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Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#261

Post by BlackjackCF »

sametmax wrote: post #159
jnwatson wrote: post #133

I recent got a 15 inch Dell Precision. I’m running a recent Ubuntu. I don’t recommend. It constantly throttles the CPI. I get lots of PCIe recoverable errors. The USB bus runs out of available throughout. Plugging anything Displaylink is a disaster. The camera/microphone is below the screen, which sucks more than I expected. It takes 2 hands to open the laptop. It is possible to plug in the power supply such that com…

I own a dell xps 15. Same, i don't recommand it. Autonomy is abysmal, usbc support very poor, the bios took a year to be stable and the sound died after some months. Not worth the price tag. Mind you, the xps 13 doesn't seem to have the same problems. I still love my old samsung 9 serie and wish the brand would have worked out the quirks and made a new one. My next try will be a thinkpad carbon since every owner arou…

I have a Dell XPS 15 as well. Mine does the coil whine and the keyboard isn't great. It's kind of sad, but it's probably still the closest thing to a MBP that I've had out of a non-Apple laptop.

I'm also running Elementary OS on it and it's been okay.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#262

Post by manish_gill »

I'd love to have a better hardware quality build than my current Macbook Air, but my problem is that I've become quite fond of MacOS over the last few years. I don't miss the days when I was running Xubuntu and trying to tinker out everything to get the basics working. Windows hasn't been to my taste lately either.

Are the current generation of Linux desktop environments as user friendly as MacOS?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#263

Post by ofrzeta »

mattlondon wrote: post #165

Yes, there are reasonable alternatives to MBP for developers. I know that I might be an outlier here, but I personally find using OS X to be a frustrating experience - the only positive I could personally see for developers vs windows was ( was - past tense!) the unix command line (linux has historically always been a struggle (drivers etc), so I personally steer clear). But now Win10 has a unix command line too so w…

What are your pain points with macOS? I am a long time Linux user and running it on many servers but I actually like using macOS. You have pretty much everything you need, including the great Homebrew. Also probably the best hardware support of any Unix on laptop. I always had so many problems with Linux on various notebooks (WiFi etc.) that I am glad that it just works and I can focus on other stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#264

Post by linkmotif »

CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #194

I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always…

I don’t really understand how people overlook the whole Chinese government thing with regard to Lenovo. Can someone shed light on this? I would be very uncomfortable using Lenovo, and I’m not even a huge privacy person. But Lenovos must be bugged by the Chinese. How could they not be?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#265

Post by shazow »

aviraldg wrote: post #223
CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #194

I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always…

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

The bad news: There's no unified HiDPI solution on Linux that works well end-to-end.

The good news: You don't really need one.

Bumping the font configuration fixes 80% of the scenarios, and the rest I tweak on a case-by-case basis. The good standards-conforming apps (e.g. modern terminals, browsers, etc) automatically multiply the font sizes by your screen DPI. Most desktop managers have a scale sliders for the GUI size, if you're into that. Some stragglers include Steam which recently added support for a 2x size multiplier (it's something, but not the best).

You kinda get exposed to how the sausage is made, but the sausage still tastes great.

Linux desktop is better than it ever was, but the road to perfection is long and eternal.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#266

Post by tootie »

147 wrote: post #251
tootie wrote: post #87

Not a hardware req, but I've recently become quite enamored with Win 10 + WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) after years of using a Mac. WSL lets you run a lightweight Linux shell (Ubuntu, SUSE, Kali are supported atm) without a VM. It's purely for command-line purposes, no X, but that's fine for me. Windows for UI, then I can run all my bash in the Ubuntu shell almost seamlessly. You can run the shell directly from s…

I just thought of another question. What's everybody's workflow like on windows with WSL? If I use an editor like vscode then wouldn't I need the packages for linting, etc. on windows when I'm editing code in the WSL filesystem?

You can run VS Code and all the plugins from Windows. The terminal pane will actually let you choose Powershell or Bash from the drop-down.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#267

Post by trynumber9 »

I have a Huawei Matebook X. It's closer to the Apple MacBook, being fanless with only a dual core CPU. It works for what I do (C# compile times are not bad at all). It was $750 when I bought it and I really like it. There's a new model, the Matebook X Pro, which would be closer to your needs with a quad core CPU but it looks like it'll be more expensive.

https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x/

https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x-pro/

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#268

Post by acobster »

yutuco wrote: post #30

System76 has a line of high end Linix Laptops, if you take their OS (Ubuntu based) you get a pretty direct alternative to MacBook Pro https://system76.com/laptops

I use a System76 Serval laptop at work. Up til then I had worked almost exclusively on Macs. It's the best computer I've ever had.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#269

Post by gilbetron »

ianai wrote: post #139
gilbetron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I love WSL, and find win10 to be a better interface than OS X. Updates for OS X just move things around and change the looks, Windows 10 adds great new things - like new options for Linux distros under WSL.

With frequent bad reports regarding windows hardware, what’s the hardware to run wsl? I really did not like my experience with the XPS13

I have a Dell Precision 15", and it works great, as far as I can tell. I do ML stuff in docker Jupyter notebooks without a problem. Docker builds seem fast, definitely as fast as my previous laptop (a macbook pro retina from ...2014?).

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#270

Post by digi_owl »

Symbiote wrote: post #230
aviraldg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

I have no problems on KDE for home use, I think the problems are mixing multiple screens with different pixel densities.

Best i understand, the problem child is Gnome. The devs involved there basically ignore xorg provided DPI information, resulting in all kinds of problems.
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