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Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

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Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#111

Post by majorlazer »

phaus wrote: post #74
oemera wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own nothing from Dell beside my 23" Ultra Sharp monitor and I will tell you that I will never ever buy anything from Dell again. The monitor is really awesome at its price point and I don't want to miss it but the service Dell is doing is the worst I have ever seen. Let me tell you why. When I bought the monitor I was really happy to get a 3 year ultra warranty service from Dell for free. So the monitor gets shippe…

Even if Dell's monitors had a 50 percent failure rate and no warranty, you would still be saving money by purchasing only Dell monitors. While price isn't likely your only concern, $1000 for a monitor(even a nice one) is really ridiculous. When you consider the fact that a 27" iMac only costs about $1700, it only seems even more absurd.

I assume you are referring to the Apple 27" display listed here: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC914LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ

You do realize that it is 27" with a 2560x1440 resolution and it uses an IPS panel, right? That doesn't come cheap. Dell's comparable monitor is only $100 cheaper: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&#...

Of course, I would rather get the Dell, but the Apple display isn't really over-priced.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#112

Post by 18pfsmt »

wyclif wrote: post #102
commandar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I must be the only person out there that can't stand chiclet keyboards. One of the many reasons I'm interested in the upcoming Vizio thin+light notebooks is because they're not using chiclets.

Yes, the old-school ThinkPad keyboards were the best you could get on a laptop. Chiclet keyboards are made for non-touch typists, the kind of people who need to hunt and peck with big fat fingers. My fave keyboard is my Unicomp Linux model, with the Caps Lock and Ctrl keys swapped...but best of all, with positive keyclick and actual mechanical switches under each key instead of dopey, squishy foam like what you get w…

I only recently figured out that my inability to easily use Vim was related to the fact that I'm not a touch-typist (not a hunt-and-pecker either). Good thing I'm just a hobbyist, wannabe programmer.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#113

Post by gbog »

jmsduran wrote: post #9
ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

What you are describing sounds like my 5 year-old HP DV9000. The keyboard & track-pad were surprisingly of very high quality, very close to that of Apple's IMO. Too bad though the hardware & chasis design of the product line was extremely shoddy & defective; if the notebook didn't fry itself so often it probably would've been noticed more.

Everybody is praising Apple keyboards here. Strange thing is at my work place many have a "real" keyboard beside their MBA or MB.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#114

Post by tseabrooks »

ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

Hands down the most important part of this comment is the touch pad. It's a real struggle to find a decent touch pad aside from you know who.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#115

Post by krakensden »

jmsduran wrote: post #9
ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

What you are describing sounds like my 5 year-old HP DV9000. The keyboard & track-pad were surprisingly of very high quality, very close to that of Apple's IMO. Too bad though the hardware & chasis design of the product line was extremely shoddy & defective; if the notebook didn't fry itself so often it probably would've been noticed more.

Speaking of frying itself, when mine got hot the keyboard stopped working reliably, and it got hot easily and often.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#116

Post by kleiba »

bfrs wrote: post #90
rdtsc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinkpad (T60) has a great keyboard, good feedback. I don't use the mousepad, I like the little red pointer thingy it has and has 1400x1050 resolution display. It also a mate display (not the glare type). It is bulkier than other laptops and by now its processor is behind the latest i7 and i5's. Also as soon as I got I installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu lets me re-map caps lock to a control for my emacs usage. And most o…

Don't you get too much strain on your left pinky if you remap CapsLock to Ctrl? I shifted to: CapsLock -> Enter Keys next to spacebar -> Ctrl This feels a whole lot better. As Xah Lee [1] points out, the original symbolics keyboard that Stallman developed emacs on, had Ctrl keys next to the space bar. [1] http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

I read Xah Lee's article a good while ago. Emacs is the program I spend >90% of my time in, I first encountered it on a SUN Sparc Classic. If my memory serves me right, the SUN keyboard had META close to space and CTRL under the TAB key (where PC keyboard have CAPS LOCK). So, naturally, I grew up with the control key in that position.

When using Emacs on a PC, for the longest time I didn't remap CTRL and with the default position Emacs becomes quite awkward to use. On a PC keyboard, I used to have pinkie strain a lot when doing lots of coding. But these days I spend most of my computing time in front of my Dell Netbook and the keyboard size is ideal for this key mapping - so nice, in fact, that I'm wondering whether there are any external netbook-sized keyboards that I could use with my desktop PC.

Another comment on this page complains about the arrangements of the HOME/END/INSERT/DELETE keys etc. on most laptop keyboards. I've got to say that I basically never use them. Even though the SUN Sparc keyboard had arrow keys, at some point I disabled them on my keyboard to force myself to learn Emacs' native shortcuts for moving the point. Now my hands hardly ever have to leave the home row.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#117

Post by angusgr »

rdtsc wrote: post #82
ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

Thinkpad (T60) has a great keyboard, good feedback. I don't use the mousepad, I like the little red pointer thingy it has and has 1400x1050 resolution display. It also a mate display (not the glare type). It is bulkier than other laptops and by now its processor is behind the latest i7 and i5's. Also as soon as I got I installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu lets me re-map caps lock to a control for my emacs usage. And most o…

Couldn't agree more. I use a Thinkpad X60 for much the same reasons (X-series because I carry it around a lot, still "bulky" compared to a Macbook Air but not to the point that it ever actually bothers me.) I really don't look forward to having to upgrade it some day.

Aside from the screen feeling a bit outmoded to me (although I like matte, LCD tech has come a long way in 5 years) it's an absolute pleasure to use.

So I was disappointed when Dell's announcement was about Linux shovelware instead of just saying "easy modular upgrades, quality keyboard, portable and light but solidly built." :/

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#118

Post by keeperofdakeys »

thrill wrote: post #43
sophacles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, I will never consider switching away from my Macbook until the following things are true: * battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old) * very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, o…

I'm using Ubunutu 12.04 (and learning to love the bomb, err, Unity) on a Samsung 15-inch Series 9, and those things you mention work fine. Small irritants include a screen of less quality than I expected (vertical viewing angle is minimal), a keyboard that is more noisy than I wish, and a touchpad that I can't get to disable during typing. But it's fast, quiet, large-screened and has more than enough horsepower for d…

You should look into syndaemon. This will disable the touchpad when you are typing. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Disa...

Also, the screen on the Series 9 is one of the better screens out there. Also, I don't find the keyboard on my 13" loud though.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#119

Post by jamesbritt »

davidw wrote: post #47

In the spirit of... well... "thinking differently" we might call it, I'll actually say I'm pretty happy with the Dells I've had. They're solid workhorses with relatively good value for the money I spent on them. Certainly, they are not glamorous or beautiful, but they work well, have good support, and have generally run Ubuntu pretty well. That said, if someone came along and really did good Linux support, I'd probab…

I've been pretty happy with my Dell laptops, running Ubuntu.

But they lost me when they dropped WUXGA. That extra 200-pixel row may not matter to folks using their machine to watch movies, but it's missing developer real estate to me.

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