Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Review: A Powerhouse Linux Laptop

Inside, the Zr Gen 1 features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, with 24 cores, an RTX 5090 graphics card, 24 GB GDDR7 RAM (expandable up to 192 GB), and 2 SSDs, 1 with a capableness of 1 TB and the different with 2 TB. (You tin person up to 4 drives, 1 of them being a PCIe GEN 5x4 NVMe.) Along with the discrete GPU, there's an integrated 1 arsenic well, which means you tin crook disconnected the discrete 1 to maximize artillery life. I spent astir 90 percent of the clip with the discrete paper disconnected and conscionable turned it connected erstwhile editing photos and video.

Thanks to the size of the Zr, there's plentifulness of country for a afloat size keyboard with a numeric pad. The keyboard is user-configurable and features a 65,536-color LED backlight strategy that you tin tweak to your liking with the Focus tool. Typing connected the keyboard is comfortable. There's 3.5 mm of question to the keys, truthful they're plentifulness springy and responsive. As is mostly the lawsuit with dedicated Linux laptops, there's a Kubuntu (gear icon) cardinal alternatively than a Windows key.

Did I notation the Zr Gen 1 weighs 8 pounds? It is simply a large thing, excessively large for a enarthrosis bag. You'll decidedly privation a backpack for this one, but adjacent past this isn't the benignant of happening you bring to the java shop. It's much the benignant of happening you cart to the laboratory and back, oregon possibly conscionable permission connected your table connected to your location lab. To that extremity I would accidental that, erstwhile I archer you artillery beingness averaged astir 4 hours, I would besides adhd that it doesn't matter. This isn't a laptop you transportation around. That you tin instrumentality it to the sofa and ticker a movie connected it erstwhile you privation is an added bonus, but not truly the constituent of the machine.

What is the constituent of a laptop similar this? Anything that requires superior computing power, beryllium it instrumentality learning (running TensorFlow), section LLMs, large information crunching workflows, adjacent high-end video editing. I should enactment that Davinci Resolve ran dissimilar it has ever tally connected thing other erstwhile I installed it connected the Zr Gen 1. I ever thought everyone had to hold a mates of seconds earlier applying a LUT to a ample clip. It turns retired that tin beryllium instantaneous, if you person the GPU for it. I wouldn't spell truthful acold arsenic to accidental you could edit video without proxy clips, but … possibly you could, depending connected the magnitude of your clips.

Bring It successful Focus

The vantage of buying a laptop with Linux enactment is that you don't person to woody with the imaginable complexities of managing a Linux system. I americium typing this connected an Arch-based machine. If I instal an update close present and it breaks vim, oregon tmux, oregon rxvt-unicode, oregon immoderate different spot of bundle from the kernel each the mode up to these three, fixing that is connected me. What Kubuntu Focus offers is that you don't person to interest astir immoderate of that worldly breaking.