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The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

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21–30 of 168 posts

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#22
post #7

I can't wait for proper high end ARM laptops with Microsoft's backing and support. I'm like the author, I consider the M MacBooks very impressive but I dislike the OS itself. And it was very unexpected that Chrome underperform so much, without it it's a complete deal breaker for me.

Why? Chrome is such a terrible browser to begin with. How is it a deal breaker?

In my own experience, Chromium browser (which is the base for Google Chrome) works much better (faster) than Firefox on my Pinebook Pro (ARM, Linux).

But I think the author is using Chrome under emulation, so bad performance is expected.

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#23

Like the author, I also do a lot of Kotlin development and use intellij and pycharm a lot. This sounds like an awful laptop to do that on. Kotlin is great but it's compiler is rather slow and you end up waiting for that a lot. So, faster is better. I noticed about a 2.5x build speed improvements when I upgraded my cheap Samsung i5 laptop (a temporary thing I used for a while) to the M1 14" Mac Book Pro. On a typical…

Silly question ; am I the only person who still uses a desktop / tower machine? Feels like I'm a huge minority these days, but when it comes to needing processing power and juice it still feels it provides budget and upgrade flexibility no laptop can match.

I have a nice big workstation with heck load of cores, memory and a 4090. It's the only way to fly. Laptops are great for emails but toys when it comes to dev machines.

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#24
post #5

I'd be much more interested in the Linux situation on this laptop. Most of the UI applications I use casually or CLI apps are available on ARM (I have them running fine on a Pinephone, so the experience on a laptop will only be better). But not sure how the dev workflow would be: Podman, IntelliJ, Sublime Text, etc.. And some casual stuff like Calibre, Thunderbird, Joplin. Oh and how much would the battery life impro…

Same where wondering if it performs the same/better under Linux. I imagine the battery life could be better under Linux based on my experience with Windows 11 on my own laptop, I mean, the fans don't even spin up that often under Linux unlike the near constant fan chorus Windows gives me.

Also, a computer without a single fan so I can comfortably use it on my bed? With possibility to replace it's SSD? It sounded a lot like my next laptop.

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#25

Like the author, I also do a lot of Kotlin development and use intellij and pycharm a lot. This sounds like an awful laptop to do that on. Kotlin is great but it's compiler is rather slow and you end up waiting for that a lot. So, faster is better. I noticed about a 2.5x build speed improvements when I upgraded my cheap Samsung i5 laptop (a temporary thing I used for a while) to the M1 14" Mac Book Pro. On a typical…

Silly question ; am I the only person who still uses a desktop / tower machine? Feels like I'm a huge minority these days, but when it comes to needing processing power and juice it still feels it provides budget and upgrade flexibility no laptop can match.

I noticed a lot of people switching to desktop during work from home. They have this gaming PC just sitting there, and it turns out to be way faster than there stationary MacBook.

Personally I use a desktop at a standing desk from 9-5 and a 13" laptop around the house/on the deck.

I'm likely going to upgrade from the Dell XPS 13 to a MacBook Air, but the desktop is a higher priority. She could use some upgrades.

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly question ; am I the only person who still uses a desktop / tower machine? Feels like I'm a huge minority these days, but when it comes to needing processing power and juice it still feels it provides budget and upgrade flexibility no laptop can match.

I use a desktop that I can remotely access. So I can do development on my fast computer from anywhere. It’s always on so it’s easy to run long jobs. Since my laptop is basically just a thin client used for ssh, vnc, and a web browser, it’s super easily replaced.

I've yet to find an offline desktop which can be secured, let alone work on it from a remote location.

Cant people detect when their offline machines are being/have been hacked?

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#27
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly question ; am I the only person who still uses a desktop / tower machine? Feels like I'm a huge minority these days, but when it comes to needing processing power and juice it still feels it provides budget and upgrade flexibility no laptop can match.

I use a desktop that I can remotely access. So I can do development on my fast computer from anywhere. It’s always on so it’s easy to run long jobs. Since my laptop is basically just a thin client used for ssh, vnc, and a web browser, it’s super easily replaced.

I do the same, for the same reasons.

Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer

#28
post #5

I'd be much more interested in the Linux situation on this laptop. Most of the UI applications I use casually or CLI apps are available on ARM (I have them running fine on a Pinephone, so the experience on a laptop will only be better). But not sure how the dev workflow would be: Podman, IntelliJ, Sublime Text, etc.. And some casual stuff like Calibre, Thunderbird, Joplin. Oh and how much would the battery life impro…

I use a pinebook pro (same company as the pinephone). Sublime works a treat. So does thunderbird, calibre.

Intellij doesn't have aarch64 Linux distributions, you can kind of hack it together it's completely unsupported. Not sure about Joplin but I expect it would be ok (I think it's electron based? VS code works ok too).

Re locked-down: pbp can run many different Linux variants, and boots with tow-boot bootloader. Hopefully that would support ThinkPad to, but I don't know.

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