Oryx Pro is the first System76 laptop with Coreboot, Open Controller Firmware and NVIDIA

Waiting for AMD based laptop with Coreboot.

Wow that's some serious spec! Wonder what price we're looking at here.

Also, if there are any Norwegian distributors for it.

I will take Coreboot over a fully closed source BIOS but the fact they rely on closed source blobs to make it work still angers me any time they want to slap the open source tag on it. The same can be said for many things, the Linux kernel included. It's all open source ! Except for the parts that aren't....... Just sad what we have had to settle for due to hardware manufacturers.

Quoting: BeamboomWow that's some serious spec! Wonder what price we're looking at here.

Base price is a little over $1600 USD. Also, upgrades are reasonable. It has been a LONG time since I looked at buying a laptop new, but that seems pretty good to me.

While I'm all happy with Nvidia personally, "Coreboot, Open Controller Firmware and NVIDIA" sounds like a strange combination. Who's eager on having even their BIOS open (all fine with that, don't get me wrong) and still wants their GPU drivers closed?

Sadly, what I need is a good lightweight compact and *portable* 10" netbook as my current "Samsung N308" has become really outdated.
And as for a "Beast of a PC", my current desktop serves me well, thank you very much.

Quoting: Alm888Sadly, what I need is a good lightweight compact and *portable* 10" netbook as my current "Samsung N308" has become really outdated.
And as for a "Beast of a PC", my current desktop serves me well, thank you very much.

Sadly there are only detachables left in the 10" category. I once had a Dell Netbook, even switched the HDD with an SSD and upgraded its RAM to 2 GiB. But the CPU (Atom N450) was just too slow even for web browsing (although the trend to responsive web design effected readability enormously on the 1024x600 display).

I bought a refurbished Thinkpad A285 some time ago. It's a bit wider and longer but only half as thick and weighs nearly the same, so portability is okay for me. And is has more than enough oomph.

I really don't like price and warranty. I mean, in Europe all laptops come with 2 year warranty, but here I have to pay extra money for that. And because service centres are not in my country, I believe, I would have to send them back laptop and wait a long time before I will get it back. That's really not looking good for that price


Last edited by DMG on 25 June 2020 at 8:23 pm UTC

I'm still waiting for a AMD 4000 series laptop.

Most people are waiting for an AMD GPU. But this one is a nice machine. Nice to seem them finally giving a compact gaming machine without sacrificing specs (the previous Oryx Pro was bigger than this). Also, good to see the battery bumped to 73Wh. I wonder how long this one lasts, though with an 8 core H series CPU I don't expect it to last much.

Well, that's going on my List of Toys I don't Need but Really Wish I had Anyway. Sigh, if only I had a few more children I could sell for medical experiments ...

As mentioned in the "actual specs" in the article... The Nvidia GPU hilariously cannot be accessed in Windows. System76 has informed me that this is being actively looked into as many of System76's customers are interested into dual booting on hardware like this.

I've also found other issues with Windows on a different Sys76 laptop we have. We're unable to adjust the screen brightness, and more often than not, Windows will not recognize the laptop even has a battery (and just assumes the laptop is plugged in). It's possible there is some other functionality broken in Windows that we haven't caught yet. I've asked as to whether these issues are also present in the latest Oryx Pro. They've informed that they're looking into it, and will get back to me.

I've noticed that under the Windows device manager there are 2 unknown devices. I'm unsure what one of them is, but the other is something like "ACPI1776" (I'm going from memory, but something quite close to that).

Seems System76 has their own ACPI implementation in their custom BIOS/UEFI implementation:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=System76-ACPI-Driver-Linux-5.5

I am bringing these issues up so people are aware that there *might* be other issues on Sys76's Coreboot enabled laptops.

I love System76's tier 1 support for Linux. I've been buying my laptops from them exclusively since 2009, because I know they will just work, and I don't need to invest massive amounts of time researching whether or not the model of laptop I'm interested in will be compatible with my primary OS (I'm a father and generally work so I don't have a lot of free time).

But while I'm in Linux the vast majority of the time, I do like to game here and there (and this is something that's improving in Linux, but still has a ways to go)... So I hope System76 gives some sort of official update as to what their plans are here. If they announce that they will definitely be addressing the issues that prevent dual boot from being fully functional, I'll pull the trigger as I'm very much in the market for a new laptop right now.

Quoting: Alm888...

I love your avatar! I still occasionally go back and play that game.

Decided to do a little searching this morning on the off chance I might find something on the Nvidia+Windows issue on this new Oryx Pro and came across this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/hfuulp/new_system_76_oryx_pro_model_is_out/fw3uyp0/?context=3

Looks like this guy is the principle of Sys76. No idea if the firmware update is even available yet, but even if it's not, I think this pretty much confirms that at the very least a fix is inbound!

And again we have an Intel/NVIDIA combo from them. They are doing great things, but I want an AMD/AMD laptop. With hardware kill switches. And open firmwware. So if System76 can partner with Purism on that project I would buy one. In 1080P of course, there's no point to a 4K laptop with a screen that small.

Quoting: jarhead_hAnd again we have an Intel/NVIDIA combo from them. They are doing great things, but I want an AMD/AMD laptop. With hardware kill switches. And open firmwware. So if System76 can partner with Purism on that project I would buy one. In 1080P of course, there's no point to a 4K laptop with a screen that small.

This is why:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-will-continue-to-dominate-the-premium-gaming-laptop-market-Frank-Azor-confirms-no-Ryzen-4000-and-RTX-2070-or-RTX-2080-laptops-anytime-soon.462278.0.html

Maybe once System76 starts making their own laptops and there is increased demand by laptop vendors in general (I don't think System76 alone would be able to provide enough of an impetus for such hardware to be produced).

I'm a big fan of the hardware kill switches myself, and I've suggested they do these things in some of my interactions with them.

We'll probably get there eventually on all of these points, but not for at least a little while yet...

I don't get the point of 4k screens on gaming laptops... Laptop hardware isn't that great for pushing 4k. 1440p, on the other hand, makes a lot more sense I think, and is something I would buy.

On another note, it looks like not only is the Nvidia+Windows issue definitely fixed, but the battery/screen brightness issues I was concerned about were never there on model of Oryx Pro according to the same Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/hfuulp/new_system_76_oryx_pro_model_is_out/fw3uyp0/?context=3

Additionally, looks like a fix for the battery/brightness issues on the Darter Pro are going to be as well!