I switched from MacBook Pro to System76 Galago Pro with popOS! — Three months on
TL; DR;
The good:
- A powerful Linux laptop with reasonable price that just works
- Pretty lightweight (2.87 lbs)
- It never gets very hot
- Lots of ports
The bad:
- Trackpad is “sticky”
- Short battery life
Fifteen years ago I was in graduate school doing research in population genetics. My favorite procrastination activity was downloading Linux distros from distrowatch.com and testing them out using LiveCDs. I was pretty happy with Knoppix back then but there is still lots of fiddling that makes it work. I was searching for the operating system that “just works!” I then purchased a 12" MacBook pro in summer 2014 since OSX was based on BSD. It took me about a week to realize that there is little fiddling that needs to be done — most things “just works!”
15 years on, I am still very happy with OSX, I have been using it at home and at work. Even though most of my development work is done on the Linux HPC cluster or the AWS EC2 instances I have not been using Linux as my main terminal. For the last year, I have also been performing an experiment on a $150 Chromebook with Crouton installed and it has been going quite well — I can do most of the things there without having to use my Macs, but for some things, a more powerful machine is needed. So when I was looking to buy a new laptop I thought I would give the popOS! on Galapo Pro a try.
Galapo Pro
The more detailed tech spec of my Galapo Pro is shown below. Yes, it has got 64 GB of RAM! Going from 16GB to 64GB costs $400 for Galapo Pro and $800 for MacbookPro (2666MHZ DDR4).
1× 4.2 GHz i5-10210U (1.6 up to 4.2 GHz - 6 MB Cache - 4 Cores - 8 Threads1× 64 GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2666 MHz (2x32GB)500 GB NVMe Seq Read: 3,500 MB/s, Seq Write: 3,200 MB/s1 TB SSD Seq Read: 560 MB/s, Seq Write: 530 MB/s
So many ports!
The Galapo Pro comes with a USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3, 2 × USB 3.1 Type-A, HDMI, MiniDP, and even an SD Card Reader! Definitely a lot more varieties than the MacBook Pro.
Trackpad
I have to say that I really don’t love the trackpad of Galapo Pro. The trackpad was not smooth and maybe a bit overly sensitive, it is hard for me the apply the right amount of pressure. I have to carry an external mouse around when I use it outside of my house. I know to be a real geek I need to learn how to use the keyboard to do everything (like here, and here) but I am not there yet 😔. This is probably the one thing that I miss most from a MacBook pro.
Battery
The battery, as quite a few people have pointed out, does not last long. It lasts for about 3 hours for me even when I am mostly browsing and typing. Also, the battery goes down a lot quicker than MacBook pro after putting it to sleep. My Galapo Pro usually goes from 100% to 70% after sleeping for about 10 hours; while you hardly notice any difference in battery power after sleeping for a similar amount of time in a MacBook Pro. According to this review, it seems that the Danter Pro, Galapo Pro’s bigger brother, does have better battery life.
Running heavy jobs
I have used the laptop to run some computationally intensive jobs like aligning the entire human genome or training a deep neural network. While it’s not very fast (due to the specs) it never got very hot, it was lukewarm at best even when all 8 cores were all at close to 100%. The fan is also relatively quiet.
PopOS!
While I am very comfortable using Linux I still appreciate the auto-configuration and configuration GUIs that made my life easier. Here are some of the examples:
- mounting volumes and naming them was very easy with the Disks app
- setting up printer/scanner: My Wireless Pantum M6552NW Monochrome Laser Printer was picked up as soon as it was online and I was able to print from it. I did have to install XSane to use the scanner though.
- wireless keyboard and mouse also work right away after I plugged in the USB receiver. I also tried connecting using Bluetooth and it worked without issues.
minor nuisances
- I have a feeling that the laptop does not completely go to “sleep” when I put it to sleep. Usually, the battery level drops from 100% to less than 80% with 8 hours of sleep. My MacBook Pro could retain more than that after one week of simply closing the lid. This might be related to the battery life that I mentioned earlier, I am not sure. Also, I have to manually click on the sleep option instead of closing the lid like what I usually do with MacBook Pro, as there were times that I just closed my Galapo Pro it continued to run and drained the battery in 3 hours.
Accessories
Macbooks and Macbook Pro wins this category hands down. I looked for a sleeve and a portable stand for Aria and realized that most of them were designed for the MacBooks. The choice of a perfect sleeve is very very limited, to say the least. For the portable stand, the one that I really like, which is designed for MacBooks, would be covering the ventilation holes :( I ended up putting some stickers on it instead.
Overall, I am very happy with the Galapo Pro and PopOS! If you are using it more like a desktop at home office, with occasional travel, it could work very well. It does fulfill my requirement on “just works” and it is a pleasure to use it. I do wish that it has a better trackpad and that the battery lasts longer though.