In the past two weeks, six Linux laptops have appeared (or announced) on the market. These range from unusual "mini" laptops to 4K displays...
StarFighter: Linux laptop with 4K display
British hardware company Star Labs plans to launch StarFighter, a new Linux laptop, and is finalizing more production details. According to the presentation, StarFighter uses a 15.6-inch, with a 10-bit matte 4K IPS 16:9 display (probably 3840 × 2160 resolution, perfect for 2x scaling), and will provide LVFS support. Officials note that the display alone costs more than the company's original StarLite Linux laptop.
Additionally, StarFighter will provide:
- Choice of 45W AMD/Intel processors
- Up to 64GB of memory
- and up to 2TB of storage
Although the official product photos shared so far use elementary OS 6.1, foreign media OMG! Ubuntu! believes that this device is likely to provide optional pre-installed Linux distributions , including Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
MNT Pocket Reform
MNT, a German company that develops open-source hardware and software, believes the future of digital life is sustainable and open-source, and has previously released an MNT Reform laptop starting at $999. Now MNT will launch a mini notebook called Pocket Reform, which is expected to be released in late July this year, and the price has not yet been announced.
Pocket Reform has a 7-inch 1080P resolution screen (ppi about 310), a mechanical keyboard with 60 keys, four transparent keys and a 10mm trackball below the keyboard.
Most importantly, Pocket Reform adopts a modular CPU, memory and other design. The standard version of the processor is NXP i.MX 8M Plus, which contains four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores with a main frequency of 1.8 GHz, Vivante GC7000UL GPU and NPU units. In terms of storage, it has 4GB and 8GB of DDR4 memory, and supports microSD / NVMe SSD expansion.
KDE Slimbook 4
Slimbook is one of the sponsors of the KDE project, and the Slimbook 4 is their fourth-generation Linux laptop with the new AMD Ryzen processors and the latest Plasma desktop environment by default.
The KDE Slimbook 4 is available in 14-inch and 15.6-inch versions, and the internals of each model are basically the same, except that the larger model comes with a larger battery. Other parameters:
- AMD Ryzen 5700U
- Supports up to 3200 MHz 64GB RAM (8, 16, 32, 64 are supported), including two slots
- 2 SSD m.2 NVME slots - Up to 4TB SSD storage
- 3 USB slots (two USB 3.1 and one USB 2.0)
- 1 USB-C 3.1 (includes Power Delivery), supports video output to up to 2 monitors
- HDMI 2.0 4K 60Hz
- Ethernet (RJ45)
- Intel Wifi 6 AX200 (Maximum speed 2.4Gbps)
- Micro SD
TUXEDO Pulse 15 - Gen2
Germany-based Linux hardware vendor TUXEDO Computers has announced a Linux Ultrabook: the second generation (Gen2) TUXEDO Pulse 15.
The Pulse 15 - Gen2 features an updated AMD Ryzen 7 processor, the 35W Ryzen 7 5700U, with a TDP of just 15W, a single-fan/single-pipe cooling system, and integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics.
The TUXEDO Pulse 15 Gen2 Linux laptop is currently available for pre-order from TUXEDO Computers' online store, pre-installed with Ubuntu-based TUXEDO OS 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, or Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS. The base configuration with 8GB RAM and 250GB NVMe SSD storage starts at €1.149,00 ($1,200,00). All orders will begin shipping at the end of July.
ROMA: The first RISC-V laptop for developers
Xcalibyte has announced ROMA , which it claims is the world's first "native" RISC-V laptop for developers, led by RISC-V International (a non-profit organization) and co-built by Deepcomputing and Xcalibyte to provide native RISC-V development experience.
ROMA is notable for the inclusion of a "RISC-V" key, which some speculate is a shortcut key to start the development environment, or a neat standard custom programmable key.
According to the press release, ROMA is equipped with a quad-core RISC-V CPU, a GPU/NPU accelerator, up to 16GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4X memory, up to 256GB hard drive capacity, and supports running most Linux distributions. Officials have not announced more detailed technical specifications, so the appearance and price of the ROMA did not appear in the press release.
Lemur Pro
The System76 Lemur Pro is a thin and light Linux laptop with a 14-inch Full HD display, a 73 Wh battery, and support for up to 40GB of RAM.
The System76 Lemur Pro comes pre-installed with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or the company's Ubuntu-based operating system, Pop!_OS, with a 1920 x 1080 resolution matte non-touch LCD display, backlit keyboard, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support, stereo speakers, and a 1080p webcam and 65W power adapter.