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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?

#161

Post by threeseed »

rhamzeh wrote: post #133
icharters wrote: post #127

Quoted post unavailable.

True, but it is not a tool that works for everyone. In my case, I consider the Mac one of the cons of working at my current place of work. My days are filled with minor hassles that I could really do without. Doing simple things takes longer, and I have to deal with random freezes, slowdowns and even crashes that I did not have to deal with when using my own laptop for similar needs over the past couple of years (mos…

Maybe you have an older Mac ?

Any of the M1 variants should have no performance issues even under pretty heavy load.

And if you're having random freezes or crashes then that is a symptom of a hardware fault.

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

#162

Post by brobinson »

fy20 wrote: post #51

A few years ago I would have said ThinkPads but I think there are better options available now. At the end of last year I wanted to replace my T470, and wanted to upgrade to something with a more powerful (not U-series) CPU. The ThinkPad option that fitted my requirements was on back order for months, so I looked around... The ASUS ROG line of gaming laptops had exactly what I wanted, although they look a bit garish,…

Are you able to run X/Wayland off of the Intel GPU and leave the Nvidia GPU free for CUDA usage on that setup?

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

#163

Post by number6 »

tommyage wrote: post #22

www.tuxedocomputers.com I never had hand on them yet, but they appear very promising.

I am using this one from 2018: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/de/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note... Which is a https://clevo-computer.com/en/clevo-pa70ep6-g/pa71ep6-g in fact.

It is an excellent laptop, but more on the side of a workstation than on the side of mobility

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

#166

Post by icharters »

usr1106 wrote: post #157
icharters wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a professional software engineer I choose to use the best tools for the job. In my case that tool happens to be a a Mac.

Elsewhere in the comments there is a message saying that containers are constant headache under MacOS. Not having used it I can't comment. But containers are a regular part of my work. We have them in production and additionally I use them because I cannot install every required tool / environment to my machine at the same time. In that light the position of the best tool for the job doesn't sound to be undisputed.

I have several Docker containers running at any given time with no issues.

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

#168

Post by jlokier »

jrib wrote: post #37
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…

What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine? The battery on the m1 was to enticing. I went back and forth between a ThinkPad x1 with Linux and this MacBook air. It's impressive and I have no regrets. When there's an arm laptop released with similar performance and battery life I can run Linux on, I'll definitely be picking one up

> What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine?

For me, the 16GB RAM limit on the MacBook Air is the principal reason not to get one, otherwise I would have already. As soon as you go to 32GB or more with M1, it's a big price jump to the Pro range, not sub $2000 any more.

I have been looking at the M1 MBPs, but the price makes it need justification, and the 2.5 months lead time even at Apple stores for the higher models, has kept me from committing. And when I tried the MBP keyboard in store, it felt not as good as the old Firefox in daily use is constantly swapping on my older MBP that has 16GB RAM, and when I used Safari, it wasn't any better. (It was the trigger that made me go back to Firefox, as it used less memory than Safari when I switched). It quickly rises from 10GB to using 30GB after a little browsing; I've seen it go up to 67GB. Some sites will do that with just one tab open. It took me a long time to realise that's why browsing was so janky and pausing a lot, and back when I used Safari everything else paused often too. So I'd not be eager to buy a new laptop with the same problem.

Perhaps the Linux dev VM and several Electron-based communication apps that have to be running constantly add up, but it always seems to be the browser that grows to use much more memory than there is available.

With Firefox it seems to be a fixable software problem, because when it's triggered to release memory it will drop as fast as it can swap in, with no apparent affect except a long pause. I expect it's all cache. The memory statistics fluctuate very rapidly sometimes, gaining several GB in seconds, even when just clicking around text-only sites like HN.

But it's not realistically going to be fixed, so I think it best to get at least 32GB RAM for the next machine, whether it's a Macbook or not.

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

#169

Post by lelanthran »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #57

serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux? Do you have a habit of modifying your wifi drivers and recompiling the source? I am big on open source but have never felt my life was improved chasing dependencies vs just brew install ... I have never had a satisfactory battery + sleep/standby experience on a linux machine, vs a Mac I can leave unplugged for weeks and it wakes back up where…

> serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux?

For a daily driver? Poor UI experience on MacOS. On Linux usually one of Mate, Plasma, WindowMaker, XFCE or Gnome will have the Window behaviour (snapping, tiling, maximising, switching) I want.

All of the Linux options have file-selection dialogs that don't suck. All of the Linux distros I have used for a daily driver have better software than brew.

MacOS kernel certainly has some nice surprises (compressed memory is impressive), it doesn't ever crash and it sleeps and wakes correctly.

OTOH, all the non-kernel software is, frankly, crap. They're unintuitive, hard to use and limited in variety.

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

#170

Post by tzs »

Casteil wrote: post #12
terafo wrote: post #7

Are 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. https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/

Anyone here have any experience with running Linux via UTM or Parallels on M1?

99.9% of what I do on Linux is command line (I usually don't even install a GUI, using an X server on another machine on those rare occasions I want to run a Linux app with a GUI), so I'm mostly curious about that case.

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