When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works .
Unfortunately, the StarFighter uses soldered RAM, so users cannot upgrade it down the road, but you can upgrade its storage if you need more space down the road.
Watch On This device had to go through a grueling journey, having been first announced on the r/linuxhardware subreddit in November 2022 with either an Intel 12th-gen or Ryzen 6000 series processor and an estimated delivery timeline of three to four months. The next update arrived in February 2023, when the lead time was extended by another four to five months, with some community members commenting on their doubts about Star Labs’ ability to deliver. It seemed that the startup is based out of a barn in rural England, some 30 miles southeast of London, run by “a bunch of geeks” who were complaining about running Linux on laptops that weren’t designed for it.
You may like Framework’s overhauled Laptop 13 Pro brings a redesigned chassis Nvidia's long-rumored N1 SoC spotted on a laptop motherboard with 128 GB RAM, listed for $1,400 Grab MSI’s RTX 5080 gaming laptop for just over $2,000 The commenters’ concerns were valid, especially as the timeline for the StarFighter laptop kept on extending. Star Labs Systems’ production updates only went back as far as July 2025, when they apologized for the delays on the January 2025 pre-orders. They expected to deliver the StarFighter some three to five months from that date, but had issues with the production facility they initially contracted to build the laptop.
After going back to their original supplier, everything went back on track with multiple updates every month regarding the progress of the device. The first batch of StarFighters finally arrived in January 2026, some six months late for those who pre-ordered early last year. As the company has fulfilled the early orders, it seems that it’s launching the laptop for sale to the general public.
The StarFighter Linux laptop will compete against other Linux-focused designs from Framework, Tuxedo Computers, and Slimbook. And while they might be a small company operating way outside of the city, the industry is in sore need of more laptops built around Linux, especially as gaming and Steam is pushing more users into this family of open-source operating systems .
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/new-linux-starfighter-laptop-family-debuts-starting-at-usd1-878-star-labs-systems-laptops-arrive-with-spacious-ram-several-options#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- Huawei braces for $12 billion in AI chip revenue driven by homegrown AI model demand — Chinese fabs can barely keep up as Nvidia's market share craters within t
- Xbox CEO Asha Sharma kills Copilot for Gaming — overhauls leadership with CoreAI veterans
- Save $1,100 on this prebuilt gaming rig with Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti, Intel 14900KF, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage — AB Kaze II Aqua on deep discount
- [Daily Due Diligence] NVDA NVDA
- Nemotron Labs: What OpenClaw Agents Mean for Every Organization
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.