Slimbook is one of several companies selling PCs with desktop Linux. The KDE Slimbook is one of its most popular laptops, and now a seventh-generation model has arrived with impressive hardware and pre-installed KDE Plasma.
The company announced in a blog post, “Since the first model, Slimbook and KDE worked together with a precise objective: offer the user a fast, modern, sustainable and 100% ready to enjoy KDE Plasma from the first boot. This seventh edition reflects this evolution: a more solid design, fluid screen and a big leap in performance since the project started.”
The KDE Slimbook is a 16-inch ultraportable laptop, powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor with 10 cores and 20 threads. You also get integrated AMD Radeon 880M graphics, expandable memory up to 128GB, up to 8TB of storage, a backlit keyboard, and 100W charging over USB Type-C Power Delivery (USB-PD).
Thankfully, the laptop isn’t short on ports and connectivity. There are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C ports (both of which support power input and 4K video output), three USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2. The lack of USB 4 or newer Wi-Fi versions is a bit disappointing, though.
The screen is a 16-inch 2560×1600 panel, with a 16:10 aspect ratio, 100% sRGB coverage, and a maximum brightness of 400 nits. The refresh rate can go up to 165Hz—even though this isn’t really a gaming laptop, that will give you super-smooth animations.
As with other Slimbook computers, this ships with KDE Neon instead of Windows. Most other modern Linux distributions should work as well, though. You could also throw Windows on it if needed, even if it somewhat defeats the point of buying a Linux-first PC.
Slimbook also said in its announcement, “The seventh generation resulted from an ongoing collaboration over eight years uniting specialised hardware and top-tier free software. Something that started as a pioneer initiative to offer an optimised laptop for KDE Plasma, has been converted to a consolidated project that strengthens the role of open-source in the technology market.”
You can buy the KDE Slimbook VII for €1,029.00, which is a temporary Black Friday discount of €70. The company is based in Spain, but shipping is available for countries in the European Union, Australia, China, India, Canada, and a few other regions. Slimbook says it has issues shipping to the United States, which isn’t all that surprising, so US residents are probably better off buying a System76 or Kubuntu Focus laptop.
Source: Slimbook via 9to5Linux