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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?

#511

Post by jenscow »

noduerme wrote: post #192

This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.

Can get a much better desktop machine at the same price, and upgrade/repair easier.

Then a ex-corporate laptop from eBay that I'm not too worried about breaking/losing. Dell laptops tend to have the best support of Linux.

I spend >80% of my time in the same place, so it makes sense for me. If I'm out and about, I won't be doing "full" work anyway.

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

#512

Post by Unbeliever69 »

lazyier wrote: post #441
raxxorraxor wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a Mac Book from time to time and the keyboard alone is special... I don't think Mac is a good universal machine for development to be honest. The devices overall are nice, out of the question, but a Linux machine is ultimately more powerful.

Apple keyboards are miserable. I don't know why people keep saying that it's so wonderful. I have a Macbook pro I get from work and the keyboard on that thing is borderline unusable. With it's weird flat keys, no travel, and the elimination of function keys for this terrible GUI thing. As an Emacs user I find the whole concept of a "touch screen esc key" as deplorable and regressive. And this is on top of the poor re…

The new macs are (for me) a return to the pre-2015 era but on steroids. My M1 Macbook Air is a blazing fast dev machine for what I do (dockerized full-stack web dev). I do sympathize with all the mac hate during the dreaded 2016-2020 era. I'm glad I held out and skipped that era entirely.

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

#513

Post by yackback »

mvanbaak wrote: post #225
noduerme wrote: post #192

This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.

This only works if both the desktop and the notebook are always online and on a good connection. For the desktop, this is doable (although not everywhere, first world is pretty good connected but besides that it can be really hard). For the notebook, it all depends.

Why does the notebook need to be in good connection? Use mosh.

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

#514

Post by [deleted] »

neogodless wrote: post #297
jotm wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if the hardware runs Linux well, it's not that ridiculous to recommend it. Forget the Apple software part.

Can everyone that has spent at least one month using Linux on an M1 as a daily driver please respond with their experiences, so we know that this "Linux on an M1" recommendation is valid?

[deleted]

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

#515

Post by havocsupreme »

I know you said you dont want mac, but I recommend apple only for the hardware. If you want linux, you can use Asahi Linux. Its in the beta stages but it allows your to harness mac’s superior hardware to develop on Linux. Apple is proven to make long lasting products that meet all the requirements you’ve list. Recommend M1 in particular, better than most intel and ARM laptops of its generation.

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1

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

#516

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior?

That is a good question. But ...

> They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth".

As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

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

#517

Post by qudat »

Freaken wrote: post #276

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…

I also have a framework laptop and love it.

Article I wrote about it: https://erock.io/2021/11/01/framework-vs-mbp.html

Battery life will be an issue for OP. Also, the speakers are by far the worst feature.

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

#518

Post by brobinson »

allisdust wrote: post #352
akvadrako wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the options with AMD dGPUs are very limited, I'd guess about 5% of what's out there with Nvidia. The new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 looks like a good option; my only concern is poor black levels.

+1 for zephyrus (though I'm using last year's model). Thanks to the hard working asus-linux community, most of the hardware features are controllable seamlessly through GUI software (fan profiles, switching between gpus, keyboard lights etc). Goes well with Fedora because they have the latest kernels with stable releases.

Could you link to this community and the GUI software you mentioned? I just got a Zephyrus M16, and I'm having quite a few issues getting stuff working on it.

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

#519

Post by StillBored »

xwdv wrote: post #480

Thinkpad T480s. Your search is over.

Lenovo, in their wisdom (penny pinching I guess), has been soldering either 4 or 8G of ram into the thinkpads for the last few years. This is one of the things that drove me away from them, because it seriously limits the amount of ram that can be installed (vs what is possible) and it messes up any kind of dimm striping one might want to run, as well as restricting you to the generally not great timings of the soldered on ram.

Its irritating and destroys what might otherwise be a pretty desirable machine, compared with any number of less expensive machines that have two DIMM slots.

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

#520

Post by helmholtz »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #211
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…

It's every Ask HN thread, every time I want to ask a question here I give up because I find myself listing the obvious, requirement-breaking answers that I know will come but that I don't want to see. It's not like stack-overflow where often the users are beginners and don't know what they want and it's sometimes helpful to point out XY problems. Here people are technically literate and know what they want yet the re…

Like all the "just use Org-Mode" comments. God, if I see one more Org Mode recomendation I might just burst!
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