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#opensource #Linux #software

00:00 Intro 00:30 Sponsor: Secure your internet connection 01:27 Operating Systems 03:51 Server Software 06:15 Apps for using Nextcloud 08:04 Apps to run the channel 10:27 Utilities 12:02 Productivity Software 14:16 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:21 Support the channel

Firefox Theme: https://github.com/rafaelmardojai/firefox-gnome-theme Thunderbird theme: https://github.com/rafaelmardojai/thunderbird-gnome-theme

My laptop and my desktop run Fedora workstation 38 with GNOME 44.

For my servers, I have one running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It's used for my Nextcloud server, it's hosted on Linode, and it's the backbone of all my digital life and the channel. My other server is used to host my podcast, the Linux and Open SOurce News podcast. That server is hosted on Linode, and runs Debian 11.

I also run HoloISO on a PC in my living room, that serves as my Linux gaming console.

First thing is Nextcloud. As I said, it's installed as a Snap, and it works beautifully. I don't get the updates as soon as they're out, but when I do get them, they're very well tested and I never had any issues with it. I'm currently on version 26.0.4, so Nextcloud Hub 4, not 5.

I mostly use Nextcloud as the platform to handle all my online accounts. It hosts my calendar, contacts, tasks, photos, notes, RSS feeds, passwords, and I also use it to share files with sponsors, or to share the link to the weekly patroncast I make for patrons and youtube members.

My other server hosts my podcast, using YUNOHOST and their Castopod app. Yunohost is a very simple, graphical dashboard to run one or many server applications, it basically just simplifies hosting stuff and has pre packaged apps to install stuff in one click.

To interact with other Nextcloud related stuff, I use a few apps. The first one is Iotas, it's a GTK application that plugs into Nextcloud notes and lets you take, well, notes, in simple, distraction free markdown. For RSS feeds, I use Newsflash, which is another GTK app.

I also, of course, use the Nextcloud desktop client to sync all my files to and from my computers, plus the Nautilus Nextcloud integration so I can generate a shared link for any file straight from the file manager. For tasks, I use Endeavour.

And on my phone, I also use the Nextcloud app to send all my photos automatically from my phone to a folder that is then synced to all my computers, and I use the official Nextcloud Notes app to have access to my scripts while I'm recording.

For audio, I use Audacity. It looks like crap, it's very old, but it does the trick, it has the 3 effects I need, a noise reduction tool, a compressor, and a normalizing tool.

For my thumbnails, it's obviously GIMP. It has a bad reputation among people who are familiar with photoshop, but as I've never used that thing, GIMP is really easy to use for me

And for recording my screen, it's OBS on every device.

When I happen upon an image I want to use that uses a format Resolve doesn't support, like WebP or AVIF, I use Converter to convert it to PNG. For converting video files, I use ffmpeg in a terminal.

And when I need to re download one of my old videos that I didn't backup, I use Parabolic.

Now for a few smaller utilities. FOr virtual machines, I generally run them using GNOME Boxes, because it's really simple.

For my backups, I use Pika Backup. I also use Safing's portmaster. For editing text, I generally just use Nano in a terminal.

For music, I use YTM Music, because I pay for Youtube Premium to avoid ads on my TV, and it comes with a music streaming service, so might as well use it.

I won't talk much about the web browser, it's Firefox everywhere, even on my phone.

For my office suite, I use LIbreOffice, everyone knows about it.

For email and calendar, I moved to Thunderbird, seeing as version 115 is absolutely wonderful and well designed.

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:28 Sponsor: Get a free issue of Admin Magazine 01:29 StarLabs launches a Microsoft Surface equivalent 03:16 COSMIC theming options 04:49 SUSE is going private 06:05 GNOME 45 beta is out, with some nice features 08:19 More Plasma 6 changes 10:16 Gaming News: AMD ray tracing and mitigation performance 12:39 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 13:33 Support the channel

StarLabs launches their Microsoft Surface equivalent

https://linuxiac.com/starlite-5-linux-tablet/

COSMIC showcases theming options

https://blog.system76.com/post/customizing-cosmic-theming-and-applications

SUSE is going private

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/18/suse_delisting/

GNOME 45 is getting a cool feature, plus the beta is out

https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-adds-keyboard-backlight-control/

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/10/gnome_45_beta/

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-45-beta-released-heres-whats-new

https://mastodon.social/@tbernard/110917789015402671

More Plasma 6 changes

https://pointieststick.com/2023/08/12/how-all-this-icon-stuff-is-going-to-work-in-plasma-6/

https://pointieststick.com/2023/08/18/this-week-in-kde-double-click-by-default/

Gaming News: AMD ray tracing and mitigation performance

https://www.winehq.org//announce/8.14

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-Batch-Accel-RT

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/08/linux-kernel-gets-an-amd-zenbleed-fix-for-the-steam-deck-apu/

https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-inception-benchmarks

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#Linux #immutable #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:33 Sponsor: 10% off your first website with Squarespace 01:26 What is an Immutable Distro? 03:30 Advantages 05:16 Installing software 07:44 Updating software 10:48 The Complexity problem 12:01 Are they the future? 13:26 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:29 Support the channel

They are linux based operating systems that are designed to be read-only and not easily modifiable.

Most of these immutable distros still let you install apps and packages on top of the system, through flatpaks, snaps or appimages, or with a specific layer of packages, that is kept when rebooting and updating. Some immutable distros give you easy access to containers so you can still use a full system with full write access.

And there are a BUNCH of immutable distros: Fedora Silverblue, and Fedora Kinoite are basically Fedora Workstation, with GNOME or KDE, but with an immutable base. Vanilla OS is an Ubuntu based, soon to be debian based immutable distro that gives you access to any packaging format through containers. BLendOS does the same thing, but based on Arch. SteamOS, the linux distribution that powers the steam deck, and also my Linux gaming console / PC is also immutable.

You could also say that NixOS is an immutable distribution, since you only install things and modify configurations through a declarative config file that is used to build the system. And there are a lot more, like microOS from openSUSE, endlessOS, and more!

So in terms of advantages, immutable distros are just way more secure. Since you, the user can't modify the base system, and since the super user can't do it either, it also means any third party programs also can't modify that base system.

Another advantage is reliability. Since you can't tinker with the system files, you also have a much smaller chance of actually destroying your system.

And in terms of maintenance, since you only use an updated system after a reboot, there is no risk of breaking something by updating it while it's running.

But how do I install anything if I can't write to the system? Most immutable distros work around that using universal packaging formats like flatpaks, snaps and appimages.

But that's not the only way to install stuff to an immutable distro. A lot of them actually still let you install packages to the system, in a dedicated layer. That's called "layering".

WHat this means is that you still have access to the distro's repos of packages, and you can still elect to install some, but you won't use the usual package manager, but another dedicated tool.

Some immutable distributions also use containers, generally with something like distrobox.

Another difference that can be considered a drawback is updating. Updates on immutable distros are never applied in place. When an update is available, they'll build another system image. So you end up with 2 systems; the one you're currently using, and the updated one, which is not currently active. And you only get the updates after you reboot onto that new system image.

Another drawback is the complexity of these systems. Everything you try to do is different: installing a package doesn't use your usual package manager. Applying updates isn't the same command, or requires you to reboot to actually use the updated system.

Immutable distros are a different sort of system, with different tools to interact with things you might already know how to do.

Are they the future? Probably not. For servers, they make a lot of sense. For regular users, they do have a lot of advantages, but they also have a bunch of limitations that require the use of workarounds.

And so I don't think immutable distros will replace regular distros. They'll grow, and occupy a space next to let's call them "mutable" systems, but they'll probably never be the default thing most people use.

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Gain control of your internet connection 01:42 Google wants to add DRM to the web 04:20 GNOME has a new way of managing windows 06:31 Plasma 6 removes a few features 08:30 Canonical drops LXD maintainers 09:46 FOSS Nvidia vulkan drivers land in Mesa 11:29 Linux drivers speed boost 12:46 Gaming news: Blizzard games on Steam & Heroic update 14:20 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:14 Support the channel

Google wants to add DRM to the web

https://www.techradar.com/pro/googles-new-plan-for-the-future-of-the-web-has-a-lot-of-people-worried-heres-why

https://vivaldi.com/blog/googles-new-dangerous-web-environment-integrity-spec/

GNOME has a new way of managing windows

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2023/07/26/rethinking-window-management/

Plasma 6 removes a few features

https://pointieststick.com/2023/07/26/what-we-plan-to-remove-in-plasma-6

Canonical drops LXD maintainers

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LXD-Maintainership-Canonical

FOSS Nvidia vulkan drivers land in Mesa

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVK-Merge-Request-Mesa

Linux drivers speed boost & battery life improvements

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Per-Policy-CPU-Perf-Boost

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-anv-mod-boost

Gaming news: Blizzard games on Steam & Heroic update

https://linuxgameconsortium.com/blizzard-games-are-coming-to-steam/

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/heroic-games-launcher-29-out-now-with-amazon-games-support/

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#macOS #macbook #laptop

00:00 Intro 00:49 Sponsor: Proton Mail, the secure and private email service 02:22 macOS: sub par software 07:49 The Apple Ecosystem: not useful to me 09:35 macbook Pro: top notch hardware, but... 12:24 M1 Pro CPU: powerhouse with one crucial flaw 13:20 Performance & Battery Life: no equal 14:30 Why it's just not for me 16:04 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:59 Support the channel

MacOS sucks as an operating system. No going around that, it's designed for mono tasking, or full keyboard use. No window tiling, dock can't minimize apps by clicking on them, the green button puts everything full screen...

The Global menu is great though, I wish it was well supported on Linux. No cut and paste for files and folders in the file manager is completely insane, and dragging files to other folders, or even to an open app is SO SLOW.

Installing apps was OK once you get used to it. The app store is pretty useless, as everything I wanted to use wasn't in it: resolve, firefox, GIMP, rectangles, an app for nextcloud notes, obs, steam, none of them are in the app store.

Virtual desktops are ok: gestures are good, but I'd argue GNOME does them better now: three fingers up in macOS doesn't show the virtual desktops, you also have to move the pointer towards the top of the screen to reveal them, or create a new one You also can't just swipe right with 3 fingers to get to a new virtual desktop and start opening apps there.

Clicking on a window only focuses it, it doesn't select what you want, which is also annoying to get used to. Font rendering is absolutely great, though, especially compared to font rendering on Linux.

Now in terms of hardware, there's very little that's wrong with this macbook pro:

• The display is pretty great, high res, color accurate, high refresh rate, it's very good, bUT it's also covered in super reflective glass, without a matte coating. The keyboard took me a while to get used to, no numpad on such a big laptop is annoying. The webcam, mic and speakers are insanely good, and trounce everything I have ever used with Windows or Linux.

But, in the end, I still prefer using my Slimbook Executive 16. Why? First, while the build quality of this mac is undeniably better, it's also extremely heavy. 1.5 kilos for the executive 16, 2.1 kilos for the Macbook

The ports on the mac are far less useful as well, lacking any USB A port. In terms of trackpad, I'm not super convinced by the one on the macbook. It's huge and precise and gestures work really well, but the click is just so unsatisfying.

M1 is a cool architecture, but it also has trouble running VMs for operating systems that aren't ARM based, which means it's basically unsuitable for my day to day work where I need to test distros, on a VM first, and then on actual hardware.

On geekbench, It scores 2038 in single core score, which isn't bad, and 12636 in multi core, which is among the highest I've ever reviewed on a laptop, and it was on battery, not plugged in.

Battery life is insane, with 14 to 16h of light work, and 6 to 8h of video editing, compared to 7 or 8h on the executive, and about 3 to 4h of editing.

In the end, I have more fun using my Executive 16. It feels solid enough, although it does scratch more easily, it weighs less, I like its keyboard and display just as much, and I actually prefer the touchpad on the Executive The mic, speakers and webcam aren't super important to me, so I don't really mind the downgrade, but I have to admit the ones on the executive are just way below the ones the macbook ships with.

On top of that, my Executive can run a full blown Linux distro, and VMs, which this mac can't, yet. Of course I'll try Asahi on it at some point, but for now, it looks far from ready.

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#framework #laptop #linux

00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: 10% off your first website with Squarespace 01:35 Who are they? 03:45 Customization Options 05:10 Comparison with Framework 07:07 Design & Build Quality 08:53 Specifications 10:35 Performance & Battery life 11:51 Display, inputs, speakers, mic & webcam 13:41 Should you buy one? 14:58 Support the channel

NovaCustom Website: https://configurelaptop.eu/

NovaCustom is from the Netherlands, and they're specialized in laptops, you won't find desktop PCs in here. They put the focus on customization of your laptop to your exact specifications, they ship Linux out of the box, and they use coreboot.

They offer 3 years of warranty, and they guarantee spare parts availability for your device up to 7 years after your purchase.

They have 14 inches, 15 inches and 17 inches, the cheapest they have is 749€, and the most expensive goes up to 3900 euros but that's with all the options ticked

Of course, you can change the specs, but you can also add you own logo, you can change the boot logo, you can engrave the palm rest, you can pick between Windows and Linux, or you can ask them to create a dual boot.

You can choose yo use your own keyboard layout, in ANSI or ISO, change the look of the super key, change keyboard illumination, ask to completely remove the mic and webcam...

Framework goes further, since you can even replace the entire motherboard and keep the whole chassis, keyboard, panel, webcam and ports. They don't have as many models and sizes though, and until the 16 inch model releases, you're not getting any dedicated GPU options, and you're limited to 13 inches.

Novacustom is more about customization, repairability, and allowing users access to their own hardware, where Framework is more about keeping the exact same device, and making it modular, and allowing complete upgrades.

In terms of price range, Framework will be a little bit more expensive than NovaCustom for the same configurations, but they do have better panels, and newer CPU options, plus Ryzen options that Novacustom don't currently offer.

My review unit is the NS51 series, their mid range laptop. In terms of build quality, it feels very rigid, the hinge is super solid. The whole thing is pretty heavy, 1.7 kilos, and it's quite sturdy.

The only real issue I can see is the position of the power button, next to a USB port

All the spare parts are accessible for up to 7 years after your purchase, and they give you a complete service manual.

My review unit came with a core i7 1260P. In terms of I/O, on the right, you get gigabit ethernet, the ill placed power button, one USB 2 port, a micro SD card reader, and on the right, you have your barrel charger, an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, and 1 thunderbolt 4 and 1 type C 3.1 Gen 2 port. You can charge the laptop using USB C.

This laptop came with coreboot, with Dasharo firmware.

In terms of performance, the CPU gets a more than honorable 2498 in single core, and 7450 in multi core. As per battery life, this chip is relatively power efficient, it lasts for about 7 hours at mid brightness, wifi on, watching youtube videos in a loop.

Now let's look at the various things this laptop comes with. The display is 15.6 inches, 1080p, 16:9, 300 nits of brightness. It covers 98% of SRGB.

As per input, the keyboard feels pretty good to type on. They keys have good travel, they bounce back well, it doesn't feel mushy for a membrane keyboard, and it sounds pretty good. It's a good keyboard.

The touchpad is decent, it doesn't feel like glass, but it's smooth enough, large enough, and it feels precise. It did wobble a little bit and you can feel that when just using tap to click.

Now, the webcam is the usual potato quality fare, it's 720p.

The microphone is the same, it will be suitable for short video conferences, but it makes you sound distant.

And finally, the speakers, they're your average fare.

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#internet #ads #marketingdigital

00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks 01:32 The ad-based internet 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us 11:43 Three possible outcomes 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads.

To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone.

Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company.

All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work.

Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient.

And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome.

I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them.

As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them.

And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options

First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue.

This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go.

Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium.

It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose.

Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly.

This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.

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#linuxmint #linuxdistro #linux

00:00 Intro 00:30 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop, or app to your browser 01:24 Touchpad Gestures 03:43 Look & Feel 06:26 Desktop & Apps 10:12 Internals 11:00 XFCE and MATE variants 13:35 Parting Thoughts 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:30 Support the channel

If you got used to the super smooth 1:1 gestures for GNOME or Plasma on Wayland, or even elementary OS on X11, you'll be disappointed here. Mint still uses X11, and their gestures act like keyboard shortcuts. You perform the gesture on the touchpad, and once your fingers have moved enough, the animation happens all at once.

Gestures are disabled by default, you'll be able to enable them in the new Settings panel. They are very configurable though, contrary to GNOME or KDE.

Mint 21.2 also changes a few things in terms of how the distro looks, or can look. First, instead of the endless list of selectable themes, in their dark or light variant, and all their color variants, you now get Styles.

The Style defines the theme you're using, for example MintY, Adwaita, or the older Mint X. For each style, you can pick mixed mode, where apps can be light or dark at the same time, dark mode, where every app that supports the dark mode preference will use it, and light mode.

And on top of that, you have a choice of accent colors, if the theme supports it, for example, there are no accent colors for Adwaita, or the High COntrast theme.

Folder icons are now longer the same color as what WIndows uses, they'll now use your accent color instead, which is much better in my opinion.

On the desktop side of things, the login screen received a lot of improvements, with support for multiple keyboard layouts that you can switch between, and support for tap to click as well.

The onscreen keyboard is usable there, and you can also configure the layout for it, and you can now more easily navigate this login screen using the keyboard and the arrow keys.

Once you're logged in, you can now resize the main menu, by dragging its corner or its edge, and you can now disable notifications for connected devices that have a low battery level.

As per the apps, the file manager, Nemo, now generates thumbnails using multi threading, which means it should be way faster.

The software manager got a small UI refresh, with the search field inline in a headerbar, with the hamburger menu moving there as well. The app pages also got a small redesign, with buttons in the header to install, and to show the installation source.

Pix, the image viewer, got a lot of changes, mostly due to its rebase on a new version of GTHumb.

Finally, Warpinator, the PC to PC file transfer program, was reviewed by the openSUSE team, and some security issues were discovered and fixed.

All Linux Mint editions are still based on Ubuntu 22.04, and they're all LTS, supported until 2027. The next base change will be when Ubuntu 24.04 releases, which means that in the meantime, you get the Linux kernel 5.15, and older Mesa and Nvidia drivers.

Now, for the XFCE variant, you get the same improvements to the login screen, the apps and the software manager, plus the new colored folder icons, tooltips and notifications, and the symbolic icon changes. You're not getting the Styles manager and selector though, and you're not getting the touchpad gestures either.

Still, you do get XFCE 4.18, which is a solid update over 4.16 that Mint used in the previous release.

As per MATE, it gets the same stuff as XFCE, so no gestures or style manager, and it's still on MATE 1.26, same as the previous Linux Mint release.

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Stellaris 17 from Tuxedo: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-Stellaris-17-Gen4.tuxedo

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#Linux #laptop #review

00:00 Intro 00:27 Sponsor: 10% off your website with Squarespace 01:22 Form Factor & Build Quality 03:57 Specs and Configuration Options 05:38 Performance Benchmarks 07:53 Aquaris: external watercooling 09:42 Battery life 10:30 Mechanical keyboard 12:44 Display 13:28 Port selection 14:30 Mic, webcam and speakers 15:31 Price and conclusions 16:56 Support the channel

No 2 ways about it, this is a big device. It has a 17 inch screen, 16:10. It weighs 2.8 kilos, and it's 38 cm wide, 27 cm deep, and 2.7 cm thick.

The chassis is made of aluminium and has literally no flex, no bend, no creaking. It also resists fingerprints really well, thanks to a soft touch coating on the inside of the laptop.

You're free to open it, and you can access and replace the 2 M.2 SSD slots, the RAM, the wireless card, and the battery as well, which is screwed in and not glued.

The CPU is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX. All models come with at least 16 gigs of RAM, and an RTX 3070Ti with 8Gigs of vRAM. You also get 250 gigs of PCIe3 SSD, and Wifi 6 + BLuetooth 5.2.

It can go up to 64 Gigs of 4800 Mhz RAM, up to 4TB of PCIe 4 storage, and, either an RTX 3080, or a 3080Ti. And all cards run at their maximum Total Graphics Power allowed by Nvidia,. You also get a 99Wh battery.

On geekbench 6, it gave me scores of 2121 in single core, and 10219 in multi core.

I ran the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, at high settings, at the native resolution of 2560x1600, and it got me an average of 101 FPS. When cranking all the settings to the max, still at the native resolution, it managed to reach 97 FPS. At 1080p highest details, the Stellaris 17 got 110FPS.

It also gave me an idea about thermals, at 75 °C under heavy load, which isn't bad at all.

With its 99Wh battery, running in Nvidia on demand mode, with the display at 50% brightness, wifi being used to play youtube videos in a loop in Firefox, the laptop lasted for 8 hours and 12 minutes.

The keyboard uses Cherry MX ultra low profile switches. The key travel is really good, at 1.8 mm, and the click happens at 0.8 mm. Some of the keys aren't using mechanical switches, notably the function keys and the whole numpad, they're using membrane switches instead.

The touchpad is humongous. It's also thankfully centered, and it's covered in glass, so it's really smooth. It feels very precise, and using it with tap to click feels great.

It's a diveboard mechanism, so obviously you can't click everywhere on it, it has to be in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the sound it makes is satisfying and doesn't rattle.

The dislay 16:10, 17 inches, and it goes up to 240hz refresh rate. It is G Sync compatible, to avoid any screen tearing issues. It's decently bright, at 380 nits, and it has full sRGB coverage.

In terms of ports, on the left, you get the usual Kensington Lock, a USB-A 3.2 Gen2x1 port, a microphone input, and a headphone jack. On the right, you get an SD card reader, and 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports. And on the back, you have a port for the Aquaris external watercooling solution, a USB-C 3.2 Gen2x1 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Gigabit ethernet port, and a barrel jack.

Let's finish with the mic, speakers and webcam. The microphone is decent, but nothing to write home about. You'll want to run it at about 25% volume. The speakers get really loud, but they don't distort or sound tinny at all, they have a good amount of bass.

As per the webcam, well it's 1080p, and it can produce good results with decent lighting, but it's still a bit grainy even in natural light. It's just a small notch above the usual potato cam.