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?

#711

Post by indiv0 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #170

Casteil wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Parallels on M1 here! I followed mitchellh's guide to setup NixOS [0]. He runs an X server on the machine and works entirely within that (minus mail, etc.). I tried that at first then decided against.

I'm now running the machine headless in the Parallels VM, and using VS Code on the host to Remote SSH into the machine. It's absolutely incredible and I highly recommend this workflow. My rationale is here [1].

Fair warning I haven't tried to get any OS other than NixOS installed. Not sure how usable Ubuntu ARM or others are.

[0]: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31101605

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

#712

Post by nobody10 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

I have Kubuntu Focus XE. Pros - support replies quickly - I really haven't install any new software other than Discord and Spotify. Everything comes out of the box. - Has all the IOs that I ever need. - Very light, build quality is above average.

Cons - Mouse pad is kind of sensitive - I would trigger it by accident while typing.

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

#713

Post by Delk » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #476

emptyfile wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think a lot of developers are buying macs due to marketing. I've never seen a developer with a macbook in my country. The idea sounds absurd. Unless you need Final Cut or whatever, Apple is considered a status brand in many parts of the world.

My past three workplaces let me choose between a high-end Windows laptop, or a Macbook. I always opted for Windows, due to some tooling I'm used to, but ended up regretting it on every occasion The problems with non-Apple laptops are manifold. Surprisingly, there's very little practical difference between $1k and $4k laptop. System integrators don't spend their budget wisely - they cheap out on some parts, while over…

As much as I kind of hate beating a dead horse, the driver and power issues on Linux are very much a matter of hardware choice.

I suspend and hibernate my ThinkPad constantly, from once to several times a day, with no concerns. My uptimes are usually limited by wanting to have a kernel (or some other low-level) update actually take effect once in a while.

My OS install is old enough that I can't actually remember what kinds of tweaks I may have made power-wise apart from installing TLP, but I get comparable battery life on Linux and Windows. I don't think I'm that far from stock configuration. It used to be worse -- my current OS install was originally on a different laptop -- and battery life was perhaps ~20-25% worse on Linux than on Windows, but I don't see much of a difference nowadays. Intel CPU power states are managed by the CPU itself nowadays anyway.

If there is a difference, it's usually because sometimes script-heavy web pages left open on the background seem to cause Firefox to keep hogging more CPU time on Linux than on Windows.

Sure, hardware choices will be limited. You do have to be selective, and the realistic hardware options may or may not satisfy you, so it's entirely reasonable if e.g. an Apple combination of hardware and software turns out to be more attractive.

Not everything is perfect, of course, but it does sound baffling to hear that "Linux" has these constant issues that I haven't experienced in years in daily use. It's true that you have to pick your hardware, and there's probably still a higher chance of hardware compatibility issues if you haven't paid anybody to make sure the combination works, but in my experience, those stereotypical issues are pretty far from being a universal truth.

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

#714

Post by jazzyjackson » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #193

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…

My 2017 MacBookPro laptop swings from 12GB free to 600MB free back to 12GB for no apparent reason, while giving me warning notifications of low disk space that I can't turn off. The only reason I have 12 GB free instead of 3-4 is that I uninstalled a whole bunch of stuff so that I could actually do a Time Machine backup. Yes, I had to uninstall stuff in order to do a backup. Seems backwards. These annoyances from the…

predictability is my favorite answer so far, thanks, I just had the issue of "why is safari closing tabs on its own" and the answer was "because icloud is trying to sync my tabs" ... the less remote management being done on my machine from the cloud the better

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

#715

Post by princevegeta89 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #391

Does it have to be a laptop? I ditched my 2019 MBP for development. I used a desktop with Linux and couldn't be happier. For email, zoom, etc. I used the MBP. Linux dev experience is still far superior than Mac OS for me, and I tend to prefer big screens, mechanical keyboards and a work-desk env for long programming or video editing sessions.

This used to be my setup until I realized I was running into a constant, frequent extra effort of keeping my PC and my laptop in sync for various things like my environments and files. Ditched it for a single power laptop instead.

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

#716

Post by akhmatova » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

nanidin wrote: post #485

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess that if someone can’t articulate why they do or don’t want something, someone who is passionate about that thing sees their chance to help someone see the light. I then guess that the solution to giving requirements like “not a mac” is to also articulate why at a level that the audience will respect. OP has already made the mistake of asking for something very broad in the title, then asking for something ver…

If the title read “Linux laptop” I doubt they would have as many people in the comments suggesting anything else.

Sorry, but that's a cop-out. As others have point out, the real problem is "people just don't read these days". Not even the top few lines of a post. If they did, they would have had no problem finding this important qualifier:

    I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS

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

#717

Post by uuyi » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #580

uuyi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fanaticism really. A lot of us find it's the only computer that actually does a half decent job of trying to work properly and doesn't kick you in the balls. Well it does but rarely. Honestly I'd rather be using Windows on a ThinkPad. I really really like windows, PuTTY, MS office etc and I even like spending time in Visual Studio. But the hardware quality has declined to near zero in the PC market and lets…

i would really recommend to try out wsl2. its become massively fantastic. you should try it if you havent. Thinkpad with Windows 11 and WSL2 is mindblowing

That’s the WSL I’m complaining about. Got VPN routing issues and background process problems. Plus the hyper-v vswitch keeps killing my networks. It’s not a real Linux. I’m done.

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

#718

Post by dark-star » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:40 PM UTC

If you really have $2k to spend on a laptop, then a Mac is probably a safe bet. All developers I know that use one are very happy with it, although I don't have one personally so I can't offer first-hand experience.

OTOH, I am more than happy with my Dell laptop. A slightly older Latitude. Everything works out of the box (I run Manjaro on it), even the WWAN, keyboard lights, card reader, etc. And you can get replacement parts (battery, screen, keyboard) for years since those laptops are so common.

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

#719

Post by jerlam » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

flawi wrote: post #613

hexo wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In where I live there's a ton of devs using macs. The idea sounds absurd, too. Even more absurd when you realize they're mostly developing stuff that will ultimately run on Linux.

Working for a pretty big corporation (20000ish employees), the reason for this I hear from our IT/Workplace Services team is that Apple laptops actually integrate with the existing Windows-centric IT infra reasonably well with regards to account management, hdd encryption, endpoint protection, etc. This is not true for really any flavor of Linux, or so I'm told. So it's either a HP ZBook or a Macbook, and a big chunk…

I worked for BigCorp (not FAANG), and developers chose Macs for exactly the opposite reason - they did not integrate into BigCorp's dysfunctional IT infrastructure because they were too new.

Over the years, BigCorp IT had deployed increasing amounts of corporate malware for various reasons. Users would be regularly treated to dialogs from various IT departments (accounting, security, inventory, licensing) demanding that they verify their employee number, job code, physical location, etc; security agents that scanned all disk activity and network traffic; inventory agents that make sure all software was properly licensed; and arbitrary software installations and upgrades that IT incorrectly believed everyone in the company needed.

With a Mac, none of these agents existed, so you didn't have to deal with your computer actively working against you. With newer forms of enterprise management, this overhead should be reduced on both Windows and Macs, but due to inertia all those agents will continue to be installed on Windows long after they are needed.

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

#720

Post by BuckRogers » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 7:42 PM UTC

I don't know about Linux support, as I would use WSL, but I love Samsung laptops that have the S-Pen. It's Wacom EMR tech, which is the best you can get for a stylus and the only place to get it on the PC side that I know of. Other than a standalone Wacom digitizer of course.

I also have a Thinkpad X1 Xtreme and it's solid, but nothing to write home about. If going for that, I'd compare (in person) with the latest Dell stuff. Otherwise, I'd go Samsung for me.