I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…
For what it’s worth, I have the same experience with Pop OS! during the past year. Steam is also at a point where I can just install native windows games and run them with barely any trouble.
Wait, what? Does Steam bake in some kind of automatic virtualization support for Windows games these days?
I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…
QUESTION: As a Mac Dude: Did you ever get the Apple Magic keyboard to work? I think it was the right mouse click that never worked. (I never used a Mac) If you look for a Laptop, Dell XPS are pretty good. If you buy one used, avoid the one which has the camera at the bottom of the screen. People look right up your nose in meetings I was told.
I bought a nose hair trimmer for this reason. Then I switched to a Thinkpad.
This is going to sound dumb or elitist but I am so much happier working since I ditched portable computing. I have a desk at home in an office. I have the same setup at work. I don’t carry my dev environment with me. When I need to work I go to the ’do work stuff’ place. Nice keyboard. Nice mouse. And a nice OS that, yes, took a whole day to configure but over which I have total control. (Full-screen focus-mode no-or…
That's easy to say in 2020 when mobility in general is non-existent. But if you travel even somewhat often, it's nice to have the ability to carry the environment with you. I used to take the train to work every day. I was never more productive then I was in that time on the train.
I am this way too. Often got more work done on days when traveling by plane than I normally would in a week or more.
Something about being in motion really aligns my creative and productive juices simultaneously.
For what it’s worth, I have the same experience with Pop OS! during the past year. Steam is also at a point where I can just install native windows games and run them with barely any trouble.
Wait, what? Does Steam bake in some kind of automatic virtualization support for Windows games these days?
Jup, comes with a customized proton build, and the ability to select specific proton versions if you have them installed.
I’d say 50% of games works out of the box. And 25% more after installing some video libraries that are for some reason not automatically installed.
I had a really bad time with Fedora 32, used to Arch Linux: it always felt like RHEL unstable, with many breaking changes not documented (Fedora 32 needed some kernel and firewall hacks to work with Docker [1]) and have their own set of unstandard tools, still not very much documented. I spent 3 hours trying to understand how to compile a patched mainline kernel -- need to learn about dracut, koji, fedpkg, rpmbuild -…
So, you figured out how to compile patched kernel in just 3 hours? Wow. (Create patch, install src.rpm, add patch to SOURCE directory, mention patch in .spec and add instruction to apply patch to %setup section, and then rpmbuild the .spec).
I work in C++ and for compiling the CPU is definitely the bottleneck. My CPU will be pegged at 100% for several minutes and my two (SSD) drives just blip once ever few seconds.
At this point, I would be spinning up 96 core AWS build servers to retain sanity :)
Past some critical mass local dev indeed simply doesn't work, but the majority of codebases aren't ~that~ large. And until that point I feel there's an analogy between having a light laptop and remotely doing your heavy lifting with the whole working remote thing in general. In theory, on paper, and assuming reliable decent internet connectivity, with a little elbow grease there should be no discernable difference between thin client remote dev and an in-your-lap xeon, just like with high quality low latency video teleconferencing with a team that knows how to do it there should be nothing lost with physical distance. In practice though the overhead of doing any little thing, no matter how small the overhead may be optimized down to, is still real. Non-verbal communication is lost on zoom and the distance between you and your real UI grew by hundreds of miles and dozens of links, and the tradeoffs your environment makes when there's no such thing as a 'quick check' add up fast. But it's obviously not one dimensional, and there's probably irony in the weight shedding that offers you 20 hrs of battery life coming with a price tag of requiring reliable wifi to get any real work done.
i code iOS (native) app for a living. I'm already stuck developing for the app store, using xcode to sign and deploy, using a programming language (that i love) swift that only really works on mac OS. My personal situation isn't going to change anytime soon unfortunately. I was about to dump my iphone next time i had to pick one (and keep my current one for testing), however my laptop is my work computer. I think "st…
> How can we stop the nazis? P.S. I work as a nazi for a living. How about find another way to make a living which lines up with your ethics? (P.S. this comment does not compare Apple to nazis)
I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…
I thought Ubuntu stayed on the cutting edge, at least when it comes to 3rd party packages. Not sure about the kernel.
I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…
Oh and what about that pristine glass touchpad experience, is that available anywhere?
> What can we do, now, as developers ? Don't buy Apple products. Don't use Apple products. Don't support Apple products. Don't develop for Apple products. Raise awareness among those who would listen.
But my company only gives me the option between mac and windows.
Depending on how you feel that sounds like a reason to look for another job. I greatly prefer not using Windows and macOS is rarely an option for my line of work. OS comes up very early in my job seeking process.