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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?

#21

Post by philliphaydon »

francis-io wrote: post #4

The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme (Gen 1) here with Manjaro, runs great. So I recommend ThinkPads.

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

#23

Post by philliphaydon »

excitednumber wrote: post #19
francis-io wrote: post #4

The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…

I recently wimped out of buying a thinkpad due to uncertainty regarding getting Ubuntu running correctly and the time it would take me to do it. Do you have a guide you’ve used or instructions you have stashed somewhere?

Ubuntu more or less just works, just shove a bootable usb stick in, install it, and use it.

Things get a bit fiddly if you want to use something like Manjaro or Fedora. But even then, it all just works.

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

#24

Post by jll29 »

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 or X1 Nano are my favorites. Small, light, but powerful.

Before I used the ThinkPad X230 and DELL Latitude 7270, each for many years and bought second hand. The DELL was particularly sturdy.

All of these are Ubuntu LTS friendly boxes.

Avoid Microsoft Surface Laptops, which require patches to run Linux, Microsoft doesn't offer an Image ready to burn on a stick. And although I'm writing this on an M1 MacBook, I can't recommend that box yet as a primary machine; I use it mostly for making and presenting slides and browsing HN and such, not for serious dev work. In a year's time, this may look different.

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

#25

Post by andmikey »

excitednumber wrote: post #19
francis-io wrote: post #4

The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…

I recently wimped out of buying a thinkpad due to uncertainty regarding getting Ubuntu running correctly and the time it would take me to do it. Do you have a guide you’ve used or instructions you have stashed somewhere?

For my Thinkpad (Thinkpad 13, I think it's called L-series now) installing Ubuntu was no trouble at all - set up a bootable USB, install, and done. Ubuntu actually runs much better than Windows!

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

#26

Post by scns »

Check out Tuxedo Computers, Linux first with a Tux key. You can configure the machine to your liking. If you want compute intesive skip the slim & light ones. They have machines with 45W TDP Ryzens on offer [0].

[0] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note...

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/why-TUXEDO.tuxedo

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note...

https://github.com/tuxedocomputers

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

#27

Post by jraph »

I'm happy with both my second hand HP Elitebook 840 G6 and the ThinkPad carbon X1 Gen 9 I have for work.

I think I like the HP one slightly better: function keys can be set to trigger either F1-F12 or to the actions drawn on them without the Fn key (and the Fn key swaps this). If set to the actions by default, F1-F12 are still automatically used when pressing a modifier key, and no action is on F2, which means I almost never need to use the Fn key for those and I can intuitively use alt+F4. That's not the case on the ThinkPad. It has a proper menu key (on the Thinkpad, they decided to replace it to screen capture, which is on FN+Right Caps on the HP). I like the metal feeling of the case and the feeling of the keyboard (but the ThinkPad is good on these areas too). Both have a touchscreen, and there are visible, diagonal lines on the Thinkpad's screen. Which is not very problematic, but better without. The HP has an Ethernet port, too. I think Linux works slightly better on the HP too: the sound automatically switches to the headphone when plugged, and switches back to the internal speakers when unplugged, on the same distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed). Though that might be some settings issue. S3 sleep works flawlessly on the HP. On the ThinkPad, it is not supported and indeed it does not work well. They decided to switch to whatever Windows decided to do with suspend, which does not really turns off components but put them in low power mode, which is a mess.

The ThinkPad is lighter, probably has a better sound from the internal speakers (though the HP's sound is correct too). The trackpoint on the ThinkPad is way more useful, you can scroll with it by holding the touchpad's upper middle button which is not there on the HP.

Both have a long battery life. I can recommend both.

I've not tried the KDE Slimbook 15, but it is a more expensive rebranded version of another model if I remember correctly.

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

#28

Post by martinald »

Casteil wrote: post #12
terafo wrote: post #7

Are M1 Macs with Asahi Linux a viable option for daily-driver or they are not mature enough?

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/

I've rarely seen a Linux laptop with solid display out, GPU acceleration and sleep/wake ever though...

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

#30

Post by pflanze »

bebna wrote: post #10

Battery Life Lipo: - Run it in by fully charge it 2-3 times, (deplete it with normal use) - Normal use keep it between 20-80%, write yourself a script or something to stop charging manually/automatically - Deplete/fully charge it quarterly or twice a year to give the bms a change to balance the cells.

> - Deplete/fully charge it quarterly or twice a year to give the bms a change to balance the cells.

AFAIK it's not the balancing that needs to happen periodically, but the measurement of the voltage curve so that estimates are shown correctly. Balancing should happen all the time (and is, AFAIK, usually done by a low-level circuit, not a microprocessor) regardless of how far you charge or discharge. But if you know more, feel free to correct me.

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