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Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

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Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#91

Post by jerf »

mironathetin wrote: post #34
mahmud wrote: post #29

You can't go wrong with a Thinkpad, in fact, I wouldn't use any other laptop if it came free. I ran thinkpads exclusively for the last 10 years. My last desktop machine had an AMD Duron and 256 megs, that's long ago it was. They're not the most good looking, but they're rugged and functional as hell. A Thinkpad looks the same after 5 years, most others peel and scratch. When I was backpacking, my road-mate had his ma…

You cannot go wrong with a Thinkpad, but you can do better, IMHO. I enjoyed my last Thinkpad (t40) a lot. Still have and use it after 6 years. But especially with linux, battery life wasn't very good (now the battery is completely dead of course). The fan never stopped. To answer the question of the OP: yes, it is totally worth to learn Mac OS. First, the effort is small. Second, you will save a lot of admin time. Th…

Earlier power-saving technologies were pretty proprietary from what I recall; there was "pre-ACPI" and also a fairly substantial period of "ACPI that still only worked through Windows because Windows could tolerate a lot of errors in the ACPI tables where Linux actually believed the tables". Now most of them are through standardized interfaces and work in Linux just fine.

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#92

Post by yummyfajitas »

tjr wrote: post #84
yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My mac ownership timeline: Day 1: Ooh, pretty. 2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works. 1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped…

Just to toss this question in, because I've seen lots of people make a similar comment, but never have really seen an explanation as to why: what is the problem with iTunes? For me, I don't do much in the way of using iTunes; I set up a play list, press play, minimize it, and enjoy listening to music while I do other things. Maybe I'm not a music player power user?

Some "features" of iTunes:

When I import my music folder, iTunes copies all the files to it's own private directories, using the filesystem as an index. Thanks, but my music is already arranged the way I like.

iTunes doesn't play flac or ogg. And when I rip a CD, it wants to save it in some proprietary flac-like format (which, as far as I know, does not work on non-macs).

I enjoy controlling my music from a phone/tablet/other computer. Shameless plug: http://github.com/stucchio/DJ-Pirate http://cims.nyu.edu/~stucchio/software/djpirate/screenshot1.... http://cims.nyu.edu/~stucchio/software/djpirate/screenshot3....

iTunes + iPod also has some extremely unpleasant anti-features: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1202

(Note: this may not all still be true, haven't used iTunes since 2007. )

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#93

Post by Symmetry »

samstokes wrote: post #7
Symmetry wrote: post #5

Pretty much everyone I know who runs Linux on their laptop uses a Thinkpad. They don't come with Linux installed but they tend to have good driver support and pretty good quality. You might also consider system76, but I don't have experience with those. EDIT: I'm currently running Linux on my T410. Suspend was broken with Ubuntu 10.4, but everything works perfectly now with 10.10.

Got a T510 here (with the extra-high-res 1920x1080 display) and it's great. Everything works in Ubuntu 10.04 (I don't have any problems with suspend-to-RAM or -to-disk). I spent a while looking into MBPs and it seems the Linux support is still fairly laughable - the latest models won't even boot it, and even the older ones require a kernel recompile to get sound working. I'd buy an MBP without hesitation if I wanted…

I think the reason suspend didn't work for me was that I had the new version of Intel graphics whereas with a 510 you probably had NVidia graphics. Still, given that the new Intel graphics system had only been out for a few months when 10.04 came out I'm not really complaining too much.

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#94

Post by spiffworks »

tjr wrote: post #84
yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My mac ownership timeline: Day 1: Ooh, pretty. 2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works. 1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped…

Just to toss this question in, because I've seen lots of people make a similar comment, but never have really seen an explanation as to why: what is the problem with iTunes? For me, I don't do much in the way of using iTunes; I set up a play list, press play, minimize it, and enjoy listening to music while I do other things. Maybe I'm not a music player power user?

Well, for one thing its format support is conservative. Like most people who haven't lived in the Mac ecosystem their whole computing lives, I have my music collection in a variety of formats- mp3, ogg, flac, etc. I would like very much to have a media player which didn't ask me to bend to its will. This of course is not an issue for most people, but its a sore sticking point for people who try to switch from Linux. In Linux, if you find a file in an obscure format, you can always find a gstreamer plugin for it and totem(or anything else) will play it without losing a step.

I myself tried to switch, but gave up after about a week. One of the main reasons was the iMac's boot time. After having used Fedora and Ubuntu, I found it unbearably slow. Was my experience just an anomaly or is this the general case?

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#95

Post by ahi »

I used to have a Thinkpad, but the battery/power connector kept crapping out on me. I'm not convinced Lenovo has maintained the commitment to quality. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I currently use a (copy/paste from newegg) Gateway NV59C57U Intel Core i5 450M(2.40GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 NoteBook

Was only $650 and runs Mint (Ubuntu derivative) just fine. Only problem with it is that the trackpad sucks, but why would you be using the trackpad when you spend all your time in vim? In short, it's plenty fast and since it's a third the price of an MBP there's no guilt in buying a new laptop every year.

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#96

Post by timwiseman »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My mac ownership timeline: Day 1: Ooh, pretty. 2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works. 1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped…

I must say that while I am not a huge fan of OSX, Macs have amazingly well designed hardware. I remembering staring and marvelling at the magsafe power cord the first time I saw it, and every piece of the hardware is well made too.

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#97

Post by yummyfajitas »

tkaemming wrote: post #85
yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My mac ownership timeline: Day 1: Ooh, pretty. 2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works. 1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped…

Odd — I'm running Snow Leopard and haven't had any issues with many of the libraries or apps you mentioned (boost, ampqlib, postgresql), although it's probably worth noting that I installed them all through Homebrew ( http://www.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/ ).

That reminds me of another thing I disliked about macs. An open question: who is in charge? Macports? Fink? I couldn't pick one, because neither one had what I wanted.

I think Homebrew is fairly new. If it works, I'm glad, but it didn't exist a few years back. So, a disclaimer I should have included in my original post: things might have changed in the past year.

The package manager I found useful was virtualbox + apt-get.

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#98

Post by robgough »

bradleyland wrote: post #60
megamark16 wrote: post #56

I use a MBP at work and I'm not really a huge fan. I find the interface requires that I use the mouse way to often, and I have to know all Apple's special key combinations to get anything done. I spend most of my time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, and I wish I were booting Ubuntu natively, but I just haven't had time get it working correctly. I am also in the market for a new dev machine for personal use, and I'm lea…

> I find the interface requires that I use the mouse way to often, and I have to know all Apple's special key combinations to get anything done If you expect to get anything done without using the mouse, knowing all the "special key combinations" is a pre-requisite for any OS. I hate to be the kool-aid drinker that jumps to Apple's defense, but I hear a lot of complaints about OS X keyboard accessibility that simply…

It took me over two years to find that checkbox, as I didn't know to look for it.

Not being able to dismiss a dialog box with the keyboard was driving me mad.

System Prefs>Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts>"All Controls"

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#99

Post by eru »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My mac ownership timeline: Day 1: Ooh, pretty. 2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works. 1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped…

Can't you just run Linux on your Macbook?

Re: Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

#100

Post by docgnome »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #92
tjr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to toss this question in, because I've seen lots of people make a similar comment, but never have really seen an explanation as to why: what is the problem with iTunes? For me, I don't do much in the way of using iTunes; I set up a play list, press play, minimize it, and enjoy listening to music while I do other things. Maybe I'm not a music player power user?

Some "features" of iTunes: When I import my music folder, iTunes copies all the files to it's own private directories, using the filesystem as an index. Thanks, but my music is already arranged the way I like. iTunes doesn't play flac or ogg. And when I rip a CD, it wants to save it in some proprietary flac-like format (which, as far as I know, does not work on non-macs). I enjoy controlling my music from a phone/tab…

You can turn the copying files "feature" off. Still annoying. I also hate iTunes.
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