Are M1 Macs with Asahi Linux a viable option for daily-driver or they are not mature enough?
I would say not mature enough yet. There are plenty of things missing support right now.
Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
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Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#12Are M1 Macs with Asahi Linux a viable option for daily-driver or they are not mature enough?
Definitely not mature enough for a daily driver.
It's an alpha, and there are significant things that don't work yet including HDMI, displayport, thunderbolt, GPU acceleration, video acceleration, and sleep/deep idle.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#13Battery Life Lipo: - Run it in by fully charge it 2-3 times, (deplete it with normal use) - Normal use keep it between 20-80%, write yourself a script or something to stop charging manually/automatically - Deplete/fully charge it quarterly or twice a year to give the bms a change to balance the cells.
While these are good guidelines, I came to the conclusion that life's too short to spend so much mental energy on this. If your devices need to be charged - charge them. That's it, that's the only rule.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#14Any device that can build its own kernel is a good SWE device.
However, I'd recommend a DELL or Samsung with a high-res OLED display. Those are gorgeous and have great color and luminance contrast for text.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#15> maintaining battery life
Using less battery power:
- use `powertop` to find processes that are sucking power
- stop browsers when not in use (e.g. `killall -STOP firefox-esr`, then same with -CONT when using them again, although Firefox tends to first spin 100% for a little while then; alternatively simply `killall firefox-esr`, Firefox will usually re-open the tabs)
- I use hibernate
Retaining battery life over the years:
- AFAIK Li-ion batteries last longest when kept cool, and when kept in the 30%..70% charged range most of the time; there used to be ways to tell ThinkPads to stop charging when reaching 70%, I've never used that though.
- I'm still hoping LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries will be sold for laptops some day, they would last much longer (but I guess when it happens, most third-party ones will be fakes (re-labelled Li-ion)...)
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#16Speaking of longevity, given the performance of m1 and absence of any moving parts except keyboard — go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there.
Would be still more performant than most of intel laptops in 2000$ range.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#17A thousand dollar second hand thinkpad now (t or x1) and another thousand dollar one in two years.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#18The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port.
As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these devices, ultimately a device that’s more practical for me in day to day usage wins out.
That generally leaves me with a more established manufacturer. Lenovo Thinkpad and Ideapad have options in this area and run Linux just fine. Dell XPSes are good too, though I wish they’d offer an AMD option. HP Envy/Spectre devices are rather decent too, though getting the touchscreen and sensors to work on these can be fiddly because HP compensates for their broken BIOS through the Windows drivers instead of just fixing shit.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#19The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…
I recently wimped out of buying a thinkpad due to uncertainty regarding getting Ubuntu running correctly and the time it would take me to do it. Do you have a guide you’ve used or instructions you have stashed somewhere?
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#20Speaking of longevity, given the performance of m1 and absence of any moving parts except keyboard — go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there. Would be still more performant than most of intel laptops in 2000$ range.
> go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there.
You can’t really do that, yet. Asahi is making good strides so that you can run Linux on the M1, but it’s not there yet for a daily driver.