"For those looking to save time or avoid a potential
headache, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and other major vendors have been
offering Linux notebooks for some time now. One of the smaller
vendors though that has been offering Ubuntu Linux notebooks (along
with desktops and servers) is System76 Inc. This Colorado-based
company not only ensures their hardware is 100% compatible with
Ubuntu Linux, but they also preload some popular software packages
that are not installed by default on Ubuntu. In this review we are
looking at the System76 Serval Professional notebook.
"The System76 Serval Professional is a 15.4" notebook available
with a 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1200 display, which can be configured
along with a NVIDIA GeForce or NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics processor.
Some of the other components include Gigabit LAN, 802.11 a/g/n
WiFi, Bluetooth, Express Card, a built-in 2.0 mega-pixel web
camera, and a fingerprint reader. Our System76 Serval Professional
review unit was configured with the 15.4" WSXGA+ display, an Intel
Core 2 Duo P8600 dual-core processor clocked at 2.40GHz, Intel
Mobile 4 Series + ICH9M Chipset, 4GB of system memory, a 32GB Intel
X25-E Extreme SSD, and a NVIDIA GeFore 9800M GTS 512MB graphics
processor. System76 currently loads their products up with Ubuntu
8.10 (x86_64) with the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, GNOME 2.24.1, X Server
1.5.2, GCC 4.3.2, and the proprietary NVIDIA driver."