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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?

#291

Post by thomastjeffery »

michaelangerman wrote: post #138
shazow wrote: post #89

I switched from a 2014 13" Retina MBP to a 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (6th gen) and I'm extremely happy with it. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018... is the most objective/detailed review I've seen. One of my biggest anxieties was the fear of "upgrading" to an inferior device after a decade of being on Apple devices. Thankfully, that has not been the case. - The 14" WQHD HDR screen is remarkab…

What version of Linux would people recommend for this machine ? 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (6th gen)

What you are really asking is what Linux distro people would recommend. Full stop.

That laptop has Intel graphics, which have great Linux support. It will run practically any distro without any extra effort.

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

#292

Post by indemnity »

gkop wrote: post #239
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.

Surprisingly, both engineers on the 2560x1440 are happy! They run Ubuntu with a second screen at their desks (27” 2560x1440 external monitors). I’m actually the one that’s unhappy because their font size is too small for me to see when pairing ;) BTW I think 2560x1440 may not be high enough to technically be considered HiDPI?

As someone with a 2560x1440 (27”) display at work and a 5120x2880 (27”) display at home, the former is very much not HiDPI, not even close :)

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

#293

Post by confounded »

linkmotif wrote: post #264
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?

Where would such a bug be?

If you’re installing Linux, that wipes out software bugs (seems the most likely place to me). Lenovo provide details about the components and design, which means you could verify/replace things if you like. ThinkPads are trusted enough by the USG for various uses (though they seem to prefer Dell).

Personally I’m more freaked out by Intel’s Management Engine.

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

#294

Post by mmphosis »

No.

I am looking at going back to desktops, actually mini-PCs, and are there any reasonable desktops?

No.

Going forward, I am looking at:

• a fanless Intel-based mini-PC with way more than 16Gb RAM running Linux, but I decided to delay this as I don't like Intel chips

• a new MacBook with Intel chip, but again I don't like Intel, and new Apple hardware means joining the Apple ecosystem, giving Apple my credit card, paying for proprietary apps, paying to publish iOS software

• wait until 2020 for a MacBook with Apple ARM chip, but again I don't wish to join the new Apple ecosystem

• a Power or some other CPU (not ARM, not Intel) running Linux, these are better but expensive

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

#295

Post by antoineMoPa »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #164

I've been working on Chromebooks since the 2013 Chromebook Pixel, though the laptop itself is almost irrelevant, because I've just moved everything into the cloud and work from a couple of VMs with tmux/vim/mosh. Of course that's not on option if you require a complete IDE, but it seems that support for local GUI apps is coming with a native ChromeOS feature called Crostini. People runing the Development channel alre…

I use my chromebook with crouton all the time. This semester for example, I did embedded development with mbed-cli (uses gcc for arm) and emacs. I also wrote LaTeX both on overleaf and on my chromebook (many gigabytes). I live with few hundred megabytes left and I listen to online radio instead of having gigabytes of songs. I delete stuff that I don't use and everything is fine.

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

#296

Post by musicaldope »

stefantheard wrote: post #197
Thriptic wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, so everything works on the xps 15 w/ Ubuntu 17.10? I want to pull the trigger on buying one but I am concerned about the Linux support. Also, do you know if the new XPS 15 support a two hard drive configuration?

technically it does not "work" but after some amount of hours of googling specific issues that pop up you can get it going. it's painful though.

Any pointers on specific issues to look out for? I'm thinking of upgrading from 16.04 on my XPS 15

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

#298

Post by alexandercrohde »

As somebody who got later into macbooks, and begrudingly had to admit they were objectively superior, here's what I'd like to know about a competitor.

1. Does the screen ever flicker?

2. Has a key ever come off?

3. Does it ever fail to sleep when you close the lid

4. Would you worry if you drop it from waste height 5 times (closed, but running, onto a hard-wood floor) ?

5. Have you had any driver problems, have you ever had to reinstall the OS?

6. Have you had it crash one you more than once every 3 months?

7. Have you had any glitches (audio dying, network problems, charging problems)

Saying no to all of these is my personal benchmark for my air. I haven't used PC laptops in a while now, so I'm genuinely curious if the higher-end competitors can compete on this reliability benchmark.

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

#299

Post by brockers »

smoyer wrote: post #259
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'm a huge fan of the X1 Carbon

Same here, out entire dev shop is X1 Carbons on Linux.

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

#300

Post by shmerl »

jhoechtl wrote: post #244
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.

HiDPI on Linux is pretty much non existent. I am telling from experience. I have booth a decent 4K external monitor and a HiDPI IPS internal display. The only setup which is ok in the sense of least horrible is Gnome mutter Wayland with experimental per monitor fractional scaling enabled. And this one is only ok if you can restrict yourself to the few ported pure GTK3 Gnome apps. Which means not that much. No Firefox…

Linux desktop is doing fine. But I prefer to avoid GTK when possible. It's years behind Qt. Some thing like Firefox are necessary though, but it's a pity it's stuck with GTK.
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