If you’re a Linux user on the hunt for a new laptop, there’s quite a bit of preparation and research you must do on top of the regular research buying such an expensive piece of equipment already entails. Reading forum posts from other Linux users with the laptop you’re interested in, hunting for detailed specifications to make sure that specific chip version or that exact piece of exotic hardware is fully supported, checking to see if your favourite distribution has adequate support for it, and so on.
There is, however, another way. While vastly outnumbered, there are laptops sold with Linux preinstalled. Even some of the big manufacturers, such as Dell, sell laptops with Linux preinstalled, but often only on older models that have been out for a while, or while not fully supporting all hardware (the fingerprint reader and infrared camera on my XPS 13 were not supported by Linux, for instance). For the likes of Dell, Linux in the consumer space is an afterthought, a minor diversion, and it shows.
If you want the best possible out-of-the-box Linux experience, you’ll have to go to one of the smaller, more boutique Linux-only OEMs. One of the more prominent Linux OEMs is System76, who have been selling various laptops and desktops with Linux preinstalled for more than decade now. Recently, they launched their new ultraportable, the Lemur Pro, and they kindly loaned one to us for review.
Full disclosure: System76 sent us the laptop as a loan, and it will be returned to them after publication of this review. They did not read this review before publication, and placed zero restrictions on anything I could write about.
Specifications
The Lemur Pro configuration System76 sent to us comes in at $1492, and packs a 4C/8T 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10510U, with frequencies of 1.8 up to 4.9 GHz and 8MB Cache. It came with 16GB of RAM, of which 8 is soldered onto the motherboard, and 8 is seated in the single RAM expansion slot. Storage-wise, it is equipped with a 500GB SSD in one of its two user-accessible M.2 slots – a Samsung 970 Evo Plus.
The 14.1″ display has a resolution of 1920×1080 with a matte finish, with a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. The display is powered by the integrated GPU, and there’s no option for a discrete GPU. The battery is a 73 Wh unit, and is entirely user-replacable.
Bucking a trend in the industry, the Lemur Pro is reasonably equipped when it comes to ports: one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 2 port, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a MicroSD Card Reader, a full-size HDMI port, a barrel connector for the included charger (USB-C charging is also supported), a combined headphone/microphone jack, and the usual Kensington lock. The USB-C port can also be used as a display port with DisplayPort 1.2.
Hardware
The design of the Lemur Pro is unassuming, mostly black, and free of the kind of design frivolities other laptops tend to suffer from. There’s no RGB here, no flames painted on the lid to make it go faster, no screaming logos or gamer accents – just a black laptop with a System76 logo on the lid. That’s it.
It is incredibly light, weighing a mere 0.99 kg – for comparison, a MacBook Air weighs 1.29 kg, so the Lemur Pro is considerably lighter. This does come at a price, however, and the Lemur Pro just doesn’t feel as strong and sturdy as similar laptops with a bit more heft to it. There’s an amount of flex in the display lid, bottom cover, and keyboard cover that you just won’t see in a MacBook Air or an XPS 13. It’s a trade-off you have to make – if you really value the extreme kind of portability the Lemur Pro provides, it means giving in somewhere else.
I’m disappointed System76 does not provide a high refresh rate display on the Lemur Pro, in the very least as an option. Once you’ve gotten used to 144Hz (or even higher) on your computer displays, using a 60Hz display feels like a major step back. I understand the battery life concerns, but I’m definitely more than willing to give up a little bit of battery life if it meant a buttery-smooth 144Hz UI. Aside from the lack of a high refresh rate option, the display is excellent – it’s bright and the colours look normal, but note that I’m not a colour expert, so I can’t make any claims about colour accuracy. For my general use, however, I didn’t run into any issues.
Speaking of battery life – this is one of the major strong points of the Lemur Pro. System76 advertises a maximum battery life of 14 hours, and while these kind of figures are usually complete nonsense, I think they’re not far off the mark here. Since we do not (yet) have a long history of laptop reviews, we do not have any consistent methodology for measuring battery life, so anything I say here is very subjective and difficult for you as a reader to parse. That being said, with casual use – meaning, browsing, writing, Twitter and e-mailing while watching YouTube videos – I could definitely hit the 10 hour mark at the balanced power setting.
Switching to the power saver setting yielded me even more hours of battery life, but it did cause a notable hit in performance, especially for video. Simple 1080p YouTube video – either played in Firefox or locally – would stutter and lag, but everything else seemed to perform just fine. My guess is that the power saver setting targets the integrated Intel GPU quite aggressively, but honestly, for several hours of additional battery life, I think it’s worth it.
The battery life is especially remarkable since getting proper battery life out of laptops designed for Windows running Linux is often a major hassle, and no matter what you do, Linux battery life on laptops not designed for Linux always lags behind Windows – which makes sense when you think about it. Opting for a Linux-first laptop demonstrates that when hardware, software, and firmware (which we’ll get to in a minute) are designed together, Linux laptops can easily have similar or better battery life than Windows or macOS laptops.
The Lemur Pro has a multitouch trackpad that is entirely unremarkable in its operation. It works fine, but doesn’t come anywhere close to the quality of MacBook trackpads or the trackpad on my XPS 13. It’s not bad – just very average and middle-of-the-road. The trackpad surface has a bit too much resistance for my tastes, and since it has a ‘diving board’ design physically hinged at the top, it gets progressively harder to click the higher your finger goes, and at the top rim it becomes entirely impossible to click at all. I would prefer the type of trackpad that you can click anywhere.
The keyboard is solid, has a good feel, and nice clickiness without being annoyingly loud or overbearing. Due to the mentioned flex in the keyboard cover, keys in the middle of the keyboard do flex downwards a bit for those among you with a more forceful stroke. The only true issue with the keyboard is the placement of the page up and down keys right above the left and right arrow keys, which is something not everyone likes. I’ve gotten used to this layout because my XPS 13 uses it as well, but for the first few weeks, you will definitely hit page up and down instead of the left and right arrows.
Two other points about the keyboard: first, there’s no Fn lock. This can be annoying since things like display brightness, volume, and keyboard lighting/brightness are all adjusted using Fn+Fx. Since I – and many others with me – don’t use the actual Fx keys all that often, but do adjust brightness and volume all day long, an Fn lock would be greatly appreciated.
Two, and this is a minor nitpick but one that bothers me nonetheless: the keyboard lighting is not automatic. On my XPS 13, when you move the mouse, click, or strike a key, the keyboard lighting comes on automatically (you can turn this feature off, too), and after a few seconds of inactivity, it gradually turns off, too. This is a great feature if you often use your laptop in dark environments to watch video, like I do. On the Lemur Pro, you constantly have to manually turn the keyboard lighting on and off using the Fn+Fx keys, which is just plain annoying.
There’s a 720p webcam included in the top bezel of the display, and as with all other webcams in laptops, it’s barely passable. It technically gets the job of displaying video done, but for some reason no laptop manufacturer seems even remotely interested in including webcams from later than 2004, so we’re stuck with what we have. If you rely on webcams for your job – as many have discovered this year they might – get an external quality webcam instead. As said, though, this applies to all laptops on the market today.
The included charging brick connects to the laptop using a barrel plug, which is an odd choice for such a modern laptop, especially taking into consideration it also supports charging over USB-C. I’ve had bad experiences with barrel plugs over the years regarding longevity, and since this is an ultraportable in 2020, it should’ve come with a USB-C charger and an additional USB-C/A port instead of the barrel connector.
A minor annoyance with the included charging brick is that the fixed cable with the brick on one end and the barrel connector on the other is incredibly short. It’s only about 67 cm long, meaning you always have to keep the brick on your desk, or when using the laptop on your lap, next to you on the couch. If you’re using the charger at a busy airport or whatever with no room to place the brick on the chair next to you – good luck, you’ll have to stick it between your legs or stuff it between your leg and the person sitting next to you.
In short, get a third-party USB-C charger with a longer cable.
A few notes on performance and thermals
If you’re in the market for an ultraportable machine like the Lemur Pro, you’re not going to use it for gaming or heavy video editing, since that’s simply not what it’s designed for. If you want a gaming laptop or a video editing workstation, you simply won’t be considering a laptop like this – you’ll be looking at laptops with discrete GPUs and processors with more cores.
The truth is that every ultraportable in this segment equipped with the latest Intel or AMD mobile processors will perform great, and the Lemur Pro is no exception. With the 10th Gen Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and the Samsung Evo M.2 SSD, this machine never slows down, and I’m pretty sure the same will apply for the slightly cheaper Core i5 model. You can spec the Lemur Pro up all the way to 40GB of RAM, so even if you have to run a bunch of local virtual machines to test your code, this laptop can serve you.
The Lemur Pro’s thermal solution leaves something to be desired, and I’m not sure if that’s because of software or hardware. It uses a single fan, and I have an issue where while watching video, every minute or so, the fan will spin up, spin for roughly 10 seconds, and then spin down. Now, I really don’t like fan noise and can be quite anal about, but I still feel like during such light use as a bit of browsing or a bit of video watching – nothing crazy, no 4K or anything – the fans should simply never spin up unless something is wrong.
The laptop tends to get relatively hot during such light use, and I feel this might be because the only ventilation openings are inside the hinge – there are no vents on the bottom or sides of the laptop for the fan to draw cold air from. What I think is happening in my case is that the temperature keeps just barely hitting the fan threshold, after which a few seconds of the fan spinning brings it back down just enough – rinse, repeat. This is nothing less sensitive thermal thresholds or a mild undervolt couldn’t solve, but I’m obviously not going to experiment with a laptop that’s only on loan.
That being said, not everyone cares as much about fan noise or temperature as I do, so your mileage may vary. If you mostly use your laptop in noisier settings like coffee shops or busy offices, a fan spinning up for a bit won’t be an issue for you, and the fan isn’t excessively loud either.
Software and firmware
The Lemur Pro comes preinstalled with System76’s own Pop!_OS, which is a fairly standard Ubuntu derivative with some tweaking done to the kernel and power management to make things like the great battery life possible. Since I feel most OSNews readers have their own favourite distributions, and because this is a laptop review, I’m not going to spend too much time on Pop!_OS.
It does seem you can add System76’s own PPA to other Ubuntu-based distributions to gain some of the benefits of System76’s drivers and kernel changes, and of course, you can look at their code and implement it on your own distribution of choice too if you have the skills to do so. You’re not tied to Pop!_OS (or Linux, for that matter) at all, and can run whatever distribution you want.
What I do want to talk about, however, is the firmware of this machine. Like other System76 machines, the Lemur Pro uses a combination of coreboot and System76’s own firmware tools as a BIOS/UEFI environment, as well as System76’s controller firmware for various other functions, which are all entirely open source and available on Github.
This means that there’s a lot more low-level open source code powering this laptop than most other laptops on the market. If you know how to program controller firmware or how to work with things like coreboot, you can pull the code from Github, make any changes you desire, and flash your own firmware onto the laptop. This isn’t something most average consumers – including myself – have the skills to do, but it does mean that it’s highly unlikely there’s anything nefarious hiding in the BIOS or firmware. Add to that the fact that all System76 laptops ship with Intel’s Management Engine disabled, and the Lemur Pro gives you lot more privacy and hacking options than most other laptops on the market.
There are also benefits for average users, however. For instance, thanks to the relatively lightweight nature of the System76’s BIOS replacement, this machine boots incredibly fast. Furthermore, the controller firmware, which controls things like battery management, thermals, the fan, special functions keys, and a host of other functions, plays a big role in achieving the excellent battery life figures this laptop achieves.
Still, there’s clearly a major missed opportunity here, something that might even be in the pipeline for all I know. Since System76 is using its own controller firmware for thermals, the battery, and fan control, the next step would be to integrate control over these into Pop!_OS itself, with an easy-to-use graphical interface to control fan speeds, thermal thresholds, power savings, processor frequencies, and so on. This is a major weak point in Linux compared to Windows, and System76 has a prime opportunity here to further set their computers apart from the rest.
In fact, with fine-grained control over the fans and thermal thresholds, I could probably pinpoint and smooth out my fan issue within a few minutes, setting up fan curves and thresholds specifically tailored for my use case – something I do manually in the BIOS of my two Linux desktops (but sadly not in Linux itself).
As a whole though, it’s an almost surreal experience to see such integration on the open source front. Not only was it an interesting experience to unbox a brand new laptop and have it boot straight to Linux, realising so many usually proprietary bits were open source just felt right. This kind of integration and low-level firmware stuff isn’t exactly sexy, and I find it commendable that System76 is investing in it. I hope they – and us, as users – will reap more benefits in the future.
All-rounder
After a few weeks of using the Lemur Pro, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t really fail at anything, and has a few standout features – most notably the excellent battery life and the open source firmware. If you’re a Linux user looking for a powerful, understated ultraportable with amazing battery life, I honestly don’t know where you can do better than the Lemur Pro.
The situation changes a bit if you’re currently a Windows or macOS user and are looking for a new laptop. While the Lemur Pro is still a great laptop and you’ll enjoy using it, it can’t quite measure up to the best the Windows and macOS platforms have to offer in a few key areas. The trackpad is good, but not great – there’s better ones on similarly priced Dells or Macs. The display is good, but there’s no high refresh rate or 1440p/4K option as Windows PCs offer. The build quality is good, but it’s definitely not on the same level as an XPS or MacBook.
It basically is a good all-rounder for non-Linux users, but an unequalled option for Linux users.
That being said, if you had told me even just 5 or 10 years ago that we’d get a Linux-only laptop that was this good out of the box right now, I would not have believed you. There’s room for improvement, but there’s no denying this is simply a really solid offering.
Thom Holwerda,
I’m not sure if you still have it, or if someone from system76 could reply, but I’d be curious if the sensors read under linux.
> install “lm-sensors”
> configure by running “sensors-detect”
> dump output of “sensors”
> test pwmcontrol / fancontrol
On my computer it displays the usual ACPI & coretemp, but none of my gigabyte motherboard’s temperature & fan speed/controls are available. Consequently I can’t monitor/control anything on the motherboard under linux, which is disappointing. It’s not significant enough for me to replace it, but I would tell my earlier self to buy a motherboard with a different controller.
While I like System76 laptops – ram soldered to mainboard is crap. If something will happen with this ram module (and that happens), then a whole motherboard is lost (unless you can desolder it out and then solder in – and that is rare skill).
System76 – please, don`t go that road.
Jim Raynor,
It may just apply to the Lemur model, which is smaller and thinner than the other models.
https://system76.com/laptops
The Lemur says “Up to 40 GB DDR4” whereas the other models say “Up to 64 GB Dual Channel DDR4”, which probably means you can replace the RAM in pairs.
Keep in mind slots/sockets have reliability issues of their own – they can suffer mechanical failure and other stresses, when your memory modules are fine. (One big example of this was very early Apple 2s, where the RAM sockets would lose connection.)
It’s not like this is some new thing either. The “golden age” of ThinkPads, lauded for serviceability, often had soldered RAM – my 701 and X40 are that way.
Then you have awesomeness like the Thinkpad 770, where not only is the RAM not soldered in, but the CPU is on an module you can pluck out and upgrade. Granted, much like many other laptops, it’s an effort to get that thing into enough pieces to do that… Then again, that’s a pre-Lenovo one, and it’s built like a tank.
Fun fact, the Thinkpads are the only ones certified to be used on the International Space Station (learned that with the recent launch as I watched an older video tour of the place).
System76 simply repackages Clevo reference design laptops with different software and firmware, they have no control over the hardware. Soldered-on memory is a pain, but how else are those Clevo guys going to make the laptop thinner? (apparently a major market ask)
Anyway, hardware is much more reliable now than it was, so unless you do something silly like trying to overclock the laptop, you should be fine, provided of course that you bought all the memory (main and storage) you ‘d ever want, because there will be no upgrades.
That’s not the case. I copy/paste the reddit comment available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/8uhfpo/why_buy_system76_or_other_mark_instead_of_clevo/
This is System76’s response regarding that matter:
“System76 web developer here!
This vastly trivializes the work System76 does for months and sometimes years leading up to a product release. We don’t simply take an off-the-shelf product that already exists, throw an OS on it, and sell it.
System76 works with upstream manufacturers (like, yes, Sager and Clevo for laptops) to determine what types of products to develop, including their specifications, design, etc. for months up to a release. These products do not exist before we enter into these conversations.
Once that has been determined, designed, and goes into production, we start on firmware. We ensure all components are working together and with the Linux kernel (often requiring changes to the components’ low level interactions with the OS, since the upstream components themselves are often manufactured with the assumption they will be used by Windows).
Once that is complete, we test with Ubuntu specifically, ensuring the OS is working perfectly with the hardware. If there are any OS-specific changes to be done, we write that behavior into our “driver” which is preloaded on all machines, with the intent to upstream that into Ubuntu and/or Linux itself as quickly as possible. When this is more generic like ensuring HiDPI works great out of the box, this actually ends up benefiting competitors like Dell’s XPS 13 probably as much as it benefits us, but we put in the effort to file the bugs, track them, write the code, and get it upstreamed.
Once all of that is complete, we finally offer it for purchase and market it with all of our pretty photographs, sales pages, etc.
What ends up happening, then, is that Sager and/or Clevo offer a machine with a similar-looking chassis for sale as a barebones laptop. This is the result partially of the decision making System76 has made for what to produce in the first place. These products, however, do not contain any of the firmware or driver work that System76 has invested in. They do benefit from the nice photography and advertising System76 has done, and since they look similar, people assume they’re going to get the same machine for cheaper “directly from the manufacturer.””
I mentioned System76 puts different software and firmware on their laptops, but wasn’t aware they do so much work though on them, so thanks for the info. When it comes to hardware, companies like Clevo will let you make some minor tweaks to the design, and they have plenty of designs to choose from anyway, but they won’t let System76 change fundamentals like motherboard design which requires a ton of money in R&D, hence System76 can’t change things like soldered-on RAM chips in their thin-and-light laptops.
How are the battery *durability* settings? That is, setting upper and lower charging limits so that the battery’s charging capacity degrades less.
emphyrio,
For anyone curious, on android if you have a rooted device you can stop the automatic charging via /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charging_enabled
An application like “battery charge limit” on fdroid can make use of it to limit max charge.
https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/set-charging-limit-your-android-device-avoid-excess-battery-wear-0176280/
I’ve never tried this on a laptop, but I’d also be curious if this works!
Lenovo’s laptops’ battery have this feature in their firmware, though in linux you have to dig a little to expose it and you have to live with any battery indicator eternally saying that the battery is charging , even though it is not.
Glad to see System76 kicking around, my next laptop will be a System76, used with a separately-purchased Windows license at first. With Microsoft killing off technologies without flinching an eye and breaking their flagship product (Windows) every 6 months as if it’s no big deal (despite some people having to work on it), I need to have a way out even if that way out is Desktop Linux.
Here are the technologies Microsoft has killed in a very short while:
– Windows Mobile (Embedded Handheld): Killed without upgrade path beyond re-writing your applications for Windows IoT
– Windows CE (Embedded Compact): To be killed without upgraded path beyond re-writing your applications for Windows IoT
– SecDrv,sys – Killed, making purchased games in physical form unusable without a crack
– Windows Media Center – EPG has already been killed, to be killed off completely in 2023 without an upgrade path
These weren’t hipster nonsense like KIN, Zune or Windows Phone that nobody cared about, these were platforms with a rich ecosystem and sometimes unique. I simpy don’t trust Microsoft to support win32 in the future, and them being tight-lipped about the compatibility situation in Windows 10X is a worrying sign. Wouldn’t be surprised if they keep the promised win32 compatibility to a minimum required to run Photoshop and such, and maybe even only for signed apps. So it would simply be a bad choice to not have Desktop Linux as an officially supported option on new hardware, just in case.
My current laptops will stay on Windows 8.,1 forever, because Nvidia 3D Vision display…
It’s weird you can stretch things ridiculously far based on a number of market failures that were never part of the core Windows product. Outside of the special Windows media center edition, none of these products can be expected to be maintained after being a total market failure, nor were they ever things that shipped with Windows thus requiring maintaining compatibility. As for Windows Media Center itself, definitely killed by an endless stream of alternatives like Netflix, Roku, TiVo, etc. Investing in failed products may suck, but get over it. Microsoft isn’t Apple and won’t ever do things like strip Win32 or OpenGL out.
Nice review, thank you very much.
My next desktop and laptops will be System76 since I’m jumping ship from macOS and Windows, though I might partition or install windows on a separate disk and manually boot to it every once in a while for the random need though.
The firmware does have me sold, that is absolutely the right approach.
Yes, nice review: enough info for me to get a good idea about whether to consider System76 in the future, and it’s refreshing to have something slightly different to read here as well.
There’s a pretty detailed review of Pop!_OS in this month’s Linux Format, and since the review here explicitly doesn’t cover it, here’s their conclusion:
This is a nice review of a nice little. portable.
But, see if you can get to review a Monster AMD Laptop like:
Like the SERVAL Ryzen 5, and Nvidia RTX 2070.
Base Price $1,223.00
Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS (64-bit) with full disk-encryption
1× 8 GB GDDR6 $100 Off $349 RTX 2070 w/ 2304 CUDA Cores $249.00
1× 4.4 GHz Ryzen 7 3700X (3.6 up to 4.4 GHz – 8 Cores – 16 Threads) $185.00
1× 64 GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 3200 MHz (2x 32GB) $535.00
1× 2 TB NVMe Seq Read: 3,500 MB/s, Seq Write: 3,300 MB/s Orders shipping early July $665.00
No Additional M.2 NVMe
4 TB SSD Seq. Read: 550 MB/s, Write: 520 MB/s $879.00
3 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty $225.00
Product total: $3,961.00
And compare that to a MacBook. Pro, etc.
That would be an interesting comparison.
Or, request a completely Maxed SERVAL.
My current laptop is also a ‘designed for Linux’ machine and I’m happy with it. It’s not from System76 but from a company in Germany that also disabled the Intel ME. It came pre-installed with Ubuntu and has some PPAs from them. It also has their own BIOS/firmware.