The First Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 Linux Laptop Arrives On The Market
Ryzen 7 7840HS powers Tuxedo's Pulse 14 Gen 3 laptop
It's nearly impossible to find any laptop that runs Linux out of the box, let alone a high-end notebook with Linux, but Tuxedo's brand-new Pulse 14 Gen 3 changes that. Equipped with a Ryzen 7 7840HS, 32GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM, and up to two SSDs, the Pulse 14 Gen 3 is likely the fastest Linux laptop today, though the field wasn't exceptionally crowded.
The highlight of this 14-inch Linux laptop is its Ryzen 7 7840HS, which is an eight-core Zen 4 APU that comes with AMD's Radeon 780M integrated graphics. It's a high-speed CPU, though not quite as fast as the top-end HS chip, the 7940HS. With 32GB of LPDDR5 clocked at 6,400MHz, the 7840HS in the Pulse 14 should be very competent at both work and light gaming.
Tuxedo hasn't precisely skimped on other hardware, either. The 14-inch display has a resolution of 2880 by 1800, up to two PCIe 4.0 SSDs (with options like Samsung's 990 Pro 2TB), an 18mm thin chassis, and a 60Wh battery with USB Type-C charging. Connectivity is also good, with 6GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.2, four USB ports, three video ports (two of which come from the USB ports), and an SD card reader.
What's particularly interesting about the Pulse 14 Gen 3 outside its hardware is its operating system. Instead of running a mainstream Linux distro like Ubuntu or Fedora, by default, it runs Tuxedo OS, the company's distro. It is based on Ubuntu, which should offer users hardware-specific support for things like drivers and a broad software ecosystem. If you don't want Tuxedo OS, Tuxedo offers regular Ubuntu and other variants.
The only high-end Linux laptop that can claim to be as fast as the Pulse 14 Gen 3 is Dell's XPS 13 Plus, which can optionally come with Ubuntu. The XPS 13 Plus features Intel's Core i7-1360P and can come with up to 32GB of LPDDR5-6000, a 2TB SSD, and a 4K touch display. Regarding CPU and iGPU performance, the Core i7-1360P in the XPS 13 Plus doesn't measure very favorably against the Ryzen 7 7840HS in most laptops, which may indicate that the Pulse 14 Gen 3 could be the fastest Linux laptop to date.
The Pulse 14 Gen 3 launches on December 12, and you can preorder it from Tuxedo today. Although Tuxedo is based in Germany and charges in euros, the company ships internationally across Europe, to the U.S., and some other countries. The base model of the Pulse 14 Gen 3 goes for 1,111 euros, and the highest-end configuration with 8TB of storage is 1,605 euros.
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Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.
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bit_user ReplyIt's nearly impossible to find any laptop that runs Linux out of the box, let alone a high-end notebook with Linux,
This is rubbish. It was more true about 10 years ago, but Linux installs fine on the majority of laptops. ThinkPads have long been the go-to laptop for Linux users, but I even installed multiple distros on a couple 2004-vintage Pentium M laptops (HP and Sony-branded) and a 2011-era Sandybridge-powered Dell laptop. My current laptop is a Skylake-powered Lenovo from 2017 and everything works perfectly.
If we go back to those ~20 year-old Pentium M models, I did indeed have issues with GUI acceleration and wireless networking. However, it's been pretty smooth sailing on the newer hardware I mentioned.
I guess the main thing Tuxedo is selling is a tech support contract for Linux running on their machine. I think you can still get that from most major OEMs, if you buy a machine from them with Linux pre-installed. However, support may be limited to the specific distro they ship on it.
If you're buying a laptop with the specific goal of running Linux on it - and it's not coming pre-installed - it's still not a bad idea to do a quick search and see if you can find recent info on any issues people are having with it. However, it's a reasonable assumption that it will install just fine and most laptop features should work as expected. -
PrimalNaCl If they make a 16" variant in at least WQXGA then I'm interested. As the other commenter mentioned, the line about finding a notebook that will run Linux out of box is not difficult these days. In fact, unless you're Lenovo and shit the bed on having sound work through the speakers on the Legion Slim 7, out of the box linux on notebooks is pretty much all ponies and rainbows. Definitely avoid Lenovo though.Reply -
bit_user Reply
Mine is a Thinkpad 13. However, I believe that was more of a branding exercise, as it doesn't appear to share a lot of the traditional Thinkpad design elements. As I said, it has always worked flawlessly, although the model was about 1 year old when I got it.PrimalNaCl said:Definitely avoid Lenovo though.
I was hoping the Thinkpad name would count for something (it usually connoted good Linux support) and maybe it did - or maybe their Linux support has just been very uneven.
Even the ARM-based version has been receiving attention, although it should be noted that model went on sale to the public about 6 months prior to this article's publication:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-ThinkPad-X13s-Progress -
bit_user ReplyThe First Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 Linux Laptop Arrives On The Market
This title is still really eating at me.
I noticed the author has taken an extended absence from contributing to this site (contributing no articles between Jan 2020 and Nov 2023), but that's really not a good excuse.
First, let's look at this claim, because "Ryzen 7000 Zen 4" connotes more than just Phoenix. There was already the chiplet-based Dragon Range (7045-series) that launched at the beginning of the year. However, even if we just restrict the claim to Phoenix, here are some reviews of AMD Phoenix laptops running Linux:
https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen7-7840u (published July 6, 2023)
https://www.phoronix.com/review/thinkpad-p14s-gen4 (published Sept 23, 2023)