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

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

#71

Post by Bullfight2Cond »

5560 is one of my least favorite laptops ever.

The trackpad is unnecessarily big that my hand routinely clicks it when typing. Also, it has driver issues:

- on windows if you move the trackpad quickly and then click, it resets your cursor position -- I've lost work because of this bug: https://imgur.com/a/ibNObJ8

- on linux (tried in fedora) there's an unresolved issue with the kernel driver where randomly the acceleration of the cursor will drop and the cursor movement will have a large amount of lag: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/61...

Physically, out of the box it looks nice but over the course of 2-3 months becomes quite disgusting: it attracts smudges, the speaker grill fill up with dust. It's also heavy.

The plastic housing on the edge of the display is so sharp that when I went to wipe dust off the screen I sliced my finger and started bleeding.

Performance wise, it's okay, but I only get 5 hours in windows (VSCode, Slack, Firefox).

The keyboard is okay, but I prefer the thinkpad keyboards because the delete key isn't offset from a touch power button like the dell.

3/10 would not buy again

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

#72

Post by pthread_t »

stingraycharles wrote: post #5

Missing [2019] in the title. I’m in the market for buying a laptop this year. What is the currently reigning developer laptop?

When it's time for me to upgrade I'll go with one of the framework machines. [0] It's fully customizable, with room for future upgrades. I've been looking into a Dell machine for a while, but they just seem to have too many issues.

For what it's worth, I'm currently using an m1 macbook, and the battery life is absolutely incredible.

[0] https://frame.work/

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

#73

Post by nly »

synergy20 wrote: post #66

I was assigned a Macbook Pro at work and I asked for a non-Mac laptop, reason being I'm a Linux developer and Macbook did not work well for me(keyboard,etc). I ended up with a XPS 15 that has 64GB DDR and 2TB PCIe NVMe SSD around $2750, comparing to 32GB+1TB of MacBook Pro it is about $800 less expensive. I did not realize Precision 55xx series is even better built than XPS15 otherwise I will probably go that route.…

I'm pretty confident the Precision 55xx series are exactly the same, they just have different chipset features.

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

#74

Post by ModernMech »

Shadonototra wrote: post #29

i find it very hard to suggest an intel/amd laptop nowadays now that M1 macbooks exist.. M1 is a league on its own, everything else is just tech junk at this point

There are still zero Apple laptops with touch/pen displays. M1 gives good performance per watt, but at the same time my computer's longevity has been more than enough for probably a decade now; as long as I get a good solid 10 hours on a single charge, that might as well be 20 hours because it'll be hooked up to my home monitors before too long. And yes, M1 performance is very good, but so are a lot of other machines out there, and most laptops today, even the slowest worst ones, are more than sufficient for the everyday computing needs of most people.

So the value of a amd/intel laptop is all the performance you need, all the battery life you need, and also you get extra features you'll never see on a Mac like pen and touch screen, plus compatibility with all of your games, programs, and hardware. That's not tech junk, imo.

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

#75

Post by cyberpunk »

vbezhenar wrote: post #67
cyberpunk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I have the air with m1, and my battery life is insane. Like 20 hours, even with a parallels vm running some of the time. I do however have no idea what discord is. Isn’t it some kinda forum? Also using safari when on battery doubles your life, fwiw.

Discord is like Slack, with video calls. I’m using Safari.

Slack has video calls… they’re Shite though ;)

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

#76

Post by pjmlp »

augusto-moura wrote: post #26
ok_dad wrote: post #7

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…

I think the point is that most modern laptops don't offer good linux support (which are without a doubt have the best developer experience, aside from ~debatable~ macOS'es). Either they lack good driver support or need you to hack config files/kernel params. So yeah, I still type for "developer laptops" or "laptops with good linux support" when I'm searching new computers, and no, a basic off-the-shelf Dell Inspiron…

Depends which kind of developer, there is a big world out there beyond UNIX CLI and daemons with Web UI.

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

#78

Post by bdlowery »

synergy20 wrote: post #66

I was assigned a Macbook Pro at work and I asked for a non-Mac laptop, reason being I'm a Linux developer and Macbook did not work well for me(keyboard,etc). I ended up with a XPS 15 that has 64GB DDR and 2TB PCIe NVMe SSD around $2750, comparing to 32GB+1TB of MacBook Pro it is about $800 less expensive. I did not realize Precision 55xx series is even better built than XPS15 otherwise I will probably go that route.…

> I was disappointed that XPS did not even use a metal hinge, which is probably just 25 cents more. so yes XPS does not use the best quality parts from my experience.

This is why it's $800 cheaper than a MacBook Pro.

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