A Linux gaming Laptop isn't as crazy as it sounds: Slimbook Hero review
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
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02:06 Slimbook Hero
03:32 Design & Build Quality
04:45 Specs and options
07:02 Performance & Gaming
09:25 Display
10:06 Keyboard & Mouse
11:20 Software Experience
12:36 Linux gaming laptop?
14:10 Support the channel
It's a 15 inch device, with a 1440p display that refreshes at 165 hertz, with an aluminium chassis, a 13th gen Intel i7 CPU, an RTX 4060 GPU, as much RAM as you could cram into a laptop, and very solid I/O.
So, this thing is chunky: it's not meant to be an ultrabook, it weighs 2.1 kilos, or 4.6 pounds, and it's pretty damn sturdy. Not much give or flex to this chassis, thanks to the aluminium.
The hinge is really solid as well, with minimal wobble when typing. It's a 16:9 form factor. Of course you can open the laptop, and access the 2 M.2 slots for SSDs, the 2 DDR5 RAM slots, and the battery, which is 62 Wh. You can also buy spare parts from Slimbook, including the bezel cover, touchpad, lid, battery, keyboard palm rest, display, and more.
Now, in terms of specs, this laptop is well equipped, with a core i7 13620H, and an Nvidia RTX 4060, with 8 gigs of VRAM.
You can spec the rest up to your liking, with up to 64 gigs of DDR 5 RAM, at 5200 Mhz, and up to 4TB of PCIE4 storage.
You can also choose to dispose with the gamer branding and use a more unified black keyboard instead of having the white accents on the WASD keys, and you can pick any keyboard language you want.
As per I/O, on the left, you get a kensington lock, a USB 2.0 port, probably for a mouse, a mic jack, and a headphone jack. On the back, you have a mindisplay port, USB C 3.2 gen 2 with dusplayport support, HDMI 2.1, a gigabit ethernet port and the barrel charger, since charging this thing over USB would be a challenge. And on the right, there's an SD card reader, and 2 type A USB 3.2 ports.
On top of all that, you get Bluetooth 5.2, Wifi 6, a basic webcam and onboard mic that won't blow your socks off, dual speakers that are pretty decent, and a backlit keyboard with RGB, because, gamer.
In terms of benchmarks, the CPU get a score of 2733 in single core and 11625 in multi core on Geekbench 6.
browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3…
Battery life is decent, with about 7h of generic office work with wifi on, 50% brightness, and using the silent mode.
In Horizon Zero Dawn, at the native 1440p resolution, without any upscaling, and at the ultra preset, the Slimbook Hero managed a super smooth 60 FPS.
For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, also at 1440p without upscaling, and the ultra preset, I got 99 FPS on average, sometimes going down to about 80, or up to 120.
The display is really solid, it covers 100% of SRGB, it has a refresh rate up to 165hz, and it's 1440p.
The keyboard is solid enough. The keys are very stable, and they have good travel. They're quite clicky, and the sound is pleasant, and they bounce back super fast, it's very nice to type on.
The touchpad is ok. It's smooth enough, and precise, although it's very off center, which I find annoying in day to day use.
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David
in reply to anonymiss • • •Passwords for accounts accessed over the Internet should be long random strings of upper and lower-case letters and numerals. E.g.,
m7FDi8cCybOspY5sAVN14jdYj
.Memorizable passwords should only be used if they can't be used remotely. The passwords you use to boot and log into your computer can be memorizable, but they should be difficult to memorize. Ideally, they should contain no words in any language.
Samuel Smith
in reply to anonymiss • • •like this
Noam נעם, balduin and Richard like this.
Richard
in reply to anonymiss • • •Samuel Smith likes this.
David
in reply to anonymiss • • •You can remember a process that creates your passwords or PINs.
printf "my easy phrase" | sha256sum | tr "0" "Q" | sha256sum | tr "0" "Q" | sha256sum
You remember the phrase, the
sha256sum
commands, and thetr
commands.Samuel Smith
in reply to anonymiss • • •I like it, but sadly the people talking about password strengths and the people needing stronger password are usually completely different sets of people.
IMHO, the best LCD (lowest common denominator) passwords are phrases like "4ScoreAnd7BeersAgo"
Easy to remember, long enough, and still has three types of characters.
If there's a better mental password system for opsec challenged people, I'd love some suggestions!
balduin likes this.
anonymiss
in reply to anonymiss • • •@Samuel Smith go to a+ security style with some special character:
“4:Score&7.5Beers<-Ago!”
Richard
in reply to anonymiss • • •Samuel Smith likes this.
Samuel Smith
in reply to anonymiss • • •I had a new employee who didn't know how to use the "Shift" key. So we found him a workaround. It was painful to watch. He would press the caps lock, then a letter, then turn caps lock off, then a few more letters or numbers, then the caps lock...
I'm leery of using special characters because sometimes the developer of a site will disallow certain characters, but not filter them on input. So conceivably, you could enter "It'sTooHotInAZ120°" and it would accept it, then you can't log in because the ° symbol isn't allowed.
The LCD isn't always the user... LOL
balduin likes this.
David
in reply to anonymiss • • •The USA was founded by wealthy slaveholders.
Of the first 12 Presidents, only two were not slaveholders: Adams and Adams. Why didn't John Adams and John Quincy Adams own slaves? Because it's obviously immoral.
One of those ten slaveholders was Thomas "All men are created equal" Jefferson, who enslaved more people than any other President. He owned slaves every single day of his adult life. Some slaveholders turned against slavery and became abolitionists. Not Jefferson. Some freed their slaves in their wills. Not Jefferson. (Washington did free his slaves in his will.)
When the Declaration of Independence was signed, slavery was legal in all 13 states.
britannica.com/topic/The-Found…
BTW, read about Jefferson and the six children he fathered with his property, Sally Hemings. Jefferson hated the press so much because they kept telling the truth about him and his very young, enslaved mistress.
The Founding Fathers and Slavery | History, Impact & Legacy | Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannicaanonymiss
in reply to anonymiss • • •😱
What is with the women?
David
in reply to anonymiss • • •Some women in the USA (e.g., in Wyoming) were voting in elections in 1869, but women didn't get the right all over the USA until 1920.
What about Germany?
I was shocked a few years ago, right here on D*, to discover that women didn't get the vote in Switzerland until 1971!
OK. Just looked it up. Women got the vote in Germany in 1918.
anonymiss likes this.
anonymiss
in reply to anonymiss • • •Richard
in reply to anonymiss • • •David
in reply to anonymiss • • •@anonymiss
In Europe, and in former colonies of European countries, wealthy men have ruled for centuries. The USA was founded by wealthy men.
After WWII, the USA had huge advantages over the rest of the industrialized world. Europe and Japan were in ruins, along with all the countries that were part of the empire of Japan before the war.
The wealth of the wealthy wasn't completely gone, but much of it was destroyed by the war.
The US President during the war was Franklin Roosevelt, and his policy was to take power and wealth from the rich and give it to the war effort, and, after the war, to the veterans of the war.
Veterans, almost overnight, became a new, large middle class. They were able to earn university degrees and buy real estate. They joined labor unions. They had real pensions (not retirement accounts from which banks profited). They were able to send their children to universities.
Everyone in this new middle class assumed that the middle class would continue to grow and become more powerful. The wealthy who owned the USA before WWI seemed to be defeated. This was sometimes called "the revolution of rising expectations."
But the old wealthy families were not gone. They fought back. By 1980 they had regained power. It took a few more decades to get wealth and income inequality back to where it was in the 1890s, but the wealthy have won the class war they started.
Now wealth and income inequality in the USA is greater than ever. This country is run, once again, by racist, wealthy, old, white men. To them, what you call "democracy" is radical, extreme socialism.
@Richard
Trump's victories in 2016 and 2024 were not unpredictable or random occurrences. They were, to a large extent, the result of the poor quality of the only party allowed by our election laws to compete with the Republicans. The Democratic Party is a conservative party whose only appeal to voters is "We're not as bad as the Republicans." It's not at all surprising that it has failed to inspire potential voters to vote.
like this
balduin and Samuel Smith like this.