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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?

#501

Post by allisdust »

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,…

For Linux to fix the WiFi card, you can use any distro with latest kernel. A lot of hardware support issues on Linux are due to slow release distros like Ubuntu (and a lot of people not knowing this assume it's due to lack of drivers in mainline Linux). I use fedora and everything works out of the box following the asus-fedora website.

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

#502

Post by kellogs_aran »

asciimov wrote: post #420

Do you actually need a laptop as your main development machine? A few years back, I switched off of using a laptop for my main machine. This allows me to spend my money on hardware with more cores, more ram, better gpu, better linux support, bigger screens, and upgrade paths. $2000 will buy you a lot of desktop computer. Further, if you don't spend all of your $2k on fancy cases and overpriced gpus, you will have eno…

Yeah I considered this too but it's not very child friendly. I live with family and I try to optimize for mobility. Maybe one day :)

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

#503

Post by Mikeb85 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #326
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

They definitely market the "brand" leading to quasi-religious fervour.

Of course, there's religious devotees to all 3. I throw my lot in with the Linux crowd because of freedom: freedom to use the software and not give a fuck about anyone's philosophy or religiousity. And the knowledge that it'll always be open source, I'll always "own" my software, etc...

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

#504

Post by ezfe »

Flankk wrote: post #191
ezfe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Most of the Development flow (and even most of the non-dev flow) happens in Open Source areas: - Safari - Apps you download, like VSCode - Command line tools The areas that aren't open source (The Calendar app, file browser) can be replaced as you choose. I won't tell you to use a Mac, I j…

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.

Well, Xcode only needs to be used if you're publishing to the App Store, which you wouldn't do with a linux machine anyways so that's a moot point when comparing them...

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

#505

Post by indiv0 »

c0mptonFP wrote: post #226
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Dude, operating system is one of the most fundamental things to consider when getting a dev machine. MacOS is literally useless for me, because I depend on the Linux kernel.

Just run Linux in a VM! It's my preferred workflow nowadays.

See: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubDMLoWz76U

Only real limitations are lack of ML because no server/desktop-grade GPU and some missing ARM-based docker containers. But the latter is slowly being resolved and the former isn't gonna happen on a laptop anyways.

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

#506

Post by ezfe »

akho wrote: post #278
ezfe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Most of the Development flow (and even most of the non-dev flow) happens in Open Source areas: - Safari - Apps you download, like VSCode - Command line tools The areas that aren't open source (The Calendar app, file browser) can be replaced as you choose. I won't tell you to use a Mac, I j…

Safari and VSCode are not open source. Most people who value freedom in software for practical reasons are motivated by having a way to fix or work around inconveniences, having a community and an active discussion on features, general composability and hackability of software, … macOs (with all respect to their UI achievements) gives you none of that.

Safari isn't, you're correct - but WebKit is. And Safari does fall into the category of things that can be fully replaced.

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

#507

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

mekster wrote: post #478
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this satire?

As in? I'm serious.

It is definitely not easier to passthrough an NVIDIA GPU that I require for machine learning to a virtual machine on an M1 Mac versus just buying a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU. I don't even know if M1 supports eGPU, have not heard anything about it, and I doubt PCI passthrough or whatever you use for eGPUs works on macOS. Sometimes hardware does matter, and it glaringly matters (esp. w.r.t. CUDA).

Also consider gaming. Considering that GPU virtualization is not really a thing still, I cannot imagine, for example, gaming being easier on macOS, and the VM requires additional setup too.

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

#508

Post by Mikeb85 »

mekster wrote: post #474
falcolas wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? The same reason console wars exist. If there are multiple choices, and it's not practical to take/use/buy all the options, people feel the need to justify the choice that they did make. When someone's starting from a defensive position, unemotional rationality is uncommon. AKA, it's human nature.

Except Mac, macOS and its third party apps are actually better. Windows is always lagging with its legacy burden, Linux on desktop doesn't have commercial interest to begin with. Consoles are pretty much the same unless they have exclusive games. It's not really emotional matters. Used Windows 10+ years and not missing it.

> Except Mac, macOS and its third party apps are actually better.

Definitely not.

> Linux on desktop doesn't have commercial interest to begin with

Red Hat is literally IBM now...

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

#509

Post by geocar »

Maybe you want to consider a beefy desktop with a battery-backup and plugging it in someplace cold and setting up a laptop to remote into it. You can get a lot of bang for your buck in a desktop, and going lean on the laptop means you don't need to compromise on cpu memory or storage. They even make special video cards that do the remote desktop encoding (PcOIP) that are really quite fine for coding, but I find xpra to be just fine for me.

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

#510

Post by indiv0 »

chociej wrote: post #457
mekster wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't feel right. Any OS can virtualize Linux, so the host doesn't really matter. Besides, it's usually the software that matters and not the OS.

Virtualization is a far cry, performance and experience wise, from running the OS natively.

Not anymore. Not on the M1s. They're far and away faster than anything but the beefiest desktop. A lua parser benchmark I ran in a VM on my M1 beat my 5950X by a factor of two.

The only remaining limitation are missing some ARM docker containers (which is slowly being solved) and the machines not being suitable for ML (in which case you need a desktop or to rent server time on the cloud).

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