System76 COSMIC entering Beta soon and their Serval WS laptop gets a big upgrade

System76 have launched a brand new and upgraded Serval WS premium laptop that sounds delicious, and I have hardware envy now. Additionally, it seems their COSMIC desktop is due to expand soon.

Their new Serval WS laptop has display bump with a 16-inch, 2560×1600, 240Hz panel. Backed up by an NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti that should cover all your needs from work to gaming. The processor has been upped as well with the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU. Overall it sounds like quite the little powerhouse.

Spec highlights:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU.
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.
• Up to 96GB DDR5 RAM (5600 MHz). Base model is 32 GB DDR5 5600 MHz (2x16).
• Up to 12TB PCIe 5.0 & 4.0 storage. Base model is 1 TB PCIe4 (up to 5,000 MB/s read, 3,600 MB/s write).
• 16” 16:10 2K display at 240Hz.
• 2.5GbE Ethernet.
• WiFi 7 + Bluetooth 5.4.
• Your choice between:
  • Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS with full disk-encryption.
  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

The price is a little eye-watering though as $2,999 being a premium high-spec laptop. From a smaller vendor it's not surprising but they also have some of the best Linux support of course. Shipping starts in late May.

As for the COSMIC desktop environment, their press release noted "System76 is working on COSMIC, their new open source desktop environment created for Pop!_OS. COSMIC is soon entering the beta phase. Once cleared for release, users can look forward to more battery life, cooler temperatures, more features, and an overall intuitive software experience."

See more on the System76 website.