Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#41

Post by goosedragons » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

excitednumber wrote: post #19

francis-io wrote: post #4

The 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?

What needs to be done depends on the model. Some models are Ubuntu certfied [0] and just work. They even sell some with it. Some need a little tweaking. I recently got a P14s Gen 2 AMD at work and all I really had to do was install the OEM kernel to get WiFi working and set sleep in the BIOS to Linux instead of Windows. Otherwise everything works.

[0] https://ubuntu.com/certified

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#42

Post by JamesAdir » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

acky wrote: post #13

bebna wrote: post #10

Battery 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.

Lenovo has a tool that can keep the battery at around 70%. If you are 80% working in the same location, then it can really keep your batter life longer. If you are moving all the time, then certainly keep it charge to 100%.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#43

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

Lenovo T14s here (AMD version). Stuff works out of the box on Debian, except for the LTE modem which works after a bit of a struggle. Battery life is better under Windows but I haven't bothered working out why, probably need to set up some power management stuff. Associated dock drives three 1920x1200 screens at the same time as the built-in one.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#44

Post by cssanchez » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:34 AM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #24

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 or X1 Nano are my favorites. Small, light, but powerful. Before I used the ThinkPad X230 and DELL Latitude 7270, each for many years and bought second hand. The DELL was particularly sturdy. All of these are Ubuntu LTS friendly boxes. Avoid Microsoft Surface Laptops, which require patches to run Linux, Microsoft doesn't offer an Image ready to burn on a stick. And although I'm writing this on an M1…

Think pads are nice for the many reasons in other comments. However, the track pad and nibble-mouse on it are unusable in my opinion. For a laptop, it requires an external mouse to function, so if high mobility is a factor, I would look elsewhere.

My basic $600 acer laptop from 2017 has better trackpad than my ThinkPad from work and was expandable enough to cover my needs with a quick Ram and SSD upgrade and it has a really good, large track pad still working to this day.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#45

Post by pizza234 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

Avalaxy wrote: post #34

daenney wrote: post #18

The 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 dev…

> Dell XPSes are good too Be very careful. They are very good laptops, and Dell's customer support for businesses is stellar, but the XPS machines play VERY bad with Linux. There are some XPS machines that are shipped with linux, so they should be fine. But most of them have wifi/bluetooth chips that have no support at all, or very bad support.

Dell XPS has a Linux-specific line, called "Developer edition", which is intended to be Linux-compatible (it can be indeed be configured with Ubuntu on purchase).

Their compatibility is not as good as they say (it needs a couple of tweaks, one of which is crucial, otherwise the machine eats batteries while on standby), but it's still decent. Definitely not "VERY bad".

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#46

Post by penner_im_auto » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

cookiengineer wrote: post #31

I got myself a T440p because the 4th generation is the last one with replaceable display, battery, RAM and CPU. They're quite heavy but that's not an issue for me. Best bang for the buck I ever spent. Bought it around 2015 in used condition for around 250EUR, then upgraded CPU, RAM, batteries (2x as of now), got a bigger SSD and HDD (512GB+4TB) and got an IPS display and a touchpad of the T480 which fits in there. I…

I can confirm that. Also have a T440p And I'm very happy with it. Added a 1 TB SSD, 16 GB RAM, Kubuntu, keep some spare CPUs with different performance levels because I travel a lot. Everything is very easily interchangeable, designed to military standards. I've had my device for 3 years, and it's already suffered bumps and scratches that would break other devices. Got myself a docking station for 25€ for when I am home. It hasn't even crossed my mind to get another device since then.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#47

Post by OJFord » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

> I looked into the Framework laptops and so far it looks like they are still a bit beta.

I'm not sure that's fair, (and it's pedantically wrong - they're in production - but I know what you mean) the hardware is the nicest I've seen besides Macbooks (I agree with you about macOS, but I do like the hardware, keen for Asahi one day but that is very much beta (alpha actually I think)) and Linux is Linux? It works fine out of the box, everything 'in-tree'.

Unless you just don't want to buy any company's first product of course, which I suppose is fair enough, but I hope (for the longevity of a company I like & spares/upgrades for my laptop) that enough people don't feel that way.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#48

Post by FormFollowsFunc » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:37 AM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #40

daenney wrote: post #18

The 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 dev…

Dell XPSes are good too Unless you plan to put them into a bag or backpack suspended: With regards to transporting your laptop in a bag or backpack, safety should be your primary concern. You should always turn the laptop OFF [...] Under no circumstances should you leave a laptop powered on and in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin. The laptop will overheat as a res…

It’s a problem with Windows. I’ve a dual boot MacBook Pro and I run into that issue only when I put the laptop to sleep when running Windows. I don’t have the issue when running MacOS. You would think after 30 years Microsoft would figure out how to keep a computer asleep.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#49

Post by GordonS » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

jraph wrote: post #27

I'm happy with both my second hand HP Elitebook 840 G6 and the ThinkPad carbon X1 Gen 9 I have for work. I think I like the HP one slightly better: function keys can be set to trigger either F1-F12 or to the actions drawn on them without the Fn key (and the Fn key swaps this). If set to the actions by default, F1-F12 are still automatically used when pressing a modifier key, and no action is on F2, which means I almo…

Do you have any thermal and/or noise problems with the HP?

I've had several HPs over the years, including ZBooks, and every single one got very hot and blasts the fans all the feckin time :/

They were all company machines, but it's put me off ever buying one myself.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#50

Post by indymike » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

I've been running Ubuntu on an LG Gram 17. Huge screen (true 17"), 18 hour battery and weighs Les than 4 lbs. It also has a metal chassis. Only device that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.