[vosper]

> - you cant use external monitors without the NVIDIA card enabled which requires a reboot. This is the single largest failing IMO and is more annoying than you'd think it is.

> - you only get about an hour of battery life with the NVIDIA card enabled making it totally useless to keep on unless you plan on using this thing like a desktop all the time.

With these 2 caveats I'm surprised you still think it's fine! I guess it depends on your work situation and pain tolerance. If I had to toggle graphics cards and reboot every time I detached or re-attached my laptop from/to my desk-with-external-monitor setup... Well, I wouldn't be happy about that.

[jentist_retol]

>With these 2 caveats I'm surprised you still think it's fine!

I have a Macbook Pro for work. It is functionally a desktop that I can take home with me every day. If Apple shipped a Mac Mini with a built in 10 minute battery that auto hibernated the machine when i unplugged it, it would make sense for work to provision me one of those and save $800~

If this was my personal laptop, it'd be untenable though.

[thebruce87m]

Check out the DeskMini series. It doesn’t have the battery thing you mentioned but it’s what I wish the Mac Mini was. You can fit 4 hard drives in it! 2 PCIe and 2 2.5”.

[jentist_retol]

Well, I specifically need a computer that is easy to yank away from my desk and take home, and vice versa.

[innocenat]

It's actually more of a technical problem.

A lot of laptop wired the external output to NVIDIA card, so if you are only using Intel it won't work, as is the case here. Wiring to NVIDIA can more performant, as wiring to Intel requires copy-back from NVIDIA to Intel when NVIDIA is active (which is what is being done for the internal monitor).

As for reboot, well, I still don't know why NVIDIA doesn't have auto-switch in their Linux driver yet.

[HeadsUpHigh]

The NVIDIA issue is the biggest problem with any kind of linux laptop. It's not system76's fault and unfortunately right now there is no way around it. If you need more than intel or amd integrated you have to work with that and it's 100% NVIDIA's fault. The hardware can work the right way but they refuse to work with upstream to actually implement the capability.

[Erlich_Bachman]

There are Linux laptops with 2 video cards (one of them being NVIDIA) which has none of the issues mentioned (like for example HP zbooks). So definitely not a problem with every linux laptop.

[fomine3]

Not systen76's fault but they decide to use NVIDIA's GPU for Linux PC (or pick a base model with NVIDIA GPU from Clevo)