Laptops preloaded with Linux aren't a rare as they used to be. In fact big name hardware companies like Dell have whole lines of laptops that ship with Ubuntu installed, and if you want to stretch things a bit you could argue that a Chromebook is a kind of Linux machine, though it takes a bit of tinkering to get actual Linux installed. Still, there's no question that the Linux user of today has a wealth of options next to the dark ages of just a few years ago when "I use Linux" was code for "I spend all my time looking for hardware drivers".
What remains unusual even in the midst of what looks like a growing interest in PCs shipping with Linux is companies that sell nothing else. There are a handful that do though and have for some time. From long time Linux supporters like System 76 to newer efforts from the likes of Purism, which began life with an impressive crowdfunding campaign that raised over a $1 million to create a line of sleek, Apple-inspired, but completely free software laptops.
If Purism is any indicator, Linux-based hardware businesses might have an actual future in a world increasingly dissatisfied with the proprietary OSes on offer. If you're a developer looking to get a laptop with more than 16GB of RAM Apple's no longer an option. The company recently updated its Macbook Pro line, but still caps RAM at 16GB. That means you can either get a PC and live with Windows 10 or you can try installing Linux and hope it works.
Alternately you could invest in some hardware that's been well tested and known to work with, if not every Linux distro, at least Ubuntu (and by extension, Mint and every other Ubuntu derivative). System 76 is perhaps the best known of these alternate, Linux-loving hardware vendors and for good reason -- they offer incredibly powerful Linux machines with more customization options than most manufacturers offer for any system, no matter what OS it ships with.
System 76 has a decent range of laptops, from the small, lightweight, battery-sipping Lemur to some mid-range options with better performance to the top end beast-like Oryx Pro.
After reviewing the svelte, but not necessarily top-end specced Dell XPS 13, I got curious about System 76's Oryx Pro. On paper it sounds like a desktop machine somehow packed into a laptop form factor. If money were not an object and you wanted the most of everything you could pack into an Oryx system you'd end up with a 6th Generation Intel i7-6820HK CPU, and GTX 1070 GPU, 64GB of RAM, a ridiculous 9TB worth of hard drive and either an 15.6 or 17.3 IPS. You'd end up with a desktop machine packed into a dark, brushed aluminum alloy shell that still manages to fit in your backpack. It would set you back almost $7000, but hey, with massive power comes a massive price tag.
If you wanted a portable video editing workstation or a gaming machine you can take with you wherever you go you'd be hard pressed to find more impressive specs from any manufacturer, let alone one that ships with Linux-compatible hardware like System 76.
When I mentioned to System 76 that I wanted to test the Oryx Pro and compare it to the Dell XPS as a "developer" laptop they were a little hesitant, pointing out that the two are really -- aside from both shipping with Ubuntu installed -- pretty much nothing alike. It wasn't until the Oryx Pro arrived though that I really understood just how different they are.
The Oryx Pro that System 76 sent for me to test was not the fully maxed out model, but it did have a GTX 1060 GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. It also had the 1080p matte IPS display. As configured it would set you back $1864. Even without the max hard drive space and nowhere near the max RAM the Oryx Pro was incredibly powerful, but that's not the first thing that jumps out at you when the Oryx Pro arrives. Once you get past the very clever, minimalist packaging the most striking thing about the Oryx Pro is holy crap this thing is massive.
Like most computer users these days I've been programmed to think a laptop should be just slightly thicker than my phone, weigh about the same as my paper notebook and be no larger than an 8x11 sheet of paper. There is of course no reason to expect this beyond the fact that that's the expectation marketing campaigns have created. If you chuck those expectations out the window, you end up with, yes, a much larger laptop, but also a much more capable laptop.
While the size of the Oryx Pro is shocking at first, especially when you pull out the Dell XPS 13 and put them next to each other, it's really not that big. Nor is it that heavy considering what you get. Weighing in at 5.5lbs for the 15.6" version, the Oryx Pro is heavy, but not back-breakingly so. It does do better in a backpack than a shoulder bag, but if that's the biggest compromise I have to make to get a portable video editing workstation, I'll take it.
So yes, the System 76 folks were right, the Oryx Pro doesn't stack up all that well next to the Dell XPS 13 when it comes to size, weight and svelteness. If those are your criteria then the Dell XPS is what you want. If you want power though, the Oryx Pro blows the Dell out of the water, especially when you start looking at RAM capacity, which tops out at 16GB for the XPS 13.
At just over an inch thick the Oryx Pro makes it clear that if you want to pack in some serious hardware you're going to have to forgo skinniness. This does, however, mean that the Oryx Pro has room for quite a few things becoming increasingly rare in laptops, like an ethernet port and an SD card slot. There's also 2 Mini DisplayPorts, an HDMI port, 2 USB 3.1 Type-C ports, 3 USB 3.0 Type-A ports and headphone and mic jacks. The GTX 1070 models also include a headphone amplifier.
The Oryx Pro also includes a very nice keyboard, with some much thicker keys than you'll find on most laptops these days. It's no Model M , but it's about as close as I've seen a laptop get to the kind of old-school, clacky keyboards some of us still remember fondly -- minus the clacking part, which your fellow coffee shop denizens will appreciate. The keys have a nice springiness to them and the backlight supports multicolor back lighting.
The Oryx Pro is not, despite its size and heft, ungainly. In fact its quite svelte and the brushed aluminum top gives it a nicely understated design. The bottom of the Oryx Pro is plastic, but the build quality of the laptop is good enough that I didn't notice much flex even lifting it one handed. Another bonus to having a slightly thicker body is that you can have real speakers that actually project sound out of the top rather than some muffled, tinny speakers stuck underneath. And the Oryx Pro's speakers are impressively good, they're even angled towards you and manage to deliver a surprising amount of bass for their size.
While the Oryx itself is, if not the sleekest laptop out there, at least not quite like the bricks Lenovo used to churn out, there is one downright ungainly thing about the Oryx Pro -- the power brick. The power brick is ridiculously huge, about double the size of any power brick I've ever seen. It's also worth noting that it adds nearly 2lbs to the total weight of the Oryx Pro. And you're going to want that power brick with you if you plan to work for more than a couple hours because of course, with great power comes great power consumption.
Exactly how much battery life you get out of the Oryx Pro will obviously vary according to what you're doing with it. I happened to have a video editing job that coincided with having the Oryx Pro so I loaded up both KDenlive and Lightworks and when crunching video, as you'd expect, battery life suffers. I still managed to get about 1.5 hours out of the battery, even running a video editor, though that dropped more when actually exporting the edit to the final MP4 file.
The other things you may notice if you push the Oryx Pro at all is that it has a good old fashioned fan in it and it uses it. It's not particularly loud as fans go -- my EeePC's fan is far louder -- but it is noticeable. If you frequently work in very quite spaces, like a school library, you'll notice the fan, as will anyone working around you.
I will admit upfront that I am not a gamer, but I did test Grand Theft Auto V and a couple other more graphics-intensive games and discovered just how impressive top end Nvidia hardware actually is. Suffice to say, if you're looking for a portable gaming machine, the Oryx Pro delivers.
I gave the Nvidia card a workout editing 4K video as well and it was similarly impressive, especially with 32GB of RAM at its disposal.
The graphics card in the Oryx Pro is powering a 1920×1080 matte, optionally IPS, display that has nice rich colors, renders pretty close to true black, and isn't so HiDPI that it has problems on Linux desktops. Did I mention it's matte? A good matte display, especially a good matte IPS display, is frankly the number one selling point of the Oryx Pro for me. I could comfortably stare at this screen all day with very little eye strain.
That said, if I have a complaint about the Oryx Pro it's the lack of a 4K option. A screen this good at 1080p is just begging to be that much better in 4K. I am apparently not the only one to think that. Just before this review was finished System 76 let me know that a 4K screen option would soon be available.
The Oryx Pro ships with Ubuntu installed by default. There's an option when ordering to select the newest LTS Ubuntu release (16.04.1 as of this review) or to go ahead and go with the latest stable release (16.10 as of this review). The model I tested came with 16.04.1, but true to my ongoing experience with 16.04, I encountered a few bugs, all of which were fixed when I upgraded to 16.10.
None of the bugs were show stoppers, though at least one, which caused Ubuntu's HUD interface and dock to get flickering lines though it after waking from sleep sometimes, is likely the result of the graphics card and Ubuntu 16.04's somewhat older kernel. Again, upgrading to 16.10 got rid of the problem and I strongly suggest opting for the latest stable release when ordering an Oryx Pro.
Unlike the Dell XPS, which, with a higher pixel density display, has some problems running certain applications -- notably GIMP -- at such high DPI, every application I tested worked just fine on the Oryx Pro.
If, like me, Ubuntu is not your favorite distro, fear not, chances are good that the Oryx Pro will run your favorite distro without a hitch. I tested a pre-release version of Fedora 25, Ubuntu MATE, Arch with Openbox and Debian Testing with GNOME all without encountering any hardware-related problems. Officially System 76 only supports Ubuntu, but unofficially I've found their support to be helpful no matter what distro you happen to be running.
The Oryx Pro is a pleasure to use, the keyboard is nice, and, as mentioned above, the matte screen is wonderful. Adding a USB mouse to the package gave me a portable system -- albeit a heavy one -- fully capable of editing video at the coffee shop. I did get some looks from the generally Mac-centric crowd when I pulled out such a massive -- next to a Mac laptop anyway -- machine, but it was the power brick that elicited a "woah" comment.
I carried the Oryx Pro in a backpack of the old school variety when designers recognized that two straps distributes weight better than one and indeed, you'll want a backpack if you plan on toting this thing around. I would not call it heavy exactly, but suffice to say that if you carry it around all day you'll know it's there.
There's another thing that sometimes comes up in reviews of System 76 machines, namely that the same machine can be had for less money from another manufacturer like Clevo. It's true that System 76 purchases parts from other manufacturers, but that's really a small part of what makes the Oryx Pro a pleasant Linux experience. If saving money is your top criteria you might indeed want to check out the Clevo version that specs out roughly the same on paper. However, that will not get you a machine with the firmware, drivers and hardware components that System 76 uses to build fully Ubuntu-compatible machines (and by extension Linux more generally).
If you want hotkeys, touchpad, audio jacks, keyboard backlighting, suspend and all the other functions you take for granted to work out of the box with no fiddling on your part then you want to pay for the work System 76's engineers have put in.
In the end all hardware is a compromise, the question is, which end of the spectrum do you want to compromise on?
If what you value is portability and extended battery life, and you only need enough RAM to run a web browser (so, about 16GB), then the Oryx Pro might disappoint. At 7lbs (with power brick) the Oryx Pro is relatively large and heavy next to something like the Dell XPS 13, but you won't get 64GB of RAM in an XPS 13. You won't get up to 9TBs of data storage space in an XPS 13.
The real question is then, do you need 64GB of RAM? Do you need all the power of the Oryx Pro? If you're serious about editing video, gaming, or are compiling software on a regular basis then you'll appreciate the additional RAM and power of the Oryx Pro.