Slimbook has sold PCs with desktop Linux for a while now, and today the company announced a premium Linux-powered laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor and up to 128GB RAM. Say hello to the Slimbook Executive.
The Slimbook Executive is a high-end laptop with a 14-inch screen, a weight of only 2.64 pounds (1.2 kg), and a “Silk Skin finish” that “offers a unique feel.” The display is a 3K 2880 x 1800p LCD panel, and the maximum refresh rate of 120Hz should help the laptop feel snappy in everyday use. It’s not a touch screen, though.
The laptop has an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor, with 16 cores, 16 threads, and a maximum boost clock of 5.1 GHz. That’s not one of the third-gen Core Ultra chips that were just revealed earlier this month, also known as Arrow Lake, which is a bit disappointing. The Core Ultra 7 255H still has great performance and power efficiency compared to most x86-based processors, though. It’s also well-supported by the Linux kernel at this point, while optimizations for Series 3 chips likely won’t arrive for a few more months, at the earliest.
You can configure the laptop with up to 16TB of storage across the two NVMe PCIe 4.0 slots, and 16-128GB DDR5 RAM. The storage and memory are both upgradable, which is more than you can say for many other PC laptops and all current MacBook models.
Credit: Slimbook
For connectivity, you get three USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 40Gbps port (which also works as USB-C and DisplayPort 1.4a output), HDMI 2.1, a USB 3.2 Type-C, an SD card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack. There’s also Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 5.2. You get two options for Wi-Fi: the Intel AX211 card with Wi-Fi 6e, or the MediaTek MT7925B22M that supports Wi-Fi 7 on Windows, but only Wi-Fi 6 AX on Linux.
The Slimbook Executive ships with Slimbook OS by default, which is a customized version of Ubuntu Desktop LTS with the GNOME desktop environment. You can also choose Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, KDE Neon, and other distributions when you purchase the laptop, or Windows 11 for an extra €119-169. It’s just a normal PC laptop, so you can install any other Linux distribution that supports 64-bit x86 hardware—just make sure you’re on a recent kernel version for the best performance and power efficiency on that Core Ultra CPU.
You can buy the Slimbook Executive for €1,326 from the company’s online store, with shipping available in the entire European Union, Australia, China, Canada, and a few other regions. Slimbook has had problems shipping to the United States (not a surprise), so if you’re in the US and want a laptop built for Linux, consider a System76 PC instead.
Source: Slimbook on Bluesky
