Hacker News Reader

Comment by CaptainMarvel | Hacker News Reader

This is like the Framework laptop but it's a UK-based company that has been around for years, and with an explicit focus on Linux compatibility to boot. I'm surprised I haven't come across them before as I've been looking for Linux-compatible laptops for years.

They do some things better than Framework such as supporting Ryzen processors, and seem a bit cheaper overall. The battery life seems like it would be better. They have a spare parts store as well and a full disassembly guide as well as an "open warranty". I was never a fan of Framework's swappable ports.

The biggest disadvantage seems to be that the screen is bog-standard 16:9.

I'm curious on the quality of the speakers, webcam, keyboard, and trackpad. I have a feeling they will not be great - in comparison to a Macbook at any rate.

From reviews it looks like the trackpad is poor because it is not whole-trackpad clickable, and the keyboard is also poor due to the short key travel.

Are there any other decent alternatives available in the UK?

View on HN

> The biggest disadvantage seems to be that the screen is bog-standard 16:9.

Bigger than that IMO is 14" @ 1080p. It's just too little for daily use for me. Framework are so far the only ones in this market segment who have ever marketed >1080p laptop displays AFAIK. I have a hard time understanding why there is such a lack of higher-res panel options across the market, even when seemingly all other relevant specs are high-end.

I'm sure like usual when this comes up, some people will come reply with "you can't make out the difference anyway", which is just not true. Some of us prefer smaller fonts and higher information density. 8px font size is just less ergonomic and more tiring for the eyes. For 16:9 14" I just won't consider anything below 1440p.

I'm keeping a spreadsheet for a new Linux Laptop (Alder Lake or preferably a Rembrandt) w/ HiDPI(ish) and 32GB+ of RAM and there are some options.

Currently announced:

* Lenovo X1 Carbon G10 - 14" 16:10 3840x2400 500-nit 100% DCI-P3 60Hz IPS

* Lenovo ThinkBook 13X Gen2 - 14" 16:10 2560x1600 400-nit 60Hz IPS

* Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 - 13.3" 16:10 2880x1800 400-nit 100% DCI-P3 60Hz IPS

* ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5401 - 14" 16:10 2880x1800 550-nit 100% DCI-P3 90Hz OLED

* Asus Vivobook S 14X OLED - 14.5" 16:10 2880x1800 550-nit 100% DCI-P3 120Hz OLED

I'm also keeping an eye out for the next gen refresh of the Tuxedo Infinity Book Pro 14 - they use a 16:10 2880x1800 400-nit display as well (these are a TongFang ID4H1, and XPG and some other OEMs also use a similar chassis).

My last 2 company laptop were a Lenovo X1 Carbon G8 and a Lenovo X1 Carbon G9. These machines are so reliable and resilient, no matter how much you travel, they are indestructible. I definitely recommend them.

I would not. I've had an X1C7 for three years now. Numerous Linux driver issues (especially audio), issues restoring from sleep, had the screen replaced twice and the trackpad replaced once.

To be fair if you get the on-site repair warranty, that is pretty great.

The audio problems with the C7 were unfortunate but more on the Intel side to have force pushed that with this generation of CPU while nothing was ready. I got it 6 months later at the moment where things were starting working. Never got much trouble for resting from sleep.

I am currently still using my old X1C2 from 2014. That's quite reliable by my standards. I would prefer to continue with Lenovo due to reliability and good Linux support (there is a dedicated engineer for that matter who is available on their forums and who help various distributions including Debian and Fedora to make things work). I was waiting for the Gen 10 but battery life seems disappointing on Windows, so I am waiting for people to test on Linux. Gen9 only has FHD+ or 4K+ (too low and too high).

To solve the audio issues try with this command:

> pulseaudio -k

I'm also looking for a new Linux laptop for this spring. I thought about the Tuxedo laptops, but after reading around there are a lot of complaints about quality and even Linux driver issues.

I've been pretty disappointed with my Lenovo X1 Carbon and don't want another Chinese laptop, so I'm thinking to go ASUS. Currently maybe one of:

  - ASUS Vivobook Pro 14X, 14" OLED, 600 nits (peak), 3K, 90Hz
  - ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, 14" LCD, 500 nits, 120Hz, 2560x1600, AMD GPU

I personally try to avoid Nvidia dGPUs since I usually don't need CUDA and they tend to be a PITA even w/ DKMS drivers and are terrible for battery life.

I think the thing with the currently available Vivobook Pro 14Xs (M4700/N7400) is that they're currently last-gen Ryzen 5000 and Intel 11th gen chips. Even though I'd like to try out the OLED display, I'd probably go w/ the G14 atm - Ryzen 6000 and also you get 1 unsoldered DIMM slot so you could probably get yourself get up to 40GB of DDR5.

While Asus doesn't give a crap about Linux, there's a pretty active community (focused mostly on the G/M ROG laptops, maybe another good reason to go w/ the G14): https://asus-linux.org/

It seems like these days there are always si0x/s3 or other power drain issues w/ non-validated Linux laptops though. A good reason to support companies like Tuxedo, System76, Slimbook, Starlabs etc that at least make some effort that their EC/BIOSes actually play nice.

I agree Linux support would be ideal, but hardware quality is of first importance; many of those companies are just rebranded Clevo.

Until recently I agreed about absolutely no Nvidia, though it might be improving. For a few months now the drivers support the standard Wayland interface GBM, which at least means any compositor should work with them.

I agree you want good QC, support, and product design/features, but the various Lenovos, HPs, Asus, are just ODM'd machines manufactured by Wistron, Compal, Pegatron, etc so it's not all that different except big brands pay for more exclusivity. As far as repairability goes, you'd be better off with more standard parts, and honestly, lately some of the white label chassis' like the Clevo L141MU or Tong Fang ID4H1 are as good or in many ways better (lighter, unlocked BIOSes, more upgradeable (SODIMM slots!), better cooling, bigger batteries) than what many of the big OEMs have been putting out.

Not all configurations one these white labels are the same though since OEMs usually can choose what quality display panel, trackpad, etc they want to use...

My concerns are more with chassis quality. Having a good keyboard means having a rigid body. Many reviews of Tuxedo mention mushy keyboards. Even the keyboard on the Stellaris, which they highlight, doesn't fair well in opinions.

I agree most OEMs are bad, but the specific ASUS models I've mentioned, along with Thinkpads in general, seem to have better keyboards. Sadly Lenovo is making them worse every generation (with less travel).

Hey, I'm the one complaining about the lack of options - the Slimbook Executive seems to check all the major boxes and it's the first time I hear of them. Do you have any experience or anecdotes with it?

It looks like the same Tong Fang ID4H1 chassis that Schenker Vision 14/Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 use (also XPG Xenia 14 I believe). If you do a search online, Notebook check, YouTubers (including some Linux-oriented ones) and various subreddits will probably have reviews. Basically looks good to me but ideally for performance/efficiency I'd wait for the 12th gen refresh (this particular chassis is Intel-only, although TF has other AMD models).

Below 45W, Ryzen 6000 outperforms, and it's battery-life can be up to twice as good as Intel 12th gen in idle/low intensity tasks like web browsing though, so for a thin and light, my hope is to see a decent AMD model come out in the next couple months.

BTW, a couple years ago I did a review of one of the first 4800H Tong Fang systems (versions of this have been available as the Schenker VIA 15 Pro, Tuxedo Pulse 15, KDE Slimbook, and Eluktronics Thinn 15): https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechr...

It was pretty thorough and I answered a lot of questions so maye relevant still. Also, one of the things that I liked about the Ryzen laptops is that while it mostly wasn't possible to exactly undervolt, enthusiasts have done a great job documenting mobile Ryzen's power and thermal behaviors, and you can basically script it to behave how you want, when you want: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide

I use a toggle that runs `ryzenadj -f 50` for example, which allows full turbo/speeds, but hard throttles to keep my temps right below my fan hysteresis temp to keep it completely silent. This tends to be my favorite run-mode on battery (I have it attached to a udev script for when unplugged).

is burn in a problem on those OLED displays?

Any chance you'd be willing to share the spreadsheet (read-only)? That would be a great resource.

Sure, here you go: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lXdXJEkKqsDNFm3LuPpB...

I have a ThinkPad E15 with Ryzen processor and supports 64GB RAM

No xps13?

> I'm sure like usual when this comes up, some people will come reply with "you can't make out the difference anyway", which is just not true.

It is true for those people. No doubt that's not true for you, but you're not everyone. With fairly small screens (14" is small compared to a 24" desktop monitor) I genuinely don't notice the difference. I'm sure if you would put two screens next to each other I'd be able to spot differences, but in daily use? Not really. I used to have a employer-provided 15" Dell XPS with some >1080p resolution (I forgot which exactly) and I really didn't notice.

There are downsides, too: the computer has to work harder to render all those pixels and the battery life is shorter; my battery life was noticeably shorter than my previous almost identical XPS with a "normal" 1080p screen, so it's a trade-off.

Having an option would be nice for those who care about it of course, but I suspect a large section of people just don't care, and especially as a fairly small shop you can't do everything.

> There are downsides, too: the computer has to work harder to render all those pixels and the battery life is shorter; my battery life was noticeably shorter than my previous almost identical XPS with a "normal" 1080p screen, so it's a trade-off.

Makes me wonder why Apple is capable of building laptops that run for hours and have a high DPI screen then? Don't confuse Dell dropping the ball on hardware and software integration with trade-offs. There are upsides to high DPI too: you can turn off anti-aliasing since you won't notice it when the pixels are too small to see.

For me personally, I definitely do notice the difference; I just don't care about it enough for it to be worth the downsides you mentioned (plus the downside of worse FPS when gaming).

I notice the difference so much that I have a visceral reaction to low res displays, almost claustrophobic as if a screen door is covering my eyes. Can't stand them.

I can live with the lower resolution, as my eyesight is getting worse, but not with the 16x9 aspect ratio. 16x10 (1920x1200) feels so much more productive.

My main monitor is actually 16×10 1920×1200, and at 24" I find it's kind of too low of a resolution: I wish it was more. But it was fairly cheap (second-hand/refurbished from a reseller) and the intersection of "16×10", "not too large" (I don't want a 32" behemoth), and ">1080p" is basically zero, so I had to compromise somewhere, and given the low price point and that I couldn't be arsed to figure out all the display tech and whatnot for the new screens it was an easy choice.

But 16×10 seems to be making a bit of a come-back, at least for laptops.

FWIW you can also try scaling the display - ChromeOS does this well out of the box, Linux is OK, Windows has it too. Best of both worlds IMHO.

Of course it's true for them and they should go with that.

It's a tired myth that "the human eye can't perceive the difference and you don't either". We're all different, with different needs and preferences.

> We're all different, with different needs and preferences.

Yeah sure; actually, it just so happens I more or less said the same thing in a different comment a few days ago (very different topic, but similar sentiment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30984309

I mostly just wanted to hook in on why these kind of systems still frequently come with a 1080p screen.

> It is true for those people. No doubt that's not true for you, but you're not everyone.

While what you say is probably true I just wish it was not the constant narrative around laptops that have nice screens. I bought a Samsung Galaxy Chromebook and absolutely loved the 4K OLED screen it had up until the day its WiFi suddenly died. Everything looked amazing on it - even just the boring ChromeOS UI elements looked amazing. However every reviewer had the same feedback - that you can't tell the difference and you should shoot for 1080.

> Framework are so far the only ones in this market segment who have ever marketed >1080p laptop displays AFAIK.

This is weird to me because I feel like I have the opposite problem. I don't want retina displays I derive no joy from and that eat more power for that lack of joy, never mind cause problems with differential scaling if I plug into a lower res desktop screen. I find I can't get high quality laptops that don't force me to have a too-high density screen.

I have settled for the framework because everything else about it is perfect for me, but I kind of hope someday they sell a replacement non-hidpi screen for it and I will very much buy it. The possibility of those kinds of choices down the line is why I bought into it.

That's fascinating. One of the things I like about HN is encountering people who have such radically different preferences.

For me, my big pet peeve is the difficulty of finding a high resolution (4K/5K) desktop monitor that is not enormous.

To each their own!

Retina is a slightly overkill for me too, but I'd still prefer it over FullHD.

System76, Clevo, and OP(StarBook) are all 1080p only. I'm sure I saw others I just don't remember right now.

1440p is perfect for a 14". It has a close enough dot pitch to my 4k 27" displays, so that I don't have to do any weird scaling when connected to external monitors. My other laptop it 4k and it's a pain in the ass to tune it so that things are not too big or small across displays.

Isn't 1080p @ 14" like almost exactly the same as 4K @ 27"? It's 157 ppi vs. 163 whereas 1440p @ 14" is 209 ppi. And 4K at 200% scaling is just sharp 1080p. I guess it depends what scaling you're using on the 4K display 27" display but if it's 100% it should be near perfect unless scaling isn't working like I think.

Isn't that too small for 14inch display though? You will have to use some form of scaling with that resolution I suppose?

You need to set up various environment variables to scale up per app and framework, but once you do it should work across both the monitors and the laptop.

> Framework are so far the only ones in this market segment who have ever marketed >1080p laptop displays AFAIK.

Dell has sold their Linux-ready "developer edition" XPS 13 with a UHD+ screen for quite a few years now. (They max out at 16GB of RAM, though, unfortunately.)

Dell isn't quite as "open" as something like Framework or System76 (or Star Labs), but they at least sell their Developer Edition laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled, at your option, and claim the hardware is supported properly in Linux.

(I say "claim", because I have the 2018 model, with a fingerprint scanner with no Linux driver.)

The post-Ice Lake models of the XPS series all support 32GB of RAM on the Developer Editions; I have one. Until that point this was Intel's fault because before then they were behind on their memory controllers, nothing Dell could do about it.

Fingerprint reader support for Linux in general has been a sticking point for a very long time, including on the XPS series. (I still fondly remembering the blobs needed for my old ThinkPad's reader to work...) But it's basically the only thing that requires blobs from my knowledge. I don't even bother with it on my stock Fedora install, though it is quite slick in Windows, I admit...

Ah, strange. I'd just looked at Dell's site, but couldn't configure the Developer Edition for anything over 16GB. Probably my fault I couldn't figure it out... plus their order/configure site is terrible.

I had an xps. The battery swells and the charger stopped working, then the replacement charger stopped working. The keyboard and trackpad werent great either

Wouldn't recommend, getting parts replaced takes months when I sent mine in for repair on just a 3 year old model.

I don't get this either. I picked up a cheap Samsung Galaxy laptop with Manjaro a while ago to replace my broken mac book pro until I can get that replaced (getting the new 14" pro for work).

The Samsung is fine but the screen is very mediocre in comparison. The same dreadful 1080p screen as world + dog insists on these days. Gnome makes it more cramped by insisting on a top bar thingy. I'd love to have a much higher resolution and brighter screen. 16:9 is just way to claustrophobic. And why do window managers insist on this silly top bar these days? That just eats into already limited space. Currently using Gnome and of course the one extension for that that fixes that (auto hide the damn thing), promptly broke when I updated Gnome.

Writing this on my good old imac 5K; the original one from 2014. Now that's a nice screen. My 2017 15" macbook pro had the infamously shitty keyboard, which actually ended breaking the very nice retina screen by virtue of a loose key that inserted itself in between the keyboard and the screen when I closed it. So something that should not be falling apart actually fell apart and did maximum damage. Absolutely disgraceful. I'm glad they ditched that design.

The Samsung at a quarter of the price manages a nice keyboard (with numeric keys even), a passable touchpad (multi touch but mechanical click sadly) and even a nice aluminium cover. If it weren't for the screen, I'd call it a superior deal. About as fast, same amount of ssd/memory, and it runs a lot cooler (i5 with xe graphics). Also, no thermal throttling because it just does not overheat. But at this price, I'm not complaining. This laptop with a better screen would be an awesome deal. Somebody needs to start doing this. 16:10, 4K would be what I'd spend money on.

>I have a hard time understanding why there is such a lack of higher-res panel options across the market

There are plenty of options, just most of them aren't cheap, or fitting in targeted price range.

There isn't a lack of high-res panel in supply, but a lack of high-res panel in demand. Or in other words, no-one apart from Apple (not that Apple gave its user a choice, but let's ignore this for a moment ) manage to market Retina or high-res panel and created enough demand to sustain a different upgrade option or SKUs.

This then cycles back, without economy of scale, not just a vendor but the whole industry, high-res panel do not enjoy the unit cost reduction as standardise low -res panel ( or 1080P panel, which isn't really "low-res" ). So the cost of these specific panel are far higher, increasing BOM, increase RSP, etc. etc.

Next question that always comes after this answer is always;

>"But we have higher prices SKUs, it is not like there isn't a demand for current SKUs +$100 / 200"

Yes. But given the option to choose between paying extra $100 / $200, the market tends to flavour for more memory, faster CPU or better GPU. Not higher-res panel.

I have a Dell XPS13 Developer Edition that was specifically sold with Linux.

Mine has a 4K screen and to be honest it’s a bit of a pain at that size.

It looks great but everything is a bit small with pixel doubling.

If it boots in native res then it’s unreadable. You have to mess with grub and set the font size to something enormous.

I wish I’d opted for HD 1080 when I bought it. Would be readable and the battery life would be longer.

I agree. Tho it also depends on how often it's a pure laptop, and how often it's a "desktop" with two larger primary monitors connected.

I'd probably opt for 1440p+, but given the rest and the price maybe not. For others, 1080 might be just fine.

8px font size works fine with good hinting. In general, 1080p would be a near-optimal resolution given pixel-perfect rendering. Higher resolutions are useful when the rendering is too fuzzy, they're simply about hiding that imperfection.

Come back when you have tried that with CJK. There is no font or rendering that can make that comfortable to read.

If it works for you, great, I'm just tired of people telling me I don't understand what I want and I shouldn't have to write a blog post justifying myself everytime I claim that higher screen res makes a huge difference for my use-case. It's not like Chinese language is an edge-case.

Sure, but nobody is using 8pt CJK fonts. Even with a 5k panel, you wouldn't be able to resolve their shape without the equivalent of a magnifying glass (i.e. focusing on a smaller section of the screen). Talk about eye tiring.

*px but yes, precisely my point (wouldn't be so sure about "nobody", though...). On higher resolutions, more pixels in the same physical size. I find 10~12 all good, depending on circumstances.

But physical size is exactly what matters wrt. resolving a shape. Already at 1080p, the pixels are too small to resolve individually when comfortably looking at the screen. So there's really nonbenefit to such tiny character sizes.

> Already at 1080p, the pixels are too small to resolve individually when comfortably looking at the screen.

No, and people perpetuating this myth is what annoys me - that physical size is comfortable for me and that's what I use on a daily basis.

Try 8px font of full-width Chinese characters on 14" 1080p next to the same effective physical size on a 4k and if you still tell me it's too tiny to tell, well, I guess we have different eyesight and preferences.

Th e so called perfect rendering you're referring to is just infinite layers of havkd that rely on the subpixel layout of your panel to appear smooth. Monospaced, unaliased bitmap fonts will look great and I use them too, but most fonts out there are not designed to be pixel perfect but instead to be rasterized to different sizes, and for that, higher resolutions do help.

You can get a 14" 4K ThinkPad (e.g. P14s).

I do not count Thinkpad as open enough to be in the same segment anymore. I have owned many generations of them and some are still in use but will not be getting a newer one the way things look now.

One practical aspect is how they are very inconsistent in making crucial firmware updates available. In theory, they're on fwupd/LVFS. In practice, that can lag behind by months or even years and the only way to get necessary updates to get security fixes or get certain hardware working is many times to boot from Windows.

It is only the trackpoint that locked me on ThinkPad. There is IMHO clearly a user base that would be willing to move away from Lenovo only if they could get an open replacement for that single part...

Yeah me too, the trackpoint keeps me at ThinkPads for my daily driver (I have experimented with others like the Pinebook Pro, but (underpoweredness aside) the lack of the trackpoint kills the deal for me...

I just want physical mouse buttons (especially for right and middle click), which only trackpoint laptops seem to do anymore

Yeah me too. Apparently there were other laptops (dell? hp?) with trackpoints too, but not anymore.

The Toshiba legacy is still around: https://us.dynabook.com/computers/laptops/portege/X40/X40-J1...

I can't see the keyboard nor trackpoint, and it's quite expensive.

> In practice, that can lag behind by months or even years and the only way to get necessary updates to get security fixes or get certain hardware working is many times to boot from Windows.

I feel like I get updates fairly often with my p50 on Ubuntu which is 5 or 6 years old at this point.

My gen 9 x1 carbon is the best Linux machine (which includes desktops) I've ever owned.

What's your upper size limit for 1440p?

I wouldn’t use a screen larger than a phone (7”) at 1440p. 4K is the minimum for laptops. Unfortunately 4K is also the maximum for desktops since I can’t find any 5K panels with a decent refresh rate (>=120Hz)

The key is to just stop caring about absolute pixel count. All that matters is the angular pixel density, with regular pixel density being sufficient when compared within a “class” of viewing distance (e.g. handheld, laptop, desktop, couch).

Regarding laptop speakers (in general) Dave2D recently uploaded an interesting video [0] where he compared MacBook speakers to best Windows laptop's ones that he had in the studio.

It really does make you wonder why there such a noticeable difference!

[0] https://youtu.be/LkYB931iUjc

> They do some things better than Framework such as supporting Ryzen processors

For some weird reason if you pick a non-english keyboard you can only pick the i7-1165G7 (which IMHO is the worst proposal of the three available if you pick an english keyboard).

> compatibility to boot

I should hope so! :P

Reply on news.ycombinator.com