that IBM's patents have expired why aren't other vendors making laptops with trackpoints? It would be nice to be able to comparison shop and consider open source systems like this but for now I feel like I'm stuck.
[+] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
> Display 15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish

They really need to ship a 16:10 or a 3:2 screen. Those are for doing work, 16:9 is for watching movies and is way too short.

[+] dangom|5 years ago|reply
So funny, I literally called their customer service about 2-3 weeks ago asking for exactly that. The use case is that for some software that runs psychophysics experiments, the timing accuracy is better on Linux computers running AMD with AMD graphics then on integrated graphics or NVIDIA discrete cards. See e.g. http://psychtoolbox.org/ . Although it's easy to configure such a computer as a desktop, there aren't really any AMD only offers for laptops out there, at least not from big vendors, and especially not running Linux without issues.

I suppose I must not have been the only one asking whether they had such an offering, and perhaps there are other use cases where such a config would be nice.

[+] taauji|5 years ago|reply
I once bought a System76 laptop. Spent quite some money on it as a student. It only lasted me 2 years. After that its chasis started to come apart, screen died and a few other things.

System76 really seems like a good idea, but one bad experience is enough for me to spend my 1000$ on another brand. Thinkpad has been a much better experience so far

[+] nfoz|5 years ago|reply
I am shopping for a laptop in this category. The first thing I look for is whether the touchpad has physical buttons. With every clickpad I've ever used, the chance of "misclick" is too high (and that my hands can't know if it thinks I clicked). And the impact of a misclick is too problematic especially on the modern web.

My XPS 15 lets you choose tap-click or physical click-down of the pad, but to push the touchpad requires so much force that it's painful. So I have to use tap-click and it is a daily frustration. My MBP's touchpad is not so bad until I need to drag something, I've noticed I avoid interactions such as resizing that I do all the time with a mouse or a touchpad that has dedicated buttons.

I know I'm in the minority but I don't even understand why we moved away from separated buttons, because I find them a joy to use.

[+] jeffhuys|5 years ago|reply
> My MBP's touchpad is not so bad until I need to drag something, I've noticed I avoid interactions such as resizing that I do all the time with a mouse or a touchpad that has dedicated buttons.

Did you know that you could use a macbook touchpad like it has buttons? I've noticed it with my mother and my girlfriend (separate entities for the record) when I got them a macbook when their windows-based laptops almost died: they couldn't get used to clicking and pointing with the same finger, and fell back to their old habits of having a finger on the bottom left of the pad, and clicking that finger if they wanted to click/drag something.

So it kind-of knows what to ignore and what not to ignore / recognise intent of the user trying to do this.

When you combine this with "bottom right click = right mouse button" you basically have what you want!

[+] WhyNotHugo|5 years ago|reply
A single USB-C port on a laptop is a hard dealbreaker nowadays.
[+] john61|5 years ago|reply
What non free software is necessary to run this hardware? Is there an Intel ME equivalent?