The awful screen is one big reason I don’t use my System76 laptop more often. It’s the worst laptop screen I’ve ever seen, has terrible light bleed, and has a pink tint. And this is the warranty replacement they tried to charge me for. The first one had the same awful screen, but kept freezing on me randomly.
And the damn thing STILL has hardware features that only work on Windows 10, five years later (like multi-finger trackpad gestures). I’ll take System76 seriously when they start putting good screens in their laptops and get rid of nvidia.
Great. I’m not using a Dell. I have a laptop from a company that supposedly supports Linux first. A company I will not be buying anything from in the future either.
I’m curious. What do you prefer, some larger res with resolution scaling? How’s the scaling situation on DEs/WMs nowadays? Last I tried it, it was pretty abysmal. Admittedly it was years ago, but it used to be that mixed scaling wasn’t possible, so if my laptop was higher DPI and needed scaling, I’d need to run any external monitor with display scaling as well. I’ve avoided high DPI/display scaling on purpose for a while at this point because of it, and tend to prioritize usable pixel real estate.
I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on a Dell XPS 13 9360 with a 3300x1800 13" screen and Wayland, and it works fine. There was one application (Sublime Merge) where I had to edit some scaling configuration settings, and there’s one tray-based tool (Jetbrains Toolbox) that comes up tiny, but for everything else the global scaling setting in KDE has done a fine job. It also handles dual monitors with different resolutions.
I don’t like 1080 screens because small text becomes unreadable more quickly on them. It’s less of an issue with a small screen, but it still counts against a machine for me.
Whatever works for you haha. Admittedly, I’m the kind of guy that’s running a 34" ultra wide + two 22" monitors on top, and is looking at replacing them with a single 42-43" 4k monitor right now just to have the equivalent of a bezelless 2x2 grid of 21" monitors lol. And they’re all budget/business monitors. So I may not be a reference on display quality… I’m obsessed with having tons of things on screen at once. The ADHD object permanence issues (“out of sight, out of mind” is my default state) might have something to do with it…
I’ll have to check it out again then, if display scaling got better since.
Also a great way to get more performance and increase battery life. On a laptop, most folks would be hard pressed to see the difference between 1080p and a higher resolution.
That’s the odd part. I run Pop!_OS on a ThinkPad with a 4K touch screen at 175% scaling and it looks beautiful. The scaling on the DE is superb. I don’t understand why they don’t offer a HiDPI option on their laptops.
And it works fine with multiple monitors at different scaling ratios, or does it scale them all the same? That’s the actual part that didn’t work correctly for me, back then.
i can’t get over how much more they cost than a similarly spec’ed mac with macs being superior in every single benchmark (except privacy and customizability)
Mac are only competitive on the smallest configuration, as you start to add the same options to each the Mac pricing goes through the roof while this one’s price will only increase by a bit.
Upgrading/tinkering doesn’t void your warranty. Explicitly.
And their customer service is top notch. I thought I bricked my gazelle when I upgraded the memory, but their customer service walked me through how to fix it - didn’t even bat an eye.
Upgrading/tinkering doesn’t void your warranty. Explicitly.
This is generally true with everything in the USA (covered by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) even though companies are sketchy about it and try to convince people that it’ll void their warranty. The manufacturer has to prove that your upgraded part was the direct cause of the issue you’re trying to claim under warranty.
I did not know that - my point is that system76 is not at all sketchy about it. They actively encourage tinkering, make it clear that you won’t void your warranty, and have extensive technical documentation to explain how to do upgrades etc
I just can’t get over the 1080p screen. It’s the one thing that’s always held me back from buying a System 76.
The awful screen is one big reason I don’t use my System76 laptop more often. It’s the worst laptop screen I’ve ever seen, has terrible light bleed, and has a pink tint. And this is the warranty replacement they tried to charge me for. The first one had the same awful screen, but kept freezing on me randomly.
And the damn thing STILL has hardware features that only work on Windows 10, five years later (like multi-finger trackpad gestures). I’ll take System76 seriously when they start putting good screens in their laptops and get rid of nvidia.
Really? I love the scream on my labtop. It isn’t super high resolution or anything but its readable in the sun and is pretty color actuate
Multi finger trackpad gestures work fine on PopOS? I’ve had no issues with them on my XPS 13…
Great. I’m not using a Dell. I have a laptop from a company that supposedly supports Linux first. A company I will not be buying anything from in the future either.
Dang, looks like you got got.
I’m curious. What do you prefer, some larger res with resolution scaling? How’s the scaling situation on DEs/WMs nowadays? Last I tried it, it was pretty abysmal. Admittedly it was years ago, but it used to be that mixed scaling wasn’t possible, so if my laptop was higher DPI and needed scaling, I’d need to run any external monitor with display scaling as well. I’ve avoided high DPI/display scaling on purpose for a while at this point because of it, and tend to prioritize usable pixel real estate.
I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on a Dell XPS 13 9360 with a 3300x1800 13" screen and Wayland, and it works fine. There was one application (Sublime Merge) where I had to edit some scaling configuration settings, and there’s one tray-based tool (Jetbrains Toolbox) that comes up tiny, but for everything else the global scaling setting in KDE has done a fine job. It also handles dual monitors with different resolutions.
I don’t like 1080 screens because small text becomes unreadable more quickly on them. It’s less of an issue with a small screen, but it still counts against a machine for me.
Whatever works for you haha. Admittedly, I’m the kind of guy that’s running a 34" ultra wide + two 22" monitors on top, and is looking at replacing them with a single 42-43" 4k monitor right now just to have the equivalent of a bezelless 2x2 grid of 21" monitors lol. And they’re all budget/business monitors. So I may not be a reference on display quality… I’m obsessed with having tons of things on screen at once. The ADHD object permanence issues (“out of sight, out of mind” is my default state) might have something to do with it…
I’ll have to check it out again then, if display scaling got better since.
Also a great way to get more performance and increase battery life. On a laptop, most folks would be hard pressed to see the difference between 1080p and a higher resolution.
That’s the odd part. I run Pop!_OS on a ThinkPad with a 4K touch screen at 175% scaling and it looks beautiful. The scaling on the DE is superb. I don’t understand why they don’t offer a HiDPI option on their laptops.
And it works fine with multiple monitors at different scaling ratios, or does it scale them all the same? That’s the actual part that didn’t work correctly for me, back then.
No problem. I have three screens, the built-in at 175%, the attached 1440p at 100% and the 1080p also at 100%.
Well damn. Interesting. Thanks!
My bet is that it’s to preserve battery life. Driving hi-res screens takes power.
My 2018er Thinkpad x1 carbon has 1920x1080 and runs over 10 hours. And has better hw suppport than this “Linux Laptop”.
i can’t get over how much more they cost than a similarly spec’ed mac with macs being superior in every single benchmark (except privacy and customizability)
Mac are only competitive on the smallest configuration, as you start to add the same options to each the Mac pricing goes through the roof while this one’s price will only increase by a bit.
My rule of thumb is HP for corporate clients that require Windows. ThinkPad for Linux running Pop!_OS Nvidia. Mac for music. Right tool for each job.
The pricing I think is a scale thing. System 76 is a small brand building systems, mostly stateside.
Is it possible to buy a display off some marketplace with the same connector, and hopefully, the display controller plays nice with the motherboard?
I guess, but at that point you might as well get a different laptop rather than void the warranty if the System 76.
Upgrading/tinkering doesn’t void your warranty. Explicitly.
And their customer service is top notch. I thought I bricked my gazelle when I upgraded the memory, but their customer service walked me through how to fix it - didn’t even bat an eye.
This is generally true with everything in the USA (covered by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) even though companies are sketchy about it and try to convince people that it’ll void their warranty. The manufacturer has to prove that your upgraded part was the direct cause of the issue you’re trying to claim under warranty.
I did not know that - my point is that system76 is not at all sketchy about it. They actively encourage tinkering, make it clear that you won’t void your warranty, and have extensive technical documentation to explain how to do upgrades etc
I love companies like that. The world needs more of them.
TIL
They sell laptops with 4k screens.