Penguin T4 GNU/Linux Laptop | Hacker News Reader

Penguin T4 GNU/Linux Laptop

thinkpenguin.com

87 pointsdxs93 comments

My impressions as someone who's been exclusively using Linux on laptops since 2007:

Heavy. Intel-only, and not even good for an Intel. Poor display. Designers can't count to three (mouse buttons). Optical drive but no built-in bluetooth on a laptop in 2023, really? RAM for 3x the market rate. Tiny battery.

I wouldn't even get this is a political statement (too heavy and bulky), never mind as an actual daily driver.

Whoa. I got a little over 1k for a 32g/1Tb build with bluray burner. I’d be fine picking this up if I really were in the market. It’s maybe a premium on what I could pick up at Costco, but honestly not that huge of a markup. Unfortunately small boutique shops like this can’t price like mega outlets like Costco, but feels like they did fine.

64GB DDR4-SODIMM costs about 115€ including shipping right now, for the T4 the upgrade from 8 costs over 300. It's the same markup you get from companies like Apple.

And I don't mind spending money on a convincing laptop, but since everything else is also unattractive, the nickel and dime-ing just makes it worse.

Bluetooth is an option... But yeah they probably should have included it as a default option and removed the optical drive from the default

It's an option as a tiny USB adapter you plug in, versus being built-in to the laptop.

The tiny USB adapter would be a lot cheaper too.. not sure why they charge $45 for bluetooth

Yeah, I'm done with 1080p displays, massive dealbreaker.

Also, I don't get the need for an optical drive inside a laptop anymore. There isn't much media that comes on it, and Blu-Ray only stores about 50GB, while 256GB USB drives are a dime a dozen nowadays.

Good things:

- up to 64 GB RAM

- both M2 NVME SSD and a SATA slot, so I could add my current SATA SSD.

- 2 kg

- 10/100/1000 Ethernet

- 5 USB ports, mixed types

- VGA (maybe much needed anymore but OK)

- HDMI

- headphone/mic jack

- mic only jack (but why another one?)

- webcam on top of the screen

- card reader

- pretty inexpensive

Bad things:

- Intel i5 only

- only 2 mouse buttons but this is a Linux laptop: it must have 3. Maybe they can't find any company building 3 mouse buttons touchpads.

- it has a numberpad, which is standard on 15" laptops, but the keyboard is offcenter with the screen.

- US keyboard only, but I could live with that if it was the only bad thing. My fingers remember where keys are.

Neutral

- 1080p 16:9 is OKish for me. 16:10 or 16:12 (that is 4:3 [1]) would be better.

Unknowns:

- how easy is it to open and replace parts?

- is RAM soldered or replaceable? Apparently it's replaceable because they write that you can "upgrade later".

- what's up with "Most USB data transfer cables on the market include a proprietary flash component that interferes with their usability. With our USB data transfer cable no such component exists" at $59.99?

Weirdness:

- an optical drive? Well, maybe that could turn into an extra slot for a SSD, with a caddy.

- bluetooth No Thanks? Compared to "No SATA Drive" or the several "Select" menus, is that a statement against bluetooth?

- the two "censored" European AC Adapters.

- the VPN service, almost suspicious.

[1] Remember that 16:9 is 4:2.25. We used to have 4:3 screens even wider than the horizontal 36 cm of most current 15" laptops. They shortened our screens.

Why is i5-only a con? I heard that for ThinkPads at least, the i7 would have lower battery life for no significant gain. Not sure if that's true

My current laptop is an i7. It's a 4th gen i7 so a 13th gen i5 is probably better but I'd like to stay on i7. I don't care much about battery life, there is at least a wall socket everywhere I work at home.

> only 2 mouse buttons but this is a Linux laptop: it must have 3. Maybe they can't find any company building 3 mouse buttons touchpads.

Isn't pushing 2 buttons at the same time on a 2-button mouse the same as pushing the third button on a 3 button mouse?

Yes but that is a very limited third button. You cannot do chording (e.g. left+middle buttons together) using that approach. Some specialized applications use chording.

Edit: spelling because phone.

Just curious, which popular app uses that?

Yeah but half the time I get it wrong and accidentally left or right click when I intended to middle click.

> - bluetooth No Thanks? Compared to "No SATA Drive" or the several "Select" menus, is that a statement against bluetooth?

And if you do want Bluetooth, the only option is an ancient USB dongle. (Only supporting Bluetooth 4.0 suggests that this hardware is ~10 years old.)

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-usb-bluetooth...

And they sell it for 43 USD? That same dongle is available on ebay for $4 including shipping.

Welcome to the FSF's "Respects Your Freedom" scam.

https://ryf.fsf.org/products

The vast majority of products sold with this certification are grossly overpriced versions of commodity hardware which happened to already meet the FSF's expectations. In many cases, the only customization performed by the "manufacturer" was rebranding and/or repackaging the item.

There is M.2 E-key, so bluetooth should come from the wireless card.

They definitely have 3 button trackpads. I have a cheap Windows laptop from work and it has 6 buttons!

> - headphone/mic jack

> - mic only jack (but why another one?)

Simple: some people use headsets that have a TRRS connector (stereo audio and mono mic on one cable), others have headsets with a TRS (stereo audio) and TS (mono for the mic) connector, while others use a separate headphone and mic (e.g. ModMic). Of course, many headsets these days use USB, but there are plenty of 3.5mm ones still floating around, and if you search "headset" on Amazon, the first two options are 3.5mm.

There are, of course, adapters (TRS + TS <-> TRRS), but most people don't have one/don't want to buy one/don't know they exist. (I only have one because an old headset came with it.)

It's probably only a couple cents extra to achieve much wider compatibility.

VGA, mic jack, 16:9, optical drive...yea pretty weird for 2023

From the Penguin Sales email I received this morning...

I believe you inquired about our laptops some time back as we literally had nothing the laptop section and were told that we were working on replacing an older generation when you reached out.

We probably told you industry norms were working against us. Basically the industry has migrated to design choices that are pretty terrible and while we could get around them it would take more energy and capital to do deviate from those bad choices.

For instance the wireless antenna on most newer laptops is placed under the laptop rather than in the screen. This interferes with the reception so using the laptop at a distance from the access point can be problematic.

Touchpads that are designed to look good, but don't function well. Well, we've got a model with physical buttons now alongside multi-touch support so you can get the best of both worlds. At least in terms of functionality and usability. Though I'll admit it might not look quite as pretty- at least the laptop is still a very thin portable awesome looking unit.

There will probably be a video coming out this week demonstrating the new model.

> Well, we've got a model with physical buttons now alongside multi-touch support so you can get the best of both worlds. At least in terms of functionality and usability.

A third mouse button like we had back in the late 1980s would be a nice improvement over a simple two-button design.

Three-finger tap works fine for me on xfce.

Only on a high quality touchpad, if they're poorly calibrated it's not reliable enough. I don't trust these guys.

Until recently, most mobile workstations had three button touchpads.

The HP ZBook Fury 16 is the only model left from a major vendor that has a three button touchpad.

Most Thinkpads still have three buttons (admittedly part of the trackpoint, so above the touchpad).

Why do the power options show as [censored] or [censored] and [censored]... WTF?!

Some kind of political statement against the EU and UK? WTF indeed.

I found: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/why-are-you-censoring...

TIL that regulatory standards for products within your our country is colonisation.

FYI: https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/

> The GDPR does apply outside Europe

> Suppose you run a golf course in Manitoba focused exclusively on your local area, but sometimes people in France stumble across your site. Would you find yourself in the crosshairs of European regulators? It’s not likely. But technically you could be held accountable for tracking these data.

Yes, it applies to everyone who does business with European customers. I think that's fair – actually, it's the only way to do things on the interwebz because otherwise it would be trivial to bypass.

This is why a number of US sites have decided to just not do business in Europe and just outright block it, which I think is an entirely fair decision.

The thinkpenguin people seem to want to eat their cake and have it too.

I do agree that thinkpenguin seems to want to have their cake and eat it too.

However, I think the claim that they can go after a website even if that website does not do business in Europe is entirely unreasonable.

If a European visits your website you do have a business-customer relationship though, of sorts.

I get what you mean, but how else would you frame it? How would you prevent e.g. Google from setting up all their servers in the US and simply saying "nope, we don't do business in the EU"?

What avenue does the EU actually have to enforce it outside their territory if the business doesn't actually operate in the EU?

Did they forget that Linux came out of Europe? and if you want to worry about standards and regulatory stuff, what about all the rest of the world?!

I’m deeply suspicious of anywhere trying to cross-sell me VPNs.

The commentary around “traditional” efficiency with trackpads - after using the latest Apple trackpads everything else is awful. I have no good memories of trackpads of day of yore either. The MacBook trackpad is better without physical buttons. The haptics are so good I can’t tell it’s not physical, and it’s one fewer physical thing to break.

“SSD is a new tech”? Really? Coupled with actual spinning drives as options, which are awful in laptops given they’re moving parts.

I wish I could opt out of the power adaptor. I have a 150W GAN power brick on my desk and in my bag that can charge my iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, Carbon X1, etc all without fuss. Apple Watch, iPhone too with the right cables. Everything USB-C all the time, please. Not some power brick from the 90s with a barrel.

No Bluetooth just seems like a weird choice.

Awful screen.

A webcam cover gets a bullet? Those are 5 for $10 on Amazon. Seems a weird thing to call out and focus on.

I can’t remember the last time I used or burnt a CD or DVD. USB drives are so much more flexible with vastly higher capacities and speeds.

This whole laptop reads as “the laptop you wanted in the 90s, here today in 2023”.

> 15.6”(39.62cm) FHD (1920x1080) 16:9 panel, 3.2mm

I've been disgusted with this stuff for well over a decade. I remember how excited I was when Microsoft showed they can see and made a glitchy 2-in-1 with bright, high-resolution 3:2 touch screen, Surface Book. When was that? Ah, 2015. Then, some Chinese noname knock-off with a Snapdragon SoC copied it, probably literally bought the same panels; I was tempted by the low price point but reasoned it's useless for work and I might as well buy a 16:9 tablet for fun. Then, I think it was some Dell super-thin premium ultrabook? Overheating Huawei with rare, subpar resolution? A few fashionable ultrabooks on underpowered Intels when I wanted a Ryzen 5800H but apparently Intel negotiated their AMD versions don't get good screens? Then, Apple got close with 2021 Macbook Pro.

I bought Apple, because it was the first one without crippling flaws and unabashed contempt for the user, as it unfortunately happens almost every time. It also conspicuously rectified many other mistakes of Apple itself: the cable, the charging port, the thinness and thin corners fetish, the cooling, the keyboard, well, you remember it.

It wasn't a laptop of my dream by any measure, which is more like "a bit thinner X440p, made with modern affordances and fuller utilization of the volume and lid space". (No, X1 ain't it). But it was good enough to consider that it's someone's dream. And it's a honor to use dream products in principle.

Anyway, the point goes beyond displays. This all convinced me that independent laptop makers absolutely can produce devices with displays of almost arbitrary ratio and resolution and indeed very close to my dream in other respects, but they won't because they have no ambition and no interest in their user's use cases; their drive is exhausted by pandering to some self-identifying nerds and selling a few thousands of "configurable" junk on a generic OEM Shenzhen chassis to the suckers. They do not eat their own dog food.

Or perhaps, less cynically, there's just too few people like me and even they'll rather get a good-enough Macbook.

> The laptop goes much farther though in incorporating a unique set of traditional functionality that will make you as productive as yesteryear.

... I mean, _traditional_ laptops were pretty terrible. Nostalgia seems like a bad way to sell laptops. The good old days when you got battery life of an hour and suspend didn't work properly...

Traditional laptops like the Thinkpad X201 or X220 back from over ten years ago were lighter, had brighter and denser displays, didn't make me pay extra for bluetooth and even had a third mouse button for scrolling.

Not just paying quite a bit more for Bluetooth, but it's not even internal. It takes up a USB port!

Old laptops also had arguably better aspect ratios, though Apple at least stuck firmly to 16:10 as everybody else jumped aboard the 16:9 bandwagon.

>everybody else jumped aboard the 16:9 bandwagon

Framework thankfully didn't and Microsoft also realized before them that vertical space is quite useful.

The whole of the x86 laptop space has been trending away from 16:9 in the past couple of years — I have a 16:10 ThinkPad from 2021 for example. This is great, but it sure took a long time… the 16:9 takeover and the terrible reign of 1366x768 began at some point around 2007 and only started relinquishing in 2021.

>No dependencies on proprietary drivers or OS-loaded binary blobs that can interfere with long term support

This is nice, seems competition is increasing between the Linux hardware vendors. But will need to keep them in mind due to the proprietary statements.

> Compatible With OpenBSD

My number 1 requirement

One thing I've never understood is the FSF opposition to microcode and loadable firmware blobs. You're running proprietary hardware that clearly uses some firmware, what do you get out of insisting that the firmware is burned in at the factory and completely unmodifiable/updatable?

It's probably an insignificant detail but why do some options in the AC adapter category contain the word "[censored]"?

  [censored] - Plug Type "Europlug" (CEE 7/16)
  [censored] & [censored] ("UK" style) - Plug Type G

Edit: Nevermind, somebody else beat me to it and I just didn't scroll down far enough: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293069

All I want is a proper keyboard. Last X220 died.

Recommendations welcome.

I don't suppose X62 can still be sourced, so… I'd guess another X220? I've yet to see a laptop with a better keyboard.

My x220 is on its last legs so I'm also looking for a replacement with a real keyboard

Vikings (https://store.vikings.net/en/) sells refurbished coreboot ThinkPads for a reasonable price.

As does the Libreboot developer https://minifree.org/ .

Are the same people interested in a GNU/Linux laptop the same ones that want to buy a VPN subscription alongside it?

This is a cool laptop but after looking it over I hope ThinkPenguin decides to sell replacement batteries (since they are removable) and perhaps even a higher capacity one that sticks out the back a bit. Also the inclusion of a B key M.2 is great for say, an LTE modem, but the page makes no mention if they wired a SIM card slot up to it. Another thing I wish was an option would be to configure without a wifi module, since not everyone is focused on libre firmware, it'd be nice to throw a generic wifi+bt module in there, rather than have to rely on an external bluetooth dongle. I know I can just swap it out later, but that's sunken cost and e-waste for the built in unit which kind of stinks.

EDIT: I checked around their shop, they do sell replacement batteries for $109, but I still wish they sold an extended cell variant like laptops did 10 years ago.

Are people still playing this ODM game?

https://www.quantatw.com/Quanta/english/product/qci_nb.aspx

Is there a Quanta SKU for this model?

Will this really work well out of the box with distros using linux-libre, such as Guix System? I believe every Intel iGPU after Haswell depends on binary blobs.

I also agree with several of the complaints others have made. Three mouse buttons is a must. I'd also prefer a trackball or pointing stick to a trackpad.

I think x86 is on its way out, and the issues of Intel ME and AMD PSP have made it not ideal for the likely audience of this laptop for quite some time. I wonder why they haven't gone with ARM or RISC-V like the MNT Reform or Pinebook Pro.

> While the T4 is thin and light at just .97 inches thick and 4.63 lbs it still boasts a DVD-RW drive (w/ opt. for Blu-ray)

It's an inch thick and weighs over two kilos. That's not really thin or light...

I own a system 76. It has been reliable but I really really miss my 2015 MacBook pro. I stayed with the company longer just because of that laptop and left when they gave us butterfly keyboard MacBook pro.

>The laptop includes a properly supported wifi card that isn’t hampered by a dysfunctional antenna solution that has become standard in most laptops for a while now. The antennas remain in the traditional and optimal location just behind the screen so your wifi performance isn’t impeded by the base of the laptop.

Is this actually solving a problem anyone has ever had? I pay a lot of attention to the laptop market and I've never heard of internal "antenna placement" being an issue before.

People talk about the Apple tax all the time but the Linux tax is real too. Of course there’s something to be said for putting your money where your mouth is and not giving Microsoft money for an OS you’ll never use.

Mainstream Windows laptops are often partly subsidized with a healthy dose of trialware installations and Linux laptops are too niche to reach economies of scale, but the good thing is that if you choose carefully it’s pretty trivial to install Linux over top of Windows these days.

I'm writing this on the cheapest laptop they had at the store, and Linux runs fine on it without any problems, using a standard installation without any tinkering needed. Everything "just works". In my experience that's more often true than not these days (or maybe I've just been very lucky).

Your mileage may vary with other models of course, but you certainly don't need a "Linux tax" to be a happy Linux user.

All of those specs and not a single mention of how much this thing costs. How can any potential customer reasonably compare this to another laptop without knowing the base price?

Click add to cart.

I just added a base configuration to the cart to see the price, looks like it starts at $799, which is pretty reasonable imho.

Their catalog [0] lists the base price as $799.00, and you can easily spec it out and add to cart to view the cost with your ideal configuration.

[0] https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/notebook-computers-gnu-...

Missed the catalog section, so makes a little more sense in the context of browsing the site from the start. Still, I shouldn’t have to add to cart to actually see the price as configured.

I don’t want to get too far in the weeds here since we’re not generally supposed to critique site design on HN. But it feels relevant to the conversation given the product text doesn’t have that information.

2023-06-12: The site displays this; but 64 GB RAM, 8 TB SSD and additional luxuries raise the price to about 2800 USD.

Is this a new firm? Surprised I'm hearing it for the first time. Anyone can share feedback about their laptops and customer support?

Bonus point if one can compare them to Lenovo.

Definitely not a new firm: http://www.fsf.org/news/a-second-fsf-certified-device-from-t..., https://hn.algolia.com/?q=thinkpenguin.

I like linux and I want linux laptops and their companies to succeed but this page is so bad on so many levels:

- No information about price

- No shipping information / warrenty for abroad

- Weight and other measurements is only in american system

- DVD drive on a laptop 2023?

- Censored information?

- Barely any pictures, the single one that exist is so small so it's hard to see.

- Shitty design that looks like one of my first webpages

Sorry but you could do a lot better in just the presentation of your products.

When compared to my 970 gram (<2 lbs) Think Pad X1 Nano Gen 2, I'll happily pass on the T4.

As someone who wants stuff like this to succeed, I must say you lost me at DDR4 and ~1" thick.

DVD R/W but no bluetooth on a modern laptop? It feels kind of like a joke...

Perhaps the available BT modules all required binary blobs?

They do offer a BT dongle via USB, so clearly there's at least one. Why not have its chip on the mainboard? Using USB for soldered-on BT is fairly common.

I don’t think I’ve ever used bluetooth… what are you using it for?

Input or audio peripherals.

On a good laptop, I would at most need it for audio (cable connectors break too easily when I'm working in a bus/train/airplane, no thanks). But since the devs can't count to three, I'll need an external mouse, and I don't trust that keyboard either. So that's three devices that are best solved with bluetooth, if you don't want connectors to break off inside the laptop at some point.

Mouse, Keyboard, headphones. Dongles work 'fine' - but that's not ideal on a modern device.

Right, but those usually require some sort of binary blob despite being USB. Look in /lib/firmware.

My laptop has a Bluetooth adapter connected internally, made by Intel.

    # modinfo btintel
    filename:       /lib/modules/6.1.30-1-lts/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btintel.ko.zst
    firmware:       intel/ibt-12-16.ddc
    firmware:       intel/ibt-12-16.sfi
    firmware:       intel/ibt-11-5.ddc
    firmware:       intel/ibt-11-5.sfi

It still requires binary blobs to function.

I'd expect the company to pick one that works without firmware. I know a bunch of realteks don't need any; Intel has been hopeless for ages.

The linux btrtl driver lists a whole slew of binary firmware blobs, but maybe they also produce a few modules which do not require them. Can you give me an example of a realtek module which does not require any?

I know that I've used a realtek USB <-> Ethernet adapter without firmware. Unfortunately, it did not work reliably unless firmware was loaded.

I'm sure they all do. Source: Used to work on Bluetooth consumer equipment

https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/bluetooth-adapters

Consider the framework laptop. It's so easy to upgrade yourself.

Why do they include an optical drive? It's not even optional.

Confused.

AC Adapter:

- Us, Mexico, Canada

- Australia / New Zealand

- [censored] - Plug Type "Europlug"

- [censored] & [censored] ("UK" style)

- Japan

lol wat

A USB 2.0 port? 47 Wh battery? 4.4 lb? What is this, 2010?

Wow the price is surprisingly low.

An onboard optical drive in 2023?

Is it using libreboot?

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