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

HP Spectre http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/spectre-laptop/overview.h...

I have the 2016 version and the only gotcha I've run into running Fedora out of the box is suspend to RAM does not work (sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake). But it's easy to fix:

Create a file in /etc/tmpfiles.d/ -rw-r--r--. root root suspendfix.conf

    w /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - PWRB
    w /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - XHC

That's it. Powerbutton will still work for suspend and wake. Gory details of bisecting this and ACPI debugging with kernel devs https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185521

And one other small problem with easy work around, older kernels (Fedora 27 and older so circa kernel 4.12 and older) do not instantiate USB if the USB-C to USB-3 adapter is connected during boot. So if you boot a USB stick with one of the two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, you'll see GRUB 2, it finds and loads the kernel and initramfs but then you end up in a rescue shell because the kernel itself can't find the stick. Workaround 1 is to boot off the powerport / USB 3.1 gen 1 (not Thunderbolt) port using a fully charged battery and install. Work around 2 is Fedora 28 which has a kernel that's working correctly, so you can use either of the USB 3.1 gen 2 ports just fine while still being plugged into power.

If you can live with the thought of not buying "new", I would suggest you take a look at Thinkpads, specifically those which were leased to a business, but where the lease was broken before term was over. These can be had at about a year of age, and the come in good shape. You can get an i7 Haswell with 65W TDP (and if you clean it once a year, the CPU will not be throttled before you start to undress) and an Nvidia Chip with 1440p 15.5" screen for under 1000$ if you look hard. As you say you are form Europe, you might be able to order from Luxnote (not affiliated, just trying to keep the market for servicable laptops from collapsing), which are based in Germany.

Expect to supply your own SSD, and make sure the Wifi modem has Bluetooth if you need that, as well as support for the standards you need. If you want to use the internal antenna(s) for cellular modem, make sure to try and get that with the laptop when you buy, as the BIOS is a little restrictive in which PCIe devices it will accept. In some cases that can apparently be fixed by hacking it, but caveat emptor.

Some models have two batteries, one fixed and one swappable, others only one swappable. The former allows trivial swapping while running, the latter would require you to use some sort of 20V-ish supply capable of providing at least 45W via the charging port, if you want to change the battery without loosing whatever is in ram.

If you care for safety and do not like fuzzing around with things breaking/being unreliable, beware of unofficial batteries. They might well refuse to charge, though the Laptop generally runs on anything that leads it's battery controller to deem further discharge to be safe for laptop and battery.

If your performance demands would not be that high, you could get a somewhat older, but rather solid Thinkpad, you'd be surprised by the price/performance ratio for even some as old as e.g. an X60s, which is one of the few which allow the ME to be fully disabled. Those are available for a very good price on Ebay, but the issue is that they only feel fast if the software is fast, and judging from your described subjective feel of speed, your software is not fast.

I hope you get a good one. And try to not freak out about the mentioned Numpad on the newer T5xx ones, as they just put the available width to use. If you can get the hang of the trackpoint, they still have the best, as far as I know. At least my Thinkpad makes me use it sometimes, while I don't even bother trying with the HP Elitebook.

I care greatly and would never buy a Lenovo because of it.

Just in the process of outfitting the office with Thinkpad T480s's.

Why not X1 Carbon? At first it was the MX150 option for deep learning on the go, but we decided to drop that because it was going to be a pain the ass in Linux and it's not a very good GPU anyway - better to ssh to the server (The variant in T480s is 25% slower even though it has the same model name). Now it's just the price... Not quite worth the upgrade price for that many machines, and the limited upgradeability means we can get 8gb now and add 8 more when there is a bit more liquidity.

The mx150 is a piece of crap GPU. It performs at less than half the performance of a GeForce 1050 and a third of a 1050 ti (which are in the Dell XPS 15 series.)

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html