Pretty decent specs if you're OK w/ 32GB of (fast) soldered memory and don't need an ANSI keyboard (there is an EN-US ISO option).
It's interesting to compare to the their Intel Infinity Book Pro Gen8 offering - that has a DDR5 SODIMMs, 99Wh battery, and is actually slightly lighter than the Pulse (also a brighter 400nit vs 300nit display), although you give up 1 M.2 SSD slot, it's 40% more expensive, and even with the much larger capacity runtime and performance is about the same or worse, since Intel.
Another good option for current-gen (7040) Ryzen ultra-portable Linux laptops is the Framework 13. A little pricier, 1 x M.2, but you get 2 x DDR5 SODIMMs, a 400nit+ display, and Framework has made good on their upgrade promises (this is their 4th drop-in replacement motherboard that runs in the same chassis and it seems like they're going to keep going). It has a very active Linux user community on their forums as well.
No ANSI keyboard might be a deal breaker for my muscle memory and external keyboards (mechanical and MX keys that I had to import from the US because Logitech only sells ISO in the EU)
Why do you need a "specific keyboard" if your muscle memory is there? Just map it to whatever works for you.
I am typing all the time in us alt international on various physical keyboards that have printed buttons in spanish qwerty, swiss french qwertz and plain ansi us keyboards. It is only a problem for those that have very little experience/use of the keyboard.
Because muscle memory breaks if the physical layout of the keys is different. The parent is used to ANSI and might hit enter where there's a different key on ISO. I am used to ISO and my layout uses that key as a modifier and is barely usable on ANSI, simply because moving my pinky to the key above enter is uncomfortable for me.
We are much more adaptive than that. Among all my computers keyboards at home I have 4 different shape of the enter key and among the 2 that have a similar ANSI shape they don't have nearly the same size.
You'll always have your favorite physical layout but muscle memory can also adapt. The same way I don't ride my mountain bikes the same way I ride my road bikes I am naturally and unconsciously adapting to the different keyboards based on how they feel to my hands.
I agree. I use an Apple ANSI Magic Keyboard, MacBook Pro with Swedish layout, and a Keyboardio Atreus on a regular basis, and I can switch between them without trouble.
There’s definitely a bit of an adjustment period when I (re)introduce a keyboard into the rotation, but I can get back to proficiency within a day or two, and then I don’t notice it at all.
It is not possible to "just map": Enter key has completely different shape and size and pushes backslash/pipe key to different row.
I'm used to ANSI with single row Enter and I don't seem to be able to switch to ISO (in the past I was forced to order and replace keyboard in my laptop because of that)
I actually tried to make it work on my laptop back then. Didn't succeed unfortunately.
I'd really enjoy reading about how they figured out the power management and fan control stuff. I couldn't figure it out. Did they have to reverse engineer? As a manufacturer, do they have access to documentation? I emailed Clevo asking for documentation and they didn't send me anything helpful.
As the name wrongly imply, it is not just about controlling the keyboard. At least on my laptop (an aura15 gen 2), a whole chunk of the control center is not available when the module is not loaded. Not sure if it will help but you might want to look into this module as well for your investigation.
Oh yeah, I remember that now. Back then I looked up those UUIDs on my laptop but none matched. The keyboard features are also different: they're implemented via ACPI on the Tuxedo laptops and via USB control messages on mine.
It's weird. There's all this Clevo ACPI/WMI stuff in those headers but when I dumped my laptop's DSDT tables there was nothing like that. I found some WMI code in there, ran them through a decompiler I found in a GitHub repository and just got back some empty stub code. I still feel disappointed about it.
It's really cool that they added sysfs LED controls. I remember looking into that as well. I was planning to send USB LED driver to the kernel but while reading kernel dricer source code and mailing lists to learn how to do it I came across comments saying they prefer to keep stuff in user space whenever possible.
They asked me to email them. I did and they actually sent me the control center software before they released it and also some details about how they were interfacing with the laptop's embedded controller. I still have those emails, they were very helpful. Very nice company and people.
I was a bit surprised when I read "4x USB, HDMI and 2x Mini DisplayPort". It looks like it doesn't have 2 actual Mini DisplayPorts, but instead the 2 USB-C ports support DisplayPort 1.4.
It's been a while since I was tempted to buy a laptop (granted I don't really look), but this configuration and price seems pretty great.
I own one of the previous generations of this laptop and I want to say that the batteries are a bit of a sham (hopefully they're better in this new one). I've had to change them once a year, because they drop from 100% health to 60% in less than 12 months. Each replacement was around 80-90EUR.
At a few months old, the laptop (a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen 6) couldn't hold a meeting.
Their customer service suggested I disabled the graphics card and to throttle the CPU, converting a $2000 laptop into a $1000 one spec-wise.
After a year and a half, I've just moved to a Thinkpad at half the cost and I couldn't be happier.
I wanted to support a smaller company rather than Lenovo but that's how it is, there where many other nuances I had to deal with (2 dead pixels, awful sound, microphone was meh, TuxedoOS started giving me kernel problems every update...).
Not bad. But I wonder why they went for 7840HS, instead of the lower TDP 7840u.
Spec wise this one is quite close to lenovo t14s/p14s gen 4, which can also be configured with a similar screen (there is also the yoga slim 7 gen 8, but it has a glossy screen).
This config is GPU-less so it has the thermal / power budget to handle it.
It's kind of meant as developer machine.
As far as I can tell the trend was first started by the Mechrevo code 01.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-4000-mechrevo-la...
Which actually got a decent amount of press have some initial Twitter hype. Several other Clevo based brands followed like Tuxedo and XMG. Not sure that Clevo actually intended it as a dev focused config originally, but they definitely leaned into it with later revisions after they saw the enthusiasm.
Not for everyone, personally the Framework 16 appeals a lot more to me (I've preorded), but when I was in college the pure CPU maximization probably would have won me over.
The Mechrevo Code 01 was a Tong Fang ODM chassis. XMG/Tuxedo (sister companies) have varying laptop models from both Tong Fang (Uniwill now?) and Clevo.
Historically, a lot of devs using Linux laptops have preferred iGPU models both to maximize useful perf/watt (dGPUs models tended to drain power much faster even when idle) and b/c most dGPU laptops are Nvidia-based and the driver issues used to be terrible. I wonder if that calculus will be changing now w/ local LLM code-helpers and other AI apps benefit greatly from stronger GPUs.
It might come down to availability, although in general I prefer the higher wattage chips since they will usually have higher specced cooling and if you want to lower power consumption, you can use a tool like ryzenadj to lower power limits (but usually not increase power, which is usually hardware locked).
Amazing. I own the Gen2 and am very happy with it. Good to see that now you don't need the stupid dock any more in order to run multiple screens, but you can do it via the 2x USB-C and the HDMI with the new model.
Strange, for a company, advertising to the Linux community, to offer only Laptops with Nvidia dGPUs, where you actually have to taint your kernel/userspace with proprietary software in order to use it.
There are basically no laptops with AMD GPUs. Why? I don't know. I think in the last months I've only seen one and I don't remember it as a laptop someone would buy.
Well, this is a company that creates Linux laptops. So if they decide to offer laptops with dGPU, they might want to use hardware that is well supported by Linux.
Laptops with Nvidia dGPUs are available from many/most other manufacturers, as you said, so there is no real reason to buy them from them. Especially if they offer sub-par Linux experience.
I get your point but I think this is an AMD problem.
Their can't keep up with the demand on the laptop market. How old are their Zen 4 processors? There are barely laptops with them. We had to wait months for a real use benchmark because it was impossible to get them.
Right now if I see and AMD GPU I wouldn't even know if it's new gen or from 3 years ago.
That's pretty dogmatic. I don't see much issue with proprietary drivers (even if it's not ideal how Linux handles that) if they actually worked properly, which unfortunately they don't..
This isn't dogmatic, it is practical considerations.
From experience, open-source drivers that are integrated into the kernel and open-source source user space have much better quality, better out-of-box experience, and push the whole ecosystem forward.
Compared to closed-source drivers, which often need to catch up to modern software, and are difficult to debug, they need additional steps to integrate and often have to build their own stuff instead of improving existing solutions that help everyone.
You will not get helpful support for errors in your proprietary driver from the manifacturer in most cases, while you get support and fixes from the open source community. It is much easier to isolate the issues if you can access the code.
Shame that an extra 30 EUR must be paid for French users to use the non-legacy AZERTY+ (NF Z71-300) keyboard layout. I believe the only one proposed is the old AZERTY layout.
I wouldn’t be able to do it until Asahi Linux is totally done. Paying 1.5k for a laptop that doesn’t respect you is quite a big ask. They’d have to pay me to use Mac OS, as someone would have to pay me to use Windows.
Got a Mac for work. I’m sure I’m holding it wrong, but to me it just doesn’t measure up to Linux/Gnome. Of particular annoyance is that Mac will just ignore my scroll wheel input sometimes. I suspect it’s a heuristics thing aimed at trackpads. Lots of other small things where Mac doesn’t measure up. And Homebrew is inferior to most Linux package managers. Mac is very focused on the use-case of GUI-only, trackpad-only, no external monitor, unplugged usage. That’s fine, but it’s really not how I use computers.
> will just ignore my scroll wheel input sometimes.
The other day I was trying to set the scroll speed (and have it consistent for all apps) on KDE and it was quite a struggle. AFAIK it just works on Gnome/Wayland but having to chose between something as basic as this and using a DE the UX of which I personally find slightly repulsive (at least in default config) doesn't seem ideal.
And for many HN users, they do get paid to use Mac OS and offered a Macbook for work. I personally still use Linux for work but I have to admit it hinders my work in certain ways (e.g. no easy access to testing Safari and no way to test VoiceOver). But I couldn't trade my setup for whatever Apple decides is best for me. So I appreciate companies still pushing for more solid Linux-first laptops.
Not the person you're replying to, but I'm afraid so. MacBooks are just so far ahead of their "competition" that it's not funny.
The M2 MacBook Pros are about as close as you can get to a perfect laptop. Really, I wish it wasn't so. It would arguably be better for everyone (except Apple) if there was some serious competition at the top end of the market. But there just isn't.
I've still yet to see another laptop that has even passable handling of sleep states / other parts of power management. (A lot of this is an OS integration problem, so Apple is playing on easy mode here.)
I've still yet to see another laptop with an even passable trackpad. (Again, OS integration, plus a stupid amount of heuristics built into the hardware itself to interpret what you actually meant when you touched the trackpad in an awkward way.)
I've still yet to see a laptop with a keyboard as nice as the current generation MacBooks. (The first generation of M1 MacBook laptops was awful, but they fixed it. Also this point isn't really fair because I haven't really seriously looked.)
I've still yet to see a laptop with as slick of a chassis and display.
I've still yet to see another laptop that can chew through demanding workloads, remain snappy the whole time, and not simultaneously sounds like a jet engine and throttle itself to a near halt.
But really, just give me proper power management and a decent trackpad and I'll call it a serious competitor.
That combination of decent performance (even while unplugged), battery life, and silence is hard to come by in x86 laptops, even in ultraportables built with efficiency-focused laptop CPUs where one would expect at least battery life and fan noise to not be issues.
Apple’s silicon helps here but I wonder if part of the problem isn’t x86 laptop manufacturers trying too hard to juice perf numbers at the cost of all else, as well as penny pinching on heatsink and fan.
Ever opened up the average laptop? They look like someone threw the list of component dimensions at a bin packing algorithm, let it run for a couple of minutes, then added some extra plastic struts to fill the dead space.
They are obviously doing a great job at what they set out to do but besides reparability and customization I don't think they are really ahead in anything compared to some premium Windows laptops.
> efficiency-focused laptop CPUs where one would expect at least battery life and fan noise to not be issues.
AMD laptops seem to be pretty decent at that. You can get something on par or even ahead of MBPs in battery life and performance and just a bit louder fans (IMHO the Air is till unbeatable if it works for your use case though)
I agree with some of that, but none of it is worth sacrificing user freedom. Using an Apple product is being forced to use computers in exactly the way Apple designed them, with very little room for customization of the experience. This might be fine if your preferences align with Apple's, or if you just don't care, but for tinkerers and tech enthusiasts it's an oppressive and limited environment. And at the end of the day, it still has its own share of issues, like any device, so it's always a tradeoff.
I'd trade lower build quality and performance per watt for software freedom any day of the week. No, Asahi Linux is not a serious option.
Why is Asahi not a serious option? Linus Torvalds himself uses Asahi on an Apple Silicon Mac, that is a pretty solid endorsement of it being a serious option.
It's an "inconvenient truth" that plenty in the saltier circles of the Linux world really don't like. Getting a good *nix environment on a laptop is a struggle. Even on lines like the ThinkPads you still have paper cuts like bad touchpads, DSP-less audio, terrible battery life, or buggy drivers making the experience unpleasant. Nothing single device has brought everything together as well as an M2 MacBook Pro, and it's a damn shame.
> I've still yet to see another laptop that has even passable handling of sleep states / other parts of power management.
That's the advantage of Apple where they control both hardware and software. It's hard to replicate, so yeah, they have an edge here.
> I've still yet to see another laptop with an even passable trackpad.
Never understood this comment, if you use keyboards instead for shortcuts the trackpad is hardly something you care about. this seems like a comment from Apple users who justify the trackpad as the key differentiator to not even consider anything else, even though the rest of the world has no problem not using Apple trackpads.
> I've still yet to see a laptop with a keyboard as nice as the current generation MacBooks.
Lenovo Thinkpad line has world-class keyboards that put the Macbook's to shame.
> laptop with as slick of a chassis and display.
display, they certainly have good ones, but most of them are not matte. As for the chassis, there's really nothing special in having a uniform grey chassis - it's a matter of taste rather than anything else.
> I've still yet to see another laptop that can chew through demanding workloads, remain snappy the whole time,
Recent AMD CPUs equipped PC, running Linux, fit that description - they are formidable machines with great performance for a variety of workloads and while you will hear the fan now and then, it's still much better than what you had a few years ago.
Never heard the fan on my M1 Pro in a year of ownership, and temperature is never uncomfortably high.
I'll pay double just to never hear a shitty laptop fan.
> but most of them are not matte
It is a matter of preference. Matte reduces contrast, saturation, and sharpness. I noticed Apple uses a higher quality anti-reflective coating than my other (cheap non-Apple branded) glossy desktop LCD. No distracting reflections on the laptop, but the desktop monitor looks like a mirror sometimes.
> Never understood this comment, if you use keyboards instead for shortcuts the trackpad is hardly something you care about. this seems like a comment from Apple users who justify the trackpad
Or as shockingly as it seems other people might have preferences which are different to yours and which are not somehow inherent inferior to yours.
> else, even though the rest of the world has no problem not using Apple trackpads.
If you go few years back same could've been said about appalling battery life, poor screen and build quality and a dozen other things. I had not problem using computers back then because I didn't know it could be better so just had to deal with it. Going back to something objectively inferior is not that easy (e.g. I almost always used an external mouse until the first retina MBP, I haven't really felt the need to since then except occasionally for gaming).
A $2000 USD laptop would depreciate to nothing over five years so that is an expense of only $400 USD per year.
At a moderate $80k USD developer salary, the laptop costs only 0.5% of that. And this is the main tool you depend on to earn an income. For an underpaid junior developer earning $40k it's still only 1% of their income.
10% of an average developer salary is something like $8k per year. What laptop costs $8k per year? That's $40k after five years. Are you confusing a laptop with a new Mercedes or what?
Laptops are a business expense for a developer. This is how you need to think about it.
+ 1. to get a usable MBP spec (i.e. at least 1TB disk and 24GB RAM) you’re looking at a 2,689€ price tag here in Germany. Not an issue if it’s company provided, but outside, this is more than two months worth of rent and a substantial part of a post tax income of a software engineer in Germany.
> It also doesn't say not soldered on RAM and SSD which means it probably is.
> Just like the CPU, the LPDDR RAM is also soldered onto the motherboard [...]
> Another advantage of LPDDR RAM is its space-saving design, which creates room in the ultra compact chassis not only for the performant and quiet cooling system but also for 2x upgradeable M.2 SSDs [...]
Also, the website talks about M.2 for the SSD form factor. M.2 describes a physical connector standard. I would imagine that's enough to imply that it's not soldered SSDs.
ECC RAM has its advantages but I agree it's not a must have for workstations. DDR5 has on-die ECC, which is basically controlled by the RAM itself and not everything around it like with regular ECC.
Why do you say that? You can run whatever distribution you want, i run arch on a tuxedo laptop with no issue. Tuxedo laptops are not perfect but i find them a good choice for running Linux, whatever distribution you prefer.
What's not perfect about Tuxedo laptops? It's the first time I hear about these, and it seems they have a great spec/price ratio. This is definitely a brand I'd consider buying.
Microphone on mine was pretty bad, without exaggerating. The procedure for updating the BIOS was the worst I’ve ever seen. Maybe if you run TuxedoOS it can be done in a better way. I once left it at full charge on the shelf for a month (possibly two) and the battery inflated. Admittedly not a smart move by me, but still. Support is excellent, though, and I got a free replacement battery. If you can get a Dell with Linux I’d say that was a smoother experience for sure. That said, I don’t want to be all negative: It’s nice to buy a laptop and 100% know that all the hardware works with Linux. That’s worth a lot to me.
I would love Tuxedo to release firmware updates via fwupdmgr.
The current procedure works but is quite cumbersome indeed (copying file on a usb stick, boot on it and run a couple of command from it)
On mine (an aura 15 gen 2) the webcam and speakers are really not great. I don't mind as I knew that before buying it, so no disappointment.
On the plus side they really do support Linux, they provide a kernel module and control center app to control things like keyboard leds and power profiles, which does a good job. I find this quite good for a small company like Tuxedo.
I'm happy with my laptop and will consider Tuxedo again next time I need a computer, but I definitely advise to look at reviews beforehand.
Agreed, I've got an Aura 15 as well a few years ago, and I consider it a good buy price/performance wise.
I had originally ordered a different, slightly more expensive model, and had no trouble at all with customer service to send it back in exchange for the Aura and a refund, which impressed me very positively.
I run Debian on the laptop and had no trouble with it.
What makes you think so? Have you had or heard of someone having issues like that before?
FFIW, you could probably install Arch (from a TTY, like in the old days :p) with the an Ubuntu kernel and any firmware that was loaded-in at runtime from the stock installation-- I'm not convinced it would be neccessary, but Linux is Linux and (most) differences between (most) distributions are minor enough that someone who knows how to troubleshoot this sort of thing could factor them out.
It's interesting to compare to the their Intel Infinity Book Pro Gen8 offering - that has a DDR5 SODIMMs, 99Wh battery, and is actually slightly lighter than the Pulse (also a brighter 400nit vs 300nit display), although you give up 1 M.2 SSD slot, it's 40% more expensive, and even with the much larger capacity runtime and performance is about the same or worse, since Intel.
Another good option for current-gen (7040) Ryzen ultra-portable Linux laptops is the Framework 13. A little pricier, 1 x M.2, but you get 2 x DDR5 SODIMMs, a 400nit+ display, and Framework has made good on their upgrade promises (this is their 4th drop-in replacement motherboard that runs in the same chassis and it seems like they're going to keep going). It has a very active Linux user community on their forums as well.