This Linux Laptop Has a Powerful AMD Ryzen Chip

Linux-first laptops are overlooked because of their specs sometimes, but you can find some pretty sweet and powerful deals on the open-source side of the pond. This laptop by Tuxedo is one of the most powerful you can buy, and it comes with Linux out of the box.

Tuxedo, a German Linux hardware manufacturer, has just shown off the InfinityBook Pro 15 Gen10. This laptop range stands up to options from companies like System76 and Kubuntu Focus, and is built around AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series of processors, codenamed “Strix Point.” These chips are currently AMD’s crème de la crème when it comes to laptops, using the Zen 5 core architecture. This laptop range comes in options ranging up to the top-tier AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, so you can get this laptop as powerful as you need it. It comes with integrated AMD Radeon graphics, which should be good enough for most daily applications and maybe even some gaming if you don’t get too demanding.

The laptop boasts an all-aluminum chassis and a massive 99 Wh battery, the largest legally permissible in a laptop for air travel. It also features a 15.3-inch display with a sharp 2560×1600 resolution in a 16:10 aspect ratio and a bright 500-nit panel, making it suitable for creative professionals—as long as the GPU is good enough for your specific use—and for use in varied lighting conditions. The InfinityBook Pro 15 Gen10 also supports up to a staggering 128GB of DDR5 RAM, a capacity rarely seen in a 15-inch form factor and, let’s be frank, in a laptop in general.

There is some non-ideal stuff about this. For one, there’s an NPU in here that’s just for show—this batch of Ryzen chips has dedicated NPUs that are taken advantage of in operating systems like Windows. While the foundational AMDXDNA kernel driver exists within the Linux ecosystem, the user-space software required to actually leverage the NPU’s power is, at present, extremely limited. This means that while the AI hardware is present, most Linux users will be unable to take advantage of it until the software ecosystem matures. This might change in the future, of course, but right now, there’s not much use for this. This won’t be bad news for a lot of people, though—the AI fad has mostly stayed out of Linux so far.

This laptop has a starting price of €1090 for non-EU customers (or €1299 for customers in Germany), which seems particularly high. This price secures a base configuration with a Ryzen AI 7 350 processor and 16GB of RAM—it’s not great, but also, I have yet to see the first high-specced Linux laptop that’s actually affordable in the way a similarly-specced Windows laptop would be. There are some advantages to mass-producing, after all. This laptop is supposed to ship next month—check out Tuxedo’s website to know more.

Source: Phoronix