321–330 of 538 posts
If you’re doing bleeding edge graphics engine programming or ML it wouldn’t be my first choice unless you can deal with an external GPU.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Switching to Linux is a move that must be extremely carefully considered, due to compatibility. I'm positive about this because I've been working 10+ years exclusively on it, and compatibility is "not great". In the past, Linux compatibility was not great because the desktop userbase was considerably smaller. Today, compatiblity is not great because hardware got considerably more complex. It's possible that some hard…
> Dell XPS compatibility with Linux is a half-scam How so? I'm using one with ubuntu 22. 04 and it works great. Haven't seen a laptop that properly sleeps and wakes up with Linux before so it has been a pleasant experience. Only thing that doesn't work out of the box is the fingerprint reader.
1. The fingerprint reader needs some older and/or patched versions of the corresponding tools/daemon. I fixed it upon setup, but don't really use it so didn't bother checking if this works now with the latest vanilla versions.
2. Something related to Bluetooth causes random CPU lockups (I think the kernel/driver is the culprit), so I have it disabled.
(3. IIRC the Wifi wasn't properly supported by the mainline kernel for some time upon release - but I bought the laptop quite late into the product cycle, so this didn't affect me)
4. The WiFi chip does not support promiscuous mode
If it was really as Linux-compatible as the ads suggest, everything would work out of the box with mainline kernel & upstream versions of user-space tools.
Mostly they probably should have picked a better supported WiFi/BT combo chip (e.g. something from Intel) instead of using a chip that barely works (yes, it's soldered on and I the dev variant probably has the same PCB as the non-dev variant).
Besides that, the UX is quite good. As you say, sleep works well (but I'm expecting that from any decent laptop; I know, I'm expecting too much). The touchscreen is awesome in Chromium (too bad Firefox doesn't touch-scroll, but maybe that can be reconfigured in about:config).
[edit] light rephrasing, added 4. + last two paragraphs.
At work I'm force to use a MacBook, a lot of dev tools don't work very well or doesn't work, every dev has different weird issues, every other day we have a different thing that doesn't work some of us had to request to replace the MBP for a different one because it was very slow and the battery only last 2h if you are lucky.
I've seen your post as a comment before. For India, I recommend buying Dell / Lenovo if you really want on-site repairs for cheap, otherwise I recommend Asus. I recently bought Asus Zenbook 14 Oled (12th gen) over M1 MacBook Air and I absolutely love it. It has 75Wh battery, excellent speakers and with a nice 90Hz 14inch display. However, I can't use Fedora on it since sound over speaker doesn't work yet. Dell's Insp…
In the UK it takes a week for it to leave the Apple Store after you drop it off. They then repair it quickly in the Czech Republic then ship it back. It can then take 1-2 weeks stuck at customs or at some UPS sorting centre with no updates to tracking.
It always feels like a 48 hour repair turns into a 3 week frustrating wait for your laptop back.
The XPS 15, Lenovo X1 Extreme, Rog Zephyrus, and Razer Blade Advanced are all laptops I've personally used for development, and would mostly recommend, however I find windows hard to use for development and linux support varies of course.
Personally, I'd give apple another chance, but if that's not an option, The XPS 15 is probably the best bet.
The current (2022) LG Gram come with Intel Alder Lake and dual USB4/TB4, they basically seem to be the only interesting competitors to the lightweight Apple laptops. The 14" model is 1.0 kg compared to the M1 Macbook Air at 1.3 kg. Linux compatibility is very good with current kernels (I had a few DRM/GuC restarts with 5.18, those seem to be fixed in 5.19), all hardware works out of the box. ADL-P power management is…
Costco sells them, and when they go on sale, the value can't be beat IMHO.
Great screen, amazing battery (even after 3 years), zero issues on Linux (Fedora), love the dual NVMe option.
I'm thinking of upgrading to a 16" model, but I'll probably wait until another year.
Edit to add: Costco now carries 14 different models.
Thinkpad X1 (Yoga/Carbon) do great for heavy use developer laptops. I use them since the first generation, with Linux as operating system. Never had serious issues with drivers, even wacom, digitizer and auto display rotation are working nowadays, not to speak of USB-3, fingerprint sensors, etc. The whole device is a no-brainer and just works.
Please excuse the long-winded answer... I have also given up on Apple, but mostly because I can't see the value in it anymore, otherwise my experience with them has been satisfactory (Intel CPU models). For the past few years I used a Microsoft Surface Pro because it seemed to have good build quality and high screen resolution, but despite this I have had to replace it as part of a recall due to a graphics hardware i…