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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?

#302
post #117
post #112

There was a recent discussion on the StarBook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 - in the comments I mention a few other laptops I've been looking at that may be of interest as well as my own review/experience w/ a laptop w/ the same chassis as the KDE Slimbook 15/Tuxedo Pulse 15.

Tuxedo pulse15 is great. Only issue I have so far is that I have a crumb stuck under the shift key and haven't figured out how to get it out without damaging the key. It's a very flat keyboard which may not be for everyone.

Best laptop i ever had

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

#303
post #287

Purism Librem 14 Is my daily driver currently running Linux mint. - overall very happy with it for my uses. I don’t do a lot of intense workloads on the laptop, mostly stuff like text editing and latex compiling. - battery is great. With screen brightness reasonably low and working on low intensity tasks, I could get 8 hours I think pretty easily. Probably 3 hours of video calls. - durability is good so far. My libre…

Second a Purism librem 14. It is a really high quality design, the SW support is fantastic, and it is easy to repair.

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

#304

I can vouch for the Framework. It doesn't feel beta at all. I'm running Xubuntu 21.10 on it an it rocks. Someone created a repo with salt scripts which works all the kinks of the laptop under Ubuntu. The only thing I needed it for was to fix the touchpad issue after resume from sleep (it would be at max acceleration) and to enable hibernate (just note that you must disable secure boot first). https://github.com/light…

+1 for Framework laptop. On the road and typing from one now.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You don't need any approval, I just don't understand that after saying "I don't want to buy a mac" you come with "You should buy a mac". What was the point of it?

Maybe they’re a parent. :)

Telling people to do things they tell you they don’t want to do becomes almost automatic if you live with a toddler or teenager.

All kidding aside, It seems that this general observation applies to half of the comments here today, many of which are talking about pro Mac, anti Mac, or but what about windows?

It would have been nice if it just said up front “want recommendation for best non apple Linux machine.”

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

#306
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a ridiculous argument. Xcode is not only closed source, it is required for publishing to the App Store. You can't modify the hardware or the software. It's a virtual prison.

Note that the argument you've called ridiculous is a response to someone who does not want a > closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like Such a person probably won't be using Xcode, nor has any plans of publishing to the App Store, so Xcode being closed-source isn't a factor at all here.

It's the main factor for a developer, actually. We're talking about Apple so it makes sense to discuss their products. It doesn't make sense to talk about Microsoft products.

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

#308
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,…

I'm still using my Thinkpad X61s.

Nothing today even comes close, and never will.

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

#309
post #228

Lenovo has some pretty good sales on thinkpad X1s (at least they do in Canada - didn't check the US site). But, if you're in Canada, I just bought this: https://www.newegg.ca/p/N82E16834233446?Description=gigabyte... It's got a gorgeous 4K OLED screen, a quite decent CPU and GPU, and it's currently $350 off + a $300 mail in rebate (there was an additional $350 off over the easter weekend, too). The track pad is not m…

I am happier with the 1080p screen on the X1. Better performance, less headaches with non-high-dpi-friendly apps, better symmetry when connecting to a non-4k external monitor.

Same experience. Makes life easier with no downsides I can perceive.

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

#310
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience. On my 9343 bluetooth did not work initially, and on the 9370 the fingerprint reader is not available (no driver available), but apart from that linux is just working - and I'm not particular fond of spending time on setting things up. Much more of an issue is that the xps, as every non apple computer does not s…

My xps had normal sleep untill s bios uodate removed ut. I eas wondering if this gave me grounds for a lawsuit
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