path: root/ars-technica/published/galago-pro-review.html

<p>Wiping the default operating system from your laptop and plugging in a USB stick with your favorite distro's live CD has long been one of the great rites of passage of the Linux world. Some of us get a little, dare I say giddy, every time we wipe that other OS away and see that first flash of GRUB. Of course rites of passage are supposed to be one time events. Once you've wiped Windows or OS X a time or two most of no longer have that giddiness -- it becomes one more annoyance, a kind of tax on Linux users.</p>
<p>In recent years the PC industry has finally spawned a few manufacturers offering up machines with Linux pre-installed and at this point I have tested most of them. Dell's XPS and Precision lines both have Linux-friendly offerings and dedicated Linux manufacturers like System76 have long offered decent hardware with Linux pre-installed. In all my testing of various models from four different manufacturers I've yet to encounter a driver problem, which is the real benefit of a machine with Linux pre-installed. To be fair, I could say the same for the Lenovo x240 that serves as my daily driver.</p>
<p>Still, finding the perfect Linux laptop has always been something of a Goldilocks problem -- this one is too big, this one is too underpowered, this one has too little RAM, this one lacks a big SSD and so on. Generally speaking if you want power and storage you're going to end up with something too big to comfortable throw in a bag and carry all day -- the Dell Precision 7520 and the System76 Oryx Pro are good examples of this.</p>
<p>Alternately you could go for the more portable Dell XPS 13 or System76 Lemur, which both offer a more svelte, lightweight machine that's easier on your shoulders, but is generally lacking in RAM and drive space.</p>
<p>What Linux users like myself have long wanted is a laptop with roughly the form factor and weight of a Macbook pro, but with the option to get 32GB of RAM or three TB of storage. A laptop that is both reasonably lightweight and powerful.</p>
<p>And that my fellow Linux users, is exactly what System76 has managed to deliver with its new Galago Pro laptop.</p>
<p>It's not perfect, but this is a very clever, very well designed piece of hardware with some very impressive specs.</p>
<p>The model I tested featured the faster 7th Gen Intel i7-7500U (also available with an i5 for slightly less), 250 GB Samsung 960 EVO NVMe, 8GB RAM (Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz), a 250GB Samsung 960 EVO NVMe SSD and a 13.3″ 3K HiDPI screen with an Intel HD Graphics 620 card. As tested the Galago Pro would set you back $1,328.</p>
<h2 id="hardware-and-design.">Hardware and Design.</h2>
<p>The Galago Pro features an all-aluminium body that looks and feels a bit like a Macbook Pro, but without the wrist-cutting sharp edges of the Macbook Pro. It's a slick piece of hardware and it's light, weighing in at a mere 2.87lbs. In fact it's difficult to convey just how amazingly light this thing is. Technically it's heavier than the XPS 13 actually, but it's also considerably larger which makes it seem lighter. My Lenovo x240 isn't exactly a beast, but after carting around the Galago Pro for a few weeks the Lenovo started to seem a bit more brick-like.</p>
<p>Around the outside of the Galago Pro you'll find the usual array of ports, including one USB-C with Thunderbolt, two USB 3.1 ports, an SD Card Reader, and, for additional displays there's an HDMI as well as MiniDP/USB-C. System76 also bucks a current trend by including an actual Ethernet port, which also features a little door that holds the cable in place. If you're a regular user of hotel wifi you know how valuable an Ethernet jack can be. There's also a slot for a SIM card.</p>
<p>The keyboard is reminiscent of the Dell XPS 13 -- black chiclet keys surrounded by smooth a aluminum frame. The travel is okay, on par with the rest of the laptops out there that sport similar keyboards (like the Macbook Pro). I happen to prefer the spongier, closer-to-clakkity keyboards Lenovo uses, but judging by the market I am not in the majority there.</p>
<p>One place the Galago Pro differs significantly from both the XPS 13 line and Macbook Pros is the bezel that surrounds the Galago Pro's screen -- it's big. The display itself is more or less the same though, the 13.3-inch screen packs in 3200x1800 pixels. As with the Dell there are some Linux apps where the HiDPI screen is more of a hindrance than a help (I'm looking at you GiMP). Color wise the screen is quite nice and renders true blacks pretty well. It's also nicely backlit and it works out of the box in Ubuntu</p>
<p>The i7 That ships with the Galago Pro is the latest of the Kaby Lake versions and for that reason I strongly recommend ordering your Galago Pro with Ubuntu 17.04, which features a newer Linux kernel with much better support for Kaby Lake.</p>
<p>Another point that sometimes gets glossed over in reviews is that the Galago Pro is very user serviceable. I couldn't find any disassembly guides on System76's website, but a quick YouTube search will get you a couple videos. It's pretty simple, just lift up the keyboard, detach the cable, unscrew three screws and then flip it over and unscrew everything from the bottom and you'll have access to the insides. You can swap out both drives and the RAM if you decided to upgrade down the road.</p>
<p>So far so good, but like I said the Galago Pro is not perfect and its biggest failing is battery life. In normal use (wifi and Bluetooth on, screen at 80 percent brightness and using Vim for writing, Firefox for browsing the web and mpd for music I only got about 3.5 hours out of the battery. That was using the stock Ubuntu as shipped. When I wiped that, installed Arch Linux, just used Openbox with tint2 and installed <a href="http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html">TLP</a> I managed to get one more hour out if it. Still not great, but better. Suffice to say that this is not an all day without a cord sort of laptop. On the plus side the charger and cord are quite small and light.</p>
<p>Another thing I disliked about the Galago Pro was the trackpad. It wasn't the worst I've ever used (pick any Chromebook to experience the worst trackpad ever), but I was plagued by jittery cursor movements and occasional moments where it would be totally unresponsive. Another downside -- the fan is pretty loud and it will kick in pretty much any time you spike the CPU to 100 percent.</p>
<p>None of the issues I experienced are what I would call deal breakers, except perhaps the battery, I really wish the battery life was closer to the Dell XPS 13, which pretty consistently lasted seven or eight hours in all my informal tests.</p>
<h2 id="software">Software</h2>
<p>As it has for some time, System76 is currently shipping the Galago Pro with either Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or the more recent 17.04. As mentioned above, I would strongly suggest you go with the latter as the updated kernel has better support for the hardware in the Galago Pro, though System76 includes its own repositories with additional software designed to make everything work smoothly.</p>
<p>Of course, as I noted when I reviewed Ubuntu 17.04, the Unity desktop that System76 is currently shipping is essentially abandonware.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, much to the surprise of the Linux community, Ubuntu abruptly announced it would no longer be working on Unity and would instead adopt the GNOME desktop going forward. That was the status of Ubuntu when I received the Galago Pro. Not long after however System76 announced their own Linux distro, dubbed Pop!_ OS, hereafter just Pop OS._</p>
<p>But one thing, don't call it a distro. System76 would like you to call it an operating system. I'm not being entirely sarcastic here either, System76 has a good reason not to call it a distro -- trademark issues. And I don't think calling it an OS or distro is going to matter. The fact is Pop OS contains quite a bit of Ubuntu branding within it, something that may end up raising the hackles of Ubuntu's lawyers. Maybe the Linux Mint devs can give System76 some advice on getting the Ubuntu branding out. Or perhaps, as Chris Fisher of Linux Action News fame suggests, Pop OS can become an official Ubuntu flavor.</p>
<p>Whatever its future, Pop OS right now is still in the alpha stage. I went ahead and grabbed a copy and installed it on the Galago Pro to see what it was like though. At the moment Pop OS is more or less a custom GNOME theme, with some extensions that make GNOME quite a bit more user-friendly, but not a lot beyond that. Because it's more or less just a GNOME theme with some extensions pre-installed it's perfectly stable. It's Ubuntu with some some different paint. And it's nice enough paint, but not something most System76 customers would probably have any trouble doing on their own.</p>
<p>When I first heard about Pop OS I thought the move made sense. System76 has always tied its brand very closely to Ubuntu and with the future of Ubuntu suddenly looking a bit uncertain it makes sense that System76 would want more control over their future. As it stands the shipping version of Unity that System76 will sell until Pop becomes the default will be &quot;upgraded&quot; to GNOME should users opt to upgrade to 17.10 when it comes out later this year. That's going to be a very confusing upgrade for anyone not expecting it.</p>
<p>Having now played with Pop a bit I'm less sure it's the right move. Developing and maintaining a distro is no small undertaking and in its current state there just isn't enough to differentiate it from Ubuntu or, for that matter, any other distro with a custom GNOME theme. Beyond that lies the real question -- who is System76's intended audience for Pop OS and what do they want in their desktop?</p>
<p>System76's marketing materials says that they're &quot;focused on the professionals and makers that use their computers to create&quot;, which is alarmingly vague since probably the number one issue that plagues distros is a lack of focus. Perhaps I'm being too hard on an alpha release software. And don't get me wrong, I'm not rooting against Pop OS. I hope that System76 is able to put something together that entices more people to try a Linux machine, but right now? Right now let's just say it's an alpha release.</p>
<p>The good news for anyone who wants to run the distro of their choice on System76 hardware is that while there's no official support, you're pretty unlikely to need it. I didn't do a lot of distro testing with the Galago Pro, but I did install Arch so I could get some work done and had no problems with anything but the keyboard backlight, which to me is an unnecessary bit of battery drain anyway (which is to say I didn't even try to get it working, though I believe there is something in the AUR that <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/system76-driver/">mirrors</a> the PPA System76 uses for its stock Ubuntu).</p>
<p>Beyond this machine though I have run Fedora, Mint, Xubuntu, OpenSUSE and Arch on three different System76 machines at this point and I have never once encountered a hardware problem, aside from the lack of HiDPI support in some desktops, which is hardly System76's fault (the company has even contributed considerable work back upstream to make HiDPI support better in Unity, an effort that now, alas, looks like wasted time). Suffice to say that if you want to run the distro of your choice you'll probably be fine.</p>
<h2 id="the-future-of-system76-and-the-galago-pro">The Future of System76 and the Galago Pro</h2>
<p>The Galago Pro was my daily machine for about a month, in that time, while I had some issues as noted above (I don't like the trackpad or the keyboard) by and large it's the best stock Linux machine. The only place that the Dell XPS 13 blows it out of the water is in battery life. As someone who lives full time in an RV and relies on a very limited amount of solar power (300w) for all my energy needs that battery life is a deal breaker. That said, in nearly every other regard this is by far my favorite laptop and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.</p>
<p>There's something that comes up in the comments of nearly every review of System76 hardware, the fact that the company doesn't build its own hardware, it orders everything from upstream hardware vendors, in the case of the Galago Pro that would be the Clevo N130BU (or N131BU). I've never quite understood what the issue is, but it certainly seems to rub some people the wrong way. Could you save a couple bucks by ordering the Clevo directly? Sure, but you'd have no support, no custom PPA to fix hardware issues and no community to get involved in. If you just want a dirt cheap Linux rig, try eBay.</p>
<p>What System76 offers is great Linux experience with a piece of hardware, maybe not the absolute cheapest hardware.</p>
<p>However, that is going to change. In addition to launching its own don't-call-it-a-distro OS, the company has announced that will soon begin what it calls &quot;phase three&quot; -- moving its product design and manufacturing in-house where it hopes to &quot;build the Model S of computers&quot;. It's a bold move, starting up hardware manufacturing and an operating system at the same time, one that might well lead to over extending itself, after all, even Canonical has backed away from making its own desktop OS.</p>
<p>It's a massive dual undertaking that may well leave System76 looking fondly back at its self proclaimed &quot;phase one&quot;, which has as its first line item the considerably less stressful: &quot;drink beer and talk about open source.&quot; Still, if System76 manages to pull off building its own hardware line the Linux world stands to reap some potentially awesome benefits. In the mean time if you're looking for a lean, mean, if not all-day machine, the Galago Pro makes an excellent choice.</p>
<p>The Good</p>
<pre><code>Trouble-free Linux on good, lightweight hardware
Excellent screen with great resolution
Plenty of RAM to handle whatever you throw at it</code></pre>
<p>The Bad</p>
<pre><code>Screen resolution is sometimes a problem with certain applications</code></pre>
<p>The Ugly</p>
<pre><code>battery life could be better, much better.</code></pre>