Linux Developer Laptops: Dell's Precision 5500 series reigns supreme (2019)

Shallow dismissal. Don’t assume everyone lives in the same year as you.

Missing [2019] in the title.

I’m in the market for buying a laptop this year. What is the currently reigning developer laptop?

Maybe if you're considering the "major laptop manufacturers", but I prefer my System76 laptop any day, since it comes with Linux and they support it from the get-go. Also, they write a lot of nice software that makes the Linux ecosystem better; I love Pop_OS! and how I basically don't have to futz around with getting things to work but have the power of a Debian/Ubuntu variant so I can install other things easily. I don't know off the top of my head any other companies that support Linux like this, but there are a dozen or more out there that I've seen and forgotten over the last few years. I do have to say that a Dell is a good choice for Linux as far as hardware goes, but I prefer now to support those companies that give back to the Linux ecosystem in some way.

I also think it's funny to call something a "developer laptop" as if you can't code on nearly any old piece of junk. If you do something very specialized like graphics or neural net ML perhaps, but then you're probably looking to get a workstation rather than a laptop.

I got one of the new 14" Macbook Pros recently and am extremely impressed by the build quality and no the whole no-more-touchbar. I don't feel as productive on it as I do my 3 year old Thinkpad X1 gen7 running Fedora, though. It's like a comfy sofa where as the Macbook is a desk chair.