Latest Darter Pro: An Outstanding Choice for the Linux User Experience

System76 sells a lot of desktop and laptop computers built for Linux, and now the company has released an updated Darter Pro laptop. It’s a high-end workstation laptop with the latest Intel processor, and it might be one of the best Linux machines you can get right now.

The new Darter Pro is a laptop built specifically for Linux, with a 14 or 16-inch 16:10 screen, up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM, and up to 8TB of NVMe storage. This new model can be equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H or Core Ultra 7 155H processor. The screen has a special anti-glare coating, so it should be more readable in bright light than many other modern laptops.

The laptop ships with Pop_OS 22.04 LTS preinstalled, but you can also choose Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (and upgrade to the latest 24.04 LTS ) when ordering the machine or install any other distribution you want. You should also be able to install Windows, but that’s not really what this laptop was built around, and System76 hasn’t updated its recommended drivers list for the new model yet.

System76

Admittedly, the Darter Pro doesn’t look as sleek as many other modern productivity laptops, but that comes with some advantages. There are a lot of ports: two USB Type-A connectors, two USB Type-C ports (one Thunderbolt 4, one USB 3.2 Gen 2), a microSD card slot, Ethernet, HDMI, and a headphone jack. Even with all that connectivity, it still manages to be 0.71 inches thin, which is only a bit more than the current MacBook Pro at 0.61 inches.

The main catch here is that the Darter Pro doesn’t have a dedicated GPU, only the integrated Intel Arc graphics. There aren’t many laptops in this price range with a dedicated GPU, outside of bulky gaming laptops, but it’s still something to keep in mind. If you want to do more gaming or GPU-intensive workloads, consider one of the more powerful laptops from System76.

You can buy the System76 Darter Pro today from the company’s online store, starting at $1,199. The base model has a 14-inch screen, an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD, and a one-year limited parts and labor warranty.

Source: System76

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