Updated: August 2, 2024
My early experience with the Titan wasn't a good one. The setup was rather messy, and there was a moment where I almost considered physically demolishing the device. Luckily, hard-earned and hard-spent money begets respect, and so I eschewed hardware-focused violence and went on with nerdy suffering instead, taming the laptop and its operating system to a usable state. Fast forward two long-term reviews later, the Titan is a-OK.
It is time for me to give you a fresh look at this machine, its Nvidia graphics and its Linux distro, some six months since my last essay. I consider these occasional re-reviews highly important. I chose this machine for a rather particular reason - to test the viability of using Linux as a primary operating system in all aspects, including the critical domain of gaming. I want to get rid of Windows in me household, if possible, and that means being able to replace every aspect of functionality with a Linux equivalent. I don't want to compromise on usability, and in parallel, I don't want to reduce my IQ by using Windows 11. Hence, this series of tests and trials and tribulations and happy moments. Report 3, here we go.
Good, great but not perfect
It is incredible how early issues can leave their mark on your confidence. I've resolved the problems that plagued this machine in its first days, and yet, I still dread them. Whenever something small goes bad, I start wondering if I'm looking at another week of pain. That almost happened this time around.
Power on Discover, begin updates - only to discover they are chugging along at a rather disrespectful 350 KB/s like it's 2002. I thought, maybe the network driver is wonky, maybe my Internet is wonky. Further checks quickly eliminated those two options. Reboot, repeat, nope.
I decided to try doing updates from the command line, and soon learned that apt was gimping on the Skype deb repo. I don't recall if Microsoft decided to EOL that or not, or moved to alternative package mechanisms, but once I commented out that particular entry in the apt sources, everything went back to being fast, breezy and peachy. To be fair, it's also important to add that Discover handled the updates pretty robustly, considering the fact I've interrupted the process twice during the troubleshooting above.
WINE problems
After I played with SketchUp Make some and finally resolved the blank window issue, I noticed that some of the application launchers no longer worked. They simply wouldn't start programs. Launching from the command line? No issues at all.
Fixing this turned out to be waaaay harder than I expected. First, Plasma refused to edit menu entry launch commands. Say you want to add something to a particular application, like Steam. Indeed, on the Titan, I've pinned Steam to the Nvidia card (the system has a hybrid PRIME configuration), and used the desktop scaling factor to make things bigger, more visible. There, the changes worked just fine, but with WINE, even after saving the menu entries, even after a logout, they would revert back to the original.
I had to play with desktop files, create my own launchers and then some. TL;DR: I resolved this, and there will be a separate article on this topic. For now, seeing is believing or something. Anyway, a hurdle that got unhurdled.
Everyday use, games, battery
Good. I tried a few other Windows-only games. So far, no luck with Assetto Corsa via Proton. I only tried to use in-Steam options. While I'm aware that one can use custom versions of Proton, and a whole bunch of hacks to get the game going, I don't want to do that right now. If Linux gaming is to be a viable alternative to Windows, the game setup and launch must be plug 'n' play. To that end, I will wait a bit more for the Steam folks to issue a proper, official patch. Fingers crossed.
The system was stable, and there were no weird errors or problems. The one annoyance is that if you mistype a decryption passphrase for LUKS during the boot process, you may see a prompt that says "too many invalid attempts" (along those lines) even though you tried only once. Then, the passphrase box will show up again, and you will be able to re-enter it. Annoying and slightly unnerving, as you don't want anything bad to happen with your encryption, right. However, half a dozen reboots later, the things are solid.
The laptop did not heat too much, even under load, although the graphics card fan may chirp a little. The battery offers about five hours under light-to-moderate load at 75% brightness. In this regard, I have to say I'm quite surprised. Nice.
Conclusion
The Slimbook Titan is a robust, heavy-duty laptop that largely delivers. The initial woes can never be truly forgotten, but I'm slowly healing. Overall, the more I use it, the more I feel like it's a reasonable device, and the entire project wasn't a huge waste of money. Far from it, the gamble seems to have paid off, and I have a dependable, powerful machine available for serious work and gaming. There's still more work to be done, more games to be tested, but we're getting there.
In comparison, my Slimbook Executive is definitely a more comfortable everyday productivity choice. If you're not a gamer, it offers a better, cheaper, lighter solution overall. Ergonomically, it's superior, and the big delta comes in the graphics performance. That said, the Titan has become an excellent laptop. Kubuntu also needed a handful of updates, plus a kernel or two to get into a state of proper usability. This is something you can never take for granted with Linux machines, it irks me that this is still the default case in 2024, but overall, when it works, it's brilliant, especially when you consider the future, the alternatives, or both. Anyway, that's enough for my report 3 on this Titan. All in all, I'm quite pleased. Take care.
Cheers.