Review: Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop

I've been using Linux full-time since 2008, when I installed a copy of Ubuntu to see what it was like. It was great and I never looked back. In all that time, I have never purchased a PC that was explicitly designed to work with Linux. In 2008, there were precious few of those to choose from, but nowadays there are plenty, with names like Dell or Lenovo, or smaller, dedicated Linux shops like System76, which currently tops our guide to the best Linux laptops.

The latest dedicated Linux machine to cross my desk is from Kubuntu Focus, a relative newcomer (Kubuntu Focus launched in 2019), based not far from me in Traverse City, Michigan. The Zr Gen 1 is Kubuntu Focus' latest laptop, and it is a beast. Designed to pack all the power of a desktop in a (relatively) portable body, the Zr1 is one of the most powerful laptops I've ever used, running the best operating system around. The only drawback is that all that power does not come cheap.

Hardware Behemoth

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The Zr is impressively large at 15 inches by 12 inches, and over an inch thick with ports on three sides. The screen is a gloriously large 18-inch LCD display (2560 x 1600 pixels, 168 dpi density) with a max brightness of over 500 nits and matte finish that makes it easy to use even in bright light. It's one of the better LCD panels I've used lately, and gamers will be happy to see the 240-Hz refresh rate. You can also plug in up to four external displays.

Inside, the Zr Gen 1 features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, with 24 cores, an RTX 5090 graphics card, 24 GB GDDR7 RAM (expandable up to 192 GB), and two SSDs, one with a capacity of 1 TB and the other with 2 TB. (You can have up to four drives, one of them being a PCIe GEN 5x4 NVMe.) Along with the discrete GPU, there's an integrated one as well, which means you can turn off the discrete one to maximize battery life. I spent about 90 percent of the time with the discrete card off and just turned it on when editing photos and video.

Thanks to the size of the Zr, there's plenty of room for a full size keyboard with a numeric pad. The keyboard is user-configurable and features a 65,536-color LED backlight system that you can tweak to your liking with the Focus tool. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable. There's 3.5 mm of travel to the keys, so they're plenty springy and responsive. As is generally the case with dedicated Linux laptops, there's a Kubuntu (gear icon) key rather than a Windows key.

Did I mention the Zr Gen 1 weighs 8 pounds? It is a big thing, too big for a shoulder bag. You'll definitely want a backpack for this one, but even then this isn't the sort of thing you bring to the coffee shop. It's more the sort of thing you cart to the lab and back, or perhaps just leave on your desk connected to your home lab. To that end I would say that, when I tell you battery life averaged around four hours, I would also add that it doesn't matter. This isn't a laptop you carry around. That you can take it to the couch and watch a movie on it when you want is an added bonus, but not really the point of the machine.

What is the point of a laptop like this? Anything that requires serious computing power, be it machine learning (running TensorFlow), local LLMs, big data crunching workflows, even high-end video editing. I should note that Davinci Resolve ran unlike it has ever run on anything else when I installed it on the Zr Gen 1. I always thought everyone had to wait a couple of seconds before applying a LUT to a large clip. It turns out that can be instantaneous, if you have the GPU for it. I wouldn't go so far as to say you could edit video without proxy clips, but … maybe you could, depending on the length of your clips.

Bring It in Focus

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The advantage of buying a laptop with Linux support is that you don't have to deal with the potential complexities of managing a Linux system. I am typing this on an Arch-based machine. If I install an update right now and it breaks vim, or tmux, or rxvt-unicode, or any other bit of software from the kernel all the way up to these three, fixing that is on me. What Kubuntu Focus offers is that you don't have to worry about any of that stuff breaking.

When any piece of software upstream from Kubuntu's finished product releases new software, the Focus developers first validate that everything works on the company's hardware. Kubuntu Focus hardware is tested for a minimum of three years after last sale. If an issue is found, the company works with the developers of the core components, like KDE, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and the Linux Kernel, to fix it before it ever gets passed on to you. The last known-stable version of software remains unchanged until the next version passes all the tests and there are no issues. Kubuntu Focus does this even at the application level, testing everything from dev tools like JetBrains, to consumer software like Dropbox, Steam, Zoom, Slack, and more to ensure everything works before it ships out to you.

The result is a level of stability you're not going to achieve on your own. While it's pretty rare for me to have to roll back software in Arch, I have had to do it, and it is a pain. I think there is value in the pain of the DIY approach, but it's not for everyone, and I am happy that there are options out there for people who don't want to futz with their system and just want to edit video or run their own LLM or whatever it is they want to do. I am happy that companies like Kubuntu Focus and System76 are out there making these fully compatible, well-tested systems available.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

It's worth noting that Focus is a little different than System76. The latter has taken a full-stack approach to selling Linux hardware, controlling everything from OEM hardware configurations to the coreboot bootloader to the Pop!_OS distro with its Cosmic desktop, which is developed and maintained by System76.

Kubuntu Focus is not a full-stack retailer like that. As the name suggests, what you get is stock Kubuntu. The company does ship a couple of extra (and very handy) configuration tools and managers, along with their own software repositories, but they aren't customizing Kubuntu beyond that. Kubuntu Focus is, ahem, focused, mainly on QA testing of updates and maintaining full hardware support for its devices.

Focus does offer a few software tools, including custom power profiles tailored to your hardware, allowing you to fine-tune everything from graphics cards to fans. My favorite, though, is the rollback tool. If for some reason, somehow, something does go wrong with your Kubuntu system, you can use the rollback tool to quickly revert back to the system as it was before it stopped working. I tested this extensively by purposefully breaking the system, and it always worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

Kubuntu Focus has also done a great job with its setup wizard, which guides you through the setup process with a series of questions, suggestions, mini tutorials, and little wizards designed to make getting Linux running easier for newbies. It succeeds too. I especially like the little widgets that sit on the desktop to remind you of keyboard shortcuts and other helpful extras. For those new to Linux, the overall experience is leaps and bounds better than what they'd get downloading a random distro and trying to get it to work.

Leave Apple Behind

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

If you want an all-powerful Linux laptop, the Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 is a fantastic, if expensive, machine. Most people will probably be better served by one of the company's other models, like the Lr 14 or 16, which are more like your standard 14- or 16-inch laptop, but have some nice extras like dual SSD slots and up to 96 GB of RAM. The only downside is you're limited to a Core i5-13500H processor.

There's also the M2, which sits somewhere between the Lr and Zr, being a bit more svelte than the Zr, but using the more powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 processor. Whichever model suits your needs, the Linux experience and fantastic hardware support is the same.

That next year will be “the year of Linux” is a joke that's been around as long as I've been using Linux, which is going on 20 years now. I'm not going to evoke it here, except to say that I have seen more people experimenting with Linux lately than ever before. If you're one of those people and you really want to leave Apple and Microsoft behind, Kubuntu Focus machines are an excellent way to do it. They'll give you a level of support that even Apple and Microsoft don't really match.