Distribution support outside of the standard Ubuntu/tuxedo os was terrible for a long time. The fan support was essentially broken on my laptop except on the officially supported systems. Your can manually compile the (bloaty node.js) tuxedo control center, but instructions on GitHub are wrong and incomplete.
I recently saw that they now added support for Debian 13 though, so that might be worth another try.
There is also a community project tuxedo-rs but with limited device support. Doesn't support fan control on my device but is much nicer than the original otherwise.
I would not use an unsupported OS on a laptop, of course you had trouble with it. Laptops have always been notorious for having worse hardware support in Linux.
I've got a similar model. Build quality is pretty good. Although I have had issues with the speakers and one of the charging ports (there is redundancy here tho as it comes with 2 USBC). Chassis is all aluminium. Not sure exactly the touchpad material - probably plastic, with no haptics.
Overall the design is modelled on Macbooks with great screens and similar shape, but with handy extras like some actual ports.
They are just white-labeled from other companies so you might be able to find them cheaper, but overall they are sold at a fair price compared to mainstream brands.
When you think about it, framework makes the perfect work laptop.
Why?
They are too overpriced to buy for personal use, but a company doesn't care and will write it off in five years, at which point you can buy it for basically nothing, order a new mainboard, polish it up a little and you have yourself a brand new high end laptop for under a thousand. The system does not account for actually repairable electronics :)
How is the experience importing from the UK these days? I have avoided the UK at all costs since brexit. As I didn't feel like possibly having to deal with customs and delays, etc. Is it better now, including automatic taxes? Or best to still avoid it if there is a reasonable alternative?
Anyone knows how's StarBook's support and general quality? The Horizon looks pretty damn good, but is pricy, compared to Tuxedo's Aura 14, and Tuxedo has a super cool support app built-in to their Linux distro.
Linux support? amazing, been running Debian on it no problems, everything working out of the box.
Customer support? no idea, I had no need to contact them
You have a StarBook? Would you mind saying which one? I was all but decided on a Tuxedo, but then I saw how (seemingly) sexy the Horizon looks, and now I'm a bit on the fence... :D
Oooh, that's even more interesting! OK, tell me more, please! :D
How's battery life? They say it's "up to 12 hours", but I'm assuming that's "lowest brightness, no BT, no WiFi", staring at a black wallpaper"?
Which OS did you go with? Debian? And were there any issues with drivers for the touch-screen?
Do you have it with the keyboard/cover? Does it automatically go to sleep when you close it? Same with the power button press - does it go to sleep and then recover without issues?
Battery life is good, not 12 hours, but I would say closer to 8 to 10 depending on usage. Charge time is a bit long since the battery has a lot of capacity.
Everything worked on Debian out of the box, I'm, using GNOME and did not have to configure nor setup anything extra. Sleep works fine and I have setup the power button to that behaviour. Sometimes when the battery is too low (say about 10%), then it won't wake up from sleep even tho that ought to be enough juice to keep the computer running for about an hour still, that might be a BIOS setting I haven't bothered to look into.
The biggest down side of my inifintity book is that my right shift key is a painful stretch. Because they use full sized arrow keys and the up takes up the useful half of the right shift.
So half the time i hit up instead of shift and start typing my sentence on the wrong line. Its fucking infuriating.
God knows why they made that choice but next laptop i will be sure to watch out for that
I have a star labs Byte. It’s an intel n355 that sits under the tv to play emulated games it runs time crisis pretty well :) and it runs jelly fin/sonar etc to transcode stuff to Apple TV. The other nice thing is the bios is open source coreboot. I’m currently trying to silence the fan which at least is possible because of the open source bios
Yes, it's backed by Redhat/IBM but it's a community project. If things goes sideways it'll be forked and continued as if nothing happened. Using any Linux distribution, you're using tonnes of US software. They are still absolutely free and open, this is not comparable to Android that proprietary parts and locked in hardware.
I don’t care so much about the origins of an OS honestly, but since fedora is owned by Red Hat and IBM I don’t want to touch it. Particularly given IBMs involvement with AI and other such bullshit.
I use Tumbleweed on my main PC, mostly because I remember upgrading systems being a bit of a pain back in 2008 and I rather liked the idea of rolling release. SuSE also made snapper, a BTRFS snapshot manager.
The only time I’ve had problems with my PC is because of NVidia driver updates.
Aeon looks interesting though. Going to look into it deeper. I’m in the process of switching my main work computer from Windows 11 to Linux, and I’m contemplating what would be the best option for stability and maintainability. Nix has been appealing but it feels like that might suck too much time on maintenance, one of the reasons I want away from Windows.
OpenSUSE is an option. Tumbleweed is stable and has btrfs snapshots by default. I found Leap ironically a bit less stable, the default installers wasn't as polished as TW's last time I used it, so the experience was a bit less intuitive.
79 replies
How long have you had it? No issues?
Distribution support outside of the standard Ubuntu/tuxedo os was terrible for a long time. The fan support was essentially broken on my laptop except on the officially supported systems. Your can manually compile the (bloaty node.js) tuxedo control center, but instructions on GitHub are wrong and incomplete.
I recently saw that they now added support for Debian 13 though, so that might be worth another try.
There is also a community project tuxedo-rs but with limited device support. Doesn't support fan control on my device but is much nicer than the original otherwise.
I have one running Arch. Works well, AUR has the tuxedo control centre and Tuxedo provides a short guide for Arch.
Add I said, some models are supported, if you have a different one good luck
I would not use an unsupported OS on a laptop, of course you had trouble with it. Laptops have always been notorious for having worse hardware support in Linux.
This is not a ding against the laptop.
Which one did you pick?
How's the build quality? Is it all aluminium, or just parts of it? Is the touchpad glass/haptic, or regular plastic kind?
I've got a similar model. Build quality is pretty good. Although I have had issues with the speakers and one of the charging ports (there is redundancy here tho as it comes with 2 USBC). Chassis is all aluminium. Not sure exactly the touchpad material - probably plastic, with no haptics.
Overall the design is modelled on Macbooks with great screens and similar shape, but with handy extras like some actual ports.
They are just white-labeled from other companies so you might be able to find them cheaper, but overall they are sold at a fair price compared to mainstream brands.
Why are there no links here????
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/
https://slimbook.com/en/
https://starlabs.systems/
Edited, thanks !
American CPU, made in Taiwan, assembled in China, and somehow European tech?
Let me know when it’s a RISC-V laptop made at STMicroelectronics with memory made at GlobalFoundries in Dresden!
The post clearly says European brands.
There is no European-made x86 CPU available.
yet
It will take at least 10 years to establish a manufacturer in Europe. What are you supposed to do if you need a computer now?
(mind, you should always buy secend-hand)
Coma. Nature's time travel device.
Sadly GloFo has its headquarters in New York (state) and is owned by a UAE investor. So would you really call that European then?
Besides that it doesn't seem to produce or be capable of producing DDR5 and focuses on logic instead.
Nothing is perfect.
Are these available in the US?
Tuxedo and starlabs both ship to US. First time hearing of slimbook for me.
I genuinely thought that this was a meme about stereotypes around how different countries name products for a second.
I dont get it tbh
Well, "european". But have to start somewhere.
Are they not?
The brands are, yes.
Parts are not. Didn't look more to see if assembled in the EU or just designed in
Well if you look at parts then a european or even US laptop is just not possible.
Very good list of recommendments, also my choices!
(To be fair, there are more good ones in that thread, but I'm not complaining).
edit: also, there's Novacustom which is Dutch and lets you customise a lot of shit.
Your link didn't work for me. I had to wait several seconds for a redirect that then said "there's nothing here."
Weird, for me it says it's a blahaj zone link and works
this one uses a feddit uk link - does it work?
Yes, thanks, that one works.
Actually had a terrible experience with star labs, not recommended
What happened?
I always like to throw in MNT. Haven't had any experience with it though.
Which of them laptops have a track point and three mouse buttons so it can be actually used on the LAP?
I'd love that, but I'd also happily accept two mouse buttons and a normal touchpad over one giant buttonless panel.
I had that on my work ThinkPad. Never used them, tbh. Much easier to just tap and hold if I need to move something.
sir, ebay is that -> way, we do not have old thinkpads. /s
honestly laptops are becoming the new phones, all look the same, and a reasonable priced ones can do whatever I want to do on a laptop.
so boring . . .
Just saying, they are not produced in Europe which is what this post is about. 99% of laptops are trash nowadays.
they ain't even being produced anymore, so u are not supporting murica anyway.
now eBay on the other hand is prob not the best on the topic but each country got it's alternative, here in Portugal it's Olx.
Starbooks get assembled in the UK.
Tuxedo is manufactured in Germany.
Slimbooks get finished assembling in Spain.
Assembled, not manufactured. If you look closely, you'll notice that Tuxedo's InfinityBook and Slimbook's Evo have the same exact body.
They both source them from Taiwan.
How are they in terms of reparability?
I really like the ethos of framework.... alas, they are from the US. But if you are going to buy any US tech, you can't do better than them.
Yeah, I would switch from my Framework to a Slimbook if they offered upgradability.
They could make parts that work to the Framework spec, that is open source, which would he awesome.
When you think about it, framework makes the perfect work laptop.
Why?
They are too overpriced to buy for personal use, but a company doesn't care and will write it off in five years, at which point you can buy it for basically nothing, order a new mainboard, polish it up a little and you have yourself a brand new high end laptop for under a thousand. The system does not account for actually repairable electronics :)
Yeah...
https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986
Of course that's "just" their CEO. Some nice Linux first devices, though.
Just read the literal second post with their reply man
The CEO's non-replies and eventual silencing of all discussion is exactly the point. Support continues, customers ignored.
How is the experience importing from the UK these days? I have avoided the UK at all costs since brexit. As I didn't feel like possibly having to deal with customs and delays, etc. Is it better now, including automatic taxes? Or best to still avoid it if there is a reasonable alternative?
At least in Finland last I did 2 years ago it was still a pain, and extra taxes
Man, I really miss when we had home computers to rival the Americans, like the ZX81.
Anyone knows how's StarBook's support and general quality? The Horizon looks pretty damn good, but is pricy, compared to Tuxedo's Aura 14, and Tuxedo has a super cool support app built-in to their Linux distro.
Linux support? amazing, been running Debian on it no problems, everything working out of the box. Customer support? no idea, I had no need to contact them
You have a StarBook? Would you mind saying which one? I was all but decided on a Tuxedo, but then I saw how (seemingly) sexy the Horizon looks, and now I'm a bit on the fence... :D
sorry, I misread, I have StarLabs Lite, not the Horizon. But I am seriously considering upgrading to it
Oooh, that's even more interesting! OK, tell me more, please! :D
How's battery life? They say it's "up to 12 hours", but I'm assuming that's "lowest brightness, no BT, no WiFi", staring at a black wallpaper"?
Which OS did you go with? Debian? And were there any issues with drivers for the touch-screen?
Do you have it with the keyboard/cover? Does it automatically go to sleep when you close it? Same with the power button press - does it go to sleep and then recover without issues?
Battery life is good, not 12 hours, but I would say closer to 8 to 10 depending on usage. Charge time is a bit long since the battery has a lot of capacity.
Everything worked on Debian out of the box, I'm, using GNOME and did not have to configure nor setup anything extra. Sleep works fine and I have setup the power button to that behaviour. Sometimes when the battery is too low (say about 10%), then it won't wake up from sleep even tho that ought to be enough juice to keep the computer running for about an hour still, that might be a BIOS setting I haven't bothered to look into.
Thank you, that's super helpful! :)
The biggest down side of my inifintity book is that my right shift key is a painful stretch. Because they use full sized arrow keys and the up takes up the useful half of the right shift.
So half the time i hit up instead of shift and start typing my sentence on the wrong line. Its fucking infuriating.
God knows why they made that choice but next laptop i will be sure to watch out for that
I have a star labs Byte. It’s an intel n355 that sits under the tv to play emulated games it runs time crisis pretty well :) and it runs jelly fin/sonar etc to transcode stuff to Apple TV. The other nice thing is the bios is open source coreboot. I’m currently trying to silence the fan which at least is possible because of the open source bios
Are they any good
And are there models actually for sale or is it all RFQ/vaporware?
I also like:
https://novacustom.com/
https://minifree.org/
Both suppliy computers with Coreboot firmware.
Wtf is starlaps?
Star Labs is a reputable manufacturer which even designs their own products.
But is it also a distro?
No, you can install what you want on it, or ask them to preload a distro of your choice.
Ah, thank you for clarifying
Fedora is an American distribution.
That slimbook afaik also comes with non-Fedora options. Fedora is developed by the community, so I wouldn't worry too much, but, in case;
I asked about this before
tl:dr; if you care about it being beginner friendly, go for Linux Mint. if european & privacy is important, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
i'd also go for the GNOME one, that's more beginner friendly à la "less is more". KDE Plasma is more customisable.
It doesn't matter for open source.
, we said about Android and Google.
Yes, it's backed by Redhat/IBM but it's a community project. If things goes sideways it'll be forked and continued as if nothing happened. Using any Linux distribution, you're using tonnes of US software. They are still absolutely free and open, this is not comparable to Android that proprietary parts and locked in hardware.
Looks like they actually have their own distro https://slimbook.com/en/slimbook-os
Out of curiosity, why if fedora considered American?
Fedora is put our by Red Hat, which is owned by IBM, an American company.
That being said, I use Fedora. Its a great OS.
I didn't know about the acquisition. That said, not all things American are against EU interests. And this one is free and open source.
I use Fedora too. I'd switch to EU owned, but I need something stable. Hopefully EU government support for open source grows stronger
openSuSE is German. I’d say that’s pretty stable.
I don’t care so much about the origins of an OS honestly, but since fedora is owned by Red Hat and IBM I don’t want to touch it. Particularly given IBMs involvement with AI and other such bullshit.
I might try this. I saw opensuse Aeon. I use silverblue. After using an atomic system, I'll never willingly go back. The stability is wonderful
I use Tumbleweed on my main PC, mostly because I remember upgrading systems being a bit of a pain back in 2008 and I rather liked the idea of rolling release. SuSE also made snapper, a BTRFS snapshot manager.
The only time I’ve had problems with my PC is because of NVidia driver updates.
Aeon looks interesting though. Going to look into it deeper. I’m in the process of switching my main work computer from Windows 11 to Linux, and I’m contemplating what would be the best option for stability and maintainability. Nix has been appealing but it feels like that might suck too much time on maintenance, one of the reasons I want away from Windows.
OpenSUSE is an option. Tumbleweed is stable and has btrfs snapshots by default. I found Leap ironically a bit less stable, the default installers wasn't as polished as TW's last time I used it, so the experience was a bit less intuitive.