My experience with Laptop with Linux
I decided to buy a laptop that satisfies the following requirements:
Works natively with Linux on it. No troubles to setup it. Just works out of the box - non negociable
Has a powerful AMD CPU. I compared many of them on
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/. The best raw performance I could get without buying a beefy gaming laptop with Ryzen 9 on it was AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS - non negociable
It is easily extendable by myself without loosing the warranty. I wanted to start with a base setup of 32GB of RAM and 512 NVMe M.2 and later add more RAM and storage if I need it.
A large battery that will allow me to work many hours - none negociable
2k display
I could choose between the following options:
Skikk AMD green
TongFang GX5 15.3-inch Metal Ultrabook from https://laptopwithlinux.com
Some of the Tuxedo models
Some of the System 76 models
The Skikk model went out of stock while I was deciding.
The other 2 companies are either too expensive for the same hardware or adding an extra cost for delivery.
So I stopped ad the https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/tongfang-gx5/ option.
I bought it with the following hardware:
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS
RAM - 32 GB
No SSD so that I could experience the case opening and installation process myself
Tux (penguin)-key on the keyboard :D
I bought separatedly a Kingston KC3000 512GB M.2 SSD
Opening the case was not difficult with a screw driver.
Installing the NVMe was very simple as the 2 PCIe interfaces are exposed directly.
I installed Ubuntu 24.04 on it within few minutes.
Everything worked out of the box as promissed by the company.
Now I am writing this article on the laptop so that I get used to the keyboard, which is not that easy after so many years of Macbook laptops, external Microsoft Sculpt and Logitech Ergo keyboards.
The observations I have so far:
The battery is draining faster than on the Macbook Pro M3 I am using currently, which is doing much more work.
The battery is draining even with the lid closed. This does not happen on the Macbook Pro M3.
The keyboard is noisier.
The support folks were very helpful on Whatsapp even before I considered to buy the laptop.
The parts are packed very accurately inside the case and very well assembled.
In the next articles I am going to share my experience with compiling Rust projects on it.
Asked the support for help.
This is what they told me:
Q: Is there a way known to your company to make the battery not drain so fast? Its bothering especially that it drains when the lid is closed.
A: First of all, it is important to install the necessary drivers. You can find our repository here: https://comexr.github.io/
To add it to ubuntu open terminal and run:
wget -qO- https://comexr.github.io/comexr.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/comexr.asc >/dev/null
Run:
echo "deb [arch=all signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/comexr.asc] https://comexr.github.io/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/comexr.list >/dev/null
Run:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install lwl-drivers yt6801 -y
Then it is important to minimise the screen brightness (screen has 500Nits, so very bright and consumes a lot of battery power) and you can also turn off the keyboard backlight. In addition, you can disable bluetooth if you are not using it. As for suspend. How long do you have the laptop in suspend and how fast does the battery drain?
U can probably do a bit of tuning using ur own kernel compile if u want, but using amd power tuning options in kernel is easy. Just need to mod the grub.
Check amdgpu kernel driver options , amd pstate control can help a lot.