After years of trying to find the proper laptop computer—and making this search a part of my full-time job right here at WIRED—I’ve given up. I’m sorry to say there isn’t a such factor as the proper laptop computer. There are too many variables at play, too many use circumstances to deal with. All laptops have trade-offs.
There are, nevertheless, some that come shut sufficient to good, and System76’s up to date Lemur Professional is about as near the good Linux laptop computer as you’re prone to get. A part of that’s the easy, clear design, however a lot of it comes from the customization choices. System76 has put in a whole lot of work within the firmware and software program that ships with the Lemur Professional.
{Hardware}
System76’s Lemur Professional line is the corporate’s skinny and light-weight laptop computer. It’s not a gaming rig, nor wouldn’t it be my high decide for a devoted video enhancing station. (That mentioned, I edited a ton of video on it. It’s actually succesful, if not optimized for video.) Nonetheless, for those who want a stable Linux laptop computer that’s gentle sufficient to hold with you all over the place you go, provides a ton of growth potentialities, and simply works, then the Lemur Professional ought to be nearly every part you’re in search of.
The Lemur Professional is a 14-inch all-around laptop computer that’s skinny and light-weight. At simply 2.5 kilos and 0.54 inches thick, you possibly can slide the Lemur Professional in a small bag and overlook you’re even carrying it. System76 makes bigger, extra highly effective laptops for those who want one, however the Lemur Professional is the ultraportable one within the lineup.
The most recent iteration of the Lemur Professional arrived earlier this yr, with new Thirteenth-generation Intel chips inside. The Lemur Professional begins at $1,150 for an Intel i5 machine with 8 GB of RAM and a 256-GB SSD. The mannequin I examined had a 5-GHz Intel Core i7 chip (1355U), 16 GB of RAM, a 250-GB SSD OS drive, and a 1-TB SSD for storage. That introduced the worth to $1,474.
The worth is affordable for the {hardware} (if maybe a tad excessive), however a part of what you’re paying for is System76’s wonderful assist for Linux, which is difficult to come back by in cheaper choices. The Lemur Professional base mannequin can also be user-upgradeable, so if you have already got a number of PCIe SSDs and a few RAM mendacity about, you would improve the Lemur your self.
