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Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#92

Post by hguant »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #89

Check out the Acer C720 running Gallium OS (Xubuntu). They're available with i3s and 4gb of ram and they're quite sufficient and have a great community.

Came here to recommend a modified chromebook. Excellent little computer - I got mine when I needed to go to Taiwan and didn't want to lug my monster of a laptop around a bunch of hostels.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#93

Post by jcadam »

johngalt wrote: post #56

Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…

The 14" Latitudes are great and IMHO strike a good balance between performance (you can get non-ultrabook class quad-core processors), screen size, and portability. Linux compatibility is usually pretty good, too (I'm currently using an E5470 running Fedora).

I usually buy my stuff from the Dell outlet (Catch them during a sale and you can save a crapton of money on a refurb).

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#94

Post by jaegerpicker »

oops wrote: post #22

What sort of software are you planning to write? e.g. apps, webdev, games, command-line utils, etc. In what language? Do you need to be able to code while offline? An iPad with the keyboard case could work, particularly if you'll always be online. You can just use it as a dumb terminal to ssh into a more powerful remote server. Another idea is the old MacBook Air 11". It doesn't meet your requirement of being a table…

I use a iPad Pro for exactly this case. I do 50-75% of my everyday work on it. I develop node.js and web frontends and iOS apps. I mostly do my node work on emacs on a remote server via Coda. Recently I've using swift playgrounds to do real work on the iOS side and it's been great, though often I need to break out the macbook pro for debugging sessions.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#96

Post by eustar »

nextos wrote: post #82
eustar wrote: post #55

I recently bought the Xiaomi Mi Air 12. tl;dr, it's the best ultrabook/notebook I've ever had and run Arch on it. I was looking for a light notebook also for programming for a long, long time (and I wanted this time Linux because of tiling window managers like i3). I finally got this Chinese model and what can I say, inside it's all Intel (Wifi, BT), Arch works flawlessly, touchpad is a glass trackpad and is for a no…

Is it all Intel? That's excellent! I presume you can get every component into powersaving states (which you can monitor with powertop). Tricky question, do you get battery discharge events via ACPI (run acpid, and unplug)? That's the gold standard for uber good Linux support, and allows for neat udev rules to be written. What material are keycaps made of?

> Is it all Intel? That's excellent!

Yes.

> Tricky question, do you get battery discharge events via ACPI (run acpid, and unplug)?

I got this:

  $ acpi // plugged in
  Battery 0: Unknown, 100%
  $ acpi // unplugged
  Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 83:38:49 remaining
> What material are keycaps made of?

Plastic.

Edit: Just saw that you meant acpid. With acpid nothing happened:

  $ acpi
  $ acpi -f // to run in foreground
  $
Is this normal? I checked also the dir where acpid should save its event file (/proc/acpi/events) but there was nothing.

However, suspend on lid close and wakeup on lid open works very good and fast (much faster than with the prior windows installation, tried with i3). I don't know if this is related to the acpi events.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#97

Post by scholia »

dagw wrote: post #73
rhodysurf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also only with Core M processors I think

The latest iteration seem to ship with 7th gen i7 or i5 processors, but the lowest powered and slowest Y-series versions of those processors. No idea what that means in real-world performance though.

All the Y chips are Core M chips, as used in the MacBook...

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#98

Post by uniclaude »

soyiuz wrote: post #81

I recommend the Asus Flip Chromebook (running Debian under Crouton for development) or a refurbished Lenovo X2xx series. The ASUS is tiny for travel. The X2xx is larger, still pretty mobile, and built like a tank (military spec moisture and dust resistance). As a side-note, the ASUS died on me during my India trip due to moisture.

I second the lenovo recommendation. An X220t with 16gb ram and ssd would fit your needs and budget for sure!

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#99

Post by harel »

Carbon X1 - hands down, no doubt, go for it. Get the 4th gen and you can max it to 16gb ram. Otherwise you're limited to 8GB. Excellent linux support (which I need), fantastic resolution, I love the keyboard. Touchpad can be a bit too sensitive but i got used to it. Great machine.
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