I have went through a lot of differnt laptops, mainly had a lot of Dell laptops but last year I decided to buy a Thinkpad T430 on ebay for close to notting and it's the best laptop I have ever had.
Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
211–220 of 628 posts
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason. I just copy my home-dir settings everywhere I go. I have a different setup on my desktop and laptop. It is mostly .config that I need. But when movi…
> Happily living on the same config files for 20 years now I just wanted to draw more attention to this particular snippet. That's a remarkable achievement, and you should be proud of yourself and your working environment. Regardless that most other people (myself included) are unlikely to be able to replicate what you've done, the reality is you've done it, and it works for you. Good job.
I also have very minimal dotfiles. Less than 200 LOC in total, including whitespace.
They have barely changed in the last decade. Two key things to be able to work like this were:
* Moving most of my computing to 3 platforms (Emacs, Unix and Firefox). I don't use any GUI application aside from a manual tiling window manager.
* Migrating to a barebones distribution, Arch / NixOS. A small half a page imperative / declarative script is enough to configure all my system.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#213just switched to a Matebook Pro X with Arch Linux and could not be happier. Slick, long battery life (around 10 hours with browser and neovim + latex for writing). 3:2 screen perfect for writing everything working (except of the finger print reader). The webcam is at a strange place, yet you can be sure it is off and not recording you, I just put the laptop on a book and it looks fine for telcos. Dell and Lenovo are…
Just wondering why I got downrated. Lenovo and Dell had documented spyware on their computers.
We also know cisco and other American companies worked closely with the NSA and put backdoors in their software and hardware.
Yes, Huawei is close to the Chinese government and there are definitely issues with that. Yes, they had spyware on some phones. Still no documented case of spyware on their computers :)
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#2142 cents. I use any computer that has a keyboard,terminal, network n ssh. Windows is the most terrible os, yes.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#215I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…
Give me the hotel then because I want to spend my time doing work not having to do laundry or cut the lawn.
I've spent more time fighting with brew and the third party package manages than I have with issues in Ubuntu.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is straight up misogynistic and is a great example of why women are driven away from our industry, because of language like this.
While it is a very unusual metaphor, I don't see how it is misogyny or derogatory against women. This is wildly off-topic but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
It’s archaic. The analogy isn’t well served by using women and sex as an example, and I don’t really see why someone needs to hear about touching women in ways they don’t like when all they’re talking about is a shell configuration.
This probably would have gone down well back in the 60s, but we’ve hopefully since moved on from comparing women to objects, and comparing how we treat women to how we treat inanimate things.
Personally, I downvoted because the author’s attitude to women has absolutely nothing to do with discussing good alternatives to laptops.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 for ThinkPads, they just work. The XPS has super annoying fans which change their speed randomly all the time (though it's possible to override: https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control ). Btw, Xfce is a desktop environment while Ubuntu is a distribution. Perhaps you meant to write you're on Xfce instead of Gnome?
Thinkpads come in different flavours, and the have very different quality. Either get a T-series, or X-series (X series is basically smaller version of T). Or if it's a used one, the later A-series are good as well (A series means AMD instead of Intel). The old A - series were crap. Nowadays T and X series have AMD also (if model ends with 5, it's AMD). T and X series have MIL certification. For example there's also…
Or, if you need the power and don't mind the size/weight and price, P-series.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is straight up misogynistic and is a great example of why women are driven away from our industry, because of language like this.
While it is a very unusual metaphor, I don't see how it is misogyny or derogatory against women. This is wildly off-topic but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
Yes it is a strange metaphor but language like “I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like” is rapey and comparing women to config files is just weird. The whole comment feels like it is objectifying women
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#219I'm also interested in that and collected a list recently:
* System 76 Oryx Pro (aluminium, official Linux support, US shipping, flaky hardware, poor battery)
* Prostar Clevo P960 (rebadge of System 76 Oryx Pro)
* Huawei MateBook X Pro (aluminium, good Linux support)
* Razer laptops (aluminium, no good Linux support)
* Chuwi LapBook Plus (aluminium, good Linux support, poor battery, poor CPU, cheap)
* Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro (aluminium, good Linux support)
* Purism Librem 13
There was a HN thread recently about Huawei MateBook X Pro: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170765
And also one about System 76: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216195
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is straight up misogynistic and is a great example of why women are driven away from our industry, because of language like this.
While it is a very unusual metaphor, I don't see how it is misogyny or derogatory against women. This is wildly off-topic but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
> “I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like, but overall we get the job done and nothing is broken afterwards.”