Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#101

Post by Arnt » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC

dom0 wrote: post #59

Arnt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinkpads have a long, long history of working well with linux and bsd, too long for it to be a coincidence. The ideapads... don't. "Developer Edition" is Dell's corporatespeak for "we made sure this works with linux".

With IdeaPads it's just totally model dependent. Some models work great with Linux, some don't work at all.

I really wish I could find anything at all that works well with linux, has at least 4G RAM (better 8 or 16), doesn't have a heavy screen , and is no wider than 28cm. Buying laptops has become really, really difficult.

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#102

Post by AsyncAwait » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 10:50 AM UTC

dom0 wrote: post #51

AsyncAwait wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind Linux, https://system76.com/laptops has some great machines - the Oryx Pro is a pretty slim, aluminium laptop with much more performance per buck than the MBP.

PC Specialist, Schenker and Tuxedo sell machines based on the same barebones. These are probably cheaper for !US people.

Yeah, in the UK I'd go with SCAN Computers[1] or PC Specialist[2] (SCAN I can personally recommend).

[1] - https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/custom [2] - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#103

Post by trm42 » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 10:52 AM UTC

Philipp__ wrote: post #16

No terminal is on par with iTerm. I was using Linux and *BSD for years, used many terminals, and of all iTerm is bread and butter (and with that font rendering and retina screen, nothing comes close). I would recommend to evaluate your needs, but be objective! If you can live with 16GB of RAM (I can, I do not do anything that would require me to use 32GB of RAM) then buy last year model. I have it, amazing machine. A…

KTerm of KDE is quite similar to iTerm2. Using them both bot not that much iTerm's special features.

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#104

Post by aorth » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 10:54 AM UTC

petewailes wrote: post #20

I'm running a HP Spectre 13. Couldn't be happier

They look great actually. Are you running Linux or Windows?

I've been a Mac user for the last few years, but spent the few before that as a ThinkPad + GNU/Linux guy. I could see myself going back to GNU/Linux on the desktop one day.

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#105

Post by siphr » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:10 AM UTC

NietTim wrote: post #26

viraptor wrote: post #7

If you want more power Lenovo T. If you want something closer to air, Lenovo X.

I'm really skeptical about Lenovo because of the proprietary software issues they've had, even read things about bioses with sketchy stuff in them which couldn't be flashed and such.

Erm which proprietary software issues are you referring to?

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#106

Post by siphr » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

I am a Lenovo Thinkpad user x230 specifically. Heavily criticised by people who love their X220's but it works great for me 12" form factor and packs a punch, separate slot for SSD if you want one and loads of ports. I have 2 actually. One runs my home server. I dropped out of the main stream sphere mainly because of this carrot donkey driven eco-system (Who knows where they are taking us). I am quite happy with my Arch Linux deployment. Its decent for gaming too.

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#107

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#108

Post by tired_man » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:27 AM UTC

For most things, my C720 Chromebook runs Ubuntu and handle any tasks I need. Don't equate price with utility ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#109

Post by szatkus » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:33 AM UTC

joefreeman wrote: post #47

I mostly used Macs for about ten years, but I don't like the direction the ecosystem is taking (cloud, app store, etc.), so recently switched to an XPS 13 (developer edition) running Ubuntu. (I actually also gave an SP4 a good chance for a few months, but couldn't get on with Windows.) It's pretty decent (both the laptop and Ubuntu) - sometimes wish the display was brighter or speakers louder, but depends on the envi…

Actually the keyboard is one of things I don't like in XPS 13. Feedback is too weak, escpecially for shift and ctrl. I don't expect mechanical keyboard from laptop, but I liked it in Vostro more. I've never used Macbook for a longer time, so I don't have a comparision.

Re: Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

#110

Post by fgblanch » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 11:43 AM UTC

The options I am considering as substitutes for the new mbp 13" are:

- The new razer blade stealth: Great built quality, kaby lake, usb-c/thunderbolt 3, great screen, reasonable price, although im not sure Ubuntu would work out of the box.

- Xiaomi Air 13: This is not really a competitor but im really tempted to try it. It is cheap (less than 1k) it looks like having a nice built quality, fast ram, good i5 processor, dedicated nvidia GPU ( so may be some acceleration for training small deep learning models). USB-C, USB3, HDMI, Ubuntu works out of the box. CONS: you have to import it.