{"id":1699,"date":"2018-10-26T07:46:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2018-10-26T08:37:18","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T08:37:18","slug":"review-system76-oryx-pro-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2018\/10\/26\/review-system76-oryx-pro-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: System76 Oryx Pro Laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can “by hackers, for hackers” sell laptops? System76 sold an Oryx Pro
\nto Rob, and he’s here to tell you about it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I should start by saying that although I’m definitely no newbie to
\nLinux, I’m new to the world of dedicated Linux laptops. I
\nstarted with Linux in 1996, when Red Hat 4.0 had just adopted the
\n2.0 kernel and Debian 1.3 hadn’t yet been released. I’ve run a variety
\nof distros with varying degrees of satisfaction ever since, always
\nlooking for the Holy Grail of a desktop UNIX that just plain worked.<\/p>\n

About 15 years ago after becoming frustrated with the state of Linux
\non laptop hardware (in a phrase, “nonexistent hardware support”), I
\nswitched my laptops over to Macs and didn’t look back. It was a
\ntrue-blue UNIX that just plain worked, and I was happy. But I
\nincreasingly found myself frustrated by things I expected from Linux
\nthat weren’t available on macOS, and which things like Homebrew and MacPorts
\nand Fink could only partly address.<\/p>\n

My last MacBook Pro is now four years old, so it was time to shop
\naround again. After being underwhelmed by this generation of MacBooks,
\nI decided to take the risk on a Linux laptop again.<\/p>\n

Oh my, an awful lot has changed in 15 years!<\/p>\n

System76<\/h3>\n

System76<\/a> is a Denver-based firm with a
\n“by
\nhackers, for hackers” ethos. It’s not the first outfit to have tried to
\ndeliver on this promise, nor will it be the last. It follows in a long
\nline pioneered by Red Hat and VA Research, and it will continue in the
\nfuture with businesses yet to be founded. At this moment in history
\nthough, System76 seems to be doing a pretty good job of maintaining that
\nstandard.<\/p>\n

Inquiries<\/h3>\n

My initial contact with System76 came by visiting the website and
\nrequesting a quote for one of its third-generation Oryx Pro models.
\nThe sales staff were responsive, polite and didn’t seem to have their
\npersonalities obliterated into uniform perfection like the Stepford
\nSalesforce of Lenovo or Dell. I also never caught a whiff of a hard
\nsell from any of them. On three occasions just before being able to put
\ndown my hard-earned dinero on an Oryx Pro, my life went sideways, and my
\nlaptop fund went to pay for strange emergencies that arose out of
\nnowhere, but the System76 sales staff were cheerfully uncaring about
\nthis. The impression I got was they believed they knew were going to
\nmiss a sale right then, but whether they missed it forever depended on
\nhow they behaved in that instant. It’s an enlightened view from which more vendors
\ncould stand to learn.<\/p>\n

Sales<\/h3>\n

At last, my laptop fund regenerated, and there were no emergencies on
\nthe horizon. I visited the System76 site again and discovered in the
\nintervening months that a new generation of the Oryx Pro had been announced,
\nand the first 100 pre-orders would receive some nice swag. Judging
\nfrom the swag I received (mostly a nice-looking promotional poster
\nthat’s actually worth framing and putting on your cube wall), I was one
\nof the first 100. I placed my order May 7, 2018, and was told shipments
\nwould begin the first week in June.<\/p>\n

A couple minor problems arose. The first was that, as tends to happen
\nwith pre-orders, the new units were not available quite on schedule.
\nThe second was that System76 wasn’t proactive about informing me of the
\ndelays. I was originally cited a delivery date of June 11th, but I
\ndidn’t receive mine until June 15th. In the grand scheme of things, this
\nwas a minor issue\u2014I’ve had far, far worse delays from much bigger
\nvendors. Still, the fact that it was on me to ask about shipments,
\ninstead of them telling me there would be a four-day delay was an
\nunforced error on their part.<\/p>\n

Price<\/h3>\n

It’s sweet hardware, and it’s priced like sweet hardware. My laptop came
\nin at $2,704 (including expedited shipping).<\/p>\n

Hardware<\/h3>\n

The new fourth-generation Oryx Pro is what was only a year ago called a
\n“desktop replacement”. But that class of computers refers to boat
\nanchors that were unpleasant to lug around in a messenger bag, not a
\nslim machine that’s approaching the dimensions of a MacBook. At 15″
\nwide, 10″ high, and 3\/4″ deep, weighing less than 4.5 pounds, it’s
\ncloser to an airweight than a boat anchor. (That’s 38cm by 26cm by 2cm
\nand just under two kilos, for you nerds out there in civilized countries
\nthat use proper measurements.) And packed into this form factor is a
\n4.1GHz i7-8750H with six cores and 12 threads, 32 gigs of
\nDDR4 RAM at 2400MHz, a half-terabyte NVMe SSD, and\u2014Maestro, cue the
\ndrumroll\u2014an 8GB NVIDIA GTX 1070 with a 15.6″ 4K HiDPI display. This
\nthing makes the Mac Retinas look jagged, and that’s not something I ever
\nthought I’d say.<\/p>\n

The usual other things round it out. For video, it has HDMI and two
\nDisplayPort 1.3 outputs, two USB 3.1 Type-C connectors, two USB 3.0
\nType-A connectors (one of them powered), audio and mike jacks, gigabit
\nEthernet and 802.11ac WiFi up to 867Mbps. Oh yes, and Bluetooth. On
\nthe 17″ models, you also can get Thunderbolt 3, but this isn’t an option
\non my 15″ model. All of these are pretty much what you should expect on
\nany modern laptop, really.<\/p>\n

The keyboard is what the kids today call a chiclet, but it has absolutely
\nnothing in common with the chiclet keyboards I remember. People hated
\nthe IBM PCjr chiclet keyboard, but this one is as comfortable as any
\nlaptop keyboard I’ve ever used. The scissor switches are responsive, and
\nthe keyboard itself is nicely backlit by a rainbow of LED lights. It’s
\na very nearly full keyboard too, with a full-size numeric keypad. Some
\nbuttons are combined with others and accessed via function key-presses,
\nbut that’s to be expected. The keyboard gets high marks.<\/p>\n

Mouse support is provided via a trackpad with two buttons, which is one
\nof the very few mis-designs in the hardware. Although two-button mice
\nare better-understood by casual and business users, a lot of hard-core
\nLinux hackers like the third mouse button\u2014myself included. The screen
\nbezel is a little larger than I’m accustomed to seeing on a modern
\nlaptop, but if that’s the price I pay for this crisp 4K HiDPI display, I
\nconsider that affordable.<\/p>\n

There’s an integrated webcam that works well out of the box with Google
\nHangouts, Google Meet and Skype. I stopped testing it at that point
\nand reached for a piece of electrical tape to cover it, and while
\ncutting off a piece of tape, I realized the final mis-design. In 2018,
\nwhen we’re all so keenly aware of our privacy and how malware can hijack
\na webcam, all vendors should place sliding apertures over their webcams.
\nGetting video should never just be about turning it on in software.
\nThere also should be a physical action performed by the user involved\u2014something as simple as sliding away a cover.<\/p>\n

Bezel, no third mouse button, no webcam physical aperture\u2014if those are
\nmy only complaints about the hardware, I think System76 is doing a
\npretty good job.<\/p>\n

Software<\/h3>\n

The Pop!_OS is Ubuntu with a skin job, but it’s a pretty nice skin.
\nScratch the surface, and you can find standard GNOME underneath, which is
\nin my mind a positive thing\u2014all those skills you’ve developed on other
\ndistros will transfer over to Pop!_OS nicely. The app store takes
\nvisual inspiration from Apple’s, but it could stand some better curation.
\nClicking on the “Games” category gives you a nice list of them, but
\nthere’s no facility to read user reviews or choose what kind of games
\nyou’re interested in. Although graphically it’s heads and shoulders
\nbeyond the package tools of yesteryear, usability-wise it still
\ncould stand improvement. Given System76 has committed to making Pop!_OS a
\nfirst-class hacker distro, I suspect the app store experience is pretty
\nlow on the list of priorities\u2014but really, it would be such an easy
\nway to distinguish it from Ubuntu and its other derivatives.<\/p>\n

My biggest complaint with Pop!_OS is that it’s almost a dark theme but
\nisn’t. “Dark muddy” might be a better way to describe the color
\nscheme.<\/p>\n

Still, as mentioned earlier, it’s all GNOME under the hood, so you can
\ninstall whatever theme you’re accustomed to.<\/p>\n

As far as development tools, it seems to all be standard Ubuntu 18.04
\nrepositories, so I won’t rehash it except to say that it offers what you
\nexpect: GCC 7.3 and 8.0.1, GNAT, Golang, OpenJDK, Mono and the like.
\nThe Mono libraries are out of date (4.8, whereas the current is 5.12),
\nbut that’s on Ubuntu, not Pop!_OS.<\/p>\n

Sound and Video<\/h3>\n

Sound-wise, the Oryx Pro is a little bit of a letdown. There’s been so
\nmuch good stuff that describing the speakers as mediocre feels like a
\ncriticism. They’re not bad speakers, mind you, they’re just not going
\nto impress you much. It’s a laptop. It’s really, really hard to put
\ngood speakers in a laptop. I compromise with a USB headset and
\neverything’s great. I’ve also had fine results with a pair of external
\nUSB speakers.<\/p>\n

Video-wise, the Oryx Pro is a docile little lamb up until it turns into
\nthe Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and starts stomping New York flat. It
\nships with two different video chipsets: one an onboard low-power set by
\nIntel and the other the aforementioned NVIDIA GTX 1070 with 8GB RAM.
\nWhen you engage this monster, this machine stops being a laptop. I speak
\nfrom experience. An hour of it in my lap was enough to leave my left
\nthigh with first-degree burns. You’re aware it’s hot, but you tell
\nyourself that you can ignore it. Then you shut down an hour later, look
\nat your leg and wish you hadn’t ignored it. The price of machismo, I
\nguess.<\/p>\n

The Intel chipset is sufficient for pretty much anything short of
\nintensive 3D, 4K gaming or mining cryptocurrency. If you want to use
\nthe HDMI or DisplayPort external jacks, you’ll need to switch to the
\nNVIDIA chipset. Switching between chipsets requires a reboot and a
\nsurprisingly long wait. My suspicion is some firmware is getting flashed
\nsomewhere. By “surprisingly long wait”, I mean that I’ve seen it take up
\nto 20 seconds more to reboot on a chipset switch than to reboot
\nwithout a chipset switch.<\/p>\n

Battery Life<\/h3>\n

Power is supplied by a pretty standard brick that ends in the expected
\nbarrel plug. The trend nowadays is for laptops to be powered by USB-C
\nor Thunderbolt, but really, I don’t care much about that. What I care
\nabout is whether the vendor-supplied power cable is long enough to be
\nuseful, and there we’re on good ground. This contributes to the overall
\nweight, of course, which is why so many vendors are intent on giving you
\npower cables that aren’t long enough to let you be more than three feet
\nfrom a socket. System76 is having none of that: you’ve got about ten
\nfeet of distance to work with.<\/p>\n

According to System76, the Oryx Pro’s battery stores 55 watt-hours (~200
\nkilojoules) of energy. That’s the good news. The bad news is twofold:
\none, power draw is significantly higher than I’d expect, and two, the
\nonboard battery monitor is completely useless.<\/p>\n

I’ve been composing this article on my System76 laptop in battery-saver
\nmode. The screen is at minimum brightness, the graphics are being
\nprovided by the Intel chipset, and I’m avoiding anything that’s
\nespecially power-hungry. Still, after just 70 minutes, I’ve dropped from
\na 98% charge to a 60% charge\u2014assuming I can trust the battery
\nmonitor, which I really can’t. 70 minutes ago it told me I had
\n92 minutes of charge remaining; now it tells me I have two hours
\nand seven minutes.<\/p>\n

Whatever. The GNOME battery applet always has been painfully
\ninaccurate, in my experience, and that’s on GNOME, not System76.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I can tell you: running purely on battery on a power-saving
\nprofile and reducing my power-hungry apps, I’ve run this laptop for
\nthree and a half hours before going dry. That’s a significant step
\nbelow what Apple’s getting with its MacBook line. I hope System76
\ninvests in improving Linux and GNOME’s power infrastructure, because we
\ncan do better than this.<\/p>\n

Like other vendors, System76 has done away with the user-swappable
\nbattery pack. It used to be that if I need more battery life I could
\ncarry a spare battery, but apparently that ship has sailed.<\/p>\n

Are we done with this? Good. Hold on while I find a socket, I’m going
\nto go plug this in.<\/p>\n

Support<\/h3>\n

Here’s something that might surprise you: my laptop is defective.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s defective. That’s not unheard of in first-shipped units. Every
\nweek or so, it’ll spontaneously reboot due to a hardware fault. These
\nreboots are infrequent enough that it’s not severely impacting my work,
\nbut it still needs addressing, and that’s given me a good opportunity to
\nexplore System76’s support offerings.<\/p>\n

Let me give the bottom line first: they’re human beings and they care.
\nThat’s both good news and bad news. It’s good news, because human beings
\nwho care are so much better than all other alternatives that it’s like
\ncomparing a supernova to a firecracker. It’s bad news, because for
\nthings really to get screwed up, you need the involvement of people who
\nare so fervently committed to getting things right, they don’t notice
\nthey’re digging the hole deeper.<\/p>\n

I reported my first bout of reboots, along with a copy of my system log
\nfor 30 seconds prior to reboot, via the web page the afternoon of June
\n20th. A few minutes after noon the next day, System76 had approved a
\nno-questions-asked return. On June 22, a customer service rep named
\nAaron told me “We are shipping your replacement part and will provide
\nyou with a tracking number as soon as it is available.”<\/p>\n

Remember how earlier on when shipments were delayed they didn’t
\ninform me about it? Yeah, that happened again. On June 26th, I asked
\nthem, “Where is this laptop? I’ve received no tracking information for a
\nproduct you said was shipping four days ago.”<\/p>\n

About an hour later, Emma informed me, “The replacement laptop will take
\nsome time to ship, because we are out of stock and awaiting the 4k
\ndisplay, which is expected to arrive the week of July 10th. We are sorry
\nfor the delays. We were just notified about the delays and apologize for
\nthis inconvenience.”<\/p>\n

On June 22nd, I was told it was shipping, not “we will ship it as soon as
\nnew stock comes in”, but that it was shipping. Then, after it became clear
\nthere was a delay in new arrivals, they didn’t reach out to let me know.
\nInstead, I found out four days later that I wouldn’t be receiving my
\nreplacement for two weeks.<\/p>\n

I complained loudly. Carl, the head honcho at System76, responded to me
\ndirectly and politely. He took responsibility for the error. System76
\nassures me it has changed the response system so the company no longer
\nwill be sending “we are shipping” notifications ahead of, well, you know,
\nsystems actually shipping.<\/p>\n

Let me make it clear, I believe Carl. I also think Emma and Aaron and
\neveryone else I’ve interacted with are good people who genuinely want to
\ndeliver the best user experience possible. I don’t think my experience
\nwith System76 represents its character as a company, except insofar as it
\nrepresents a company going through growing pains as it adjusts to a
\nlevel of demand it wasn’t expecting.<\/p>\n

And really, for how sweet this hardware is, I completely understand the
\ncompany
\ngetting swamped.<\/p>\n

The final question is, “if I had the $2,704 to spend again, would I be
\nbetter served with an System76 Oryx Pro, a MacBook Pro or a Dell XPS?”
\nAnd on balance, even taking into account the support growing pains, I
\ncan say without a shadow of doubt, I would give my money to System76 again.<\/p>\n

And I’ll also still be pestering System76 to do better. Because once
\nthe support infrastructure is cleaned up, believe you me, System76 is
\ngoing to be giving everybody else in the Linux laptop space a run for
\ntheir money.<\/p>\n

The Takeaway<\/h3>\n

Pluses:<\/p>\n