12 months ago, I bought a rather expensive ($1,600 Canadian) laptop from System76 - a vendor that focuses on Linux hardware and software. That being said, S76 did not manufacture the Lemur 9 that I purchased, instead it was made by Clevo and resold by S76, which then provides support and custom software.

In general, I have no qualms with the approach S76 takes in their laptops - as long as I get a high quality product. Over the year of ownership I’ve run into many issues but also come to appreciate some of the laptops features. The rest of the article goes over the specific strengths and weaknesses of the machine.

Physical Form Factor

The build and final product is over of a high q uality, with good hinges and chassis, but lackluster finishes. Hardware components are generally replaceable. Overall, it is built within expectation.

Chassis

The Good:

• Metal body, including the bottom panel and screen surrounding has held up well after mild abuse
• Access to internals is easy with 12 philips screws securing the bottom panel
• Battery, network card, SSD, battery and RAM are all user-replaceable with no funkiness (e.g. no glue, adhesives, etc)
• General form-factor is a great size, highly portable but still functional
• Hinges are very robust, even with the extraordinary hinge range (fully opened, the screen can be parallel to the ground)

The Bad:

• Rubber feet (that prevent the body from moving on surfaces) fall off rather easily, I have already lost one
• The metallic finish on the main laptop body (i.e. where the keyboard is located) is glossy, and picks up dirt and oils from hands easily, requires constant cleaning
• Speaker is too quiet/muddy at louder volumes
• Hardware issue where the speaker stops working at louder volumes

The Average:

• Keyboard is meh, not the best feeling nor the worst, finish of keys and key font look cheap
• Trackpad is average, no qualms with its physical placement but could be larger

Internals

The Good:

• Screen is surprisingly high quality with little washout, no dead pixels, no burn-in
• 32GB RAM slot is nice
• 2 separate NVMe SSD slots
• S76 provides public guides and documentation that walk through replacing basic internal components
• CPU performance is very adequate (Intel i5-10210U CPU @ 1.60GHz)
• Battery life is long lasting, 8+ hours with a mixed load

The Bad:

• Chassis becomes quite hot under any load
• Soldered 8Gb of RAM is non-removable, would have preferred 2 slots
• Unable to spec the machine without hardware, I’d rather not have to pay for the default SSD when I knew I’d replace it
• Network card isn’t FOSS (hardware or driver) and there doesn’t appear a FOSS alternative

Software

Perhaps the most important aspect of this specific laptop. The software is what separates it from most other competitors/resellers. Some of the software developed by S76 (like PopOS) can be used by any machine while other software (e.g. firmware) is specific to their machines.

However, while the FOSS nature of the software is absolutely fantastic, it still needs to work effectively, meaning the hardware should be well supported and stable, which is not always the case.

The Good:

• Comes out of the box with a capable Linux distro called PopOS which is based off Ubuntu/Gnome, with it’s own tweaks (like COSMIC)
• Runs System76’s own firmware which is FOSS, and updated regularly
• Apparently (I haven’t actually checked) has Intel’s ME disabled
• Runs Coreboot (open source BIOS)
• Code is generally all open source and available on github
• Battery life is very good, 10+ hours unplugged and under moderate load
• No weird vendor lock-in or hardware/software restrictions

The Bad:

• Long-standing instability
  • Reoccurring issues with newer kernels that causes hard system crashes (still happening)
  • Lockups on older firmware
• Incomplete or slow to release firmware level features
  • Battery charge thresholds (i.e. stopping a plugged-in battery from exceeding 80% charge) wasn’t available until maybe 6 months after purchase
• Suspend (i.e. after shutting the laptop lid) doesn’t really work
  • Battery drains as if it was not shut, have to turn off the machine

Everything else

The Good:

• Support is quick and easy to access
• FOSS is nice
• Nice to be able to support a smaller Linux-first shop, and not give my money to massive corporations that trample on privacy, etc

The Average:

• Hard to contribute back (personal experience - PRs aren’t reviewed/help is hard to come by when stuck on specific issues)

The Bad:

• It appears (this is pure speculation) that the team that writes the software/firmware is spread very thin so development lingers, bugs persist, features aren’t built, etc
• Hardware cycle is rather fast and unknown, the lemp10 released just a couple months after purchasing my lemp9

All in all, it has been a mixed experience with this laptop and System76 in general. I would not recommend it to the average consumer, but if you’ve got some spare cash, love FOSS and want something modern but also understand the compromises, the lemp9 (and probably the lemp10) could be an option.