System76 releases the Kudu featuring AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX

Realy? No radeon card option !

Also not the prettiest design of lappy. Daft price tag to boot

I'll just skip the screen res as thats just a joke today, Hell my 200 quid phone has better than that!

Love S76 laptops, own two, but these days, I scan the specs, see a 16:9 aspect ratio, and move on to the next story....

Especially with the Framework laptop out there whispering sweet nothings to me with its perfect 3000x2000 3:2 display, near 10 hr battery life, and Linux friendly disposition, I'm trying to hold out for S76 to give me a 3:2 or 16:10 screen and 10 hr battery life. I'm happy to forgo the modularity, but I can't hold out forever!

Nvidia ONLY once again! So i'll skip this one and will definitely not even recommend.

Sorry but i'm not sorry for saying this

I'd been waiting and hoping for an all-AMD or even Intel CPU + AMD dGPU option from System76; there aren't a lot of options out there for laptops with Radeon dGPUs. I ended up going for one of the Asus ROG Strix 'AMD Advantage' laptops (same 5900HX CPU paired with a 12GB (!) RX 6800M instead), and while it's not perfect (the USB-C -> DisplayPort adapter I have doesn't seem to work under Wayland, but the HDMI port is fine), with an up-to-date system it works well enough for my needs, and no dealing with nVidia's binary blob drivers. Just the latest Mesa + kernel (5.17-rc2 as of writing). No hardware MUX though, and a whole lot of adding 'DRI_PRIME=1' to shortcuts to force the dGPU.

That said, 2.5Gbps Ethernet as standard on this is interesting, as well as having essentially two DP outputs - I wonder if it supports MST for daisy-chaining displays off that USB-C? i.e., could you set up your dual-external-monitor setup on a docking station and run everything through that USB-C port?

Also, big fan of having the full numpad on there - that's one thing I miss on this Asus laptop. I don't even mind that the whole thing looks a heck of a lot chunkier.

Hopefully this leads to a future all-AMD option from them!

I don't understand gaming laptops. They are a -lot- more expensive than a comparable desktop PC, while still limited to a small screen and small keyboard. And yet they're so heavy that they can't really be considered a mobile device.

Seems to be the worst of both worlds to me. I don't do business trips anymore, but even for these I'd just stick to a lightweight business laptop, plus a Switch or Deck for the quick game while waiting at the airport.

Nice to see some Ryzen love, but no Radeon card is a miss for me. Though just dropping the NVidia and using the onboard graphics would be OK with me for most purposes anyway.

Plus until System76 offer UK keyboards I'll never buy one anyway (I've typed on them my whole life, you're not getting me to change at this point).


Last edited by kemra102 on 1 February 2022 at 6:16 pm UTC

Realy? No radeon card option !

Also not the prettiest design of lappy. Daft price tag to boot

I'll just skip the screen res as thats just a joke today, Hell my 200 quid phone has better than that!

1) I agree. Seems silly that it is so hard to get an AMD laptop that has both the APU and GPU be Radeon... I just find it odd...
2) Yeah, that is one FAT laptop... even my thick Thinkpad P52 looks more stylish... I haven't looked at the price, afraid to.
3) The resolution... I'm kind of on the fence about. On the one had, I have a 15.6" screen that is 4k. Problem is, not all applications really support some scaling, so they look shit next to other applications. 1080 is probably the appropriate resolution for a gaming laptop and for UI elements to all look consistent. Though most I think is for performance...

Phones can have that resolution because... why not? But I bet most people don't run them at the high resolution as it eats battery.

The lack of Coreboot and my dislike of Nvidia GPUs means this is a pass for me. If I were to get a System76 laptop at the moment I would go with the Galaga Pro.

What are with all these AMD CPU/Nvidia GPU laptops?
There are so few laptops with dedicated AMD GPUs

Phones can have that resolution because... why not? But I bet most people don't run them at the high resolution as it eats battery.

Can't say I've come across a phone thats not using the default res of the screen they have nor a way to change it to be honest.

Realy? No radeon card option !

worse is that the new all AMD laptops coming out have a firmware MUX switch to change between RDNA on mobile and Dedicated on power

Also not the prettiest design of lappy. Daft price tag to boot

All hardware is expensive now. And worse still, we are potentially moving away from traditional 'MSRP' and more to a 'Bill Of Materials' market where prices of everything will fluctuate wilder than bitcoin. This could drive hardware to even more insane levels as there is no 'price reference point' and even make the move to cloud gaming become a thing even though nobody even wants it.

I'll just skip the screen res as thats just a joke today, Hell my 200 quid phone has better than that!

When you take into account PPI (no not payment protection insurance). A 31.5" 4k monitor has 140PPI and a 15.6" has 141 PPI. You could argue easily that a large screen with higher resolution has more effective work space and that is true. But on a phone i doubt lot of spreadsheets are being worked on. PPI is kind of important, if you get a high resolution screen and actually want to be able to see things you need scaling which although makes the text clearer it drops the effective space back down to 1080p (unless its 4k and then you can drop to 1440p on a large enough screen.

140PPI at laptop viewing distances is not retina standard but it's decent enough and less demanding on games. Besides with a chunky discreet GPU you can add an external monitor with higher resolution. That said, i don't want a laptop with a 16:9 display, i will only buy one with a 16:10 from now on

.. each to their own i guess.

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy. Mind you, I hate their drivers and am very well aware of their still continued anti-competitive practices but again I struggle to justify the costs of a worse GPU. Unless AMDs drivers for their graphics cards (open source ones of course) improve the performance in my games so much over my 2070 Super, I don't understand the insistence on AMD only.

A brief aside, when did 16:9 stop being a desirable screen ratio? 1920x1080 is usually all I need for what I play/work on, on a given day. And as a resolution target it's quite easy to hit high framerates with alongside not taking a ton of rendering power to accomplish at those high refresh rates/fps. Now I did see something about the price relative to the specs so I totally understand if the screen is related to that. I just feel like the moving target has moved, and I didn't see it move so I'm curious why.

What are with all these AMD CPU/Nvidia GPU laptops?
There are so few laptops with dedicated AMD GPUs

Recently I knew I wanted an all AMD laptop and finding one for Linux was near impossible. Even for Windows this was difficult to find. I ended up with a Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1.

Surprisingly, I was able to get everything to work, including the fingerprint reader, except one minor thing. When I put it into tablet mode, I'm not seeing any event for it to trigger tablet mode. Minor issue as I can just toggle the virtual keyboard from the tray and the physical keyboard turns off at the hardware level.

So far this is a great laptop and I'm just waiting on pstate to be merged into kernel 5.17 so I can get better power management.


Last edited by KohlyKohl on 1 February 2022 at 8:19 pm UTC

A brief aside, when did 16:9 stop being a desirable screen ratio?

It was never a desirable ratio for computer displays. It was a good enough compromise between 4:3 and cinema ratios for TVs. Widescreen monitors were 16:10, but 16:9 panels got cheaper to make because of the massive economies of scale of TV panel production, which got monitor manufacturers more profit, so they started putting out 16:9 monitors even though 16:9 is too short for normal computer use.

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy.

At all price points?
I feel like if it's that cut and dried, shouldn't AMD have been forced to drop their GPU business long ago?

Maybe AMD just don't make cards that are good for laptops? Because one can certainly get desktop computers with AMD graphics cards, yes? I mean, I have one, it must be possible. And it's well known that AMD graphics cards are popular among the Linux community. Which implies, again from a pragmatic perspective, that if you are a company like System76 making computers preloaded with Linux for use by Linux users, that you could sell many units of a laptop set up with the brand of card that your market tend to want.
Something must be stopping all these computers-for-Linux companies from selling what their target market want to buy, and I really find myself wondering what. I don't think it can be that they think NVidia cards are just better--if their buyers disagree, one would think they'd follow the money and give the buyers what they want. I figure it must be either that there just aren't any AMD cards that are workable in laptops, or they're not really making laptops from scratch but rather kind of rebranding and tweaking laptops from some manufacturer that doesn't make their stuff for Linux particularly, and it's the broader industry that isn't making laptops with AMD GPUs.

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy. Mind you, I hate their drivers and am very well aware of their still continued anti-competitive practices but again I struggle to justify the costs of a worse GPU. Unless AMDs drivers for their graphics cards (open source ones of course) improve the performance in my games so much over my 2070 Super, I don't understand the insistence on AMD only.

The insistence on all AMD comes from the fact that performance isn't the only thing to be concerned about. nVidia GPUs may be faster but the difference in performance does not justify the shortcomings in other areas like external displays, which so far is rubbish on nVidia gaming laptops.

A brief aside, when did 16:9 stop being a desirable screen ratio? ... I just feel like the moving target has moved, and I didn't see it move so I'm curious why.

@Catkiller above has some of the financial reasons for why the 16:9 move happened, but there's more to it as well. 3:2 has a lot more vertical space which gives you many more rows of text, numbers, spreadsheet rows, website vertical viewing, etc. Earlier laptops were closer to 3:2 for productivity, and 16:9 only roared onto the scene given the economic advantages plus the public prioritization of video watching as being paramount.

Personally, excepting my S76 laptops (used more for gaming and with our Wacom tablet), I've been on exclusively 3:2 laptops for work for the last several years since the '15 Pixel Chromebook in 3:2 and I'm never going back. My professional software is oriented towards the vertical space, and 3:2 is a huge advantage there. I can see in one page what coworkers are constantly scrolling to view. Every time I go to a 16:9 laptop, I feel like I'm squinting.

Lots has been written online about this as well. You didn't miss the big shift, as it hasn't been that big, and it's only been in the last, say, year that 16:10 and 3:2 have been coming back (excepting the Surface laptops and some Huaweis, which have been 3:2 for years). The latest models of a few makers (Asus, Thinkpads, HP, LG, Framework, etc) have had 16:10 and 3:2 display options. Like most passionate minorities, vertical space fans are vocal online :).

However, what I would say has changed for what's sometimes called the hypercompetitive ultraportable, or Dell XPS13 class, laptop market, is given the proliferation of more vertical screens and solid 9-10 hr battery lives (or about 15 with the Apple laptops) if you're not hitting those specs you're somewhat seen as being behind...


Last edited by iiari on 2 February 2022 at 4:09 am UTC

A brief aside, when did 16:9 stop being a desirable screen ratio? ... I just feel like the moving target has moved, and I didn't see it move so I'm curious why.

@Catkiller above has some of the financial reasons for why the 16:9 move happened, but there's more to it as well. 3:2 has a lot more vertical space which gives you many more rows of text, numbers, spreadsheet rows, website vertical viewing, etc. Earlier laptops were closer to 3:2 for productivity, and 16:9 only roared onto the scene given the economic advantages plus the public prioritization of video watching as being paramount.

Personally, excepting my S76 laptops (used more for gaming and with our Wacom tablet), I've been on exclusively 3:2 laptops for work for the last several years since the '15 Pixel Chromebook in 3:2 and I'm never going back. My professional software is oriented towards the vertical space, and 3:2 is a huge advantage there. I can see in one page what coworkers are constantly scrolling to view. Every time I go to a 16:9 laptop, I feel like I'm squinting.

Lots has been written online about this as well. You didn't miss the big shift, as it hasn't been that big, and it's only been in the last, say, year that 16:10 and 3:2 have been coming back (excepting the Surface laptops and some Huaweis, which have been 3:2 for years). The latest models of a few makers (Asus, Thinkpads, HP, LG, Framework, etc) have had 16:10 and 3:2 display options. Like most passionate minorities, vertical space fans are vocal online :).

However, what I would say has changed for what's sometimes called the hypercompetitive ultraportable, or Dell XPS13 class, laptop market, is given the proliferation of more vertical screens and solid 9-10 hr battery lives (or about 15 with the Apple laptops) if you're not hitting those specs you're somewhat seen as being behind...

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy. Mind you, I hate their drivers and am very well aware of their still continued anti-competitive practices but again I struggle to justify the costs of a worse GPU. Unless AMDs drivers for their graphics cards (open source ones of course) improve the performance in my games so much over my 2070 Super, I don't understand the insistence on AMD only.

The insistence on all AMD comes from the fact that performance isn't the only thing to be concerned about. nVidia GPUs may be faster but the difference in performance does not justify the shortcomings in other areas like external displays, which so far is rubbish on nVidia gaming laptops.

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy.

At all price points?
I feel like if it's that cut and dried, shouldn't AMD have been forced to drop their GPU business long ago?

Maybe AMD just don't make cards that are good for laptops? Because one can certainly get desktop computers with AMD graphics cards, yes? I mean, I have one, it must be possible. And it's well known that AMD graphics cards are popular among the Linux community. Which implies, again from a pragmatic perspective, that if you are a company like System76 making computers preloaded with Linux for use by Linux users, that you could sell many units of a laptop set up with the brand of card that your market tend to want.
Something must be stopping all these computers-for-Linux companies from selling what their target market want to buy, and I really find myself wondering what. I don't think it can be that they think NVidia cards are just better--if their buyers disagree, one would think they'd follow the money and give the buyers what they want. I figure it must be either that there just aren't any AMD cards that are workable in laptops, or they're not really making laptops from scratch but rather kind of rebranding and tweaking laptops from some manufacturer that doesn't make their stuff for Linux particularly, and it's the broader industry that isn't making laptops with AMD GPUs.

Appreciate all of your insightful responses. I'll definitely be watching for these things in future. Personally I'm interested in any Linux first laptop that gets made since we have so few of them but (to be fair to everyone else) I am more of the "just happy to be here" kind of user. I'm keeping my high hopes for reasonable specifications into the future.


Last edited by TrainDoc on 2 February 2022 at 5:46 am UTC

I understand the frustrations with a lack of amd gpus in high end laptops but I feel like one of a few who very pragmatically concedes that nvidia makes the best gpus you might be able to buy. Mind you, I hate their drivers and am very well aware of their still continued anti-competitive practices but again I struggle to justify the costs of a worse GPU. Unless AMDs drivers for their graphics cards (open source ones of course) improve the performance in my games so much over my 2070 Super, I don't understand the insistence on AMD only.

I mean, check out reviews & benches on the RX 6800M and the consensus I've seen is that it trades blows with the 3070 and 3080 in comparable gaming laptops, while also being $100-200 cheaper. At least from a mobile standpoint, with RDNA2 at least it's very much not so cut-and-dry. Plus hardware AV1 decode (no AV1 encode anywhere in high end GPUs yet, boo), usually silly amounts of VRAM (12GB in my new lappy!), and in-kernel open source drivers.

Phones can have that resolution because... why not? But I bet most people don't run them at the high resolution as it eats battery.

Can't say I've come across a phone thats not using the default res of the screen they have nor a way to change it to be honest.

Mine has the high res / high refresh option. (Note 20 Ultra) but I think I've turned it on once, decided the scaling was bad, and turned it off again :P