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System76 tease their new 'Kudu' laptop with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX

By - | Views: 24,803

Looking for a new high-end laptop for your Linux needs? System76, makers of Pop!_OS have teased their latest with the Kudu that blends together the worlds of AMD and NVIDIA.

"The Kudu laptop is for expert multitaskers. The rub-belly-pat-head types. The Mach 12 errand runners. The kind of thinker who can open 10 doors with 1 makeshift key.

Whatever your missions, get them done faster with the Kudu laptop. Between the H-class CPU and 3000-Series NVIDIA graphics, you’ll be the ultimate conductor in a multitasking concerto." — System76.

Starting at $1899, this is one laptop that sounds like it will handle close to anything you throw at it. With the choice of having it pre-installed with Pop!_OS 21.10, Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

They're only teasing it but they did at least give out the basic specifications, although they don't note what the base model will have in terms of RAM and things like that, we're just given vague details on the max support so far:

Processor

AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX: 3.3 up to 4.6 GHz - 8 Cores - 16 Threads

Display

15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD Matte Finish, 144Hz

Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

Memory

Up to 64 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz

Storage

2 x M.2 SSD(PCIe NVMe). Up to 4TB total.

Expansion

1× USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1× USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 1× USB 2.0 Type-A

Input

Multitouch Clickpad, Multi-Color Backlit US QWERTY Keyboard

Networking

2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5

Video Ports

1 × Mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1 × HDMI(w/HDCP), 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C w/ DisplayPort 1.4

Audio

Stereo Speakers, 1 × Headphone/Microphone Combo Jack, 1 × Microphone Jack

Dimensions

14.21″ × 10.16″ × 1.14″ (36.09 × 25.81 × 2.90 cm)

What do you think to this new model? No word on release date yet but they do say stock will be limited so you may want to head to the page and sign up to be notified.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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31 comments
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damarrin Jan 6, 2022
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It's Kudu or Kudo?
KohlyKohl Jan 6, 2022
Really want something in the low to mid tier range from System76. All of their laptops are above what I'd be looking for in a laptop.

Need a laptop that I can watch shows on and use a web browser with. Also, be able to stream/hook-up to a TV.
rustybroomhandle Jan 6, 2022
Quoting: damarrinIt's Kudu or Kudo?

Kudu. It's a type of antelope.
Lofty Jan 6, 2022
Might want to hold off on spending near 2K on a laptop when the next gen Intel and AMD are just around the corner. Not to mention APU/GPU refreshes.

Would be nice if these larger powered Linux Vendor laptops came with libre/coreboot to really set them aside from just buying from every other vendor and slapping (Arch) Linux on it.
xuwang Jan 6, 2022
It's great for there to be another Linux-first option for people! That said, for philosophical reasons I'm waiting for an AMD + AMD option. I don't blame System 76. I understand that a lot of people are happy about AMD + Nvidia, and because of supplied (I think?) AMD + AMD is hard to find.

Also, last time I looked at System 76, a System 76 driver was strongly recommended even for laptops that did not have a graphics card (i.e., Intel only). I don't like this. I would rather they just say "yep you can wipe it and do a fresh install". Instead the response I got was along the lines of "it might work if you don't use our driver, but our driver optimizes performance blah blah". Is their driver open source? Why aren't their optimizations upstreamed?

After all that, if there's one thing I could say to System 76, it would be a simple and enthusiastic "Thank you for what you do!".
Lofty Jan 6, 2022
Quoting: xuwangIt's great for there to be another Linux-first option for people! That said, for philosophical reasons I'm waiting for an AMD + AMD option. I don't blame System 76. I understand that a lot of people are happy about AMD + Nvidia, and because of supplied (I think?) AMD + AMD is hard to find.

I think Alienware are coming out with with All AMD laptops this year.


Last edited by Lofty on 7 January 2022 at 4:16 pm UTC
Calinou Jan 6, 2022
According to the promo image, this new laptop is clearly the best laptop to read the Godot documentation with. :P

Edit: Oh, it's actually a video on the website showing use of Godot and Blender.


Last edited by Calinou on 6 January 2022 at 6:26 pm UTC
cybik Jan 6, 2022
This explains why I'm seeing the AMD Cézanne pstate patches going into S76's kernel all of a sudden lol
Purple Library Guy Jan 6, 2022
Well, no doubt the laptop is very nice. I'm not sold by the marketing, though--all that breathless stuff about multitasking. Studies suggest that people aren't as good at multitasking as they think they are, and that switching tasks has a cognitive and time cost, so you're better off concentrating on one thing for a while.
t3g Jan 6, 2022
I'd love for System76 to build a modular laptop like how Framework does it.
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