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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?

#441

Post by lazyier »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #286
selfmodruntime wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install Linux on a mac (which is what I did) and still get a powerful and beautiful machine, if you so desire.

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 reliability and high cost of repair.

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

#442

Post by jcranberry »

kibwen wrote: post #284
oauea wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how cult-like mac users are.

Apple is a luxury fashion company and Apple hardware is a way for people to express social status, which means convincing as many other people as possible that Apple is desirable in order to elevate the effectiveness of their social status signaling. It's the same as any other luxury fashion brand, e.g. Louis Vuitton. The value is not in the function of the product itself, but in the perception of status that it enge…

Apple the company constantly annoys the hell out of me on principle but the new M1 macbooks are pretty good.

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

#443

Post by sorry_outta_gas »

I've had good luck with the asus g14, I don't run linux on it anymore since I'm stuck in UE but there's a good ROG discord with a big linux community focused on the machine.. running fedora worked mostly fine out of the box w/ gpu switching

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

#444

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

What specific kinds of development are you doing? Enterprise CRUD software? SaaS? Data science? ML?

Just in review, I got a system 76 with pop os as the daily driver. I do a lot of ML and also game on it in my free time, so having a desktop 2080ti in a laptop chassis was nice.

However, a major complaint I have is battery life. It's not just the ridiculous GPU, it's also that linux is apparently shit when it comes to power management. If you want to mobile compute and apparently you do, you might consider a thorough investigation into battery life as a part of your requirements.

Mine is great as a mobile workstation machine, but the battery life prevents me from enjoying cafe style programming.

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

#445

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

octagons wrote: post #313
jwalton wrote: post #223

Lenovo has some pretty good sales on thinkpad X1s (at least they do in Canada - didn't check the US site). But, if you're in Canada, I just bought this: https://www.newegg.ca/p/N82E16834233446?Description=gigabyte... It's got a gorgeous 4K OLED screen, a quite decent CPU and GPU, and it's currently $350 off + a $300 mail in rebate (there was an additional $350 off over the easter weekend, too). The track pad is not m…

Absolutely love the X1 series. I use it as a daily driver running Linux and can vouch for some of the points made in this thread about them.

How is the battery life?

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

#446

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

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…

How is the battery life?

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

#447

Post by sergiosgc »

bdlowery wrote: post #426

“Battery life is important to me” You’ll only find that with a MacBook. All other laptops have terrible battery life. But since you don’t want a MacBook… looks like your shit out of luck.

Sorry, but no. That is entirely false. I get 10h out of a Lenovo X1C, and Lenovo is not special. Good battery life is not yet a given in every laptop, but easy enough to find with a bit of care when choosing the laptop.

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

#448

Post by bsnnkv »

emptysongglass wrote: post #268
adam_arthur wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controversial opinion: Windows is better for development now that WSL exists. Not a fan of using MacOS' proprietary flavor of it. And windows computers will have 5nm processors soon enough with comparable performance to m1. Yes, the process/fab matters in perf, not just the design

That is how I treat my new Framework with Windows: like a shitty DE to Linux. I run Arch (really Nix possessing the body of Arch since almost every package I use daily is a Nixpkg) on my personal laptop. I am enjoying seeing the other side of tooling. My Nix flake works without fuss inside WSL to instantiate my developer environment same as my Linux machine. VS Code Remote makes working inside WSL basically native (I…

If you could open some GitHub issues (or even just drop me a bullet point list here) of the issues you're facing with komorebi it would be appreciated!

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

#449

Post by kellogs_aran »

banal00 wrote: post #383
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…

These posts are annoying, IMO. Reviews and blogs posts about them are everywhere by like minded readers, and this is the discourse such posts bubble up every time here. Guys. I mean. Seriously. It’s a laptop. It’s not worth a request for comments every week.

Hi. OP here.

I did do some reading before posting. Here are some of the threads I had read before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302412

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861949

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216287

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28023345

None of the threads seemed to have a consensus e.g. some swear by the Dell XPS 13, others say the laptop has been a crap experience more or less. Others still prefer Lenovo Thinkpad variants, and even these have those who've had negative experiences. I was hoping for a winner of some sort or at least a list of recommended laptops that I can bookmark and spend time reading reviews of. Hope that makes sense and sorry for the inconvenience caused.

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

#450

Post by kibwen »

brimble wrote: post #328
kibwen wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a luxury fashion company and Apple hardware is a way for people to express social status, which means convincing as many other people as possible that Apple is desirable in order to elevate the effectiveness of their social status signaling. It's the same as any other luxury fashion brand, e.g. Louis Vuitton. The value is not in the function of the product itself, but in the perception of status that it enge…

I felt the way you do for the entire decade of the '00s. Then I started a job that issued me a MacBook Pro. And got to see, use, and develop for, a shitload of Android and iOS devices, both phones and tablets. Turns out I'd just never given them a chance. But yes, I'm sure Apple users are just dumber than you, and that's all it is.

> But yes, I'm sure Apple users are just dumber than you, and that's all it is.

I too fell for the Apple marketing cult. I was excited when I got my first MacBook. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. The keyboard felt terrible and broke frequently, the insistence of dongles to make up for the anemic port selection was a constant annoyance, the touchbar was a myopic UX catastrophe, the touchpad was worse than on PC laptops that I've used, the software was outdated, configurability and lack of control was appalling, and it was abundant with boneheaded design decisions that favored form over function. At least the screen was nice. Today it sits gathering dust in the corner.

But yes, I'm sure non-Apple users are just too dumb to appreciate Jobbesian bliss, and that's all it is.

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