Hardware

Specs:

Since this is my main system, a desktop replacement, I opted for some higher-end specs without going overboard (I see no point paying $200 for an extra 0.1GHz). The quad-core CPU is clocked at 2.4GHz but goes up to 3.5GHz under load, with “Turbo Boost”. Plenty fast.

The laptop case looks good, stealthy angular matte black. The build is decent, if not as solid-feeling as a MacBook Pro (hard to beat a unibody aluminum case). The material is polycarbonate with a matte finish around the keyboard (palm rest) and on the outside of the lid, glossy around the display. I wish the trackpad didn’t have the same matte finish as the rest of the body though, as a patch has already worn smooth. It would have been better had the trackpad been glossy smooth right from the beginning.

(The Serval Professional has a “soft-touch, rubberized finish on the lid and palm rest” plus a beefier power supply and cooling system. I didn’t feel it was worth the extra $200 though. I doubt the rubberized finish would hold up any better on the trackpad than the Gazelle’s matte finish.)

I opted for a display upgrade: a richer gamut (better color reproduction) matte display. I dislike the super-glossy and super-reflective displays that are standard on most systems these days — they look great in the showroom but suck in bright light. I’m not a graphics professional, but I appreciate a good display (and my wallpaper images look gorgeous; more on that below).

The keyboard is nice, plenty big, with room for a numeric keypad (comes in handy sometimes). The keyboard feels a bit loose though, with an annoying noisy vibration when I type, especially on the right-hand side. Hopefully it’s just a loose screw that I can tighten. The lack of backlighting on the keyboard is also slightly annoying, especially when reaching for function keys in the dark. I’m thinking of adding some bumps to some function keys and to an arrow key to make locating them easier. I would have paid a bit extra for backlighting had it been an option.

One nice touch is that System 76 doesn’t have a “Windows” key. Instead, it has a “Super” key with an Ubuntu logo on it — which is just a sticker they put on top of the Windows logo. Still, I appreciate the sentiment.

There’s a fingerprint reader between the trackpad buttons. I got it working, and I like it a lot. It makes unlocking the system, authorizing installs & updates, and using sudo much easier. It doesn’t work when first logging in (since I have filesystem encryption set up), so I use my password then. I have a much longer and stronger password now, which I don’t mind because I don’t need to use it very often.

I haven’t been able to successfully burn a DVD yet. I researched how to correctly create a DVD image and burn it to a disc, and the images I’ve created work fine (readable in VLC etc.), but so far I’ve only been able to produce polycarbonate coasters. I suspect that the DVD writer may be defective. If so, the System 76 warranty will cover the replacement.

Speaking of warranties, I opted for the 3-year extended warranty. In my experience laptops are prone to hardware failures under normal use, since “normal use” means being lugged around a lot. When we got my wife a new MacBook Pro we didn’t get Apple’s extended warranty though, because she uses it almost exclusively on her desk; it doesn’t move around much.

Software

I like Ubuntu 11.10’s Unity desktop. It’s quite elegant and minimal, plenty of bling/chrome without getting in my way. There are some really nice touches like how the icons stack up in the application switcher (Ctrl-Tab) when there are too many open. I’ve heard some complaints, and I tried the Gnome 3 alternative, but I’m happiest with Unity so far.

I’m used to a fixed menu bar on the Mac, so Ubuntu’s fixed top panel doesn’t bother me (although I would like it to auto-hide — a feature I wanted under Mac OS X as well). I like how the menus are only visible when required. Using the “Ubuntu Tweak” package I set the panel’s opacity to 0% so the wallpaper shows through, and I set the launcher to auto-hide.

I used “CompizConfig Settings Manager” to set the workspaces (virtual desktops) to 3×3 instead of the default 2×2. I hadn’t used virtual desktops much before, happy to just hide applications under Mac OS X, but I’m growing to like them. The only issue was moving files between windows, which gives me a use for my otherwise-empty desktop (to allow the pretty wallpaper images to show through).

The Dash is good, reminiscent of Quicksilver and Enso, as well as Mac OS X’s Sherlock. It’s in early stages, but it has a lot of potential. Adding “lenses” extends its functionality; see below for what I’ve added.

I’m looking forward to the new HUD in Ubuntu 12.04. It will come in handy with apps like Inkscape and GIMP that have oodles of extensions and filters that are hard to locate if you don’t use them every day.

In order to tweak the OS and add some functionality I miss, I installed the following. Panel indicators & applets:

• System Load Indicator — provides a CPU graph (and could provide memory & networks graphs if I wanted them) in the panel, works well.

• ClassicMenu Indicator — provides a GNOME-style application menu, but I haven’t needed it yet and may remove it.

• Chars Indicator — provides a menu of user-configurable special characters. Select a character to put it on the clipboard, and paste it into your text in any app. I was delighted to see that it was written in Python, and I submitted a patch (applied) to add optional submenu titles & character descriptions.

• Jupiter Applet — to set CPU performance modes. Jupiter works well but seems unstable, sometimes the panel menu becomes unresponsive.

• And I tweaked the menu bar clock to display a custom date & time format using these commands:

  gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format "'custom'"
  gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime custom-time-format \
      "'%m-%d %H:%M'"
  

Dash lenses:

• AskUbuntu Lens — Unity lens to ask questions and get answers at AskUbuntu.com.

• Utilities Lens (unity-lens-utilities) — Unity lens that provides a Dash-based calculator and world city information (local time, weather, map link). Very handy.

Miscellaneous:

• unclutter — hides the mouse pointer when idle. But it interferes with (at least) the Remote Desktop Viewer app (AKA Vinagre), and I couldn’t get the app-avoidance configuration to work, do I disabled it. I wish this functionality was built in.

• Wallch (Wallpaper Changer) — switches my desktop wallpaper automatically every 30 seconds (configurable). I have a collection of over 3000 images of space, sky, sea, and land, and enjoy the variety (increasing daily; sources: APOD, Reddit SpacePorn, EarthPorn, etc.). I keep my desktop empty of icons & clutter so I can enjoy the beautiful and humbling views.

I do have some issues though:

• When I wake the laptop from sleep (suspend/resume), it takes quite a while before I can log in (often 30 seconds or more), a major annoyance. This seems to be a known issue.

• While typing, my hand sometimes touches the trackpad by accident, moving the cursor within the window or moving the keyboard focus to another window. This is partly a hardware issue, due to the placement of the trackpad, which is not centered on the spacebar like it should be. But the software should be able to compensate. There’s a “Disable touchpad while typing” setting, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. There is a function key to disable the touchpad manually, but it would be nice if it worked automatically.

• I enabled IBus for Japanese text entry (Anthy input method), but it isn’t working properly. In the Dash it interferes with normal (non-Japanese) text entry, consuming key presses without any apparent rule. So far I’ve just quit IBus after first logging in. Eventually I’ll have to figure out how to configure it properly, since I really would like its functionality.

• The “compose key” system didn’t work out of the box. I set the Caps Lock key as my compose key, but it had no effect in any application, except Emacs which complained that “<Multi_key> is undefined”.

  I got the compose key working (except in Emacs) by installing the “ibus-table-compose” package. It seems odd that it wasn’t installed by default, when the built-in help system references it.

  For Emacs, I had to copy /usr/share/applications/emacs23.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/emacs23.desktop, change the Exec line to Exec=env XMODIFIERS="" /usr/bin/emacs23 %F, and set execute permissions on the file. This workaround removes the default environment setting of XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus when launching Emacs.

• Video playback wasn’t smooth, but a bit jerky, choppy. Some research suggested that this was due to Compiz’s graphical effects. I worked around the problem by creating a second account that I switch into (Gnome Classic desktop, no effects), and play videos from there. A shared directory enables access to content from either account.

These are some serious issues. While not all would affect most users (some are particular to me), solving them requires technical abilities that most users don’t have. Some are beyond my abilities (or perseverance) so far.

Conclusion

I have had my System 76 Gazelle Professional for a month and a half now. I’m generally happy with the hardware. Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” is working well for me, apart from the issues listed above. As a techno-geek, I see such issues as challenges, problems to be solved. But most people want their systems to “just work” out of the box, so I still recommend Macs for them. Maybe not for much longer though.

GNU/Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular, is getting more usable all the time. I think it’s ready for users with mainstream needs already, and for adventurous non-technical users with more specialized needs. Certainly for techno-geeks like me there is no longer a compromise to be made.