tuxedo laptops for darktable

Hardware
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hello @Dinobe, sorry to be late with my reply – haven’t spent much time here lately.

Well this is an old thread, but in the end I didn’t go with a Tuxedo (I can’t recall the exact motivations: probably price/performance?). What I ended up buying back in December 2020 is a fairly generic laptop from pcspecialist.it (they have also european shops: *.co.uk, *.ie etc) called Recoil IV. It’s a rebranded Tongfang laptop as I discovered later so very generic! It was supposed to be a gaming laptop I think, and it came with an intel cpu i7-10875H, a Geforce RTX2070 with 8Gb; I specced it with 32Gb ram and 3Tb storage total (1Tb+2Tb SSD NVMe). Total cost around €2200.

Disadvantages: heavy as a brick, the charger is even heavier so double bricks in your bag! Definitely can’t do what the cool apple kids do (take it out at the coffee shop, very stylish, one-handed etc). When you do heavy lifting the fan kicks in and is rather noisy too.

Advantages: very powerful! Darktable and Resolve run smoothly, all operations are instantaneous even now, almost 3 years in. I would change it only for a much slimmer, more portable laptop – but will it be as powerful as this one? Only ever tried with linux (simple Ubuntu) so can’t say anything about windows performances.

One of the reasons I went with this was also the presence of a mechanical keyboard which was a must back then. It would not be same priority now because 90% of the time I use it lid-down connected to an external Benq 27" screen and a mechanical keyboard (which is way better than any laptop keyboard even this one that was supposed to be a good one; I still find the lenovo thinkpad keyboards the best however despite not being “mechanical”).

I hope this helps

2 Likes
23

Thanks for the reply. I don’t know if I should bump this old thread. Anyway I can’t make up my mind about the new laptop I’m considering.
Right now I have an aging windows 10 machine (9 years old). Since 2019 I’ve been tinkering with Linux on an old thrash pc for when the time comes when I actually want to buy a new computer and change ship to Linux. As time moved on I slowly changed my mind to getting a laptop instead of a building a new PC. Reason being that I don’t want to sit alone in the home study while my wife and kids are sitting downstairs watching tele…

So I need something portable to move between the home study and the living room. Ultra portable is not strictly necessary and the laptop will seldomly leave the house. For serious photo editing I will be sitting in the study upstairs and using my external Dell 25" monitor which is calibrated and profiled.

I would like to have an integrated solution; I don’t want to start messing about with dongles and external harddrives to get the work done.
So that means enough internal storage, preferably 2 harddrive slots, enough access ports (USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, …)
Those slim looking devices with only 2 usb-c ports, all nice and stylish but highly unpractical.

The biggest question for me right now is, should I go for a device with dedicated GPU (nvidia RTX …) or will the integrated Intel Iris XE suffice?
Adding a nvidia RTX card to any laptop adds €400 on average to the price. I’m also worried about heat, noise, weight,… it adds to the machine.

While I will be using the machine mostly at home, I feel I don’t want to lug around a 2,5 kilogram laptop and equally heavy powerbrick

That said, for know I’m looking a couple off devices:

  • Tuxedo Infinitybook 16 Gen 8 (Intel i7 13700H, RTX 4060 8GB, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVME, 2560x1600 IPs - €2.044)
    Nice looking laptop, 16:10 display, possibility to add 2nd NVME drive, Tuxed supports Linux, they have their own distro (TuxedoOS). They provide tools like the TuxedoControl center, they activly develop for linux, provide firmware updates etc…

In order to make it run at it’s full potential you need to use the barrel charger. So neat docking stations with USB-C will not provide enough power.

  • Slimbook Executive 16 (Intel i7 13700H, RTX 4060 8GB, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVME, 2560x1600 IPs - €1.974.00)
    I guess this is basically the same device as the Tuxedo Infinitybook, but from the less known slimbook manufacturer (located in Spain), slightly cheaper.
    You can have it with a variety of linux distro’s . I don’t think they provide something like TuxedoControlCenter.

Some alternatives

  • Skikk Loki 15 II (Intel i7 12700H, RTX3070ti 8GB, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVME, 2560x1440, IPS, 97% SRG - €1.503)
    This is an interesting deal right now. It’s a slightly older model. Not the latest generation cpu and GPU, but more than powerfull enough for my needs. Skikk say they don’t give Linux support, but you can have it installed with Ubuntu from them. So I guess all hardware does work.

But it’s a gaming laptop. So I’m worried about the heat, fan noise,… I dislike these gaming laptops with this RGB lighting. If I want a christmas tree, I’ll put one in my living room. But it’s 500-700 euro’s cheaper than the Tuxedo Infinitybook. I could build a 2nd computer for that, or spend the money on a new lens, …

And yes all these models are rebranded Tongfang and/or Clevo designs. I have no experience either of them.
The good thing is that you can service the machines and replace memory, harddrives, battery yourself.

  • Thinkpad T16 Gen 2 (Intel i7 1365u, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVME, 1920x1200, ips, Intel iris XE gpu, - €1.873)
    I’ve had Thinkpads in the past, they are rugged and reliable. This one comes with Ubuntu support, has a nice selection of ports.
    But no dedicated GPU, no 2 harddrives that’s why I added the 2TB drive, soldered RAM).

  • Dell XPS15 (Intel i7 13700h, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVME, RTX 4050 6GB, 1920x1200 display - €2.249)
    Some amazing looking and powerful laptop, stylish, lightweight expensive, yes, but not crazy overly expensive compared to the others.
    Unfortunately no longer support for Ubuntu. Some have tried to install Linux but some off the hardware like the speakers don’t work… Dell used to have Ubuntu support, but no longer for the latest model it seems. No numeric keyboard, only fancy USB-C so dongles are needed.

I torn between the Tuxedo Infinitybook or the Skikk Loki. That €500 gap is significant)
I know you guys can’t decide for me, just sharing my thoughts…

1 Like
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well I have enjoyed reading about what’s new on the market today. Sometimes I think about replacing mine which has the key features you dislike (heavy, rgb keyboard, noisy, did I say heavy??) with something more similar to a macbook.

My first laptop where I tinkered before ditching my macbook and going full linux was a 2nd hand thinkpad, then a Dell XPS 15, very good computer but it failed miserably after a while (battery issues).

I still like tuxedo (I was just checking the infinitybook 14, looks nice and it’s light!).

What I would recommend is still opt for something with a nvidia gpu though, esp. if you’re into darktable (and possibly video editing like Resolve).

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I got almost exactly this, on sale for CAD$2198 (just 512GB NVMe instead of 2TB). It came with Windows 11 Home. I just updated and backed up Windows, then got rid of it and installed Ubuntu 23.10, and it has been absolutely problem free. There were a few XPS 15 configurations with Linux, but I got a better deal on this one.

The numeric keypad is used for a lot of Geeqie shortcuts, so that’s been a bit of a pain.

This is my primary beef, and not just with Dell. Laptop makers are rushing to be all USB-C, but peripheral makers are not there. So far, I have a USB-C to USB-A and HDMI adapter that came with the laptop and seems a bit flimsy, as well as two USB-C to USB-A adapters and a USB-C to RJ-45 adapter that I bought.

I hate trackpads, so I am using one of my USB-C to USB-A adapters for a mouse. I’m presently searching for a good wireless mouse with a USB-C receiver.

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Ok that’s nice to know. On reddit I found people having issues with Ubuntu 22.04, like speakers not properly working, external display not working, webcam not working… If i’m spending +2k on a machine I want to make sure it works…

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I went 23.10 because 22.04 came out well before the machine. So far, I have managed to avoid snaps beyond the pre-installed Firefox snap.