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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?

#471

Post by closeparen »

tischler wrote: post #441
kenning wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better comparison might be that they stole your credit card number. Lenovo did not kill anyone or endanger their lives

Stolen personal information which is later exposed in a data leak can certainly kill someone. In expectation it is less likely than food poisoning, but it still seems ridiculous to downplay the gravity of all of it. That has got to be the most fucked up thing about capitalism: Correction signals are painfully slow, delayed and weak. You can mostly only penalize a company by boycotting their products (unless they seri…

No, this isn’t a fucked up thing about capitalism. If the state monopoly on computer production did this, you wouldn’t even be able to personally opt out. You’re not going to swing the votes of an electoral majority over a niche and technocratic issue.

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

#472

Post by ericabiz »

pmontra wrote: post #290
ericabiz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to custom-configure the XPS 13 with a non-touch display and 16GB here: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-1... (US link) I run repair shops for a living, and I'd certainly recommend the XPS 13 over a HP. The build quality of the HP Envy laptops we get in are terrible. The XPS 13 is just a better laptop.

I've got a HP ZBook 15 in 2014. I'm happy with it but it's only a data point. Did you service any of them, how do they compare?

Hi, I haven't seen enough of the ZBooks in our stores to form an opinion on them at this time.

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

#473

Post by gpvos »

philsnow wrote: post #105
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…

Years and years ago I used an X server on Windows named Hummingbird I think, could you use a native x server for Windows and run e.g. xterms under WsL?

Yes. I have used vcxsrv and it works fine. There is also xming.

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

#474

Post by ericd »

blinkingled wrote: post #312
ericd wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the speakers to be awful, but I just use headphones most of the time anyway, so nbd. I have the last gen, so may be different. I'm curious how you tuned the thermal throttling, though!

It might be this - https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/870u0a/t480s_linu... TL;DR Booting Linux the throttling triggers at much lower temp than on Windows. Fixed by overwriting some MSRs I think.

Sweet, thanks!

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

#475

Post by Qub3d »

SZJX wrote: post #457
anotheryou wrote: post #93

A warning about Dell XPS (13") screens: if you take the matte display and like coding with dark color schemes it's horrible (but there might be a fix). It does loose all contrast on dark images. Saving battery they brighten the displayed image and lower the back light. This lowers 100% white to maybe a 80% white and makes for horrible contrast. For those affected: - you can test if you have this issue here: http://ty…

The adaptive brightness issue is fixed. But Dell messed up with the keyboard on the latest XPS 9370 and made it unusalbe for any fast typists. See the post at https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skip... . I'd strongly recommend Thinkpad over XPS. The build quality is much more trustworthy.

I use a 9370 and haven't noticed this. It might be that my typing speed is too slow.

That said, I only use the builtin keyboard when away from my desk. I have a thunderbolt dock with a full-size keyboard; for most devs that have a real office this is what I'd recommend anyway.

If you can't use a dock most of the time and you like the XPS 13 otherwise, the most recent LG gram is also very nice and has a better battery life to boot.

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

#476

Post by Qub3d »

ericabiz wrote: post #73
latch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with the 13" XPS is that 16GB configuration without a 4K+touchscreen display is only available in some countries (Europe, Hong Kong, ...?) I've been looking to get one (new macbook pro keyoard keeps breaking), but the buying experience has been pretty bad where I am. I'll be in Japan later this month, and I'll probably buy an HP Envy. The XPS doesn't come in the aforementioned configuration and the Carbon…

I was able to custom-configure the XPS 13 with a non-touch display and 16GB here: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-1... (US link) I run repair shops for a living, and I'd certainly recommend the XPS 13 over a HP. The build quality of the HP Envy laptops we get in are terrible. The XPS 13 is just a better laptop.

Well, shit. I wish I had known about this approximately one month ago when I bought mine.

The screen is beautiful and the battery life is OK, but I really don't see the point of 4K at this size. I figured they were just forcing an upsell to higher margin configurations...

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

#477

Post by Qub3d »

chongli wrote: post #61
Giako wrote: post #11

I suggest looking into the Dell XPS line (both 13 or 15 models, depending on your screen size tastes). I own a 2015 Dell XPS 13 and Linux support is amazing (long battery life, the laptop does not overheat and everything works out of the box on Ubuntu). The only weak spot is the webcam location in the lower part of the screen. Another good alternative could be the Thinkpad Carbon X line, but I don't have any direct e…

Did they fix the coil whine on the Dell machines?

They changed the cooling solution completely this year, so the coil whine is much less of an issue. I'm sure some may still have it, but from my sample size of 1 I haven't had a problem.

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

#478

Post by gkop »

Light2Yellow wrote: post #451
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…

Regarding Infinality: note that it's long deprecated and unmaintained, and it will break freetype2 stuff. See " rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/cryzed/e002e7057435f02cc7894b9e748c5...

The gist 404s. Is there an alternative that has emerged?

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

#479

Post by ljm »

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…

WSL will be fantastic when software catches up to it or makes an allowance for its existence. It's nothing you can't hack around manually, but it can still be troublesome to treat WSL as a totally transparent layer. For example, you'll probably deal with some frustrating git checkouts if you clone from windows but interchangeably do work from Windows-land and Linux-land. Windows natively supporting LF and allowing Linux binaries to be transparently called would wipe away most of those issues (I think you can still only call windows binaries from Linux and not vice versa), and then you just need some windows installers that can enable WSL instead of packaging Cygwin or MSYS2.

That being said, the existence of WSL at all is fantastic and it's a much nicer experience than booting up a VM or setting your dev environment up in the cloud. I'm still not sure if my next machine will be a MacBook again because of it.

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

#480

Post by gurkendoktor »

eof wrote: post #302
shazow wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

my system76 handles 4k perfectly

system76 actually ships a custom daemon that makes mixed LowDPI/HiDPI setups easier to manage, and I hope other distros will follow suit:

https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234

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