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Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
355 points by kellogs_aran on April 20, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 790 comments
Hi HN!

I am looking to buy a laptop for software development in the 0 to $2000 (USD) range.

What I am looking for: 1. Durability: battery life is important to me as well as general longevity of the hardware i.e. I would like it to last a long time.

2. Linux support: I use Linux as my OS of choice and I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS

3. Optimized for intensive computing usage.

Other things of note:

I looked into the Framework laptops and so far it looks like they are still a bit beta.

However, I am curious about users' experiences with:

* the KDE Slimbook 15: https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-slimbook-15-comprar

* the Purism Librem 14: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

* Kubuntu Focus: https://kfocus.org/order/order-m2.html

* the StarBook 14-inch – Star Labs®: https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook

Also tips about maintaining battery life would be appreciated. I've read too much conflicting advice about that lately :) Thanks.




** "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 mean. Seriously.


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 requirements are still ignored.


IMO it goes beyond Ask HN. If you make a post and you know people are going to make a particular reply, it doesn't matter if you preemptively address that reply right in your post; you're going to get that reply anyway. People skim, they don't read, and they don't think deeply about posts. They're just pattern matching on a couple words and slamming out a reply. The reply is practically locked and loaded before you even made the post.


Agree. Also I feel like most ask hn are just questions and that’s it. No need to sift through the asker’s specifications on how they’d like everyone to answer. So I feel like when an asker expects that, it’s not likely to be respected by all. It’s just a quirk of hn.


A better Ask HN title would've been "of these 4 Linux-based laptops, what are your experiences"


The current title gets way more eyeballs and engagement. I say that only one-quarter jokingly.


sadly ... you're probably right :|


People are in such a hurry to talk, they don’t listen.


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


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


I don't agree - I think if the original poster adhered to something like "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way: Use meaningful, specific subject headers" [0] then we would not even be having this conversation because the original poster would have found their target audience of Linux Laptop Recommenders rather than a bunch of people that arrived to comment their favorite laptop and found that they were cut off by the original poster with no real explanation for WHY Windows/MacOS are not acceptable.

It would be similar to "Ask HN: Which text editor should I use for software development" with a body that contains "I have no intention of using an IDE or mouse". It's a poorly formed request if your intent is to ask for recommendations amongst the keyboard driven tiled editors.

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#bespecifi...


Like all the "just use Org-Mode" comments. God, if I see one more Org Mode recomendation I might just burst!


Didja know you can use org-mode to handle this as a todo? For example:

** TODO: Install NixOs and learn how to use declarative configuration. ** TODO: Burst from hearing about the power of org-mode.

Then you can use C-c C-t to rotate the TODO's as you carry them out!

(All comments tongue in cheek from a vim amateur user)


I suspect its because a shamefully large percentage of Ask HN and Show HN are stupid or lazy

"Guys how do I learn math?"

"Are there any apps that let you type in numbers and add them together?"

"Is there any way I can ask questions to strangers on the web so I dont have to type the equivalent into the Google search bar or look it up on Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, library etc etc etc etc?"

granted my most generous interpretation of this phenomenon is that many of these cases are "kids at keyboard" phenomenon. but its frustrating at times seeing it repeat endlessly here.


Because there is no answer to this question.

Failure rates are pretty much the same given normalized manufacturing and part sourcing.

And the fit and finish debate have been semantically mined to death.

User knows constraints, just pick one!

This is not the sort of choice that needs a support group.


Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior?

They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth".

I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.


> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior?

The same reason console wars exist. If there are multiple choices, and it's not practical to take/use/buy all the options, people feel the need to justify the choice that they did make. When someone's starting from a defensive position, unemotional rationality is uncommon.

AKA, it's human nature.


it's really not the same as console wars. You touch and interact with a laptop far more often than a video game console. That alone makes the comparison invalid.

While i am no apple fanatic, i will readily admit that much of their hardware is designed extremely well from an ergonomic standpoint. Barring obvious failures like their push to make things needlessly thin, a lot of their hardware is durable and holds its value well. Personally, i have a macbook from 2014 that i still use daily for basic tasks and its keyboard is very well built.

While some user behaviour is fanatical, one cannot deny that apply invest a lot into usability of their hardware and software and it shows. Can't say the same for a lot of windows laptops.


I think you're making a different point.

The post wasn't about how you engage with the device. It was simply another similar scenario where the same behaviour emerges.

It's an emotional decision dressed in layers of thought and reason.


>You touch and interact with a laptop far more often than a video game console.

While is this true, the number of console wars spawned from comparing physical controller feel might bring the parallel back on track.


> AKA, it's human nature.

It's also a form of entertainment.

> unemotional rationality is uncommon

Tangentially, I'm not certain it even exists outside of sociopaths. A certain amount of emotion or beliefs underlies most rational arguments.

The problem is when emotional rationality devolves to either shallowness (i.e. fleeting trends) or fanaticism ("there is only one true option forever").

But shallowness and fanaticism are always present because they are both easier routes to self appeasement in a world that usually pushes people towards lower self concept.


Except Mac, macOS and its third party apps are actually better.

Windows is always lagging with its legacy burden, Linux on desktop doesn't have commercial interest to begin with.

Consoles are pretty much the same unless they have exclusive games.

It's not really emotional matters. Used Windows 10+ years and not missing it.


As a developer/gamer I use all these systems and with every year I'm less and less motivated to use macOS. Linux is clear winner for everything I need server related and Windows is fine for everything client related. macOS is in this weird spot where it lacks most of the server side stuff (lack of hosting, poor virtualization support etc.), but it also lacks some of the client side things (poor gaming, no hardware customization etc.).


Yeah I am kind of in this boat as well - Windows is held back by some legacy stuff but has also gotten better and better. It also has a bunch more spyware crap (but if you know what to do thankfully you can disable most of that). It used to be back in the day you had to choose between a smooth OSX experience or a bloated adware filled windows XP.

Linux has also gotten dramatically easier as well of course and is free. I still like MacOS generally but I always thought it was a mistake to completely ignore server-adjacent stuff that powerusers would want. If I buy a Mac and own MacOS why can't I also run a MacOS VM on that same machine? Would be pretty cool to have 3 or 4 running simultaneously with these new processors.


Last I checked, and it's been a couple years, the MacOS license allows you to run up to three MacOS images on your MacOS hardware. We do that on our MacOS build servers we use for building iOS apps since you can't have multiple versions of Xcode installed simultaneously.


> Except Mac, macOS and its third party apps are actually better.

Definitely not.

> Linux on desktop doesn't have commercial interest to begin with

Red Hat is literally IBM now...


In one word: Tribalism.


Ugh, tribalism sucks. I can’t believe those tribalists are so tribal, us non-tribalists are much better. /s


Consider the possibility that people can like Macs for reasons entirely unrelated to Apple's marketing tactics. Reasons can include things most people would agree are legitimate qualities to look for in computers, like build quality, display quality, keyboard quality, performance, battery life, etc. Those seem to me as more legitimate and less "fanatical" reasons to prefer computers from a particular manufacturer than the reason you provided, which is that you dislike some (certainly not all, and likely a vanishingly small portion) people who also buy computers from that same manufacturer.


Here's a vote for a twenty year, seven Mac user who buys for those reasons, not the marketing or wanting to fit in. In fact, circa 2005, I got the side-eye for wanting to get on a cafe's wifi or, god forbid, print something at FedEx Kinko's from my Mac.

For me — FOR ME — it's a great platform that lets me focus on all sorts of things that I want to accomplish with computers.


You hit the nail on the head. I love the physical build, performance, and overall quality. I also feel very comfortable in MacOS, I don’t like how Windows renders fonts, and I could just never get into Ubuntu.

In my case, I went from a 2015 to a 2019 MacBook Pro. I recognize there were significant keyboard issues in between those years, but my 2019 machine works very well. The only thing is it gets very hot when I’m compiling code. But for the most part I don’t use it on my lap, and this specific issue doesn’t bother me ad much as having a cheaper keyboard, lower quality display, etc.


These days I see way more people spouting the "omg mac users are fanatics!!!!" line than I see actual mac "fanatics". It got very stale years ago, honestly.

It's natural human behavior to talk about things we like in relevant contexts, but I really don't see much of it happening anywhere near the top of this comments section. Just ignore it and move on.


Have you not noticed the rabid Linux fan base on HN?

It seems like every discussion about Macs or macOS has at least 2-3 comments about how someone had used macOS for years, then got sick of apples (intel) hardware or lack of software customizability and switched to a Linux machine running Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/Manjaro and they are never looking back (except for commenting on every Mac related post on HN).

The only reason we don’t see many Windows fanatics on here is because the user base is more dev focused here and most people prefer *NIX based machines. If this was a gaming focused forum, you would see a lot more Windows fanaticism.


> If this was a gaming focused forum, you would see a lot more Windows fanaticism.

Eh. Gaming forums are full of complaints about windows and what a pain in the ass it is. Old games break, new games break, drivers break, malware concerns, bloated device drivers (glaring at you, Razer) and gamers don't like all the bloatware and analytics crap.

The reason you don't see Windows fanatics on here is because so many people hate dealing with it.

People seem genuinely excited that Steam is pushing more games to Linux.


I feel so noticed !


> result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades

Or perhaps people really like macOS and their value system is different. I don't think a lot of developers are buying macs due to marketing.

Also, Linux attracts the same fanatic behavior. If you like linux, you don't notice see how many people are pushing it. If you like macOS, you're more likely to notice the people pushing linux because you disagree with them. (And notice the macOS crowd less.)


>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 overspending on other parts purely to drive benchmark numbers, without affecting overall user experience in meaningful ways. Windows laptops get about half the battery life of Macbooks at comparable prices, and Linux is even worse than that. Every Windows laptop I've ever had experienced some problems with drivers after Windows updates (usually Wifi, Bluetooth, webcam or audio) - Linux is even worse. Issues with sleeping, hibernating, or waking up for no discernible reason. Intel Turbo/SpeedStep screwing up thermals and battery life. And more

As much as I dislike Apple, when it comes to laptops, the competition is woefully behind


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.


> I've never seen a developer with a macbook in my country.

In the U.S., at least, whenever I see photos from development conferences (which, admittedly, has been a few years) at least half of all open laptops would be Apples.


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 of our devs go with the Macbook when those are the choices.


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.


I was so against Macs when I was younger. I'd only used Windows and FreeBSD for most of my teen years. So when I was 19, and went to Singapore to work... they used iMacs. I'm all like "ew" but my boss told me once I got used to it, I probably wouldn't wanna go back. He was right. I even bought the iMac home to NZ with me as my carry on luggage (those white iMacs) heh.

Though, for the very first time in a long time I had a job with a windows laptop early last year for about 6 months. Holy shit it was a nightmare - if it'd just been Windows, I'd have been fine, but every day there was some new bullshit IT had implemented. I spent so much time fighting that thing, or just being completely lost. The network even had its own MITM thing going on which really messed with vscode (thank god for win-ca extension) - I think they were scanning in real-time to make sure you weren't doing security breaches.

Regardless, it was so over the top it's not funny. This place had less than 20 people, but these insane IT overheads.

With my current job I have been given a top of the line XPS and I gotta say, that screen looks so much better than my 2020 MBP. It's really nice. A few of my colleagues have put Linux on it, but then they can't connect to work VPN, etc. I only use the laptop for connecting to our databases and I just code on my macbook. This is a far bigger company, and they have a great IT team with none of that silliness from the smaller company.


To clarify, no one is picking a Macbook because it integrates with the existing IT infra, we are simply not allowed to use anything that doesn't integrate with the various corporate malware. And since they couldn't get Linux to play nice with those requirements, it's not even offered as an option.

Our devs are picking Macbooks because it's the lesser pain in the butt, many would go with Linux if allowed.


Things like Office 365 are also still pretty much a hard requirement at lots of offices. More enterprisey projects can definitely require working with all kinds of moderately complex technical or non-technical documents in Word or Excel.

It may be possible to get it running on Wine or CrossOver Office, of course, but most generic Windows-centric corporations probably aren't going to buy Crossover, and "I can't send you a commented version of this document by today because I'm having a random compatibility issue with this non-commercial software combination that other Normal People don't need" isn't going to make you popular.


O365 works cross platform in the browser well enough for most windows-centric corps. I've got by happily for years with Vivaldi and Libreoffice, without Windows installed.


All things being equal, yes it is absurd. In many countries were Macs aren't affordable, the amount of absurdity greatly increases.

In places where they are largely affordable for a developer, absurdity becomes relative to what you value in a development system.


Server side dev here, I use mac. I picked up using mac when I was working in a company making hf forex systems where everyone used a mac.

Why? Because Linux desktop is garbage (I daily one now too) and gets in the way. Mac you can do anything you need to do in Linux, open terminal nooo problems buddy. brew install whatever you want then switch to a nice interface with a good touchpad that you don't have to half compile yourself.

So after going it alone why did I shell out a stupid amount of money to continue using a mac when my company wasn't providing one? Because now my livelyhood depends on my laptop. I don't want things getting in the way, I don't want things breaking or having to boot into a virtual machine to get something done.

When there's $s involved it's a different caluclation. Total income = hours worked - purchase cost of laptop - hours fluffing around with my dev environment

Therefore, if my linux laptop was to die (like one of my dev's linux laptops did on Monday night) and then I was to miss a day of work, I could afford the difference between a linux craptop and a mac in lost productivity.

As for poor countries not using the best tools, I would say this is systemic. People in Colombia don't appreciate it, you see very few of the locals here using macbooks. But their time is also billed a lot lower.

A Swiss guy one told me that "the right tool is half the job", as much as the Colombians idolise the Germans and Swiss, they've still got a lot to learn.


> Therefore, if my linux laptop was to die (like one of my dev's linux laptops did on Monday night) and then I was to miss a day of work, I could afford the difference between a linux craptop and a mac in lost productivity.

As a Linux laptop user with an overbearing asshat of a boss, I fucking love this misconception. Getting my working environment set back up after a fresh install is a git clone and 2 minute Ansible run (the majority of the time is spent on packages downloading).

Fortunately, however, if I want to ditch my boss for the day, I can blame Linux. Don't wanna be on video for that call? Sorry, Linux. Don't wanna attend the call at all? Sorry, Linux must have $(bofh excuse).

I'd have absolutely zero motivation to do this if it weren't for my boss blaming everything on Linux out of the gate, but hey, if that's what he wants to do, I'm gonna lean the fuck into it.


Some people have very basic setups and use everything out of the box and that's fine. I could have an editor with git checked out and publish code in probably 20 minutes.

But there's so much extra stuff to have everything functioning like keymap, licensing, vpn, restoring file backups, password manager, slack, web browser with security / personalisation settings, aliases, zshrc, ssh keys, every other program that I need to function as a dev (zoom etc). At a speedrun my local machine would take more than 2 hours to setup. That would be after I sourced a replacement, installed whatever os.

As for my dev missing the day, that wouldn't be a happening thing. If he wants to take time off he's entitled to but turning up for work means turning up ready to go. I handed him my spare linux laptop and told him to fix his one in his own time. No B players on my team.


> I've never seen a developer with a macbook in my country. The idea sounds absurd.

What country is that?


Anyone targeting iOS absolutely has to use macs. And a lot of agencies have some developers who target iOS and just standardise on everyone running macs to simplify their IT.


The dumbest comment in a thread. MacBooks are default developer laptops over the world, even at Google.


I'd say that's just wrong. Linux is great and certainly my favorite OS to do real work, but few would consider the IS above reproach. There's always something that could be better. The dogma in Linux is usually around how free something is, not the smug sense of "our thing is the best and dismiss the rest", which seems rife with apple fans as a category.


Apple has always perpetuated a Cult of Mac since the Apple II days. I believe this is tactical from a marketing standpoint.

Here is a detailed blog on it: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/cult-of-mac/


> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior?

That is a good question. But ...

> They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth".

As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.


> people that are vehemently anti-Apple

This is just it though! You're not describing "Apple fanatics versus Windows fanatics," you're describing "Apple fanatics versus people with an irrational and excessive hatred of Apple fanaticism." Why does this culture exist specifically around Apple?


> Why does this culture exist specifically around Apple?

It doesn't. It also exists around Linux, in general and around each distro. It exists around Windows. It exists around FreeBSD (but you may not have heard from them recently)... It basically exists everywhere.

If you look at a thread about ARM, you will see it there, and the corresponding x86 one too. (And if you are lucky, you will catch some actual x86, not amd64, fans and anti-fans too). Haskell, Rust, Javascript, and PHP threads have those groups too.


It exists to some extent around Linux, because "Linux user" is an identity that some people care about, but I dispute that there are "Windows fans" and "Windows anti-fans" the way that there are Apple fans and anti-fans. Using Windows just isn't core to anyone's identity.

The interesting difference between the identities of "Linux user" and "Apple customer" is that one came from grassroots hacker subculture and the other is the product of corporate marketing.


can't speak for others. but personally I'm forced to use macbooks at my last 2 companies. Tried to make the case for getting a dell XPS with linux installed but they refused to support it. Other than that I have senior family members that have trouble figuring out how to use an iphone, between the lack of SD card slot forcing them to navigate how to pay and use iCloud, and figuring out all the dongles with the lack of headphone jack now. They would keep harassing me to help them with their issues.


It's hard to see experience on the internet. I agree, it's definitely a two way street with regard to fanaticism. The people that "shout" the loudest often drown out the more reasonable responses.

Myself, I have been back and forth between PC (windows) and Apple several times. My priorities have changed over the years and I find PC's fit my requirements to a better extent since 2014. If Apple can bring back a notebook like HP ZBook or Dell Precision I would consider moving. Until then, I will live with the tradeoff's...


I agree with you, even if I came to a different conclusion on which ecosystem fits my needs better at this moment. I respect that everyone has their own needs, and they will make the best choice for themself. I hate the shouting on the 'net.

I usually stay the heck out of the debate because it devolves to namecalling so quickly, but something about HN makes me want to participate -- the promise of a civil discussion.


> As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question.

Oh, oh! I know this one.

Apple's devices are extremely closed. This is antithetical to the spirit of personal computing. But this is only one component: what ultimately pushes Apple to generate an anti-Apple crowd is the combination of them being a closed platform, them using every dirty trick in the book to suck users into their closed ecosystem, and them being extremely successful at it.

Want to make an iOS app? Buy a Mac. No, not an old Mac, a new one.

Want to send proper messages to an iPhone user? Get an iPhone. Or convince them to install Signal. (I'll wait! LOL.)

Want to make a video call to an iPhone user? Get an iPhone. (Or ask them to install Duo, haha!)

Want to install Mac OS? Buy our hardware.

None of this would matter so much if we were talking about coffee makers. But we're talking about personal computing, a very central component of our nerd lives. If you're a youngster you're probably happy with occasional hardware replacement and messes of dongles, but for many of us our computing experiences are rooted in opening up the box and switching the guts around, or booting different software on the box, and we don't especially appreciate having to constantly battle the hardware vendor to make this happen.

Apple products seem to be very high-quality. But that's not really the point.


> If you're a youngster you're probably happy with occasional hardware replacement and messes of dongles, but for many of us our computing experiences are rooted in opening up the box and switching the guts around, or booting different software on the box, and we don't especially appreciate having to constantly battle the hardware vendor to make this happen.

I'm pushing 50 and 35 years ago I was building PCs (and selling them, too!). I love building PCs. Still do, it's fun. Tinkering is very enjoyable. I technically have more Linux machines than Macs (though admittedly that requires counting Rasberry Pis).

But. For my 'daily driver' computing, I'm pretty happy in the Apple ecosystem. They sell me 'just works' with a polished interface and I can focus my tinkering on the stuff I want to tinker with. And by infecting my extended family with this opinion, I've lowered my technical support load quite a lot.

It's the same reason that years ago I stopped modding my daily driver car, and moved that passion into a hobby instead.


I think every dev should rock a Linux setup at least once in their life but for me I prefer to make stuff than be a gardener


That's fair. Some of us just hold grudges I guess :)


I'm developing a Godot game and it's really ridiculous I need a Mac to compile it for the MacOS and iOS.

I can compile for EVERY PLATFORM from my Arch Linux, just not for Apple stuff.

It's ridículous... This kind of behavior reminds me of Ballmer's Microshit.


So just don't offer a version for Mac, and if anyone asks why, tell them you're not going to buy a 400 dollar Macbook just to use as a compiler.


Why do Apple products require special treatment when everything else works?


You forgot a 0 ;)


I think there are actually two questions here:

1. Why do some people seem to be so fanatical about their love for Macs?

2. Why do some people seem to be so vocally fanatical online about their love for Macs?

As far as #1 goes, I think it's just about finding something that you have to use every day that you are much happier with. I have found small pieces of software that have made me jump for joy simply because they resolved a small problem; it's not hard to understand why someone would become so fanatical about switching to a a completely new piece of hardware and OS that they feel works so much better than what they were previously using.

I used to have long and aggressive arguments with my college roommate about why Windows was superior to OS X and said that I would never even consider owning an Apple product. I've been using a Mac now for work and personal use for a little over a decade and I dread every time I need to use my Windows machine for certain work tasks.

I think this is perfectly understandable and I don't think there's anything wrong with people going through the process of finding something that changes the way they do something major in their lives.

#2, however, tends to be more unpleasant when it becomes vitriolic/persistent. I think this is just a symptom of the happiness that exists from feeling like you've found the greener grass (and wanting to share that with others) mixed with an inability to understand the negative aspects of aggressively stating to complete strangers that the preferences of others are objectively wrong. I think this is inevitable considering the Mac is still considered the "alternate" option for some reason, and it's paired (inevitably) with those that feel that the fanaticism for the alternate option is unwarranted.

I think the tech sector has always attracted both skeptics and idealists/innovators, and that's bound to create an environment where you'll have groups that feel like it's their duty to inform others of what they feel is the better way and groups of people that feel like it's their duty to temper unwarranted fanaticism.


>I've been using a Mac now for work and personal use for a little over a decade and I dread every time I need to use my Windows machine for certain work tasks.

For me it's the opposite. Maybe I'm missing something obvious or I've had back luck with peripherals, but when trying to do something as simple as disabling mouse acceleration involves nonsense like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/it420s/how_to_quickl... it's just baffling to me. I am noticeably less productive on Mac computers because of weird quirks like the mouse acceleration.

In that thread, you'll see people for whom that fix does work, and doesn't work, and other fixes that for some people do work, and don't work, and people that have no idea what's going on.

Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but when I switch from working on the Android version of my apps on Windows, to working on the iOS version of my apps on Mac, I feel like I'm using an aesthetically pleasing toy that just wasn't meant for productivity.


It's part guilt. Doubting your expensive purchase, thus reinforcing it with this behavior. Apt comparison with religion, especially with recent converts.

That's not to say all Apple products are bad.


> Doubting your expensive purchase

Except, there is not a single Windows/Intel based laptop that can offer the same performance as say, for example, an M1 Macbook air ($750).

There really is no comparison and there is nothing that comes close on the Windows side at that price point. If there is, please link me because I would love to know.

M1 has made Macbooks not only superior in performance, but also more economically viable than Windows.


To provide a counter argument, the base spec M1 MacBook Air is 1130 Euros on Apple EU website, not $750, and that's with a pitiful 8Gigs of RAM and 256Gig SSD which, IMHO that SSD space is what phones come equipped with these days, and too low for a dev machine/daily driver computer, without needing to ductape a slower external USB SSD to your laptop, and 8Gigs of RAM is too low for the year 2022 + futureproofing a couple of years into the future (I had that amount of RAM on a PC from 2009).

Instead, I got a Ryzen 5800U based 13" machine for 780 Euros which came with a much more spacious 1TB NVME and 16Gigs of RAM for that added piece of mind when spinning up some VMs. That's much better value for me for a workhorse, plus it runs any linux flavor natively. The equivalently specked M1 Air would be 1820 Euros.

And best of all, the screen hinge rotates full 180 degrees, which for me was a must vs the screen on the Macbook and most other laptops that for some reason stick to 110 degrees and limits the positions I can use it from.

Sure, the Ryzen 5800U won't reach the same Geekbench scores as the M1, but the performance still puts it in the top percentile of CPUs on the market right now including the M1, and plus, CPU cycles are infinite while RAM and storage are finite.

As an added bonus I can also play nearly any game on Steam on it despite the device being barely thicker than the Type-C port.

Different strokes for different folks.


You need to refresh your knowledge because macbooks have fastest ssd on the market so the ram and ssd memory is shared. You can run apps that require 64gb of ram with same performance as with native 64gb ram


>You can run apps that require 64gb of ram with same performance as with native 64gb ram

You should inform yourself about how RAM and SSDs work and read actual benchmark instead of parroting some wild claims that even Apple's marketing does not mention since having NAND storage at DRAM speed is just absurd.

Plus, using your SSD as RAM not only takes a performance hit but induces premature NAND wear turning your unrepairable M1 MacBook into e-waste sooner.


M1 Macbook air comes with 8gb soldered memory. In the UK that's 899gbp.

If you want 16gb memory you're paying at least 1700gbp.

If you want 32gb, it's 2999gbp.

Most Windows laptops have upgradable memory and you can buy yourself 32gb ram for ~100gbp.


>M1 Macbook air comes with 8gb soldered memory. In the UK that's 899gbp. If you want 16gb memory you're paying at least 1700gbp

A Macbook Air with 16GB memory and 256GB SSD is £1,199 including 20% VAT in the UK.


You might be right. The only shop I looked at was John Lewis.


Fair point. You would need to spend quite a bit more on a comparable PC if buying new. However, the breath of applications and interchangeability of the PC may render the price point moot.

For example, I just changed the notebook graphics card on a refurbished HP ZBook... I paid $275 for a Gen 3 and upgraded the Graphics card for another $350. It was a lot easier than I thought and this computer is a beast.


Looks ugly, heavy weight, low quality display and resolution, noisy fans, low battery and high electricity usage.


Nah. I get to choose a dev machine for work and I still choose a mac. It’s free to me so no doubts there!


> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior?

Ever think it’s simply because they are amazing machines instead of being some conspiracy or mass brainwashing?


Amazing machines? I haven't tried extensively the M1, so my experience is still limited to the Intel Macs.

They are OK. Not jaw droppingly good, just okay-ish. I work as a mobile app dev and unfortunately you can't avoid Mac for iOS dev :p


The new M1 Mac’s really are impressive. I suspect I might be similarly impressed by the latest AMD chips with 8 cores, but quite a lot of my everyday workloads are seeing 5x-10x performance increases over my previous 2015 MacBook.


Even the cheapest M1s?


I have the M1 Pro with (8 + 2) cores. But seeing as the cores are identical I suspect with the base models with (4 + 4) cores you'd see very similar performance except you'd be looking at 5x rather than 10x on multicore workloads.


Have the cheapest M1. It flies and the battery life is stellar. The only downside I would say is it's only 8GB of RAM. If you're doing anything with electron development, it's a no-go. You'll need a minimum of 16GB.

It's an incredible machine though. The perf and battery life remind me of the upgrade I got when switching from a HDD to a SSD for the first time. It changes how I use the device.


Long time laptop user. 2012 macbooks were solid. Just worked, never thought about them much.

The 2017-18 macbook pros (touchbar) were complete rubbish. Everything was rubbish. Keyboards. Heat. Battery. Processors.

The M1s are gods gift to developers. By far the best laptop I've used, and I don't see how anyone else can catch up


Mac hardware just works.

PCs are usually cheaper and can pull better benchmark numbers, but most Windows laptops have weird little issues and quirks that add up. I find myself a lot more productive on a Mac than a Windows laptop, which more than makes up for any price difference. I can add hacks to make Windows work, but even those aren't as intuitive as Mac productivity software.


Nope, they may just work for you tm, but not for all. As mentioned before, my work enforced 2019 macbook crashes minimum 3 times a week and my run of the mill windows PC hasn't "crashed" at all, like in the 3 years I've owned it, zero OS crashes. So I'm happy that you're content with your choice, but know yours is a decision paid with subjectivity wrapped very tightly. I'd love to see actual enterprises with large fleets of various real world used computers post metrics on failure rates, etc. I'd love to see it.


I guess it is, because of the lock-in factor of all things Apple. People like some part of the products, but other parts suck, like having to carry around silly adapters for stuff. Maybe it is some subconscious kind of thing: "If everyone was using what I am using, I would have no issues with having to bring adapters."

A bit like a snowball scheme, where you try to get more and more people to buy in and commit to it. Then they will be your cool Apple friends and you can exchange with them without problems.

Ultimately the lock-in of that whole ecosystem pushes people away from it though. Most knowledgeable people, who can avoid it will avoid it, because they do not want non-standard hardware, missing ports, 400€ monitor stands and stuff like that.


Eh, I think the adaptor thing is overblown.

I use one at my desk because I want Ethernet and I use an external monitor, but when I take my laptop on the go I never bring dongles because I truthfully don't need them.


They definitely market the "brand" leading to quasi-religious fervour.

Of course, there's religious devotees to all 3. I throw my lot in with the Linux crowd because of freedom: freedom to use the software and not give a fuck about anyone's philosophy or religiousity. And the knowledge that it'll always be open source, I'll always "own" my software, etc...


"I throw my lot in with the Linux crowd because of freedom: freedom to use the software and not give a fuck about anyone's philosophy or religiousity. "

I am not sure if you really are expected to give a fck about those things when using any of the major OSes. MacOS does not require you to swear allegiance to the cause of gender equality, even if the company behind it does indeed favour it.

Now if you want to participate in developing free software, for good or bad, those things are no longer immaterial, and if you have unpopular ideas about religion or philosophy you will sooner or later be ostracised and some hip code of conduct thingy will be the last thing you will see there.


> MacOS does not require you to swear allegiance

No but the company follows a certain direction and you need to buy-in to their idea of the future if you want the seamless experience they promise. For the full Apple "experience" you need multiple Apple devices, an Apple ID, etc...

Windows is slightly more open but similar; you need to buy-in to their ecosystem.

With Linux I can use Gnome, KDE or other... A bunch of distros. A bunch of browsers (without ads, annoyance, etc...). Anything that's an open standard basically works. There is maybe slight buy-in needed to work with my Chromecast (need Chrome on it) but that's an okay compromise.

> Now if you want to participate in developing free software, for good or bad, those things are no longer immaterial, and if you have unpopular ideas about religion or philosophy you will sooner or later be ostracised and some hip code of conduct thingy will be the last thing you will see there.

You can develop free software and ignore those things. Just work on your own thing. But you seem to mean "participate in existing project with existing organization" which is different than your first fragment.


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 not even get into a discussion about the shit show that windows and the dev story on it has become in the last few years.

Please don't suggest WSL either. I have no energy for that and its associated problems.

Really it comes down to the least stinky turd. I wish one of the big vendors (MS / Apple / Linux Vendor X) would really try and concentrate on making the best user-centric experience because at the moment they're all failing. Apple is just failing less hard and when time is money, I'm just having to pay through the nose for a little bit of edge.


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.


Macs have a certain set of features which is not even close to being matched by any other laptop, as far as I'm aware. Not everyone values these features, and for them, the Mac is just overpriced.

- solid and beautiful chassis, no plastic-y uninspired 2008-Dell design here.

- large, beautiful, high-DPI screen looks great and has crisp text. You can seamless rescale the UI to get effectively a 17" resolution or 13", depending on how big you want your UI elements to be.

- the trackpad feels fantastic to your fingers! Two-finger scrolling through a document is so natural and ergonomic. Whenever I use the stupid Windows mouse wheel, it's either 3 lines at once, which is not enough, or one page at a time, which is way too much; I've never used a Windows laptop with a trackpad, I hope scrolling on that doesn't work like the mouse wheel.

- macOS is a Unix that works. Sleep works out of the box, every time. Wifi works, and connects instantly when you open the lid. After configuring the settings on first install, I basically never do sysadmin again for the life of that version of the OS. (I re-install from scratch when I upgrade; I know the happy path will work, but as a software developer, I know upgrading has all kinds of edge cases)

- macOS has a very consistent look and feel, and looks elegant. It also has all sorts of little details that go practically unnoticed but add up to a better experience.

For non-technical users:

- there is an Apple store within about 2 hours where you can talk to a live person, try out the machine in person, etc. which makes you feel secure.

- I have had exactly one macOS tech support request in over ten years (some girl did not know how to free up disk space). Contrast with Windows, where the problem is practically un-debuggable, or Linux, where once your problem goes off the rails of the config UI you'd better know how to use the command line.

- Comes with a lot of useful software (Pages, Garage Band, iPhoto, etc.), unlike Windows which comes with nothing (and a few toy apps like Notepad and Paint).

- You don't need to be a tech expert to buy a Mac. Just get the size you want and it works.

Contrast this with Windows, where every program looks completely different (makes Linux look consistent). Windows is user-hostile (forced reboots, resists creating a local account, I cannot edit the Send To menu anymore, etc.) The user-experience of Windows is the equivalent of the Big Ball of Mud design pattern.

Contrast with Linux, where you can do absolutely anything you want, but nothing ever fully works. If you had more time you could fix those little corners, but it's just not worth it. Or you'd have to add features to this app. Or your favorite window manager (Sawfish) gets harder and harder to install. Or you fight with Pulse Audio / Jack / ALSA for this particular sound program.

And if your primary value is spending as little money as possible, Apple will drive you nuts. For what you get, the price is fair, it's just that there's no option for a lower trim model. Don't need Thunderbolt? Too bad, you're getting a fast interconnect whether you want it or not.

The thing is, there is something intangible about high-end stuff that goes from "this does what I want and I don't think about it" to "I enjoy the experience of using this". It's a little like wearing high-end fabrics, or eating at a high-end restaurant. Necessary? Absolutely not. But it's that enjoyment it gives that creates the "fanaticism".


- It's not 2008. Plenty of great looking PCs these days. My Xiaomi Mi Air 12 was IMO a better looking MacBook, clean and free of branding.

- Pretty much every modern Windows trackpad has two finger scrolling that works fine.

- You can also get mice with free scrolling wheels like the Logitech MX Master line that switch between free spinning and ratcheted. Sometimes ratcheted scrolling is better particularly for gaming or if you only want to scroll a small amount.

- Wifi works on my Linux laptops too. Sleep too. Just don't buy crap that doesn't work with Linux.

- Maybe there is an Apple store 2 hours away. Maybe there's one 5 hours away. Or a an hour flight away. Maybe 2 hours is still too far away for you so you're stuck mailing the stupid thing while your friend gets the Dell tech show up at his house.

- Just get the size you want and spend considerably more. Want a 16" laptop? Just spend $1500 more.

- Try explaining to your tech illiterate friend why their 13" M1 MBP only works with 1 monitor while their old 13" Intel MBP worked with two.

- At least you can use your favorite WM on Linux?


Well, if you don't appreciate what Apple is offering, then don't buy one. I was just explaining what people see in it. Judging by the upvotes, I'd say it's fairly representative of why people like them.

> Just don't buy crap that doesn't work with Linux.

See, this is exactly my point. Blame the user... I don't want to have to research what works well. Even if I know it works, it may take quite a while to figure out how to get it to work. It took me two weeks of recompiling kernels to get my T42 to go to sleep, and the trick was "acpi_sleep=s3" as a boot parameter. (Technically, it went to sleep just fine, it just hung in the kernel on wake, which was arguably worse) Judging by other comments sleep is still an issue. That's with one of the major features of a laptop...

(The wifi wasn't a problem per se, it's just that Ubuntu broke the auto-detection at one point. It was working prior, and they've since fixed that, but I've never had that problem on a Mac.)

> why their 13" M1 MBP only works with 1 monitor while their old 13" Intel MBP worked with two

How many people are trying to power two monitors off a 13" MBP? I'm not saying Apple doesn't have issues (I'm using a 2018 MBP that's had the keyboard replaced once, and the letters have dissolved off five keys so far, and I wasn't happy about needing to buy it because I wanted to wait until the keyboard problem was fixed, which it was six months later, but my 2012 MBP stopped displaying pixels thanks to a client project which involved compiling all day, triggering the nVidia heatsink problem), but if you're the kind of person that needs two monitors, cheaping out on the laptop doesn't seem like a great idea. Next you'll be telling me they don't have enough RAM on their 8 GB laptop to run all the programs that would make two monitors useful...

> At least you can use your favorite WM on Linux?

Actually, I cannot. My favorite WM is sawfish, which requires some package that is a major pain to compile (or maybe there are too many for me to spend the effort, and the only extant packages are 32-bit, can't remember). The default Ubuntu thing was awful, GNOME too dumbed down, KDE apps crash all the time for me (but maybe I have some setting in the .files I've been copying around for 20 years?) and KDE's aesthetics historically managed to make Windows look polished. No, I explicitly don't want a tiling WM. So I've settled on XFCE, which has about the visual polish of KDE, but at least it's lightweight. And I spend most of the time on the Mac, where the window manager does what I want. (With the exception of sawfish's raising the app under consideration during Alt-Tab, that's a great feature, don't have to look at those icons, just look for the window I want)


And I was explaining some of what's wrong with your post. It's pretty clear you haven't touched a PC laptop for like 15 years.

Is it crazy to expect a $1000 laptop these days can handle 2 external monitors? Especially when it's predecessor could? If you're just using 2 monitors to look at spreadsheets or a web browser why spend an extra $1000 for more CPU and RAM you might not even need? Even crappy Intel integrated graphics will do it so long as there's the video outputs.


Well said! The comment about Linux I feel is spot on and gave me a chuckle. “ Contrast with Linux, where you can do absolutely anything you want, but nothing ever fully works.”

I’ve ran MacBook for mobile dev and pc for in home for over a decade. Swapped to new m1pro and finally ditched my windows desktop. Still keep a local esxi server with windows dev vm in case. But Best upgrade I’ve had in awhile.


Just because you brought it up, sleep hasn't just worked for me on MacOS. I use to have a problem where it wouldn't connect to an external monitor again after sleep. I currently have a problem where my external keyboard isn't recognized until I unplug it and plug it back in.

Didn't have that problem with another keyboard on the same MacBook, and I haven't had that problem with the same keyboard on a Windows machine.

I have mac, linux, and windows machines at home and in the words of Three Dead Trolls "every OS sucks"


> some girl did not know how to free up disk space

Would you reconsider this wording, so that we can focus on your story rather than a flippant mention of their gender?

“Some girl” is definitely not nice phrasing and only furthers gender stereotypes.


//Would you reconsider this wording, so that we can focus on your story rather than a flippant mention of their gender?

I read the same post and I only focussed on the story and flippant mention on gender never crossed my mind until you brought it up..


Please consider that this may be a personal problem you have. (maybe some self reflection is in order?) I didn't find the statement problematic at all.


What would you suggest to be a suitable rephrasing?


Another part of it is that people have spent so much money buying into the Mac eco system and they find that its not the heavenly like existence they were led to believe it would be.

So they need external validation for their choice, which they get by seeing everyone else switching to the Mac ecosystem as well.


Dude, its been this way since the mid 1990's at least....


"Hello. I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC"


Apple hardware is nice. My last two systems have been Macintosh’s running bootcamp windows 100% of the time. I have a $5K MacBook Pro that’s probably one of the last I9 systems they’re gonna sell.


Fun fact: the windows and Linux communities are both equally bad at this.

It’s not that apple users are fanatics, it’s that some people define their identity by their OS and will make absolutely certain you know.


Some of the pro-Apple commentary that happens in discussions like this is just a response to the constant "you got suckered by Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field" style of comments. Anti-Apple folks like to insinuate (if not proclaim outright) that Apple users are less technical than Linux users, they're stupid, etc.

Meanwhile, some of us just wanted a decently polished desktop GUI that runs a unix command line natively. You could say that Windows now supports this, and Linux desktops have made some progress, but when I switched over to primarily using OSX for my workstation years ago, neither was remotely true. I stick with it because inertia, just like most everyone else.


> I stick with it because inertia, just like most everyone else.

Yep, I bet a lot of people are like that. That's why I use Linux on the desktop: I've been using it for like 6 years and I can't be bothered to try anything else since this is what I know.


At least people who proselytize for Linux or Windows aren't telling you to throw away your laptop so you can buy a new, $1,000+ replacement machine. Oh, you don't like it? That's because you didn't buy a $700 iPhone, and you didn't compliment it with your $300 Homepod. You didn't forget to buy a $400 Apple Watch, did you? That would almost be as ridiculous as forgetting to buy a $50 Magsafe charger! W-wait, you didn't buy that either? Good luck charging your phone, then... your Mac only ships with a USB-C cable.


You do yourself a disservice whenever you imagine that folks that don’t agree with you are idiots.


they're expensive so people innately defend them despite being no better and worse in a lot of ways


Dude, operating system is one of the most fundamental things to consider when getting a dev machine.

MacOS is literally useless for me, because I depend on the Linux kernel.


Yes.

I think the way this conversation played out was "given how I use my device, is there an optimal device to buy?" A lot of the answers are, in turn, "why don't you use your device differently? having ignored your use cases and preferences, this is the device I'd recommend."

It might be a valid opinion to say "I don't use Linux and I enjoy using MacOS on Apple Silicon" but... it doesn't actually help the original poster, does it? So why post that at all?

I guess I could point out to the poster that I use Windows 10, and I built a desktop PC. It doesn't really meet any of their criteria (except #3 computing power), but... it works for me. So maybe they should change and be more like me!


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.


"Ultimately more powerful"

As a previous BSD engineer please explain further, this entire thread is just horrendous and should be downvoted to oblivion.

Nobody cares what laptop you decide to use, nor are you incapable of doing your own research. My grandmother calls me for laptop recommendations.

My M1 Max 14" MBP has 64gb ram, mucho cores and is the fastest machine I've used. My gaming/dev desktop is a 12core ryzen with 64gb and I prefer to use the Macbook which can sit on my lap without even having a fan running.

Did I used to hate Apple? Yes. Do I have a $2500 Dell XPS 13z sitting in a closet that I never use because it throttles so horribly it's useless? Yes.


Well, you might be able to make it work, but the OS simply leaves you less freedom compared to a Linux machine.

And you would need to jump through hoops. I am an embedded dev and I have tried. Theoretically it is possible, but you would miss a lot of tooling on the way.

I don't really care about performance that much. I have an MB Air with M1 and I like it because the battery and display is very good. But it isn't really used for productivity. I also work in industry and everything here is Windows and maybe Linux. MacOS doesn't exist here.

Good luck attaching your Mac to a reflow soldering machine (I have tried too). It just doesn't play well with others and is rather exclusionary itself.


Unique devices is definitely a concern! I wasn't sure when I got my Garmin watch if I'd be able to update it from my mac. Thankfully I can.


I had to connect a work Macbook to Ethernet. It didn't have a port so I bought a no-name brand USB-to-RJ45 adapter off Amazon. Come to find macOS doesn't have driver support for the adapter even though Windows and Linux are both plug and play. And I wasn't willing to do some backdoor process to install drivers on a work laptop. I had to buy a Apple branded adapter, which was 2x the price and only USB 2 vs the other one being USB 3.


I have a random off-amazon 2.5gbps usb ethernet adapter on my M1 and it works great. I did specifically make sure someone said it worked on a mac, but wasn't sure about on ARM.


I too have an M1 MBP and XPS 13. I pretty much always use the XPS. Side by side, there is no noticeable difference in speed for my everyday work. The MBP is more efficient for sure, but I get 8+ hours of battery from the XPS which is good enough - and I can run Linux without jumping through hoops.

Edit: Missed the 'z', sorry, possibly explains different experiences.


I had to jump through a few hoops to get Linux working right on my XPS 15, and it was actually a major reason I switched to a MacBook. The backlight didn't work with the original kernel released with Debian Bullseye. That got fixed with the next release of Bullseye, but I still only got something like, 4 hours of battery life? I'm almost certain it wasn't properly switching between integrated graphics and the Nvidia GPU, but there are only so many hours in the day to set this stuff up.

I really liked my XPS when I got it, but I'm pretty jaded about Linux support for laptops ever being good enough to compete with something like Apple. And at the end of the day I care a lot more about having a high quality Unix based OS than whether or not that OS is libre (sorry to say).


8 hours is amazingly good for an XPS13 in my experience.

My XP13 9370 running Fedora lasts maybe 2 hours at a push. I'm actually considering moving back to a 14" MacBook Pro because of the battery life.

Rumours of an imminent M2 upgrade are about the only thing stopping me now.


Same boat as you, waiting for the second generation, I don't event want to jump to the apple ecosystem but the battery life + performance at that price range makes it a almost a non-brainer for me


I got the 14" Max when they first came out and it's an absolutely fantastic laptop. I love it. The Max battery life is quite a bit worse than the regular M1, if thats your main concern go with the non-Max.


Mine is the ultrabook, the XPS 13z 2n1. It throttles nonstop, I've even gone so far to rip it open and attempted to re-paste everything inside of it. Unfortunately the ultrabook CPU can't be de-lidded and pasted without breaking things, I was actually the first person on /r/dell to rip this laptop open..

The XPS 13 is a much larger device (better cooling). The 13z ruined me ever buying another Dell. I really wanted to love that laptop and NOT buy a $3k macbook. I really want the 2n1 feature.


My wife has one of those things for work. She had to downclock the CPU in order to prevent it from running the fans at full speed for her workflows. After that, it was OK, slow, but at least no longer too loud to have a conversation next to it.


Different strokes for different folks. My Macbook collects dust whenever I'm home because I'd vastly prefer to do my work on a desktop Linux box. I don't have to spend my time updating coreutils, fighting Homebrew, fixing my screen sharing permissions for the 6th time this month, or really much of anything. My desktop and the systems we deploy to have almost complete parity.


> fighting Homebrew

I switched to MacPorts when Homebrew moved on from macOS Mojave... now I wish I had done so much sooner!


MacPorts is pretty unstable (in my experience). Felt like 2011-era Arch Linux all over again...

Honestly, Nix is the only package manager I really like on Mac.


Appreciate the anecdata! Have they straightened out the issue(s) with a read-only root directory, and installation / uninstall?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30917354#30918593

> seems to be an issue of macOS and the root dir being read-only

> Took me a month to finally remove Nix from my macOS

https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/6206#issuecomment-105938...


I believe that's fixed upstream. Afaik, those issues stem from some strange FileVault/APFS inconsistencies, and have patches coming to fix it (in it's current incarnation). I don't dev on Macs unless I have to though, so I really couldn't say for sure.


How does M1 play with an external 4K monitor?

I have a 2020 Mac with the highest fucking configuration (32GB RAM and i7 8-core 10th gen) and the fans on it are always going off.

I figure a laptop with a discrete GPU can handle external screens and graphics much better than integrated, but was wondering what your take on the M1 mac for this would be.


I use a 49" Samsung monitor that does 4k and like you mentioned my Intel work macbook pro is constantly spinning fans/hot. The M1 I honestly haven't noticed it making any noise while plugged into it. It also runs a lot better, less graphic glitches and weirdness. I don't like having to use my work mbp at all anymore.


To the commenter above this, is the M1 able to handle a 4k resolution on well its own ground?


I had an M1 MBA and it ran my 4k monitor fine. I would use it and the laptop screen at the same time. Great machine. I ended up giving it to my wife and getting an M1 MBP because I needed more than 16gb RAM for my workflows.


I think you misunderstood "more powerful". I don't think they were referring to the hardware being more powerful, but the OS in terms of its flexibility.


If I pay for shipping, would you part with the XPS?


I'll sell it for cheap, ie 1kish but it's going to my mom next week otherwise


I'll pay you 5$ and shipping for that XPS.


It's being sent to my mom this week, if you make that $1k I'll do it. It's barely 2 years old and has been awful since I got it. I think I just had higher expectations out of its form factor which can't keep itself cool at all.


I'm always in support of donating laptops to relatives in need. Good on you.


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.


Agreed. I can't stand the feel of the MBP (16" 2019) keyboard. For one thing, it's too far to the right. But I also agree with you on the weird flat keys and soft F keys. At least mine has a real esc key. And this is purely habit & preference, but the control/option/command nonsense is infuriating. Everybody else does this the right way, get with the program Apple.


>Apple keyboards are miserable

> 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.

You have an older version made sometime between 2016-2019. They got rid of the butterfly keyboard for the 2020 models.


The keys on the new ones still have pretty short travel though. Much shorter than the pre-butterfly generation, which wasn’t very deep in the first place.

I can well understand that people who like / want deep key travel would dislike them.


I hate the butterfly keyboard too, but most importantly the worthless touchbar is gone and the physical escape key is back.


Am I the only one who thinks the touchbar isn't that bad? I have a MBP that has the touchbar and a real escape key. I'm a little sad they ditched the touchbar, I wish they had kept it but put it above the row of function keys. There are some things for which it's handy.


I can't stand the touchbar. Aside from having to look down to know what I'm pressing and Monterey introducing bugs causing it to disappear forcing me to restart my computer, when it does work an entire row of keys shouldn't be able to "go to sleep". My media controls disappearing because I haven't touched my computer in 60 seconds or however long it takes is ridiculous. There's no way to disable it without hacking together a script[1]. It's one of the most frustrating designs of any product I've ever used.

1. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/269174/disable-the...

edit - I just timed the sleep functionality. After 60 seconds it dims, and then 15 seconds later it goes to sleep completely....such a horrible implementation


Having the touchbar and the function keys would have been nice (e.g. if they had kept the function keys half-height, possibly with the exception of the escape and touchid keys).

However since apple decided that only "either" was an option, I'm much happier with having the function keys back.


The new macs are (for me) a return to the pre-2015 era but on steroids. My M1 Macbook Air is a blazing fast dev machine for what I do (dockerized full-stack web dev). I do sympathize with all the mac hate during the dreaded 2016-2020 era. I'm glad I held out and skipped that era entirely.


I had a pre-2015 macbook for a while and I can honestly say that I've never had a worse keyboard. It hurt my fingers and it felt like Apple was trying to destroy my hands. A cheap $10 keyboard felt better.


They fixed the esc key on the 2019 models.

I like the key travel of my (personal) 2015 MBP compared to the 2019 MBP I have for work. I put a keyboard cover on the 2019 and it feels less bad.


This will come with a lot of problems and requires extra work. Apple Hardware is not intended by the manufacturer to be used as general purpose computer but to run MacOS.


No kidding.

I can walk into any office store, plop down 350 dollars, and get a laptop that will probably work very well with Linux. Any problems I end up hardware-wise is probably going to be the same sort of problems I would run into if I was running Windows.

With plenty of companies providing great support for Linux I don't know why anybody would want to deal with Evil Corp Apple and then spend day struggling to get a mostly working system. Apple are the people who make a living on creating and pedaling spyware ffs.


Not my words but yes. Giving a corporation money encourages them to keep going that direction further. I would spend more money on Linux certified computers from (e.g. Lenovo, Dell, Purism, System76, Tuxedo...) which hopefully encourages this companies to keep going and improving. A single customer of course doesn't change much but 10.000 do.


There is almost no firmware support for the recent aarch64 Mac hardware.


Right, but the parent poster is presumably going to spend most of his time under linux, at which point a native linux box seems like the reasonable choice.


The OS and first-party software are at least 50% of the reason I buy Mac hardware, personally. Safari (+20% battery life), Notes (missing a couple features I'd like, but has also never crashed or glitched on me in a decade of use, so...), Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Digital Color Meter, Preview (I love Preview), the excellent and remarkably low-latency Terminal, Mail, et c.

Take those away and I'd just go back to buying used Windows laptops on Ebay, putting Linux on them, and being sad.


I get and respect that this is true for some people, but goodness, I am exactly the opposite. I find all of their builtin software to be irritating and unobvious.


Safari is only good for Netflix for me.

It's inspector is just so different from the rest and you can't even have a custom font to be used! because, security...

Terminal is almost good but somehow it doesn't vertically stretch to 100% height when I automatically hide my dock.

Pages and Numbers are decent but no one else uses it, so I have to keep my Office 365 subscription to use Office in the browser.

Preview surely is a godsend when other OS can't somehow make the same basic app for almost 2 decades? Mail is great too unlike Windows' very poor default one.

Windows now looks 10 years behind with no ability to catch up to the ARM standard and Linux, well, never.


> Safari is only good for Netflix for me.

> It's inspector is just so different from the rest and you can't even have a custom font to be used! because, security...

Yeah, it's far from perfect but it's really light on battery and is ~never the cause of beachballs while I'm using some other program, neither of which were the case with FF or Chrome, for me :-/ My ideal browser doesn't exist, but Safari definitely feels closer to it than FF or Chrome do. They get all the add-on stuff right, while Safari gets the fundamentals right.

> Terminal is almost good but somehow it doesn't vertically stretch to 100% height when I automatically hide my dock.

Bizarre. I'm a dock-hider (carried over from being a start-menu-hider on Windows for years and years) and hadn't noticed that. If I open a terminal window and drag the bottom down, sure enough, there's a little bit at the bottom I can't get it to go past. Oddly, if I use Spectacle to "maximize" it or send it to the left or right half of the screen, it manages to go a little lower (still not quite all the way!), but then the top has a tiny gap, like it's splitting the bottom gap between the top and bottom. Thanks, now that will bug me forever :-) I wonder if it's got something to do with line height?

> Pages and Numbers are decent but no one else uses it, so I have to keep my Office 365 subscription to use Office in the browser.

Yeah, it's no Office replacement if you need Office. I'm fortunate that it's just for my own use or for generating PDFs. They're like Abiword and Gnumeric on Linux (which were what I preferred over the bloated mess of OpenOffice on that platform) in that they're relatively lightweight but still fairly capable—except they don't crash as much and just, you know, work better.

> Preview surely is a godsend when other OS can't somehow make the same basic app for almost 2 decades?

It's straight up stupid that Preview can be an actual selling point for macOS in the year 2022, and yet, I can't point to a single similar program (or even just a PDF reader) on another desktop OS that's even close to it, and I've used tons of them over the years.


> Take those away and I'd just go back to buying used Windows laptops on Ebay, putting Linux on them, and being sad.

Same.

It's also interesting to think of this in terms of the real $ value of the OS. If I had to choose between a $1000 Windows laptop or a $2000 macOS laptop, I'd still go for the macOS laptop, even if they had the same specs. The specs of a laptop matter far less to me than the OS and surrounding ecosystem.

Same as how a $10K Mac Studio would still be useless for gaming. Could have the world's best GPU, and it would still have no value to anyone looking for a gaming computer.


I'm really, really not happy about there not being a single OS I consider comparable, when it comes to getting work done. It's like the rest are all competing with each other and macOS is just off doing its own (better) thing, while they don't even try to compete with it. I'm tentatively hopeful that Google's new OS will be good enough to compete—after a couple decades of using desktop Linux full-time, then off-and-on, I think its GUI model (and by extension those of the BSDs) is just fundamentally not capable of producing something really good. Too fragmented for mostly-bad reasons, whole stack's too big and creaky and Wayland doesn't seem to be helping with that very much, having it not just separable from but very separate from the base OS causes lots of support-related trouble if you try to target it as a platform, and so on.

BeOS was nice. Windows could be nice but they decided to make it adware and spyware and completely ruin the settings screens for no good reason. Sigh.


Safari annoys the heck out of me but I use it for the battery life, I would say it's adequate (except when stuff only works on Chrome, but not really safaris fault as far as I know). I dropped terminal instantly for kitty. Preview is the PDF viewer right? Will definitely say that thing is amazing.

First thing I did when I got my M1 though is partition the drive and dual boot asahi though.


> Safari annoys the heck out of me but I use it for the battery life

I wish it had more and better extensions, but the battery life savings and general lighter feel/effect on overall system responsiveness is so large that I put up with that unless I really have to have better dev tools or something. All my normal browsing happens in Safari. Took me like 3 years to convert after starting to use Macs, as I initially dismissed it, but damn, it's way lighter than FF or Chrome.

> Preview is the PDF viewer right?

It's a lots-of-things viewer, but its PDF support is so good that it made me go from hating when something was in a PDF, which had been the state of things with every PDF viewer I'd ever used since first encountering the format some time in the 90s, to liking PDFs. It's lightweight (like most of Apple's tools, I can just leave it in the background and forget it's there), crashes are extremely rare (maybe one or two in a decade or more of use?), and it supports all kinds of nice-to-have stuff like compiling a PDF from pages of other PDFs, removing or re-ordering pages, signing, light image editing and markup capabilities, et c.


Just started notes a couples weeks ago. Fantastic - disappointed I missed this for so long. Agree preview is great for what it is. Probably should go back to safari instead of chrome.


Notes is great. One time I was like "it'd be nice to put a PDF in this note. LOL, bet that won't work" but no, of course it did, embedded it exactly like I'd hoped it would. Drag & drop, there it is, can view it inline.

The two things that bug me: no markdown support, and no built-in export (but the format's simple and well known and there are existing 3rd party tools that can do it). Everything else is so good and so stable that I've been hesitant to go looking for something else to try to fill in those two features. I can live with a formatting bar and export being a little annoying if everything else is basically perfect.


YMMV. Linux on the 2019 16" MBP has a lot of issues that make it irritating. It works, but not perfectly by any stretch. And yes the machine is nice, except for the keyboard, which is probably one of the most important parts!


So are you suggesting getting a 3+ year old Intel model then? Since the ARM models aren't really supported yet.


Least-worst option if you're stuck running OSX is to run a Linux VM. VMWare makes probably the best solution.


Maybe, maybe not. I'm a Linux person. I run Debian in a UTM VM on my MacBook Pro and do all the work in that.

Why? Because the host machine sucks less at all the desktop stuff that Linux is horrible at and the VM wins at all the server and dev stuff the Mac sucks at.


Doesn't feel right.

Any OS can virtualize Linux, so the host doesn't really matter.

Besides, it's usually the software that matters and not the OS.


Developers usually desire a fast platform. While it is true most OS hosts can virtualize Linux, there are at least three important caveats when considering macOS. The first is that the file system performance is poor and chews up CPU when using file sharing [1]. The second is that if you are targeting x86_64 containers, you'll want to avoid full-virtualization and/or the Rosetta x86 to ARM translation later. Finally, the third is that if you work in machine learning, chances are you use NVIDA on the server, so you may want to do simple smoke testing of your containers locally, but Apple no longer ships computers with NVIDIA graphics cards.

Now some of that is alleviated if you are building non-machine learning ARM images, but you may run the risk of not having ARM versions of third-party containers you need.

I personally regret not thinking ahead about this and buying a MacBook Pro a few years ago. Either with Linux directly, or with Windows WSL2, I don't think developers need to buy a macOS machine unless they need to build iOS or macOS apps. And even then, you can rent time on GitHub-hosted Actions macOS runners instead.

[1]: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/mac/#file-sharing


Virtualization is a far cry, performance and experience wise, from running the OS natively.


Not anymore. Not on the M1s. They're far and away faster than anything but the beefiest desktop. A lua parser benchmark I ran in a VM on my M1 beat my 5950X by a factor of two.

The only remaining limitation are missing some ARM docker containers (which is slowly being solved) and the machines not being suitable for ML (in which case you need a desktop or to rent server time on the cloud).


What work are you even doing to push virtualization performance to its limit?

I cab run a Ubuntu server VM at good performance on VMware.


Is this satire?


As in? I'm serious.


It is definitely not easier to passthrough an NVIDIA GPU that I require for machine learning to a virtual machine on an M1 Mac versus just buying a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU. I don't even know if M1 supports eGPU, have not heard anything about it, and I doubt PCI passthrough or whatever you use for eGPUs works on macOS. Sometimes hardware does matter, and it glaringly matters (esp. w.r.t. CUDA).

Also consider gaming. Considering that GPU virtualization is not really a thing still, I cannot imagine, for example, gaming being easier on macOS, and the VM requires additional setup too.


Just run Linux in a VM! It's my preferred workflow nowadays.

See: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubDMLoWz76U

Only real limitations are lack of ML because no server/desktop-grade GPU and some missing ARM-based docker containers. But the latter is slowly being resolved and the former isn't gonna happen on a laptop anyways.


> Just run Linux in a VM! It's my preferred workflow nowadays.

Or just run it on real hardware! It's my preferred workflow.

These two comments of ours are equally pointless.


Alright, then allow me to explain.

Before, there were a multitude of reasons not to develop in a VM: Poor support for accelerated instructions on laptops; Slow CPUs; limited RAM; slow file-sharing between the host and guest.

The M1 architecture solves most of the issues.

Modern laptops almost universally support accelerated instructions now. This means less overhead, so doing everything entirely in the VM is worth it now. So no more dealing with slow file-sharing.

The speed of the M1 also means you're not limited compared to your desktop. Depending on the benchmark (especially any benchmark relying on CPU cache size), it may be faster on the M1 air than on a 5950X. Even in workloads where the laptop is slower, it is now fast enough.

Running docker containers in a VM on a 16GB *non-M1* machine is untenable. The M1's RAM is not only higher bandwidth and lower latency, but the compression and caching has improved so much that you can fit much more in that same 16GB.

In use-cases where you need more than 16GB, the M1's NVMe disk is so low latency that swap usage is indistinguishable in performance from RAM usage. So the laptop has no memory limit, for practical purposes (though the wear on the disk is increased in this case).

In addition, ARM architectures were a pain to deal with before, so most people emulated x86_64 and assume that you'd still have to do that on the M1. Nowadays, there is no reason not to run an ARM Linux in the VM. Most programs run just fine, and the remaining holdouts are a few Docker containers that haven't been updated. But even those aren't a problem because recent improvements to Docker greatly simplify running x86_64 containers under QEMU.

Combine all of this with the Mac app ecosystem (which has its problems, but is generally OK to use, especially if your other devices come from Apple), improved battery, the return of the good keyboard, and greatly lowered TDP, there really isn't a choice to make anymore.

The remaining reasons not to use it are basically as follows:

1) Compatibility with external devices, or work on embedded controllers

2) Anything requiring significant GPU compute (ML, etc.). But this would likely be done on a desktop rather than a laptop, which wasn't the scope of the question.

3) Disk capacity requirements (though external NVMe over thunderbolt mostly solves this)

4) Extremely multi-threaded work (video editing, etc.) where a desktop CPU outperforms the M1's multi-thread score.

Less pointless now?


> Less pointless now?

Yeah! Now you added substance. Great!


Your comment is currently on top, so instead of laptop recommendations, we have yet another navel gazing meta discussion about HN and it's tendencies.


I've read the entire thread and took note of all the top-level responses that talked about Macs before the parent was posted versus the ones not talking about Macs. There are what, 4-5 mentions about getting a Mac out of dozens of non-Mac recommendations? Barely anyone gave those Mac comments attention before they were downvoted to the end anyway.

Parent just seems to have an axe to grind and took the opportunity to hijack a thread about recommendations.


And hardly any mention of Mac in the next twenty top comments…


The one big thing thats always deterred me from Macs is the poor ecosystem for gaming. I dont play a lot of games anymore, but its a pretty reliable way of getting some much needed socialising in so I probably wouldn't want to lose it completely.

The problem is most workarounds I've seen are either to severly limit the games I can play or to get another computer/console for playing games, which just seems to be turning one problem into two. You can't even dualboot anymore, now that we have M1.


I use a console for gaming and a Mac for a daily driver. I never really got into PC gaming, though, I've always felt like the console experience was better. At least for the games I enjoy playing.


I'd love to get a console, it'd make things so much easier (pretty much any bog standard laptop would work for me otherwise), but none of my friends are on console


i use a pc for gaming and mac for dev


There are many angles to take when responding to a query, and when doing so one must consider, and occasionally, question the original premises.

In public forums, one should assume both the questions and the answers to be for a wider audience. People are here for the alternate takes, the discussions, etc. Built-in to the interface of this site and many like it are tools to hide threads, in part or in entirety, and to downvote posts or threads deemed inappropriate or irrelevant.

I guess my main counterpoint is that it's a bit vain to expect a diverse public forum to be one's own personal consultancy / counsel / etc.


One thing that deters me a bit from using macOS is the slower docker performance compared to linux. Anyone here have workarounds for this?


If your work is even a bit I/O sensitive, avoid mounting OSX folders and use named volume mounts. They are much faster as they don't cross the virtualisation boundary but you need to be careful to not destroy them if they contain data you wanted to keep

For me personally, disable the new virtualization framework and gfuse options. I hope they're working better for others, but I'm not seeing any benefits yet and CPU usage dropped significantly after disabling these


> Anyone here have workarounds for this?

Sure, use Linux.


that's what i did until the company i work for made me use a macbook :(

now i have to deal with horrible performance everywhere because of falcon agent and docker.


The biggest problem seems to be the slow disk performance when working with volumes. At least in personal projects I could make this fast by making use of Docker's caching in creative ways. E.g. first copying the package deps, installing them and afterwards copying the (often changing) source. Also sometimes when a volume is needed it can be enough to make it a single file volume.


I just put linux on the MBP in the end. Much better docker experience. I can't believe companies elect to pay for Docker Desktop only to have it be so crappy.


Using VirtioFS and the new virtualization framework makes it bearable.


What’s your use-case? I have no issue with Docker perf on macOS …because I don’t have anything Docker-based that’s perf-intensive.


I mean, if the hardware runs Linux well, it's not that ridiculous to recommend it. Forget the Apple software part.


Can everyone that has spent at least one month using Linux on an M1 as a daily driver please respond with their experiences, so we know that this "Linux on an M1" recommendation is valid?


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094361#31098178


It doesn't run linux anywhere near as well as a X1 Carbon. I get daily crashes on a fresh install on a M1 Mac after only a couple weeks of having it. My X1 Carbon has been running strong for nearly a year with no memorable crashes during that time period.

There's software I can't even install because there aren't arm versions of it available.


We know the current hw doesn't.


Eh, it's a public forum, I made a comment about Macs because I was curious why they were ruled out and a lot of conversation took place below my comment. We are not limited to talking about what OP wants us to talk about.


Nitpick: he said he didn't want to use MacOS, which doesn't necessarily rule out a MacBook. I hate MacOS but my personal laptop is a 2015 MacBook Pro running MX Linux, and I love it.


It's natural for people to be perplexed when OP asks for the best option, is given the best option, and produces an irrational excuse against that option.

What are people supposed to say besides, let's help you resolve that excuse?


I don't think they said they've had problems with Macs. They simply said their intention is not to use Windows or Mac OS. To me, that still leaves room to recommend a Mac.

It's not a cult, it's the free market at work.


Proper response 1: Ignore this whole thread.


Macbook Pro sucks, I cannot remember a laptop that is hotter (and throttles) than my current mac, and it's expensive


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.


Reviews are hard. Nobody agrees on anything, and some people have very strong options about certain things (trackpads, keyboards g that little mouse nub between the g an h keys)..

I have a system76 oryx pro running pop os. It’s older now (8th gen intel). Works well, though I had a fan start grinding, it was an easy replacement. The machine is a clevo so replacement parts are easy to get. I like it. My previous home machine was a 2014 Mac book. Oryx is bigger, faster, heavier. The build quality isn’t as good as the Mac but it decent. It has nvidia graphics which even run games. Battery life isn’t great, especially when running the nvidia card (you can switch to intel graphics ). It upgrades the os easily unless like me you do so manual stuff.. system 76 support is good (part of what you pay a premium for)

I just got work to buy a new system 76 machine for me. The amd laptop model “pangolin”. I like it so far.


> None of the threads seemed to have a consensus

That probably answers your question ;-). Along with the fact that you found multiple previous discussions. There is no consensus to be had, everyone will have their own particular definition of 'good' and the variance is so wide that you'll just have to figure it out for yourself.


I'm happy for your post (I might be about to look into deciding for a laptop, too, and unlike general review sites the discussion here is centred on the use for a particular community we're part of), and honestly I find JabavuAdams' post pretty toxic (it does elicit more heated arguments). The annoying thing here in my view is this sub-thread, not your post.


Thanks stranger :)


Look I’ve designed electronics for big corp; if you used the internet 99-2004, parts I designed probably switched your packets, or boosted signal.

You’re trying to predict your future. No one here can help with that.

You know your philosophical constraints. Hardware across vendors fails at largely the same rate due to normalized manufacture and sourcing patterns now. It all comes from the same few parts bins pretty much. The key specs are listed on each site.

Reality is you have roughly the same risk of getting a lemon or finding a laundry list of nitpicks with any choice.


> Reasonable response

I scrolled down pretty far and didn’t see a single top-level comment anywhere close to what you’re describing about people blindly advocating Macs.

Maybe you joined early, but comments like yours bringing up a problem that doesn’t exist is PART of the problem you’re complaining about.


Second this.

If you want a laptop for development - get MacBook. I used to be a die-hard Windows guy about 10 years ago. After that switched to Linux on my Desktop and used it for a year. When I switched job they gave me MBP 2011 model, I hated it. The OS, but not the laptop. The new 2015 MBP were complete garbage, but I got used to macOS. The M1 laptops are the only laptops I would suggest to anybody. The battery life is so amazing, no overheating issues, I love it.

My work also depends on Linux, I have my own company, that provides tools for monitoring Kubernetes, OpenShift and Docker. Only OpenShift is sketchy on arm64, everything else works great. https://github.com/lima-vm/lima is a great tool to run Linux VM. Also Docker for Mac and Rancher Desktop both work perfectly!

But switching to Mac could be a challenge. I was always big fun of Thinkpad laptops, especially X1 Carbon. My wife uses it (she is Windows geek). But obviously this laptop is a laptop, not a computing machine. If you need computing power, just go to Costco and get yourself a gaming laptop with good video card (3060 would be in your price range). Read this https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/srxtrx/gamin... to see which laptop provides enough power to the graphics card. But of course those gaming laptops are more like desktops you can easily move. The power bricks are huge, and laptops are heavy.

Another option to consider is to get a Desktop, you can buy used Workstations/Servers from companies like https://tekboost.com/ I got from them 2 x Nvidia Quadro M4000 8GB, Dual Xeon E5-2680V4 2.4GHz 14C, 256GB RAM for about 4k. For 2k I am sure you can find something that can fit your budget.


Should have put that on the title

I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups. In particular, when you have a very hard set of requirements that historically no one gets right except for you know who.


> I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups

Windows still owns the market to a substantial degree, Macos is still a niche OS. Maybe you've seen a trend of software companies moving to Macos, but it's definitely not the standard by any means.


Mac is probably a good dev machine. But for production and service…? I don't think so. It is currently the most unstable system I ever met. I need to reboot it due to completely un-addressable memory leak and lag (the cpu is idle, the memory isn't starved, disk don't really have much io and it still lags) from time to time if I keep it on for a long time.


That's not entirely true these days, Mac market share has gone up from 5% to ~15% in the last 10 years while Windows sits on its hands.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...


I'm not sure how you can look at Windows: 75% MacOs: 15%

and then try and dispute what I said. Those numbers aren't even close.

Sure, maybe MacOs is growing, and less niche than it used to be. I'm not disputing that.

But come on here.


Which still means that more than 5 out of 6 computers are not Macs.

Which is as diametrically opposite of the industry standard as you can get.


Have you ever been to a FAANG office ?

Or anything in San Francisco for that matter, in my time in PayPal only one dude in the whole office had a windows machine


Have you ever been to an office outside of the FAANG / Silicon Valley Startup Bubble?

You won't see a Mac almost anywhere.

The numbers don't lie. Windows is more widely used than MacOS right now, period. And it's not even close.

Maybe that is starting to change, maybe we're in for another round of companies going "This is what they do at Google" and playing follow the leader. Maybe. But that's not the conversation we're having.

If you want to have that conversation, make those points. Not this "but it's what FAANG uses" appeal to authority nonsense.


> something the whole industry uses

Citation needed. With actual stats to back it up.

The reasonable answer at the end of the day remains

> Cool, use what works for you.

There are use cases where Macs are useless or such a PITA to work with (ugh native compilation), others where they're kinda necessary (i.e. iOS development), and there's been no info about this from OP, so the most reasonable thing to do is still to acknowledge they have a good reason, and stop forcing Macs into the suggestions, even more so by using baseless arguments.


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 engenders.


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.


Heh, I was kinda bummed out when I got mine. I'd been developing on Linux for years. That turned around hard in a month or two.

This was well before the super-shitty run they had where they went all-USB-C, Touch Bar (ugh), and ruined their keyboards, though. I'd probably have been a lot less impressed if that was my introduction to their stuff.


The thread is in the context of Apple users insisting that the OP should use a Mac, when the OP has explicitly stated that it does not fit their needs.


Sure, that's silly, agreed. BS about Apple being a "fashion company" isn't really helping, though.


Well, sure, because Apple makes it impossible to develop for iOS devices without using a Mac. So you HAVE to fully buy into their ecosystem if you want to develop anything for their mobile phones.


Could we get tech companies to step up and beat the fashion company then? Because on many, many, many comparisons the fashion company makes them look completely inept at making tech products. I know, they've only had 20 years, it seems like a ridiculous ask.

Besides raw specs of CPUs and GPUs, which the fashion company is encroaching on too, my non-fashion product's trackpads, screen color quality, sound quality, screen hinges, heat dissipation locations, power efficiency, keyboards, case flex, case materials, weight, size, storage speeds, and upgradability are just some of the things that all suck on my Lenovo, Microsoft and Asus laptops my household owns and that my fashion laptops consistently do better.

My non-fashion products manage to put better refresh rate screens in, and I can get gaming capable discrete GPUs, and one of them lets me upgrade the RAM aftermarket, but for the most part they're all worse products that have lower utility than the fashion products. The perception they engender with me is that they're the only company that builds a product they don't secretly loathe.


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


> social status signaling

The same way you're attempting to social signal by putting Apple down as a luxury fashion company?


There are many ways to signal social status, and we'd all be better off if people favored ones with positive externalities (e.g. volunteering and donating to charity) rather than ones with negative externalities (e.g. lining the pockets of executives of the world's richest company while they endeavor to reduce computers to unrepairable appliances and destroy general-purpose computing).


I love and develop for Linux, but I use a Mac. I understand people’s complaints about macs, but in no way have I bought it for any kind of signaling. Most people don’t know I use a Mac, except my family.

I used to be a windows person, and had the same opinion about macs as you, but now I exclusively buy macs for myself and my family bc I am the family’s IT support team. And guess what? The amount of time and headaches it saved me over the years can’t be understated. It would not have been possible with Linux.

My mother can drag and drop an app into applications folder but even that is a stretch. She however can easily open the App Store and click buy, using the same UX as on her phone. Guess how many things are intuitive to her across her ipad, iPhone and Mac, that she almost never has to call me for anything.

I have my family on a family sharing plan with my card on it (I have terrible things to tell Apple about the fact that I have no granular control abt who or how much people can spend there) , but the fact that they are able to get what they need to be productive without having to research the many different ways an application is installed, or how it’s impossible to uninstall or to handle all those MSIs or whatever the windows installers do now, or virus scanning everything under the sun (and let me not forget about the mcaffee and avg and avast licenses and adware from companies that are supposed to be legitimate and give you peace of mind)…is priceless (I know, sounds like an Apple ad, but it’s true).

More, the integration with the outside world, how people can record voice, take notes, photos and have these things readily available everywhere. The finder app, and how I don’t need 100 different apps to view things I download from the web or get from an external source. Again, priceless.

You can geolocate, disable, brick your stolen hardware, no extra software, apps or cost. Super useful, I forgot my laptop in a cab once at an airport, my mother had hers stolen. Both are confirmed bricked. Maybe other brands/OSes have this now, but I have no time to find out.

Back to my family, how they can subscribe to things like scribd, audio books, udemy, and a bunch of other things without having to go through all the marketing pages and double speak of these services online and be able to cancel immediately if they need, gives them a lot of power and I’m glad they can get what they need when they need and move on with their lives. My mother is a lawyer, she should not spend her time fighting an OS.

Linux would be better than windows, but it has failure modes that require admin level terminal skills to solve. I use Linux server, but I have no need for the desktop atm.

Finally, maybe today is different or I never looked hard enough, but it used to be that to get a Linux laptop, I’d need to get a windows laptop and dual boot or wipe it and install Linux.

I may have time for this with servers (that’s my work), and I may have had time for this when I was in college, but I most certainly do not have time for this now.

Maybe if it were as easy to just walk into a store or get online and buy a Linux laptop back then, I might have gone Linux desktop rather than Mac.

In my mind, windows is hell, Linux is expert level, Mac is for everyone.

This is not an answer for this post, I would also like to get the answer and maybe I’ll try that.


Linux and Windows users are not much different. Just depends what website you happen to be on.


Linux user base is far more cultish. For one, they collaborate for free over high minded concepts and lol at outsiders who don’t know their incantations.

Cults were never paying their people, and like to demean outsiders. So there’s that.


> I mean, guys seriously.

But we're serious. OP has created their own nonsensical boundaries with these constraints. Essentially the title is completely misleading apart from the 2K number. If OP is looking specifically for a linux-compatible machine they should have at least mentioned that in the title. It's no suprise at all that these types of answers are in this thread.

I saw the title, came here to offer my thoughts about mac options, when I realize that actually "not allowed" by OP's request. It's click baity and almost feels like it was designed to get a rise out of the HN crowd.


Love it!

There's a meaningful title, and a set of perfectly common and reasonable requirements in an ordered, clear, explicit fashion that we all normally wish requester would follow.

But because some jumped in with their own agenda, and feel stifled... now these are "nonsensical boundaries" :->

(Plus, I mean, if somebody wanted a mac... how much advice or options do they need ? Want a mac, get a mac. That part of equation is not exactly complicated, for better or for worse, is it? So let's not pretend this was anything but zealots wanting to chime in :)

You do you, Hacker news :)


Really? OP should have put every requirement in the title? You couldn't have just read the requirements then moved on? And because you didn't then OP deserves these nonsense responses?

Get a grip.


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/lightrush/framework-laptop-formula


+1 for Framework as well. With recently launching a company, I have been evaluating laptop builds for my soon-to-hire employees. Thinkpads were at the top followed by XPS builds (which have been terribly variable in quality in recent year, unfortunately).

I am now using a Framework as a daily driver w/ Fedora and it is wonderful! Deep sleep needs work still, but everything else is working great. Plus Framework works well with Windows as well.


Hi. OP here. ThinkPads have come up a lot generally in this and other threads. I am definitely considering them too.

The Framework Laptop still has some issues that need ironing out from what I could tell so cannot to commit to them this time round. Will definitely keep an eye on them though.

Thank you.


I also have a framework laptop and love it.

Article I wrote about it: https://erock.io/2021/11/01/framework-vs-mbp.html

Battery life will be an issue for OP. Also, the speakers are by far the worst feature.


Hi. OP here. I also came across the battery issue but good to know about the speakers as well. Thank you.


Anyone else here have the annoying hinge issue where the laptop screen won’t stay up? I even got new hinges and the problem remains… maybe just bad luck. Between that and battery life though I would exercise some caution OP.

I love the framework ethos and plan to continue supporting them but imo they do have kinks to work out.


Haha this is one of the thing I wanted to know about the framework, thanks for the feedback. All of my laptops were still running fine when they became unusable because of the broken plastic structure around the hinges. I managed to fix that on this one using small bolts. I was eyeing towards Framework for my next laptop after this one falls apart wondering how durable it could be. Maybe I'll still buy that if they ever allow us to buy just the plastic case but I am seriously considering the sturdiness of a M1 running Linux. I may have to start to donate to Asahi Linux now as MacOs is a big nono. Or maybe I can find an old intel MPB that runs Linux well ?


Framework has said they are going to release new hinges that are sturdier, and they are extremely easy to swap out. The benefit of the Framework is that any kinks can be easily fixed... still kinks are annoying.


Thanks for the information.I may have changed mind once again.


> I love the framework ethos and plan to continue supporting them but imo they do have kinks to work out.

kinks is the word :) True that's what a lot of users have mentioned also.


+1 to the Framework as well. My only issue is the aforementioned sleep power draw, but they're a pretty smart group of folks. I'm pretty sure they'll figure this out in time.


I can't vouch from personal experience but the framework is so good that one of my friends is just giving away his old laptop to me, which I think says a lot


Yes but Framework does not support selling to businesses yet and, thus, can't create an invoice. Maybe this is an important point to some.


+1 for Framework laptop. On the road and typing from one now.


My current problem with framework is the small screen size. As someone who doesn't use an external monitor, the 13.5" screen is smaller than I'd like.

Hopefully they'll launch a 15"-16" variant in the near future.


If you want longevity, for under $2k, you should not rule out the Framework because it is "beta."

They have a store of easily replaceable parts. You can replace almost anything that breaks.

I have already replaced the keyboard. Don't ask.


Also a fan of my Framework. Spent just about $2k on the dot too. Running Pop!_OS and haven't really had any issues.

My work machine is a macbook pro, but I'd happily work on my framework instead.


I've also gotten a Framework laptop, and am happily running XFCE on Debian testing.

One thing I'm curious about is how other people are handling the resolution of the screen on Linux? It doesn't seem like XFCE currently supports fractional scaling well, so I ended up defining a custom 3:2 resolution and using that to increase the size of everything by about 1.5x.


It doesn't feel beta, but requires salt scripts to make it work correctly?


How is the battery life?


Battery life on my Framework on Windows is decent. I can get probably 5 hours out of it doing light dev work. Doesn't hold a candle to my work M1 Macbook's battery, but I enjoy using it a lot more.


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 my favorite, but it's good enough, and the keyboard is very decent. I haven't had it very long and mostly it's plugged in so I can't comment too much about battery life.

My biggest complaint is that the screen is too good. When I'm done with the laptop and come up to my desktop, my IPS screens look washed out and sad. :P

Edit: I didn't buy the X1, I bought a Gigabyte Aero 15.


I have a Lenovo X13 Gen 2 with a 16 thread Ryzen 5850U and 32GB of RAM. It’s about the most powerful you can get while still having a power efficient CPU under load. I spend all day compiling with all cores and battery is still around 8-9 hours with a 90% charging cap set in the bios to preserve battery longevity.

Linux works great on the AMD chipset but I had to replace the Wi-Fi card with an Intel AX220.

After buying the aftermarket Wi-Fi card and 2TB SSD, I spent about $1200. Build quality and dimensions are comparable but a little worse than the Carbon imo.


Using still a ThinkPad X220 with Linux and will switch likely this year to a X13 AMD Gen3. I personally prefer the X13 because it is solid, powerful and provide many connectors. I hope the next MediaTek WiFi-Chips are better this time, if not Intel-WiFi.

The X1 is slimmer, lightweight but scarifies a lot and is expensive. The X13 ARM is passively cooled which a major benefit, similar to the MacBook Air but due to ARMs and Qualcomm bad support of Linux not even an option. A passively cooled AMD variant would be more interesting.


I'm convinced laptops peaked with the X220. I have one sitting next to me now. It's not powerful enough for a daily driver anymore but I'm in the process of repurposing it for some self-hosting.


The T14s Gen 3 is apparently using Qualcomm wifi chips instead of MediaTek or Intel this time around, it seems likely that we'll see the same for the X13 Gen 3 as well.


Interesting! If Qualcomm means actually WiFI chips from Atheros this could mean good WiFi and good Linux drivers. Atheros has a good reputation, it is just Qualcomms ARM and GPUs drivers which are problem.


Hi. OP here. Thanks for the thorough review

> Linux works great on the AMD chipset but I had to replace the Wi-Fi card with an Intel AX220.

Curious to know why you switched out the Wi-Fi card? How easy was it to do?


I also have the same X13 gen2. The shipped Realtek wifi chipset works for me, but I needed to have a newer kernel. Fedora 34 was good enough.


Do you also experience significant battery drain during sleep? Asking since this is an issue with the T14 gen 1 with AMD.


x13 amd is just about perfect. linux or ltsc both work.


I used an X1 for a year, though with Windows. I'm not sure I'd recommend it at the price Lenovo want, but it has some nice points. Price is really the main downside for me. It's in the same ballpark as a Macbook Pro (the model I have was $2500 off the shelf) and the hardware just isn't quite there. Fine if someone else is paying for it!

Upgradeability is decent, though RAM is soldered in. You can swap in hard drives, upgrade the antenna and Lenovo has a decent manual for replacing parts.

It's a very light laptop, which is nice. It's also extremely sturdy. No problems with flex or whatever when it's thrown in a full backpack.

It works well with an eGPU, but the main USB-C power port is quite wobbly even after a thorough clean out.

It has a stupid proprietary Ethernet adapter that also blocks the USB-C port. I assume this is for use with the official dock, but why not just have two USB-C ports?

The speakers are awful. Yes we're going to compare to a Macbook as the gold standard, but for a $2k laptop I really want better.

Thermals aren't great and it dumps exhaust heat on your mouse hand.

Keyboard is good, trackpad is mediocre.

The display is good, and it's bright. There are some funny graphics driver issues with Intel. The display flickers when switching between power/battery and often the backlight settings mess up. It also suffers from screen burn if you forget to use a screensaver or leave it on for a while.

Battery performance tanked pretty fast for me. I barely get a few hours these days. If you run on low power mode, it's not usable because CPU throttling is so severe.


Hi. OP here. Thanks to everyone who's shared their experiences with the Thinkpad X series in this thread. Will add them to my list of laptops to review.


I've had the 6th gen for a few years now. Overall, I like it. But these are my issues:

- Really wobbly USB-C port(s). The original power brick doesn't work reliably anymore (I have to play with the connection in order to get the laptop to charge)

- 16 GB RAM is limiting now and can't be expanded

- The keyboard... It's more of a general modern laptop issue, but whenever I pull out my old W520 with the original Thinkpad keyboard, I start dreaming of going back. Maybe I will.


I am happier with the 1080p screen on the X1. Better performance, less headaches with non-high-dpi-friendly apps, better symmetry when connecting to a non-4k external monitor.


I'd recommend a 1440p screen, so that the dot pitch would be roughly the same as your external monitor, assuming it's 4k.


I think they are 1200p now also.


Same experience. Makes life easier with no downsides I can perceive.


Likewise I was going to get an X1 after owning several higher-end Thinkpad and Macbook models over the years.

Instead I went with a Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED, 11th gen i7, 32gb ram, RTX 3070 etc. and after using the trackpad and keyboard daily it's an excellent daily driver that'll power through anything I can throw at it.

My only qualm is I can't be bothered to get the fingerprint reader working properly in Linux and finding a slim but protective case that still fits in my rucksack has been a pain.


How does the display work for you in bright daylight? I couldn't find any definitive information about the OLED option if it's more glossy or more matte.


I believe the OLED version has a glossy, glass screen. I ended up going with the matte 1080p screen for both of my X1 generations. It works quite well in bright daylight from my experience, but will still have some glare.


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.


I second that. I only use X1Cs. Had a gen3, gen7 and currently use a gen9. The one I have now (X1C Gen9) is the first one that turns the fans on without any CPU heavy task (compiling, blender, stuff like that). Low RPM, but fanning nonetheless. I throttled the CPU (i7-1165G7@2.8GHz) to 2GHz (the hardware limit is 4.7GHz), and it no longer heats up; bullet dodged.

The gen7 had a screen malfunction, repaired under warranty with flawless service. I just upgraded because it would take two weeks for service turnaround, and we might as well have a spare laptop around.

Excellent keyboard, much better than Macs. I use trackpoint, so I'm unable to evaluate the trackpad. The internal display is 1920x1200, and I have nothing bad to say about it. Excellent linux driver coverage. Runs cool, even if it required capping its performance.


I have the X1C gen 7 and love it, has been a wonderful machine for me. It's my personal laptop, and I do most of my personal development on a desktop machine, but it sees use many days each week. I'm running linux. I haven't had any complaints about this machine whatsoever.


How is the battery life?


I get 5-7 hours on battery from my X1C7 FHD running Ubuntu. I carry a power bank in my bag that gives me that much again.


How has Lenovo dealt with the malware fallout from years past? I've wanted to purchase a thinkpad recently but I don't see how to trust them again.


The malware didn't affect their "business" Thinkpads. They really shot themselves in the foot by diluting the Thinkpad name and slapping it on $300 consumer laptops.


A few years ago I would have said ThinkPads but I think there are better options available now. At the end of last year I wanted to replace my T470, and wanted to upgrade to something with a more powerful (not U-series) CPU. The ThinkPad option that fitted my requirements was on back order for months, so I looked around...

The ASUS ROG line of gaming laptops had exactly what I wanted, although they look a bit garish, they are good value for what you get.

On Black Friday I got a G14 Zephyrus with a 8c16t Ryzen 9, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 14" FHD IPS screen. I think I paid £1300. There's a free RAM slot, so I upgraded to 32GB, I think it supports 48GB max. There are a couple of gotcha's mind you:

- It came with a WiFi chip with poor support for Linux (and it wasn't great on Windows). I got an Intel one from eBay for £10 and it took a few minutes to swap out.

- You need to restart X to switch from hybrid to integrated graphics, which you want to do on battery to save power.

- You need to restart X to switch from integrated to hybrid graphics, which you want to do when you get back to your desk so you can use a USB-C display.

- The default fan curves mean the fan turns on and off every few seconds. I changed the settings so it is off most of the time and it runs fine.

- The powerbrick that comes with it is heavy. I use a 65W USB-C brick and have no issues for working, but for gaming (it has a RTX 3060) it needs more power.

- The model I have has no webcam, that's fixed in this year's modem.

Everything else works great. Battery life is 5-6 hours as standard, but if you disable turbo boost and you can get closer to 10 hours.


I'm also on a G14! The wait time for a ThinkPad was 6 weeks when I needed a new laptop, so I just ended up buying a G14 because I couldn't wait.

WiFi seems okay for me, I've not had any problems. Restarting X is indeed annoying. Also only one of the USB-c ports has display port support, that took me a while to figure. I thought my usb-c monitor was broken until I took a closer look at the ports. No webcam is pretty annoying as well.

The Linux community for the laptop is actually pretty large. People have reverse-engineered a lot of the "nice to haves" [0].

[0] https://asus-linux.org/


Another happy user of G14 here. I'm running the 2021 version with Ryzen 5900HS, 32Gb of RAM and 1440p screen. The screen is good, the laptop is quite light at ~1.6kg, the keyboard is OK too, but I tend to use an external one when at my desk.

I love the battery life, which is great when running on integrated graphics.

The CPU is great too, I'm satisfied with autocomplete speed in my IDE. I think the 5900HS is also quite power-efficient, maybe the Intel versions are more power-hungry, not sure. Another benefit is that the laptop stays completely silent, and only whirrs up when gaming or doing heavier workloads.

The GPU in my version is "just" the 3060 Mobile, but it's good enough for me, and there are costlier version with better GPUs.

The ports are good enough for me. There's one USB-C 3.2 Gen2 which I used to connect to a DisplayPort screen, and there's an HDMI port, which I use to drive a 4k@120Hz monitor. I also use one of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports with a hub to run all peripherals (mic, webcam, keyboard, mouse).

WiFi was giving me problems on Windows (I have the MediaTek card), but that was fixed at the end of 2021. Another smallish issue is that there's no webcam, but I use a standalone cam anyway.


Hi. OP here. Shame about the lack of a webcam since I do a lot of video calls.

Otherwise the G14 would have made my list. The reviews I read on HN suggested it would be worth a look.

Edit: saw that the parent post says that that has been fixed in this year's model. Will take a look. Thanks both!


If you're going for a Thinkpad, the T480 from a couple of years ago seems to be the gold standard. The current successor of that model is the T14, but I have no idea if it's as good. I got an X1 Extreme, which is a gorgeous machine, and very powerful, but it eats through its power like no laptop I've seen before. Battery charge rarely lasts more than 2 hours.

One big advantage of the high-end Thinkpads: they're spill resistant. I accidentally spilled an entire mug of tea over this one, and it had no ill effects whatsoever. You can't do that with most laptops.


I have a 2021 T14, upgraded from a T460p. It's a bit underwhelming if I'm being honest. Ubuntu seems to have more problems with it than with the T460p:

- Crashes more than before. This has only been 2 or 3 times, but it's still 2 or 3 times for than it should.

- Has random issues, like graphical glitches, with builtin and external 4K displays. Right now I keep the resolution at 1080 because it's annoying.

- Has more issues going into and out of sleep.

Those are all probably Ubuntu's issues though. Physically I don't have a gripe besides maybe the speakers are a bit quiet and it would be nice if there was a USB C port on the right side so I could charge from either side.


I think the T14 with Ryzen 5 was actually what I was after, but it was "6+ weeks" shipping with the configuration I wanted (maxing out the soldered RAM). I'm glad I went with the G14 as it has a much more powerful CPU and is actually smaller (but weighs a little more).


> Has more issues going into and out of sleep.

I doubt that's unique to the T14, though. Every recent laptop and desktop I know seems to have trouble sleeping lately. Either they refuse to go to sleep, or they do, but randomly wake up and then stay on. I don't know what's causing this PC insomnia epidemic.


The T480s is also worth considering.


The T480 that I got is the worst laptop purchase I have done in years. The m2 port is not bolt in but you will need to buy an adapter if you want to install a second drive if your configuration is only 1 drive. The USB-C charging port had problem quickly after a year where it don't receive charge unless you put it in the JUST the right position and pray to god that it will keep charging. And the USB-C card is part of the mobo so you are looking at $700-800 mobo swap to fix the problem.


I’m using a similar setup (G15) for “AI” dev on Linux, it works very well with the Asus-laptop utils.

To complement other points:

- you can put the nvidia card in “compute” or “hybrid” mode, which removes the need for X restarts. Compute is really nice, the computer runs on IGP (which is vey capable) and all cuda workloads seamlessly wake up the nvidia card, no question asked

- the above means that the pc is nearly silent, maybe helped by the AMD cpu, while being pretty capable with the 8 real zen3 cores

- no issues really on Linux, and the Asus-laptop tools allow you to switch off the leds or cap the battery charge. The wifi card was an issue initially, quickly fixed with a newer kernel

- the screen is 120Hz, and this is really appreciated actually

I would buy a newer version in a pinch


Second this. I run an Arch derived distro on my ASUS AMD Zen3 5900 with 8 cores/16 hw threads and the cpu benchmarks are close to the M1 macs for about half the price.

The Realtek WiFi device is a problem with hp laptops too. Works but needs a cold reboot after the hibernate wakes up.

Are you saying the intel WiFi chip is pin compatible with the Realtek? That’s an amazing find.


Unless the antennas are glued (annoying but can be worked around with a heatgun), your BIOS device locks your wifi card (like Lenovo did with some of their laptops), or you accidentally get a CRF module that can only be used in compatible Intel devices, most laptops use a standard sized M.2 E key or miniPCIe network card that are totally interchangeable. Intel AX200/AX210s are dirt cheap (like $10-20) and done immediate replacements in my past 3 laptops.


> Are you saying the intel WiFi chip is pin compatible with the Realtek? That’s an amazing find.

I thought that most laptops have the WiFi on a mini-PCI card these days (or really anything in the past 10 years) unless they are really trying for the ultra-slim, solder everything down look.


The slots are usually Mini PCIe (if not M2).


8C/16T is probably Ryzen 5800 unless mobile uses a really confusing numbering scheme relative to desktop.


5900hx

# of CPU Cores 8 # of Threads 16 Default TDP 45+W

AMD really knocked it out the park with zen3


Oh, ok. Yeah, file that under "unless mobile uses a really confusing numbering scheme relative to desktop." On desktop, 5800x is 8C/16T and 5900x is 12C/24T.


Just got mine.

2022 rog strix 12th gen i9 + rtx 3060

10/10 must Buy

I went with strix vs others because of power delivery. Apparently rtx 3080 is great and all but asus seriously fucked up because the laptops they put it in dont deliver it enough power and it gets similar performance to a 3060. So I just got the 3060, 300ms screen is mind blowing


I am comparing this to my case with my own laptop Dell G15 Ryzen edition. Linux seems to play quite well with it, however I am dealing with poor driver performance and limitations with switching displays and nVidia Optimus. For that reason I tried installing Windows 10 after almost a decade lol. This amazing driver support was something I always missed and it made a lot of things simpler for me. All my hardware is now plug and play without having to restart the system. Not just that, some kernels made my system go haywire so I had to do a lot of housekeeping, which is not required with Windows 10 I believe. Looking forward to get my hands on WSL and make the final decision.


For Linux to fix the WiFi card, you can use any distro with latest kernel. A lot of hardware support issues on Linux are due to slow release distros like Ubuntu (and a lot of people not knowing this assume it's due to lack of drivers in mainline Linux). I use fedora and everything works out of the box following the asus-fedora website.


Are you able to run X/Wayland off of the Intel GPU and leave the Nvidia GPU free for CUDA usage on that setup?


I never figured out how to toggle graphics between intel integrated and nvidia gpu as I also want to use nvidia gpu fully for CUDA algorithms, is there an app or something to do that?


I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I use the system76-power extension (https://github.com/pop-os/system76-power) to toggle between the integrated Intel Xe unit and the dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 in my Galago Pro. While at first glance it might seem that it's a System76 utility for a System76 distribution on System76 hardware, I'm currently using it on Fedora, and the hardware itself should be pretty standard despite the System76 branding. Using the glxgears graphics demo, I can invoke 'glxgears -info' to use the Intel GPU, or '__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia glxgears -info' to force use of the dGPU. You don't get the fancy-shmancy menu that you do under Pop!_OS, but it has a perfectly workable CLI.


Thanks for this tip.


great, looking into them now.


I'm still using my Thinkpad X61s.

Nothing today even comes close, and never will.


The one with the LEDs on the lid? Do those work on Linux?


was about to recommend the G14 as well.

Have my 2020 G14 since almost two years now and it's absolutely fabulous running arch as my daily driver.


Just some general advice:

> https://kfocus.org/order/order-m2.html

NVIDIA gets really old, really fast. My personal laptop has an NVIDIA GPU and AMD iGPU, my desktop is AMD.

For my laptop, a zen2 build of the kernel nets me about 15% more battery life and a snappier system. Unfortunately NVIDIA makes installing that kernel tedious, so I just run the regular kernel. I also have to install the proprietary drivers because noveau keeps crashing (across multiple distros).

n=1 and everything, but I'd strongly recommend avoiding NVIDIA and going with either an Intel iGPU or AMD iGPU/dGPU.

Unless you want to do some ML, in which case NVIDIA is a must.


I'm going to hard second this. The ease and stability I gained from switching off the Nvidia closed source drivers to the open source AMD drivers has been nothing short of stellar.


Third. NVidia drivers were the bane of my existence for a while, and became such a time suck when I wanted to be doing other things.


Unfortunately, the options with AMD dGPUs are very limited, I'd guess about 5% of what's out there with Nvidia.

The new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 looks like a good option; my only concern is poor black levels.


+1 for zephyrus (though I'm using last year's model). Thanks to the hard working asus-linux community, most of the hardware features are controllable seamlessly through GUI software (fan profiles, switching between gpus, keyboard lights etc). Goes well with Fedora because they have the latest kernels with stable releases.


Could you link to this community and the GUI software you mentioned? I just got a Zephyrus M16, and I'm having quite a few issues getting stuff working on it.


I followed the guides from here: asus-linux.org/

specifically this one (because I wanted Fedora): https://asus-linux.org/wiki/fedora-guide/

There is also a reddit community for Fedora where you can ask questions (also the above link contains some discord server links I believe.

The gui software is here: https://gitlab.com/asus-linux/asusctl (the above guides anyway details the installation procedure for asusctl as well so no need to do it separately).


Thank you! This is very helpful.


Will check this out too. Thanks!


Nvidia is also better for HiDPI because they use faster RAM. I have dual 4K 144Hz screens, so unfortunately for the time being I have to stick with Nvidia.


Hi. OP here. Thanks. Will look into this since this laptop was looking like a strong contender for me.


Second hand ThinkPad T series gets a lot of bang for the buck (maybe not as good as they used to be, but still good, repairable, generally upgradable and very available as ex-enterprise machines). Good matte displays, good hinges and great keyboards.

Don't sweat the battery, they're removable, upgradeable to larger ones if you have to go a longer time on a charge and easy to replace. For the change left over from $2000, you can buy lots of them!


I've been using these old T series thinkpads for awhile. What I get is dim 16:9 screens, whisper quiet tinny speakers, battery life reliant on the extended batteries that ended with T480, these old units are half as fast at least as a contemporary laptop. The antiglare is mostly necessary because the stock screen can't handle more than 250nit in an HDR world. I can't advise a better machine for around 500, but on a 2 grand budget I think it's worth getting more.

Yet I almost see a fetishism around these machines I don't truly understand. 1080p, 60hz, 250nit, 16:9, 54% sRGB is the most common config you'll see and I really think on a 2 grand budget you shouldn't put up with it when purchasing new. This is also just a Lenovo thing, the Elitebook from the same year was 630nit 88% sRGB and the funny thing is that Lenovo probably only saved 10 or 20 bucks stocking this crap based on the price of replacement parts. On a 2 grand budget I'd spoil yourself with something better.


Absolutely. IMO the best current ThinkPad in terms of performance per dollar is the T480 (Quad Core Intel 8th gen). You can find them shockingly cheap if you're patient. Like only 50% more than the T420, which has an ancient Dual Core.


But with a much worse keyboard than the T420.


Cant agree more.

I've stopped buying new laptops and now I use refurbished Thinkpad P50 with i7, 64GB RAM, 512 SSD for ~1100 USD.

If I need to do something really computing intensive, I rent a cloud VM ;-) Actually, I've one for each project I'm working on, and I scale them as/if needed.


Who do you use for the cloud VM? I'm in the market


Hetzner Cloud, cheap and solid


Yeah I don't think you need to spend so much when these second hand T-series get you 95% of the way there for less.


Thirded. Even switching to a 2 years old used T every other year is still cheaper than spending 2k just to get what's currently high end and hope it lasts you 6+ years.

You get them decently refurbished on ebay as they are popular leasing models for companies which switch them out more or less on a fixed schedule. If you're lucky you get one that was sitting in a docking station for two years and is almost pristine, just the battery destroyed because it was on AC power uninterrupted.


I agree. I've tried the X1 Carbon and the T series. The T14s in particular is much cheaper than the X1, more powerful, more reliable, has more USB ports and deeper keybed, at the cost of being slightly thicker and heavier. In addition my X1 Carbon broke after two years of use (trackpad failed, left arrow key stopped working, trackpoint started moving by itself, etc.) which I think is due to how thin and flimsy the whole setup is. But I'm very happy with the Ryzen T14s.


Agree. I have refurbished T series as a back up and a then-new X1 Extreme as a daily driver. For everything work related the T series was more then enough, and it cost a fraction of the X1 Extreme. I did go with the X1 so as it also replaced an obsolete gaming desktop, so it was still reasonably priced overall.


Hi. OP here. The Thinkpad T series seems to come highly recommended. Though it wasn't quite clear which ones to consider and those to avoid. Will review the thread to see which ones to pick :)


> I looked into the Framework laptops and so far it looks like they are still a bit beta.

I'm not sure that's fair, (and it's pedantically wrong - they're in production - but I know what you mean) the hardware is the nicest I've seen besides Macbooks (I agree with you about macOS, but I do like the hardware, keen for Asahi one day but that is very much beta (alpha actually I think)) and Linux is Linux? It works fine out of the box, everything 'in-tree'.

Unless you just don't want to buy any company's first product of course, which I suppose is fair enough, but I hope (for the longevity of a company I like & spares/upgrades for my laptop) that enough people don't feel that way.


I use a Framework and it's been fantastic. Even the fingerprint works "out of the box" (in quotes because in Arch Linux nothing is really out of the box... I just had to install the right package). The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended. This is something I might be able to tinker away, of course. And for what it's worth, non-functional suspend is basically par for the course for every Windows laptop I've ever owned.

Also, I get the feeling that the Framework isn't your typical first product. It's built to be upgradable, so unless you find something fundamentally off-putting about the shape of the board, I'm not sure if you get much by waiting for the next generation. If they release a slimmer case, better keyboard, touch screen, or whatever, then you should be able to retrofit the new thing onto an old machine. Of course, the product is still young. Time will tell if this actually pans out.


> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended

That's a killer - it's 2022 and Apple are still the only company who can get that right. I'd switch over to a Framework in an instant (for dual-boot Linux/Windows) if they could fix that.


Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform, so every laptop with 11th+ generation Intel is plagued with this issue. Dell even put out an advisory that a sleeping laptop is not safe to store in a backpack anymore!

AMD still supports S3 sleep on their Ryzen processors, but you'll need to check user feedback to make sure that the vendor did their job implementing it properly. In S3 sleep, the UEFI/BIOS is responsible for suspending and resuming hardware state. If not implemented correctly, you'll have high battery drain (components not suspended) or bugs on resume. Lenovo had dropped the ball on that front repeatedly, with the last two gens of T14 requiring BIOS updates to fix issues.


>Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform

Wait what? How is that allowed?? What is the replacement?


> How is that allowed??

Looks like they can get away with it ¯\_O_/¯

> What is the replacement?

S0ix sleep (named s2idle in Linux), where the OS is responsible for suspending / resuming all non-essential functions. Work is ongoing on the Kernel and drivers to improve it, but there is a long way to go (yay Monday mornings with an empty battery because the power draw is still > 1W).

Even Windows is unable to make it correctly work without killing the battery overnight, so they now default to hibernating to disk after a couple of hours. This strategy is also possible with Linux, but making it work alongside full disk encryption is tricky: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Swap_encryption#Wi...


That sounds really awful...


While this is true for most vendors, this is not universally true. Lenovo specifically has an S3 BIOS option for some of their Tiger Lake Thinkpads (since they're Linux certified), although as you mention, it isn't always perfect: https://forums.lenovo.com/topic/view/27/5089860

There can be lots of EC/BIOS issues for suspending, IMO it's one of the best arguments for going for a Linux-first vendor (Tuxedo, System 76, Slimbook, etc), as you know that their top priority should be to get basic stuff working on Linux.


Isn't this because MS (kind of?) forcing modern sleep mode?

I bought a XPS end of 2019 and had a very bad experience forcing windows to use s3 mode. Actually I eventually stopped bothering with windows standby and let it suspend to ram now because 95% the time I use linux anyways and there s3 works fine.

I was several times greeted with a very hot notebook at the morning, because windows decided to boot up and do system updates during the night while the notebook was supposed to sleep.


I didn't mention it because I don't think it's a Framework issue (GP obviously doesn't have it) but rather my somehow messed up configuration of it, but the one problem I have with mine at the moment is that ten seconds or so after resuming (but not before) everything starts segfaulting, literally any command. And consequently logs don't get written to disk, so there's no record of it after I reboot it (with the physical button, necessarily) - so I'm having a hell of a time trying to debug it...


Oh wow. Indeed I haven't experienced this. How's the battery drain while suspended? I can't help but wonder if you get better suspend in exchange for...everything segfaulting.


I haven't noticed that it's been bad, but then I've had more to worry about... I have the same CPU (and, I thought the same config...) on my work laptop and no problem with battery drain there; I use 'hybrid-sleep' (suspend to swap & RAM, resume from the latter if possible but tolerate power loss).

It sounds like you might be using 'shallow' or 's2idle' (suspend to idle) sleep mode? You might need to write 'deep' to /sys/power/mem_sleep. (But don't listen to me, mine segfaults!)


That makes sense. Thanks for the tip, too - I might give it a shot. If I start getting segfaults then I'll know what happened!


Do they? With the default configuration my MBP M1 doesn't sleep properly ( or at all, clicking Sleep just does a screen flicker and nothing further, i have to disconnect power for it to actually go to sleep), draining the battery to ~10% after a weekend.


Crazy, that's what I have always had with my windows laptops. My 2013 MBP 13 and M1 MBA work perfectly.


> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended

Not particularly helpful to you necessarily, but I was able to solve the battery drain on windows by tweaking the deep sleep and hibernation settings and I'm now reasonably confident that if I close the lid on the laptop for the night it'll have a similar level of battery left when I open it in the morning.

I think everything defaults to intel's "not actually sleep" sleep mode which destroys the battery like nobody's business


The new suspend mechanism is s0ix and it works quite well. My xps13 9310 (32gb version with the jank AX500) will even get to opportunistic s0ix with a recent 5.17 kernel.

When I originally setup this laptop, I found that if I left the intel raid storage crap enabled, the mvd module would prevent s0ix/suspend. Switching to AHCI in the bios resolved this.

https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...


Just make it hibernate after X time (2 hours for me). There a repo of scripts on github (https://github.com/lightrush/framework-laptop-formula) where you might find information on how to do it. I'm sure it's not a 1 to 1 port to Arch, but it might get you started. Just note I had to disable secure boot for hibernate to work.


I made the switch back to mac after spending the last 9 years exclusively using linux on desktop with the release of the M1 Pro chip. I haven't regretted it. Their new chips really are impressive for their combination of performance and battery life. Combine that with Apple long having been the only manufacturer to manage high display resolutions without compromising battery life. It's the first laptop that I'll leave unconnected to power even when it would be convenient to connect it.

I'm definitely very keen to use Asahi once it's more stable and has support for more of the hardware though. For now I have an Arch Linux ARM VM that I keep running for some things (Haskell development on M1 is still a bit of a mess) and I can VNC into a Linux desktop over 2.5 gigabit LAN when I really yearn for my old workflows.


I cast another vote for Framework. I understand the hesitation when it comes to betting on a new company, because I was also slightly anxious when I ordered my laptop. But now that I have it in my hands, I'm really happy with it. I've also done programming with the keyboard and it feels nice.

Concerning battery life: There are various tools like TLP[1] that help you optimize your energy consumption without much configuration. I get more than 6 hours of my machine when I'm coding on the go. However, I only have a few terminals with Vim and a web browser open. Some IDEs might need more power.

[1] https://linrunner.de/tlp/


As of 3 days ago, from a thread started back in July 2021 (10 months ago), suspend in Linux still doesn't work properly: https://community.frame.work/t/high-battery-drain-during-sus...

I like the idea of Framework/what they're doing, but honestly, the lack of proper suspend is definitely an instant disqualifier, and their inability to fix it or even AFAICT properly acknowledge/address this after a year doesn't really inspire much confidence.

I get that they're a smaller company, but Framework is also much lower on my list because they're still selling their last-gen Tiger Lake 11th gen laptops, when 12th gen Alder Lake is a big improvement, and of course, that I (and I think many people) would much prefer AMD Ryzen 6000 (or heck, even 5000 series) that would give better perf/watt.


Asus TUF Dash Gaming 15 user here: I cannot recommend it enough.

- Intel i7 H series processor (best mobile Intel chips)

- Upgradeable RAM (currently at 24GB) - Intel Wifi 6

- Nvidia RTX 3060

- FullHD Screen with 144Hz

- Comfortable keyboard with backlight

- Two M.2 slots, laptop came with 500GB but added an extra 2TB.

- Good connecticity: HDMI, Ethernet, 3 full-size USBA 3.1 ports, 1 Thunderbolt port.

- Laptop runs on a 200W brick with a barrel connector, but on the go I plug it to a USBC 100W charger, works flawlessly.

- Good build quality: back of screen is aluminum, laptop itself is made with plastic with no deck flex or other problems.

- Only deal-breaker, not for me though, is the lack of webcam. I have a small USB one that attaches to the screen when needed.

Battery life is around 9h for me doing Node.js backend development with VSCode, Firefox with +40tabs, PostgreSQL and Docker running the server running locally. It lasts longer with the screen set to 60Hz and tinkering with the power settings to disable the Nvidia card when only doing CPU-intensive jobs.

Best of all: I only paid €999 ($1,081 taxes included) for it on Amazon Spain. Plus the SSD and extra RAM.


That 1080p screen would be hard to get used to after working on crisp MBP screens. Especially when staring at text all day.

The rest of the laptop does look great for the price.


It takes a day or 2 and you are used to the lower resolution again. It's not that the visible pixels would hinder readability. It's all psychological: Those who feel that nice looking fonts are important will be hard to convince. Probably also a status symbol for some. I prefer longer battery life and generally hate products and vendors wasting resources. I got HiDPI on my work laptop, but would switch back to a lower resolution any day. Use it regularly in other setups.


AFAIK there are/were some 1440p versions available in the US. I'm from Europe so I didn't see them.


Looks good but the deal breaker here is the screen. 1920x1080 is just not enough these days.


That's just your opinion...

I have good eyesight, yet prefer 1920x1080 in my laptops:

- Larger resolutions are a significant battery drain.

- Larger resolutions are more GPU intensive, taking away precious system resources.


Also, the fact that this is a 15.6-inch display enables me to set zoom on VS Code and Firefox to 90%, still able to read everything but with more estate. I had an MBP Retina before and for the life of me I don't miss the extra pixels. I do miss the 16:10 aspect ratio, though.


I won’t buy a laptop without 16:10 aspect ratio now.


Agreed, definitely. It's a game-changer.


Laptops with greater than 1080p screens just take up battery for no discernable benefit at those screen sizes.


Both of these comments are ditches alongside the road of truth. 4k on a laptop is not necessary, but it is noticeable and sometimes valuable. I have a 4K laptop screen and I like it a lot. I have a 1080p monitor and I notice the resolution (mostly on text), but I’m plenty productive with it.


I'm had a Retina 2015 MBP before, and with Windows/Gnome set to 100% Scaling I get the same screen real estate as an MBP with default settings. Screen has a high sRGB percentage and colors look vibrant and crisp.

To be honest, I would trade 2K for 144Hz again. It's so good.


lol, all I have are 1080p screens.


Is it running Linux? What OS? What is your experience with it?


I use a slimbook with Manjaro/i3, and it's fast. Far more performant than Macbook Pro 2017 13-inch 16GB with iOS I have to use at work (a bit older hardware to be fair) and 1/2 in price. No freezing, can run PyCharm, VSCode and be on a video call with screensharing + run a pacman install at the same time and I've not been able to get it to slow down even a bit. Meanwhile Mac crawls to a halt with Google Meet or Slack calls screen-sharing.

This is my setup, so a bit different from yours though:

  ESS-15-AMD
  ESSENTIAL 15" AMD
  Memoria RAM 16GB
  Teclado Español
  Sistema Operativo Sin Sistema
  Pendrive No
  Wifi Intel AX200
  M2 250GB SSD NVMe
  Modulo SIM NO
  Procesador Ryzen 5 4500U

  659,00 €
The only issue I have is the touchpad location and style (no explicit buttons). It's not centered at laptop middle, but instead at text part of keyboard middle, but I mostly only use keyboard. Works ok as long as I reconfigure it to count middle button presses as left-click, otherwise I tend to misclick.

Battery life is still about 6-8 hours when using text editor/developing or about 4-5, if watching movies. It's quite heavy laptop, but still fine for couch-slouching. A bit too heavy for travel.

It's a year old and so far it does have some discoloration on plastic, but nothing has broken and it feels fairly solid. The KDE Slimbook you've chosen seems to have aluminium body, so it would probably far outlast my basic plastic version.


How good is the keyboard?


For me, it's good, because I like quite soft and low keys. They still do a mild click and it feels obvious if a key is pressed, but it's not pronounced like on higher-key/mechanical keyboards. What I personally like is that the keyboard is wide enough to have a dedicated num-pad and that the layout is closer to a full-size keyboard than on most other laptops I've had, Ctrl is in left-most position as with normal keyboards with Fn key to the right of it. The Delete/Ins etc are moved to the top row next to F-keys, but I've not found it difficult to adjust to.

No complaints so far about any keys stopping from working or feeling odd switching between it and my full-size more clicky keyboard.


Thanks! Will add this to my list :)


This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.


I agree, except I haven’t found a ChromeBook I’ve liked.

For $900, you can buy an M1 MacBook Air. It is the sexiest dumb terminal I’ve ever used.

I had used Linux on a laptop for about 15 years prior. It is a fine 90% solution.

The Air is barely the same class of device: no noise, almost instant-on, battery lasts forever.


Modern Macs are fine as terminals I suppose, unless you travel a lot or are on metered Internet. If so, then you have a lot of stuff to turn off. See:

https://gist.github.com/mmillar-bolis/dcfb3d1814fb0532eb3c71...

https://github.com/keithbarrett/Mac/blob/master/DisableMacSe...

https://gist.github.com/b0gdanw/40d000342dd1ba4d892ad0bdf03a...

I haven't used a Mac full-time for years, but the straw that broke the camels back for me was when I was traveling through multiple countries (including in New Zealand and on flights) and I could not get my damn Mac to stop sucking down, well, whatever it was doing. The number of default services running seems to have gotten even worse since then by the looks of these scripts...


>For $900, you can buy an M1 MacBook Air. It is the sexiest dumb terminal I’ve ever used.

There's something ironic and wonderful about a laptop with more processing power than an i7 desktop being called a dumb terminal.


I was indifferent to chromebooks, until the Lenovo Ideapad Duet 5 (13.3"). Very cool machine.


Agreed with M1 MacBook Air.


I went to BestBuy last month with this same idea in mind. I've got 4 desktop PCs under my desk I use for game dev but I'm curious to travel and remote desktop into them. I was on the fence about maybe just getting a small laptop and large portable monitor but eventually landed on a $329 "HP - 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 8GB Memory - 256GB SSD - Natural Silver" that seemed to check my two boxes cheap & large screen.

I haven't made the purchase yet because I'm concerned if I should reach for a more expensive laptop that I can do work on in case I'm ever unable to connect over RDP.

Curious to hear if anyone else has had any success with this kind of setup?


The weakest link in this setup is your current internet. I've found while traveling, internet is generally pretty bad under, 10Mbs. Making this a rather difficult task. American view.

At home, my "laptop" is a dumb terminal that docks to my desk monitors. But computes to servers in the closet.

At my families who have (150:down/10:up)Mbs it was no different from being at home. I connected over wire guard. I even took my zoom/client calls in vms over rdp. Passing my webcam from my local laptop -> wire guard -> server. I also used parsed to stream gaming from home.

Conversely, I was at an Airbnb recently with (5/0.512)Mbs DSL. It was a real chore. For the internet black hole, I've opted to go for a SFFpc instead. That can fit into checked baggage or carry on. Even if I can't setup a monitor and keyboard at the airbnb hotel. Having both off in lodging wifi is suitable enough.


This only works if both the desktop and the notebook are always online and on a good connection. For the desktop, this is doable (although not everywhere, first world is pretty good connected but besides that it can be really hard). For the notebook, it all depends.


Fair. I locked in an good price for fiber at my house. I only have to worry about the quality of my connection away from home. That's just cost of doing business though.


I'm a lot on boats and before covid also in planes. I would not be able to do my coding on my desktop at home (which, like yours, has a good fiber connection)

Even if I wanted to, I cannot get a stable and fast enough connection there to work on a dump remote terminal.


Why does the notebook need to be in good connection? Use mosh.


if all you need is shell/tui, sure. what about app development, web development etc?


Does anyone have a recommendation for a remote desktop software for Linux? Specifically one that also supports using a browser, video, etc. RDP (server) with proper GPU acceleration works great for this, but unfortunately is Windows only.


I agree with this. I bought a Dell XPS 15 a few years ago with discrete GPU with the hope of using it for dev/mild gaming. Its now just used for remote desktop.

Horses for courses though. If I didn't have space for a desktop I'd be happy to have the XPS 15.

Multi-monitor is my big requirement when it comes to development. The 15" screen is good, but it doesn't beat a proper side by side setup.


I went this route albeit differently. I purchased an older model Thinkpad T440 for about $300 off eBay a few years ago, and it's one of my favorite laptops to have still. 8GB of RAM, 4th gen mobile Intel i7, 240GB SSD. I've been using it for probably about 3 years now as my travel laptop.

The keyboard on it is really fantastic, but the touchpad is not something I'm proud of.


Can get a much better desktop machine at the same price, and upgrade/repair easier.

Then a ex-corporate laptop from eBay that I'm not too worried about breaking/losing. Dell laptops tend to have the best support of Linux.

I spend >80% of my time in the same place, so it makes sense for me. If I'm out and about, I won't be doing "full" work anyway.


Hi. OP here. I had also considered this but I don't have much space where I live (family etc etc). Maybe one day :)


A "beefy" workstation these days doesn't need to take a lot of space. For example the Intel NUC machines are pretty powerful and can fit in the palm of your hand.

I'm considering something like this for personal compute-intensive projects, or things that I want to continue running while my laptop is closed.

If your workload is really greater than a machine like that can handle, you should probably be considering some kind of cloud based compute option.

The only case I can think of where a really powerful local computer is required is the link stage of a huge monolithic binary, which by it's very nature is not parallelizable, but you'd never do that on the laptop anyways.


I also do this. I recently picked up an Acer Spin 713, which I'm very happy with. On the one hand it can be a terminal to a honking desktop machine, or something beefy in the cloud, but it also runs Linux just fine, so I can do a fair amount of local development if network access is limited or non-existent.


I carry a Dell XPS1500(64GB, 2TB, 4K) that is probably 3 pounds to use at work and at home with external monitors, it's better comparing two one desktop + one low-end laptop for me.


I totally agree with this too. Additionally, MrChromebox is doing some great work in terms of fully liberating some of these older machines!


i'd second this. i set up a Tailscale vpn account and now just RDP into my dev machine at home to do any coding on my spare time.


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.


X1 owner checking in. I use it and I'm happy with it. It hit the sweet spot when I bought it a couple of years ago.

I don't recommend it for the given price point. I included all extra options such as insurance and the extra disk space.

I found it isn't fast enough in general usage. Had problems running a serverless javascript project. External monitors with scaling will bring the iGPU to its knees. The display itself is too small to effectively program on it, and the CPU is not powerful enough to run a multitude of unittests or compile more complicated programs on.

I use my X1 with an eGPU and two 4K monitors. Webdevelopment happens in VSCode with heavy usage of the VSCode remote docker plugin. This enables me to run unittests and development tasks on a beefy PC.

Taken all together this raises the price quite a bit.


What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine?

The battery on the m1 was to enticing. I went back and forth between a ThinkPad x1 with Linux and this MacBook air. It's impressive and I have no regrets. When there's an arm laptop released with similar performance and battery life I can run Linux on, I'll definitely be picking one up


> What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine?

For me, the 16GB RAM limit on the MacBook Air is the principal reason not to get one, otherwise I would have already. As soon as you go to 32GB or more with M1, it's a big price jump to the Pro range, not sub $2000 any more.

I have been looking at the M1 MBPs, but the price makes it need justification, and the 2.5 months lead time even at Apple stores for the higher models, has kept me from committing. And when I tried the MBP keyboard in store, it felt not as good as the old <= 2015 keyboards.

Firefox in daily use is constantly swapping on my older MBP that has 16GB RAM, and when I used Safari, it wasn't any better. (It was the trigger that made me go back to Firefox, as it used less memory than Safari when I switched). It quickly rises from 10GB to using 30GB after a little browsing; I've seen it go up to 67GB. Some sites will do that with just one tab open. It took me a long time to realise that's why browsing was so janky and pausing a lot, and back when I used Safari everything else paused often too. So I'd not be eager to buy a new laptop with the same problem.

Perhaps the Linux dev VM and several Electron-based communication apps that have to be running constantly add up, but it always seems to be the browser that grows to use much more memory than there is available.

With Firefox it seems to be a fixable software problem, because when it's triggered to release memory it will drop as fast as it can swap in, with no apparent affect except a long pause. I expect it's all cache. The memory statistics fluctuate very rapidly sometimes, gaining several GB in seconds, even when just clicking around text-only sites like HN.

But it's not realistically going to be fixed, so I think it best to get at least 32GB RAM for the next machine, whether it's a Macbook or not.


67GB won't help your 32GB machine either. The problem is that many websites are full of memory leaks. I had similar issues about 5-7 years ago. I then installed "the great suspender" to suspend tabs that weren't really used. That became spyware or something.. But chrome is pretty good at handling all the tabs.

I'm on M1 since it came out and couldn't be happier


It's unlikely to be website memory leaks. If it was, on "memory flush" it wouldn't drop to about the same amount every time that fits comfortably in RAM, with no visible effect except the pause. This event does not unload tabs.

With the numbers I'm seeing, think it's too risky to commit to 16GB non-upgradeable RAM for a laptop that must last many years to justify the cost. The ask HN author wants their sub-$2000 laptop to last for a long time, and I'd worry that even if browsing is smooth in 2022 brand new, what about 2025 and 2028, with more dev and comms apps running as well?

Usually it climbs to 20-30GB or so then triggers the flushing, with many annoying freezes on the way, but yes I've wondered if there's really an upper limit. Given any amount of RAM, will it use all of it and then try to swap even more? Could more RAM even be worse due to some accounting-ratio bug? (67GB is rare, only seen with Telegram which does have a severe leak.)

Like you I'm auto-suspending inactive tabs, and their size certainly isn't a problem after restarting.

Yet I see large RAM fluctuation even on text-only HN tabs. Just now, a new HN tab used 2.5GB more RAM in a few seconds before settling down to 1.2GB. Later the flush event happened and dropped 9GB. The new tab is still open. It wouldn't be a problem if it was just vm stats, but it does cause too many annoying freezes.

So what I think I'm seeing is that bloat has accrued over time, and optimising memory, or perhaps doing it right on MacOS, is not a priority for FF devs (or Safari in my experience with many tabs or windows), and won't be any time soon. If someone has usage similar to me, they should at least look whether RAM usage is borderline now before assuming 16GB (non-upgradable) will be enough over the years they want to keep using the laptop.


Client memory usage has plateaued, now that everything is a web/cloud app.


Storage maybe, RAM less clear. Some web apps use more RAM (in the browser) compared with the equivalent native app, and on a laptop people like to run multiple apps at the same time, whether web or native.


I'd argue that it continues to increase, because everything is a web app packaged into a Chromium instance.


> Avoid Microsoft Surface Laptops, which require patches to run Linux, Microsoft doesn't offer an Image ready to burn on a stick.

Is this indeed the case, and likely to continue for the foreseeable future? If so, that is really disappointing. I came in to recommend the Surface Laptop 4. You get the choice of an AMD or Intel processor, excellent build quality, and a 200dpi 3:2 touchscreen. And if you choose the "business" version, you can spec it with up to 32GB memory.

My wife is a die-hard ThinkPad user, but I can't stand the widescreen nature of them. I love how the notch on my MBP gives me that little extra bit of vertical real estate. But that screen on the Surface Laptop! My kids and a niece have them, they are amazing.


>> Avoid Microsoft Surface Laptops, which require patches to run Linux,

> But that screen on the Surface Laptop!

I've been considering the Surface Laptop for the 3:2, high PPI screen. According to this [0] so long as you have a recent stock kernel, the only things that don't work are pen and touchscreen (touch screen requires kernel patches on Intel arch, AMD doesn't support at all). I can live without both.

[0] https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...


You can use this to track Linux compatibility on Surface Laptops: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...

If a 3:2 screen is something you really want, I think getting a Framework is a better option, but if you can settle for 16:10, you'll have a lot more options now/in the near future.


That's a good point, I didn't realize the Framework laptop was 3:2. I really, really like this aspect ratio on laptop-sized displays.


I have very mixed feelings about DELL. They have great hardware. But after buying an Ubuntu laptop I discovered it had custom DELL drivers that work fine under Ubuntu 18, but have no support for later versions of Ubuntu.

I got everything working again except for the webcam, which kind of sucks.


had a similar experience (not with the webcam specifically but generally with their pre-installed Ubuntu 18). the system they shipped out with pre-installed Ubuntu 18 was really troublesome and would not sleep properly and would go 100% CPU when doing so which was maddening. it was pretty unclear what I did that fixed it because I tried so many things, but, somehow got it fixed and now have a somewhat temperamental but pretty fast laptop 3 years later and am running latest Ubuntu 22.04 beta :)


How are the keyboards on recent X1 Carbons and X1 Nanos? I have a 6th gen X1 Carbon (bought 2017) and I am in love with it. It just survived nasty a 4ft drop with only cosmetic damage.

However, I've heard that the keyboards on the recent models are not as good. It's the only thing stopping me from getting a Nano...

Edit: Linux support is stellar on the X1 Carbon, which is no surprise since RedHat issues its employees with business Lenovo laptops.


I had a X1C bought early 2018. Not sure about the generation from the top of my head, but it had no hpdi screen. Battery life was great and Linux worked fine.

In early 2020 it got stolen (full disk encryption with a strong passphrase luckily). I got a X1C 7th and expected it would be as good as the previous one. The first bad surpirse was the HiDPI screen. Xubuntu did not work well with it, it required a lot of fiddling. Well and then I run some non-Xubuntu app here and there and it required extra fiddling. In the end I gave up and just reduced the screen resolution to some "classical" value and everything was fine again. Have not noticed that my code is worse because of slightly less smooth fonts... (Some distros might be easier in that aspect, Wayland is reportedly better, and to my suprise even i3 seems to work rather well.)

Even worse the battery life is significantly worse than on the previous model. To my understanding higher resolution displays require more energy, there is nothing you can do. Have not checked whether the newer CPU could also have an impact. A full working day on battery is hardly possible anymore, even with little playing of videos or similar.

Finally my current X1C 7th came with a 4G modem that has no Linux driver at all. Not a big deal for me because I have only 1 SIM anyway and my phone has good data rates to share.

More on the anecdotal side: A firmware update was broken recently. I guess bugs happen everwhere. What I liked that Lenovo guys where active on github and a fix came quickly. Couldn't resist thinking: Like in the IBM days when Thinkpads got good support.


The most recent X1s still have good keyboards, but slightly shorter key travel than the older ones. If you're a ThinkPad keyboard lover it might bother you and is probably worth playing with one IRL before buying. If you just want a pretty good keyboard, these still have that.


7th gen keyboard is the best in the X1 Carbon history, 8th gen had reliability problems, and the current generation (9th) is very very good, if you are ok with the reduced key travel. I happen to like it, but it is really a matter of personal preference.


Think pads are nice for the many reasons in other comments. However, the track pad and nibble-mouse on it are unusable in my opinion. For a laptop, it requires an external mouse to function, so if high mobility is a factor, I would look elsewhere.

My basic $600 acer laptop from 2017 has better trackpad than my ThinkPad from work and was expandable enough to cover my needs with a quick Ram and SSD upgrade and it has a really good, large track pad still working to this day.


IMO, Lenovo ThinkBook 13s Gen2 (Intel) and Gen3 (AMD) are hidden gems which are not much talked about.

- 16:10 matte screen with no PWM

- Very good port selection (1xUSB-C, HDMI, 2xUSB-A)

- Good battery life (for a Windows laptop)

- IMO, the best keyboard layout

- Fingerprint reader

- It is actually around 1100$

- A difference between Intel and AMD versions is that AMD version does not support full length M.2 SSDs, it only supports the short ones.

- But it is probably not for computing usage since it is thin and light

A new gen with Alder Lake is announced a few weeks ago. It is almost the same but the biggest difference is that there are 2xUSB-C + 1xUSB-A instead of 1xUSB-C + 2xUSB-A. And the touchpad will be glass I think. Surprisingly the battery life seems a bit shorter on the upcoming gen. I currently cannot decide whether to buy Gen2 or wait for Gen4.


The Gen4 is supposed to be out this month, although many people are having their Lenovo laptop orders delayed (by months, even). You can check out r/thinkpad for the scuttlebutt. I like the new 16:10 2560x1600 display, but I don't know if there's going to be a keyboard lottery like with late-gen Thinkpads (distinct quality differences between Liteon and Chicony parts) - my biggest disappointment with the new version is that the AMD versions are Ryzen 5000 not 6000. At <45W the Ryzen 6000s have a distinct performance and battery-life performance vs the equivalent Intel 12th gen parts (like 50-100% better battery life when testing similar laptops for light loads like basic web browsing).

I'm vaguely on the market, but willing to wait for a few months to see some real-world comparisons since I'm a full-time Linux user, and stuff like suspend behavior rarely gets proper coverage until a fellow dev starts using them - I've already taken a couple for the team the past couple years, so figure I'll sit back this round.


Yeah, the ThinkBooks (both the 13" and the 16" models) are great! Linux Support is also good. The 16" models are also great if you need a laptop with a dedicated (consumer) GPU without any kind of "gamer aesthetic". :D

They don't support classic sleep (S3 standby) anymore, though. But I'm not sure if any modern laptop still does. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


As a longtime user of System76 servers, desktops, and laptops, I can recommend them.

* The hardware has always been "more than good enough." I mean, you can always nitpick about some or other detail, but the machines work, they work well out-of-the-box with Linux, and they last a long time. We still have eight-year-old machines that are humming along.

* Support has always been outstanding at everything from answering questions to sending replacement parts with detailed how-to instructions. On one occasion we sent them an older machine for fixing and shipping back, and they handled it flawlessly.

* Most importantly, I've always felt that everyone we've interacted with at System76 actually cares about me as a customer. They're not a charitable organization, so they need to make money, but I've always gotten the sense that doing right by customers is a higher priority.


I second System76 for these exact reasons as well. I like their hardware and Pop!_OS customizations, but I love their company and support.


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 Ansible already, but I think it's a worthwhile weekend project if you are starting from scratch. You just need to be consistent and have all changes go through Ansible.


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?


This is the classic "not the question you asked" but I strongly recommend running Fedora on laptops, particularly Thinkpads. It works perfectly on every Thinkpad I've tested on (a good half dozen models at this point) with the only exception being the usual graphics stuff if you have non-integrated or Intel graphics.

There are two reasons for this - Fedora ships a far more recent kernel than most distros (the only competitor being Arch), and Redhat does a lot of work on Thinkpad support. On my T430 at home literally everything worked out of the box with zero config, all the way down to fingerprint reader and keyboard backlight.


What needs to be done depends on the model. Some models are Ubuntu certfied [0] and just work. They even sell some with it. Some need a little tweaking. I recently got a P14s Gen 2 AMD at work and all I really had to do was install the OEM kernel to get WiFi working and set sleep in the BIOS to Linux instead of Windows. Otherwise everything works.

[0] https://ubuntu.com/certified


I run PopOS (System 76's Ubuntu derivative) on my T490, and it works flawlessly with all the upgrades (aftermarket SSD and RAM). I think the only major system-level config I've done is install TLP for better power management.

I would recommend PopOS over plain Ubuntu because they have some nice utilities for managing things like hidpi, and in my experience hardware "just works" more often, e.g. wifi.

Caveat, I didn't get the discrete GPU, those can be hell, and I made sure to get an Intel wifi chipset (same price) since it has the best Linux support.


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!


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.


Ubuntu runs flawless out of the box on my X1 Extreme Gen 2, when I installed it only Gen 1 (or 3, not sure anymore) was officially supported by Lenovo. My guess would be if the "same" laptop is supporting Ubuntu according to Lenovo it should be fine.

There were some BIOS settings to change first to get the machine dual-boot ready, nothing fancy so as I don't even remember what it was. Getting a bootable USB stick was more challenging for me!


I'm running Debian on a t490 and have had no issues so far. I can find a replacement t490 for under 600$ and it's a great dev machine.


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


Is that playbook open source? I would love to see it.


Purism Librem 14

Is my daily driver currently running Linux mint.

- overall very happy with it for my uses. I don’t do a lot of intense workloads on the laptop, mostly stuff like text editing and latex compiling.

- battery is great. With screen brightness reasonably low and working on low intensity tasks, I could get 8 hours I think pretty easily. Probably 3 hours of video calls.

- durability is good so far. My librem 13 lasted about 4 years before succumbing to a hinge issue which I believe has been addressed for the 14s

- ergonomics are good for me, trackpad keyboard etc. are great especially once you get used to them.

- expect some challenges if you’re going to run a different distro. Be prepared to put in some effort. Things are probably better now it’s been out longer.

- due to foss requirements the wifi range isn’t the greatest. You can easily and cheaply switch out the card if you want.

- One issue I had was plugging in a certain external dock to the usb c port and the entire computer shuts off immediately.

- not sure how it fares for intense compute tasks. I rarely get any fan noise but sometimes it will kick in noticeably.

I also echo others that, depending on the battery life situation, take another look at framework. I haven’t put a ton of hours on it yet but a very pleasant machine.


Also using a Librem 14 as my daily driver but less happy with it.

The machine seems to lose track of its charge level pretty easily, so it tends to power off suddenly, especially if it’s been in sleep mode for a while.

The hinge feels a bit flimsy; I’m hoping it’ll hold up long-term but there’s some give to it that makes me a bit nervous about its longevity.

The keyboard has been disappointing; my experience with it has been that it doesn’t register key presses until just after the tactile bump. Suffice to say this has led to a lot of missing keystrokes and frustration.

Also, something (I think some wires) seems to catch on one of the fans on the underside, leading to a rather annoying noise (and I suspect reduced fan performance) when any pressure is placed on the bottom panel. I’ve cracked it open to see if I can shift things around a bit, but the cable routing is tight enough that I’m not confident I can without damaging something.

I really wanted to like the Librem 14, because it’s goals really resonate with me, but… it isn’t as polished as I’d hoped it would be.


Bummer, sad to hear that. Thanks for sharing


Do you have the 3-cell or the 4-cell battery?

> expect some challenges if you’re going to run a different distro.

There are some battery life/suspend issues that seem to be rooted in the disabled intel ME. I'll have to track it down, but I recall purism trying to get a kernel patch upstream from their PureOS. It surfaced on Arch, but I haven't seen it on Qubes, which is their other first-class OS.

> trackpad keyboard etc. are great especially once you get used to them.

N.B., they only offer US qwerty. The keys have quite a bit of travel, which is fine for me. The thing that really still gives me some grief is the mini shift key. If you're a right-pinky shifter, you're going to need to stretch. If you miss, you've hit up-arrow and now you're typing on the wrong line.

The speakers are perhaps the worst I've ever heard. Doesn't bother me because I never use them, but on that note, bluetooth is a little tricky out of the box since pureos doesn't ship a driver. Not sure if another distro just works.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere, it's really simple to take apart, upgrade, fix, etc. No torx, glue, or esoteric fasteners. I dumped 64gb ram in it for like $200 and it took about 3 minutes.


4 cell battery.

Don't recall hitting the battery life issues, at least in a long time. I do remember having to install some packages about battery management but it wasn't tricky. This is the one thing Framework really trails on for me.

Speakers - agree they're not great but I think some of that has to do with the default EQ, see https://forums.puri.sm/t/better-eq-for-librem-14-speakers/13... I don't know what the current status is, they're ok for me on Mint but my standards are low.

Bluetooth - worked easily for me on Mint.


Second a Purism librem 14. It is a really high quality design, the SW support is fantastic, and it is easy to repair.


I've been a dev for almost 20 years. Though a bulky laptop with finest specs would be great, I need mobility so I had luck with these three. Super portable, yet powerful.

1. Dell XPS 13

2. Lenovo X1 Carbon

3. HP Dragonfly Elite (current)

Regardless of the brand I always stuc with i7/16Gb and at least 512Gb NVMe storage.

One downside with my current machine (HP Dragonfly) is it comes with 8th Gen intel processor not really a big problem for me, but fan it a bit louder to my liking.

Coming to Linux compatibility I've used Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo X1 with no issues. Haven't tried Linux on the current machine yet.


These threads always surprise me with the number of people who buy new thinkpads. Nothing wrong with them I'm sure (well, maybe a few things wrong with them), I just never even considered it as an option.

I recently picked up an old 2005-ish (edit: 2011 actually) x220 for a few hundred quid off ebay which seems to be running nicely. Specs aren't anything to shout about but it works fine for what it is. Durability wise, its clearly been running for at least 15 (edit: 10?) years so its got something to it.


I also have a x220. A couple of the benefits/tradeoffs:

The keyboard is the best, I have never used a laptop with a better one.

Using a dual core sandybridge is slow but if you develop on a slow machine you'll never build something your customers can't use.

You can install coreboot on it and remove IME.

It is on the list of systems Qubes (and every other Linux) runs 100% on.

The screen is only 720p but you can install a 1080p with a mod.

12in is borderline too small a screen size but the laptop is compact.

An extended battery in it gets around 8hrs of use.

Almost the entire machine is magnesium, aside from a strip of plastic at the top covering the antennas.

It can actually run 1600mhz 16gb of RAM.


> if you develop on a slow machine you'll never build something your customers can't use

This is the philosophy I try to go by. Some call it premature optimisation, but I just like working on optimisation as part of the normal dev process, rather than a secondary step which is all too easy to gloss over.

It gets a bit more difficult when it comes to game dev though, which is the current dilemma I'm in (need a new personal machine, which may end up being the x220, but that'll find use in any case).


Someone bought that laptop new at some point.


The X220 is from 2011. And they are good laptops yes, I have mine at a friend still running fine with an SSD and a bit more RAM.


> I recently picked up an old 2005-ish x220 for a few hundred quid off ebay which seems to be running nicely.

The x220 launched in 2011. It's an old machine, but not that old.

That said, I ran one myself for years and highly recommend it if you need a barebones, durable laptop for under 200ish.


Yep, your right. I did a google search and it came up with 2005, but that turned out to be the entire X-series. Cheers Google.


Love me some plastic frame laptops


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


> "battery life" vs "Optimized for intensive computing usage"

These are contradicting conditions. (Unless maybe on an M1?)

If you do use the CPU then battery life will drop even for the best laptops to a few hours max, while the fans will spin like crazy emulating a helicopter taking off. All the above mentioned laptops will behave like that.

At my last place I had a Thinkpad P1 which is supposedly for the above mentioned purpose, and still I suffered from heating and noise, and the battery life was abysmal (2 hours of Zoom call would deplete it, for example).

Although I just noticed that you didn't mention portability - in which case buy an older Thinkpad T4xx/5xx which had the dual battery setup, and buy some additional batteries too, and you can swap them on the fly. Sadly AFAIK Lenovo no longer makes these laptops...

Battery life tips: 1. get the simplest screen (FHD instead of 4K, 90Hz...). 2. don't get an integrated 3D card.


Yeah, it’s an unfortunate reality with your bog standard x86 laptop. Choose performance or portability, silence, and battery life, but not both.

And sometimes even when you pick your trade-off, it still doesn’t work out. See my Thinkpad X1 Nano I selected as a silent ultraportable with decent battery life — it spins its fan up to surpassingly loud levels when plugging in a 2560x1440 60hz display or whenever it’s doing anything even remotely strenuous. If my needs for that machine didn’t include Windows, I would have been so much better served by an M1 MacBook Air it’s not even funny (and even then, I sometimes wonder if a bodge of Windows on ARM in a VM on an M1 Air wouldn’t work better).


> Battery life tips: 1. get the simplest screen (FHD instead of 4K, 90Hz...). 2. don't get an integrated 3D card.

This sounds counter-intuitive. I thought integrated graphics used less power than a discrete amd/nvidia card.


Yes, I can only imagine the parent made a very unfortunate choice of wording, meaning "integrated" as in "integrated into the laptop," and "3d card" as "discrete graphics card." You definitely want A graphics card for battery life (not that you can buy a laptop without one) and you want it to be one integrated into the CPU.


I used a Dell Precision running Linux and it was a very good experience with a lot of power. It is essentially an XPS 15 but you can opt-out of the dGPU and just have Intel Xe graphics which makes life easier with Linux if you don't need a high-end GPU.

15", good keyboard and trackpad, amazing screen (get the 4k option and scale at 200% so you have a 1080p look and feel but super crisp), decent sound, powerful CPU, lots of RAM, M.2 PCIe SSD, etc. Although if you really want to get better battery opt for the 1080p screen which is still great.

Battery life with Linux on any laptop is kinda rough no matter what in my experience, it's okay but not MacBook Pro with M1 levels. Also the fans get kinda loud which you may or may not mind but is kinda par for the course with most Intel laptops as they're all a few mm too thin imho.

As for why Dell? Well personally I have always had superb experience with Dell support. Engineer on site a day or two later to fix any issues and when I needed a replacement they sorted it within a few days and let me send the old machine back a week later so I could backup and restore without a huge hassle.

I know others have had bad experience with Dell support but for me (in Europe) it has always been fine.


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.


Do you have any thermal and/or noise problems with the HP?

I've had several HPs over the years, including ZBooks, and every single one got very hot and blasts the fans all the feckin time :/

They were all company machines, but it's put me off ever buying one myself.


No. Actually that was a main requirement for me. I hate noises. The computer is completely silent except when doing heavy computation or maybe long video calls in the browser (and then it's not that bad, though I would not notice that much because my headset blocks a lot of noises), and only if KDE's power setting is not set to power saving (though some things can feel a bit sluggish then). And the computer keeps cool.

The 840 G3 was similar in this respect (that's how I discovered the Elitebook, the lab had an agreement with HP at the time), except I had to turn off the secondary HDD I chose to take when tweaking the configuration with hdparm -Y.

Though the ZBook seems more focused on performance than the Elitebook, so maybe the Elitebook will not cut it if you expect similar performance.

The ThinkPad actually spins its fans more easily than the HP I think, but it is also more powerful. The HP's noise when the fan do spin is also less annoying than the ThinkPad, it's a soft blow.


Interestingly the heat problem for my zbook got solved by reapplying thermal paste just today.


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/


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


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


I'm happy with my T480 (has NVidia, but I disabled it -- it did mostly work with open source drivers, just warmish)... USB-C DP, PD works.

The only issue I have is that original Docking station sometimes fails to switch audio outputs (Ubuntu LTS).


No issue on my two thinkpads (E580 and Yoga 390), my Dell Latitude 5310, my GPD Pocket 2 in that regard.

I have an HP elitebook 8140p that works well with netflix, hbomax and youtube but seems to have lower framerates with other video streaming services. Not sure if it because it uses the nouveau driver or because it is just more than a decade old.


Really? Unless your machine is completely unsupported by the kernel, I find that hard to believe. Even Nvidia machines "just work" these days...


I would say not mature enough yet. There are plenty of things missing support right now.


Depends on the development.

I am doing C development, with some Javascript thrown in for the client, quite comfortably on a laptop from 2008 (Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 320GB spinning rust HDD).

I use WindowMaker, Firefox, Xterm, Vim, Git, Clang and GCC. from login Window to my first xterm opened in the project directory is around 500ms. My build (C only) is currently around 700ms.

My editing is lag-free only as long as Vim's 'cul' option is turned off.


I have a Core 2 Duo laptop. I pimped it up to 3GB of RAM and an SSD. I also installed Ubuntu Mate. It works great for remote work, when I mostly just use it as a terminal into my workstation. I can also use MS Teams on it without issues.

I read somewhere that it might support 5GB of RAM (4GB + 1GB), but I don't want to spend more money on it on a gamble.


What cul option? Cursor line highlighting? I also recommend putting synmaxcol to something low, like 80-128.


> What cul option? Cursor line highlighting?

yes.

> I also recommend putting synmaxcol to something low, like 80-128.

I'll keep that in mind if it slows down, but TBH it's working just fine right now.


Have you considered System76?

https://system76.com/laptops

Another one i found interesting is the framework laptop. Its completely modular.

https://frame.work/

And apparently their firmware is opensource.

https://frame.work/blog/open-sourcing-our-firmware

That said if you are looking to play games or have a dedicated graphics card your options will be severely limited.


Depends on the games I suppose. The games I like (CS, sleeping dogs, cities skylines) all run spectacularly on a Ryzen 3 desktop (not System76)

Well, I haven't actually tried the last one since I added more RAM, but I imagine it would work well too.


Hi. OP here. I read some of the previous HN threads on System76 and just laptops generally and it seems like these won't be a good fit for me now. Maybe later when both products are a bit more mature.


Yeah understandable.

We all have our own requirements that change up our own decision.

For example i CANT stand large laptops. 12.5-14" is my max. That excludes a lot of options though.


Unless you’re training some ml models or doing heavy graphics, you might not need super heavy compute/gpu. If you do need, then remote into a desktop or vm is another option.

I have for the past 5 years or so focused on battery life over compute for my machines and then used RDP to access a VM dev machine hosted in azure. It’s worked great, and I was able to use free azure credits that came with msdn. You can do similar with ec2 and google compute. There are also container based dev environment services out there now. The benefit being you don’t need dev cruft on your everyday carry laptop. Plus if you get a new laptop or have multiple, your dev environment doesn’t change.

That said I did just switch to an m1 max as I also need to do Xcode. That has been a solid machine, though might be above budget. You could run Linux on it pretty sure.


I recommend System76 laptops. The Serval WS has full desktop class hardware in a laptop chassis (so battery life is a distant second -- my Serval WS lasts for about 40-90 minutes on battery depending on workload). Their other product offerings are pretty good too.

And, best of all, they provide first-class Linux support and provide their own Ubuntu-derived distribution, Pop!_OS.


I love my system76 lemur pro. It has amazing battery life. It's quite small and isn't going to be the most powerful thing in the world. I remote into my ryzen 5950x desktop when I need real power


I love my Lenovo Thinkpad (X1 Carbon). From the little things like hardware switches for the webcam and microphone to the big things like the excellent keyboard feel and Linux support (I use Manjaro). HOWEVER, get the premium screen, because WOW the 1080p screen isn’t great.


This.

I love my current one to bits (X1c 7th gen) - almost weightless, sturdy, excellent battery life, excellent connectivity, wonderful keyboard.

Oh, and the 1080 screen, which isn't great, but did help improve battery life significantly over the other offerings. I get a full work day out of mine without a charge, which is most useful whenever I'm in the field.


I have 4 of them for family members. Myself uses Dell XPS15 but it's from the employer. I will get myself a Carbon X1 more likely for personal usage.

Lightweight, robust, powerful enough for development and daily use, we had them for a few years, no complain so far.


The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port.

As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these devices, ultimately a device that’s more practical for me in day to day usage wins out.

That generally leaves me with a more established manufacturer. Lenovo Thinkpad and Ideapad have options in this area and run Linux just fine. Dell XPSes are good too, though I wish they’d offer an AMD option. HP Envy/Spectre devices are rather decent too, though getting the touchscreen and sensors to work on these can be fiddly because HP compensates for their broken BIOS through the Windows drivers instead of just fixing shit.


> Dell XPSes are good too

Be very careful. They are very good laptops, and Dell's customer support for businesses is stellar, but the XPS machines play VERY bad with Linux. There are some XPS machines that are shipped with linux, so they should be fine. But most of them have wifi/bluetooth chips that have no support at all, or very bad support.


Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience.

On my 9343 bluetooth did not work initially, and on the 9370 the fingerprint reader is not available (no driver available), but apart from that linux is just working - and I'm not particular fond of spending time on setting things up.

Much more of an issue is that the xps, as every non apple computer does not support s3 sleep anymore. So just closing the lid and putting it in a bag can lead to overheating and battery drain.

Honestly I don't get, why we can't have decent power management unless you buy a mac.


> Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience.

That's good to hear for you, but I'm not just making this up. I have the XPS 13 9310 which mostly comes with the AX500 chip for wifi and bluetooth.

- For about half a year it had NO support in Ubuntu (non-existent drivers)

- Then it finally got drivers, but it was extremely unstable. After an automatic update from ubuntu, the wifi no longer worked and it took several weeks for it to be fixed.

- The bluetooth VERY often won't turn on after a reboot, requiring me to reboot about 5 times before it finally works.

- Same for wifi, even on the latest drivers it often can't find any networks.

- Some networks can't be found by the linux drivers. No problems at all under windows, with the same laptop.

- Crashes or freezes of the whole OS as a result of these drivers.

There's probably a ton more issues that I'm forgetting...


I have a 9310 32gb model with the ax500. With a 5.17 kernel and the WLAN.HST.1.0.1-05266-QCAHSTSWPLZ_V2_TO_X86-1 ath11k firmware, the machine has been flawless. Well maybe not the fingerprint reader.. i installed some updates and that broke but I never really used it so I haven't bothered trying to fix it.

Oh and make sure you configure the nvme to AHCI in the bios. The intel raid stuff is trash and causes major battery / suspend issues in my experience.

https://github.com/kvalo/ath11k-firmware/tree/master/QCA6390


I mean that sounds like problems with one wifi card which can be swapped out for about $30. Swap it out for something like the ax200 and I bet those problems go away


My xps had normal sleep untill s bios uodate removed ut. I eas wondering if this gave me grounds for a lawsuit


Dell XPS has a Linux-specific line, called "Developer edition", which is intended to be Linux-compatible (it can be indeed be configured with Ubuntu on purchase).

Their compatibility is not as good as they say (it needs a couple of tweaks, one of which is crucial, otherwise the machine eats batteries while on standby), but it's still decent. Definitely not "VERY bad".


I have an XPS 13 9310. What's this crucial tweak? I've been running it on a vanilla Arch install for about a year and haven't noticed much battery drain on standby (maybe a few % per day left sleeping?)


The bug is this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1808957. Battery draining overnight - yikes!

It's possible that Arch ships with the workaround/fix by default.


I’ve owned two generations of them and exclusively run Linux on them (I think the 2016 and 2018 releases). One of them was a Developer Edition from work, but the other one was a generic store bought. Never had any issues with WiFi or Bluetooth.

I’ve always run distributions with kernel releases that aren’t months or years behind upstream, which might have helped as far as hardware support goes.


In case anyone is interested, I have had good results with Linux on a specific Dell XPS machine:

http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/how-i-use-debian-dell-xps-13...


XPS 13 usually has good Linux compatibility. But XPS with 15" screen can be a bit of trouble to get all the hardware working under Linux.


Dell XPSes are good too

Unless you plan to put them into a bag or backpack suspended:

With regards to transporting your laptop in a bag or backpack, safety should be your primary concern. You should always turn the laptop OFF [...] Under no circumstances should you leave a laptop powered on and in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin. The laptop will overheat as a result of that action.

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/FAQ-Modern-Standby/td-p/7...


It’s a problem with Windows. I’ve a dual boot MacBook Pro and I run into that issue only when I put the laptop to sleep when running Windows. I don’t have the issue when running MacOS. You would think after 30 years Microsoft would figure out how to keep a computer asleep.


If you run it on supported hardware it works just fine. The Macbook Pro is simply not open enough for Windows or Linux to support it.


There's a BIOS setting you have to change in a lot of laptops nowadays. The default, power hungry sleep mode is usually labeled "S1" or "Windows modern standby". True sleep mode is often labeled "S3" or "Linux", confusingly enough.


If it's an AMD laptop or older Intel. Intel has deprecated/removed S3 support in Tiger Lake-U:

https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/k0fm7z/system76_l...


Past, informative discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952&p=2


This is true of any laptop. I've cooked a 2012 macbook pro in a backpack because suspend didn't work right.


One small note on the screen (especially wrt travel and/or OP's requirement for a good battery life): "worse" screens will often give significantly better battery life. I downgraded my 4K/60 to a 1080/60 on purpose and tripled my battery life on otherwise-identical specs (3 to 9 hours on two Razer Blade Stealth models).

Great points, though. Especially brightness -- even if you don't need all those nits for day-to-day use, they're great to have as an option when you do! Don't skimp on the screen specs that matter to you.


Maybe you want to consider a beefy desktop with a battery-backup and plugging it in someplace cold and setting up a laptop to remote into it. You can get a lot of bang for your buck in a desktop, and going lean on the laptop means you don't need to compromise on cpu memory or storage. They even make special video cards that do the remote desktop encoding (PcOIP) that are really quite fine for coding, but I find xpra to be just fine for me.


I'm actually on the fence for something like this. Waiting to hear about cooling capabilities of the upcoming Dell XPS 15 though.

In this case, instead of laptop i'm thinking of tablet with a big screen instead.


> maintaining battery life

Using less battery power:

- use `powertop` to find processes that are sucking power

- stop browsers when not in use (e.g. `killall -STOP firefox-esr`, then same with -CONT when using them again, although Firefox tends to first spin 100% for a little while then; alternatively simply `killall firefox-esr`, Firefox will usually re-open the tabs)

- I use hibernate

Retaining battery life over the years:

- AFAIK Li-ion batteries last longest when kept cool, and when kept in the 30%..70% charged range most of the time; there used to be ways to tell ThinkPads to stop charging when reaching 70%, I've never used that though.

- I'm still hoping LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries will be sold for laptops some day, they would last much longer (but I guess when it happens, most third-party ones will be fakes (re-labelled Li-ion)...)


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.


Hi. A combo of Enterprise CRUD software and SaaS.

I use Docker/asdf to run 3 different projects so the memory and hard disk space I use add up to quite a bit.


Do you actually need a laptop as your main development machine?

A few years back, I switched off of using a laptop for my main machine. This allows me to spend my money on hardware with more cores, more ram, better gpu, better linux support, bigger screens, and upgrade paths. $2000 will buy you a lot of desktop computer.

Further, if you don't spend all of your $2k on fancy cases and overpriced gpus, you will have enough money leftover for a cheap but decent laptop. This laptop can then remote in to your workstation anytime you actually need the high end computing power.


Yeah I considered this too but it's not very child friendly. I live with family and I try to optimize for mobility. Maybe one day :)


I don't know why everyone loves XPS so much. I got one to use for dev and it just sucks.

Why I say that, you ask?

1: Advertised as "space age cooling" is just a dinky heat pipe: this laptop has HUGE cooling issues, super loud fan, impossible to share screen during meetings without everyone hearing your portable jet engine. I mitigated this by placing some good thermal strips to connect the heat pipes to the aluminium back of the laptop, this dropped it a few degrees and the back only gets slightly warm, not hot. Why couldn't Dell have done this? I'm still tempted to repaste the thing as well.

2: Dell's usual early 2000s corporate BS. The fan is loud. But you can't control it. Well you can, but you have to use Dell's crappy Power software which gives you three different settings for it. No speedfan, no manual fan control etc as it's all locked down.

3: Variants with 4k screens from about 2019 (idk about other years) with integrated graphics just _cannot_ drive the 4k panel properly in terms of performance.

4: The cooling sucks

5: The battery sucks pretty bad, you might get a couple hours out of it at most (esp on Windows).

6: The cooling sucks

Granted, they provide drivers for linux/support it etc which is great, and the machine itself (at least the one I got XPS 9380) is pretty powerful - it just can't cool itself well enough to get the performance unless you're fine sitting in front of the world's loudest white noise generator. Only thing is I paid £1650 for it late 2019...now they're available for like £399 secondhand. No wonder, they've probably all cooked themselves.


Here was my thermal pad install: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/glh92c/comment/ftda5m...

It did improve things by a decent bit, but under full load it still wants to melt itself. I guess we can blame consumers complaining about laptop undersides becoming a bit warm.


MSI Creator Z16[P]

You should be able to disable the dGPU if you have no need for it, within the BIOS, to improve battery life.

As for why I recommend it?

1) It has a thin, MacBook-esque aluminium chassis.

2) A choice of two biometrics - Fingerprint and Facial (the latter works with Howdy on Linux).

3) The processor is a 11th (Z16) or 12th Gen. (Z16P) Intel Core i9. The former uses 3200MHz DDR4 AND the latter uses DDR5.

4) They both sport a RTX 30 Series dGPU for creative work or gaming.

5) MSI has decent Linux support historically, for their laptops at least.

6) MSI laptops feature a "hidden BIOS" which exposes hundreds of options and toggles (from undervolting and over locking, to tuning PCIe slot power limits). This is quite helpful at times.

7) It has a panel that pretty much ticks all the boxes except HDR: a good resolution of QHD, high colour accuracy (∆E < 2), a high refresh rate (either 120Hz or 165Hz), as well as touch support.

8) It sports RGB keyboard backlighting, if that's your thing.

9) It has a great selection of ports, with one (Z16P) or two (Z16) Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB [Type-A] 10GBps ports.

10) MSI laptops of this size usually sport two NVMe slots, for expansion. You could even use one slot for a Google Coral. Furthermore, the included NVMes from MSI that I've had have been "top-tier" in terms of throughput.


> However, I am curious about users' experiences with:

>the Purism Librem 14: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

https://forums.puri.sm/t/no-nonsense-review-from-an-actual-u...


There was a recent discussion on the StarBook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 - in the comments I mention a few other laptops I've been looking at that may be of interest as well as my own review/experience w/ a laptop w/ the same chassis as the KDE Slimbook 15/Tuxedo Pulse 15.


Tuxedo pulse15 is great.

Only issue I have so far is that I have a crumb stuck under the shift key and haven't figured out how to get it out without damaging the key. It's a very flat keyboard which may not be for everyone.


If the compressed air suggestion doesn't work, you could also try 90%+ isopropyl alcohol which might work to dissolve any bits and is electronics/keyboard safe. Otherwise, drop a line to Tuxedo support, I've seen XMG/Tuxedo guys be very active on their forums/subreddits, so I think you have a good chance of getting a useful response from them.


Have you tried compressed air? I had a similar problem with an old 12" MacBook with the old super shallow keyboard and compressed air helped me blow crumbs out.


That just worked! Thanks!


Best laptop i ever had


No Intel proc with a U, T or Y suffix. These are all lower power versions that won't sustain high performance. You absolutely sacrifice battery significantly with anything else though when under sustained high performance, including strong AMD processors, but they may do a little better.

Next is discrete graphics. If you just need multiple monitors, an Intel G CPU will usually do it. If you need discrete GPU, again you're going to sacrifice on battery.

For longevity, you might want to consider a Xeon laptop. Lenovo has these, so they're one option.

One measure of how much sustained performance a laptop can take is the charger wattage, usually buried in the spec sheet. In my experience chargers are rated only slightly higher than the wattage necessary to keep the machine going at top performance. A laptop with a low wattage charger is unlikely to sustain top performance for long. But it depends on your definition of "sustain". 10 minutes? Half an hour? Constant load of 60, 70, 80%? The charger heuristic just weeds out low power though. There's less of a guarantee that a higher wattage charger == higher sustained performance.


I've been running Ubuntu on an LG Gram 17. Huge screen (true 17"), 18 hour battery and weighs Les than 4 lbs. It also has a metal chassis. Only device that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.


One more very satisfied user of an LG Gram 17. A beautiful LG 2560x1600 screen, amazing (also LG) battery life, less than 3 lbs.

I really like the keyboard and touchpad, more so than on a Mac (but that's very personal). The RAM can be upgraded to 40 GB, and there is a second M.2 slot if you want disk mirroring or striping.

I run Fedora and have zero problems. (I generally upgrade 3 months after a release.)

The model that I have has a 72 Wh battery and newer 17 and 16 inch models now come with an 80 Wh battery. Mine is 3 years old now and it's aged much better than I expected. I can watch a 4K movie over a network CephFS mount and after 2 hours, my battery is at 80%.

I bought it on a whim at Costco, and I seriously think I'll get another one next time (maybe a 16"). Costco drops the prices to $350-$400 off every few months, and they're a steal for what you get.


Another very happy LG Gram / Linux user here. Fingerprint reader seems to work for me, running Ubuntu 22.04.


so... I upgraded to 22.04... and the reader now works.


I've got a LG Gram 16" running with Fedora. Loving it.


I absolutely adore my System76 Darter Pro. System76 is actually great for many different price points since they are extremely customizable. For example, you could do something like opt for a cheaper processor but more storage whereas many manufacturers force you to have more expensive everything (Apple is the worst offender, but all seem to do this to an extent).


I would get a System76 Lemur Pro with whatever upgrades for your budget, or whatever other form factor that suits your tastes really.


Lemur Pro owner here. I personally have super-mixed feelings about the machine.

Pros: Battery life is excellent. Used it for 12 hours while walking around a factory doing an IT system install, never had to charge it. Slim form factor is nice. With an upgrade to an i7, additional RAM, SSD, etc., performance is good for any task not requiring a GPU. It would easily be the best laptop I've ever owned, except for...

Cons: WiFi chipset died within months of purchase and had to be replaced. Battery swelled by year 2 to the point that the mouse was unusable, so battery had to be replaced as well. The machine shipped with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which had a Linux kernel bug that caused the machine to freeze when trying to throttle up/down the i7 CPU for power management purposes. I contacted System76 about the problem, and they didn't know anything about it... I ended up having to troubleshoot it myself, at which point I told them the issue, and they sent out an email about the fix to (what I assume was) all Lemur Pro owners. I thought buying a Linux laptop from a company that specializes in making Linux laptops would let me avoid these kinds of nagging issues around things like drivers and power management bugs, but alas it did not. More startlingly, I would have expected a company that specializes in Linux laptops to at least be AWARE of such an issue on their machines, but it seems they had no idea... I feel like I would have been just as well off going with a Thinkpad.

Related final pro: It was frustrating to have to replace multiple parts in this machine (especially so early in its life), but I have to give credit to System76's self-install policy. They sent me the parts and detailed instructions for doing the repairs myself. Saved so much headache.

Overall, I really want to love my System76, but I'd have to think really hard before buying another one.


Another Lemur Pro owner. Short essence: Casing quality is rather poor, if you like "used look" after 6 months, you may actually enjoy it. Wears off very fast. However being able to modify their firmware (I remapped quite some keys) and given that the battery can run up to 2 business days, I'd consider buying this device again. No hardware/software (using their Pop_OS!) issues since using for it 15 months now. Ah, and I like how slim and light weight it is (roughly 1kg).


Lenovo T14s here (AMD version). Stuff works out of the box on Debian, except for the LTE modem which works after a bit of a struggle. Battery life is better under Windows but I haven't bothered working out why, probably need to set up some power management stuff. Associated dock drives three 1920x1200 screens at the same time as the built-in one.


If you have issues with sleep mode draining like crazy: Update the bios and enable "Linux" ACPI mode, which they claim will destroy windows beyond belief but I haven't noticed anything. Since otherwise s3 (aka deep sleep) is disabled and s2idle might be broken prior to the 5.15 kernel.


Fyi, they pushed a bios update that fixed my battery issues. It's not m1 good or anything but after the update it's average and sleep works correctly without draining it.


Battery life is very bad here.. I've a T14


I have the same question but I'll tweak the parameters somewhat: I want a movable developer workstation. I'll never (or almost never) be using these components of the laptop: battery, screen, touchpad, keyboard. I also don't care much about size weight since I'll be 99% sitting still. On the contrary I'd like it to be large and heavy, if it would help with noise and thermals.

Are there good "movable" laptops that run cool and quiet yet have high perf, and achieve this by actually making the laptop larger?

I want something with good build quality (not a plasticky gaming rig). I want something using recent CPUs (intel 12th gen, or recent Ryzen). High power (35W and up) that can run for hours without throttling. I have tried various Dell models (precisions) but the thermals are abysmal because it's only half the thickness it needs to have in order to manage that kind of power.


Do you use a portable screen? I'm also looking for a "movable" workstation. I have considered a mini PC like Intel NUC coupled with an external GPU, but between the screen and the GPU case I fear it would start to be inconvenient for plane travel.


No I use normal screens 27” and up. I just move the machine between a home office and computer and have screen/keyboard/mouse etc in both locations.


I'm in a similar boat and the ones you're mentioning are all ones I've considered, along with some in the comments.

Just to throw one more out I haven't seen mentioned is Razer. I haven't purchased one but have played around with them in person.

The Razer Blade laptops in particular seem really nice to me, with nice build, screen and very nice touchpad, in a good form factor and nice specs. The MacBook Pro is maybe the closest thing I've seen to them. There's apparently a version of a Razer released by second company with linux on it (blessed by Razer), targeted at development, although the "regular" Razer laptops can be had for much less cost, more in your range. I used to think of Razer laptop as a "desktop gaming alternative" but some of the newer ones seem like they could be used for development. I've seen the Blades in AMD and Intel form.


Would definitely second Razer. The build quality and touchpad are the best I've ever used and the only real downside is the price. But if it's in the budget, I'd definitely recommend.


Some thoughts:

1. I have heard only good things about Framework. If I were getting a laptop today, that would be on my short-list

2. I have had an HP zBook 15 G3 for many years now, so no issue with durability there. However, I just tried to price one and the price has gone way up, so it's out of the $2k range for anything reasonably configured for developer use.

3. Battery life; if it's going to be mostly plugged in, select the option in the BIOS for that; it will stop charging the battery sooner to increase longevity of the battery. If it's going to be use unplugged a lot, try to keep it above 20%. Ignore any advice about fully draining the battery to prevent "memory effect" that was dubious advice even for NiCd batteries that could potentially suffer from memory effect and was never true for LiIon chemistries.


System76. They have great customer service and contribute to open source community. Support them.


This shop is very US-centric and it also appears that you cannot figure out what shipping will cost unless you create an account. This is not a good first impression.


Shipping for me (in 2020) was $35.32.


For what it's worth, I have been using cheap-o refurbished HP Elitebooks (the 830) off of eBay running Fedora and they are great. I have been running my old one for years and years and the new one for about a year or so.

Battery life erodes over time but a new battery will fix it right up.

It depends what kind of development you're doing, of course. I am not sure what intensive computer usage means to you, but I would say I use it intensively! But I am not doing anything that requires a GPU nor am I re-compiling kernels every day. But for my humble needs I've found it's a cost-effective solution that holds up quite well.


You should look into a Dell Latitude. Specifically, look for one with Intel Graphics (for better Linux compatibility and battery life). I'd personally go for a 74xx model. They work great with Linux, in my experience. They're also business-grade, so they have decent longevity and repair-ability, with easy to find parts.

https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2021/08/12/dell-latitudes-a...


Speaking of longevity, given the performance of m1 and absence of any moving parts except keyboard — go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there.

Would be still more performant than most of intel laptops in 2000$ range.


> go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there.

You can’t really do that, yet. Asahi is making good strides so that you can run Linux on the M1, but it’s not there yet for a daily driver.


You can run Ubuntu under Parallels on Mac M1. It works well for us.


I have some concerns about longevity of many of the current M1 machines. Yes, they have no moving parts other than keyboards (and fans in some models) which would be covered by AppleCare+ [1] so it would seem that you could keep on going a long time.

However, one of the non-moving parts does wear out: the SSD. It is not clear to me from the AppleCare+ TOS if an SSD failing due to reaching its write limits would be covered. The TOS says it does not cover wear and tear, but I'm not sure if SSD wear falls under that or not.

I like to keep computers a long time. I kept my 2008 Mac Pro until 2017, and only switched then because something I needed required the latest MacOS and 2017 was the year when the 2008 Mac Pro stopped getting the new major MacOS releases. I'm now only considering replacing the 2017 iMac i got then because the display has developed a vertical line of bad pixels. If not for that I'd be staying on it for another few years at least.

The SSD in my iMac is still around 98% after over 4 years and so seems like wear won't be a problem, and it is replaceable with some difficulty (OWC calls it an "advanced" repair and suggests having a pro do it).

But I've got 64 GB in the iMac. I don't think I've ever seen it touch the SSD for swap/paging [2]. I'm worried that on many of the M1 Macs that would not be the case. All of them except the Studio and the 14/16" MacBook Pros top out at 16 MB, and I've noticed on my iMac that I'm usually using between 16 GB and 28 GB.

I've watched quite a few reviews on YouTube of people testing the M1 machines under heavy load in quite a few different configurations, and one thing that has stood out is that there is surprising little performance difference in a lot of these tests between maxed out memory and minimal memory configurations. These tests do show significant swap usage on the low memory machines.

Similar thing in a lot of the comments on HN from developers using M1. Great performance with a lot less memory than I expect a machine used for heavy development to need.

I think what is going on is that there is so much bandwidth to internal SSDs now that on recent machines if you are hitting swap for task switching the I/O is so fast that it won't noticeably limit performance. It would only be when you are dealing with data structures big enough that you need to hit swap during random data structure access in a single task that you'd start really noticing a slowdown.

My concern then is that with the M1 Macs that have 16 GB or less RAM they may be making enough use of swap that they won't work out when it comes to longevity. Most people's needs grow over time as software becomes ever more bloated, so I'm worried that even if they aren't touching swap much now they will be in 3 or 4 years.

[1] In case anyone else missed this a year or so ago like I did, Apple changed the way AppleCare works. It used to be a one time purchase that extended your warranty to 3 years and then ended. They changed it so that you can buy it as an annual subscription that you can keep renewing indefinitely.

[2] Hah! In the middle of typing this post, my swap usage went to 99.0 MB. Kind of weird. I didn't manage to get any swap usage when I purposefully tried doing several large things trying to see how much memory I actually needed, and now I'm just sitting here with everything idle except the browser and I get swap.


Linux is great. I'm with you. As someone who's been on Linux for 8 years I can say that if going with Linux be prepared to experience driver compahility issues and random broken things although the occurrence chance is small. Be prepared to spend time to deal with them. Also be prepared to have suboptimal drivers that don't fully Make use of your CPU and GPU and their power management functions. In some cases you can also be prepared to not be able to find good software for the use case you'd be looking for.

Or just go on with Windows + WSL.


I primarily use Pop_OS (Ubuntnu derivative) on a Thinkpad X1 as my development laptop. I'm able to run a few containers and VMs, vscode, some utils, spotify (via it's electron app), bluetooth keyboard, bluetooth headphones, with no issues. Pretty much all of the hardware stuff like bluetooth and wifi was supported out of the box.

I normally work next to a power outlet, but if I don't have one my typical dev setup (vscode, spotify, some bluetooth, some containers running) gives me somewhere between 3 - 6 hours, which is pretty good imo.

When I was feeling cheeky I setup Steam and got some basic games running through the Proton compatibility layer. That seems to have broken my ability to do updates due to some issues with Nvidia drivers and I'll look at that at some point.

Overall though, an X1 with Linux can get you really far these days. I do have Windows around to dual boot if I need to but it is much slower and burns through battery like a jet plane through fuel.


After a ton of research I picked up a Dell XPS 15 (9510) around the holidays for roughly 1600 USD and switched from OSX to Manjaro and I'm in love. 11th gen 11900H processor. I started with the super high def display but returned it for the FHD display. The resolution of the FHD is more than sufficient (it's actually GREAT), the battery life is better, and it's matte display is much easier on my eyes. Things I love - 16GB of RAM (that is upgradable, and will be upgraded), two SSD slots (both occupied). I set it up to hibernate since s3 sleep is gone. I open/close my lid many, many times per day, and it comes back quickly enough for me (probably ~5s). And I appreciate that it's totally powered off that way when the lid is closed. The only hardware issue I'm aware of is the two extra subwoofer speakers don't yet work in Linux, and they sound really good in Windows (I kept a dual boot, but I very, very rarely use it). But the speakers still sound decent w/o the subs running, much much better than my wife's Ideapad. I don't know if the fingerprint scanner is operational and don't care about that, but everything else works well. I do lots of Zoom calls, camera is fine, etc, etc. I code on it all day almost every day, and the keyboard is a high point. I'm a trackpad user, and Linux trackpad is subpar, but after a ton of tweaking I'm happy and functional.


Depending on where you are I would probably recommend looking at used Thinkpad P1/X1 Extreme. They tend to be within your budget if you're looking at a model from a year or two ago and they work very well on Ubuntu (Debian as well if you look at grabbing non-free drivers for whatever isn't working) and Ubuntu derivatives.

While I know there are a few suggestions for gaming oriented laptops, but I'd suggest you are careful going down that route as some of the cheaper models feel very flimsy and if you end up working on this for longer periods of time, things such as sharp edges, sub-par (rattly) keyboard, bad screen or hell, even weak hinges, can be very frustrating. There is also the issue that Linux support might not be as good.

I had an E460 and it worked fine for 6 years (I dropped it a few times and someone spilled coffee on it) but even 4-5-6 years down the line I could find replacement keyboard, replacement battery and even replacement case for it. When I gave it to be used by someone else, I had swapped these parts out, paid probably 60$ for them but I knew that the laptop will keep running fine for a few more years. I don't think I could find replacement case/keyboard for some gaming laptop 6 years down the line...? Or maybe I could and I just haven't had the chance to look.

To sum up, get an older Thinkpad or maybe even an older Dell Precision.


Since you were seeking laptops I imagine you're fine with the computing power laptops usually offer.

I recently purchased a ThinkPad E14 gen 3.

It has a 6 core 12 thread Ryzen 5 5600U, with 24 GB of memory (8 GB soldered + 16 GB I installed later).

I run Linux exclusively. No Windows or dual boot or anything like that.

I currently run the latest Fedora 36 Beta. On this particular OS I have none of the usual Linux problems.

- Wifi works on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

- Bluetooth works seamlessly. Picks up my wireless mouse and headphones right after boot/wakeup. Couldn't say the same about my older Linux laptops.

- Sleep/suspend/wakeup etc works.

- Camera works. Btw it has a shutter.

- Screen resolution is full HD.

- Battery life of about 6 to 7 hours on moderate usage. I think you might be able to customise your order with a bigger battery and faster charger.

What doesn't work: - Fingerprint sensor

Note that I did not have to do any workarounds on my machine with Fedora 36 Beta. YMMV.

Some general thoughts on the ThinkPad E14:

- Material quality of the E series is definitely not as great as the T, P, and X series of ThinkPad. But then again, it was much much cheaper, and I think the quality is okay for the price.

- You can upgrade memory, storage, and a few other things by opening up the bottom panel.

- Keyboard is great. Trackpad isn't as good as the ones on the Mac. I personally like the 3 physical buttons above the trackpad.

- Choose your display wisely. There are TN displays as well as better quality displays.

------

My friend has the same laptop, except it's on Ryzen 3, memory is only 8 GB, and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. On his machine, there are the following two problems:

- Display always goes to full brightness on boot.

- Memory shows only 6.2 GB (usually it shows 7.7 on other Ubuntu laptops with 8 gb; on my Fedora it shows the full 24 GB).

However, these are OS specific problems and workarounds exist. Also, I'm hoping things would be sorted out in the newer versions of the Linux kernel.


Sidebar: do you have an opinion about which ThinkPad series currently has the best material quality, disregarding weight as a factor of such quality?


I haven't used it extensively, but the X1 carbon impressed me.

Where I live the X1 carbon is crazy expensive though — even more expensive than well spruced Macbooks.

The newer M1 Macbooks have impressed me. Though I love Linux, I don't do anything that can only be done on Linux. Hence I hesitate to spend more than a Macbook money on a ThinkPad.


I'm a big fan of the LG Gram 17. It's the lightest laptop with a 17 inch screen ever made, even lighter than a Macbook Air. It's not the most performant machine so I wouldn't buy it if you need the best performance, but it's certainly good enough for software development. Just get a anti-glare screen protector with it since the screen is very reflective.


Have you considered an HP Elitebook? I am using an Elitebook 850 G7 given by my company. I have been daily driving it for a year now with Ubuntu 20.04 (previously an 840 G3 I think) and have no complaints.

I use it with triple monitor setup, all 32 inch 2K (I find 2K better for programming) and use it with the Hp 120W dock.

I even upgraded its memory to 64GB myself from Amazon for much improved quality of life (I give Intellij 24G alone; have at it!)


If you care most about battery life, aesthetics and keyboard, then the pinebook pro is a great choice. You can spend the $1800 you save on cloud VMs or a kick-ass desktop.

Cons:

The touchpad is acceptible, but middling. (I am a stickler for touchpads.)

The battery drains in suspend mode out of the box. Supposedly, there are fixes, but people have mixed reports of their stability.

You'll want a separate device for music streaming and zoom.

Anyway, I have one, and it is perfect for my use cases.


I have a Librem 15v4 by Purism. It's no longer sold, but it's a nice laptop. It's the only Purism laptop with a 4K screen. For some reason, you can only find FHD screens these days.

System76 has some decent laptop options for Linux, but all are FHD.If I had to purchase a new laptop today, I'd look at System 76's Lemur Pro or Purism's Librem 14.


Consider buying used/upcycled. With Linux you're in good hands: the older models tend to have better support.

The T-series Thinkpads are excellent. They're rugged and designed for falls, spills, and travelling. There are still manufacturers producing extended battery packs and chargers for them. They're designed to be upgraded and modified.

Bonus: you'll save some silicon from reaching a landfill for a few more years. And they're cheap. If one bites the dust you can replicate your setup to a new one and get going again without breaking bank for another $2k.

Unless you're planning on doing bleeding-edge real-time 3D graphics work, the likelihood that you need a big, expensive machine is pretty low. Depending on the software stack you intend to work on you might not even need that much RAM (though if you're doing stuff in bleeding edge C++, Rust, or Haskell I'd recommend >16GB).


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.


So to answer your question seriously I would say look at some of the newer laptops that have OLED screens and (if you need it) smaller dedicated GPU. These are going to be super future proof and you can sometimes get last years model very cheap. I do not have a ton of experience with them but personally might get something like the HP Spectre or maybe a Gigabyte or MSI laptop.

What really holds me back though is the damn keyboards on modern laptops - they all suck. The old keyboard on my Thinkpad T420 I love in comparison. There are people that are actually replacing the whole innards (you can even buy them premade and shipped from China) of I believe the Thinkpad X301 or similar with modern CPU, modern screen, etc etc. And on the plus side anyone who sees your laptop at a cafe is going to think its an old POS and not even think about stealing it!


"I looked into the Framework laptops and so far it looks like they are still a bit beta."

I have been using one since December and it has been fairly reliable. Linux support is quite good as is the community they've built. It's also cool that the Embedded Controller firmware is public and they have some community members' threads showing how to customize it as well.

They had some teething issues with power drain from the expansion ports while suspended - an upcoming BIOS update is supposed to fix those. The battery lasts around 6 hours, so if you can live with that I would highly recommend this for your needs.

On maintaining battery life, they have a feature to limit the battery charge level to a customizable limit (usually people like to set this at 80%). Other than this, the fact that this is easily user-replaceable should help.


Huawei Matebook looks interesting alternative to Macbook

https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-14-amd-2020/

Similar build and high power CPUs (not the mobile optimized/low power)


I have several different laptops. Current main (the unit I'm typing this on) is Linux Mint 20.2 based, AMD Zen2 8c/16t, 64GB ram, 3TB NVME, Renior (AMD) and 1660Ti (NVidia) based. HP Omen 15 2020 edition.

I get about 3-4 hours of battery life (meh), with iGPU (AMD). Very light. Good keyboard, and trackpad. Everything works under linux, though sometimes the BT vanishes (I think I need to reseat that, but I was lazy and installed a $10 USB BT5.1 adapter). I do heavy development/builds/testing on it.

I run windows in a kvm instance window if I need it (less than once per quarter at this point). Came w/o OS. Bought it on Amazon late 2020 for about $1850 or so.

The laptop it replaced (though still alive) is a Sager 4c/8t Intel with GTX 1060 ish dGPU, Intel iGPU, 64 GB ram, and 1.5 TB SSD. Very capable machine, though battery life is abysmal. Maybe an hour. Its my current living room machine. Came pre-installed with Windows, but I installed 2 SSDs, and bumped the memory from 16GB to 64GB. Reworked the boot and virtualized windows (windows should never touch physin government's Federal Ministry of Education and Research.cal hardware). Bought in 2018 for about $2200. It is heavy, bulky, good workhorse, but older Intel CPU.

I also have a Sager I bought in 2010. Still works, 16GB ram, 4c/8t, 500GB SSD, GTX 560m graphics. Its my basement lab machine.

All 3 run Linux Mint 20.2. All function well (even the old machine). I expect I won't need to replace the new machine for quite some time.

That said, work laptop is finally a Mac, having been stuck on horrible Windows machines from Dell. Had many driver/OS problems with windows, machines crashed regularly. BSOD and others.

Newer M1 Pro now. Far more stable than windows, almost ... almost as good a UX as linux. CPUs are fast, though even with Homebrew, I can't build everything. This one ran the company about $3500 or so.

YMMV, but the HP Omen series is nice.


s/physin government's Federal Ministry of Education and Research./physi/g

sigh fat fingered this one


If you call Dell, they can make you a top of the line XPS or Precision that comes with linux from the factory.

I stick to the thin-n-light XPS 13/15/17 or the Precision 5570 or 5770. Rock solid build quality.

Note: if you call Dell they’ll give you a couple hundred bucks off the price on the website, and can do custom builds


Forget anyone who says just use a Mac or Windows. They probably haven't used Linux in awhile because most of their "issues" don't exist anymore.

My experience: Ubuntu and Fedora "just work" on almost any machine. If your hardware is super new use the newest version or beta for the first release cycle.

I used to have a ThinkPad, now have an Acer Swift 3, both "just worked". Dells seem to be good. System76 of course. Razer sells a dev machine these days. And so on.

Tip on maintaining battery life: charge from 20% to 90% and don't leave it plugged in, use appropriate brightness, realize that GPU heavy stuff, multiple monitors, etc... all use more battery. Stay away from discrete GPUs unless you know you need/want them, integrated is fine for most gaming these days.


I’d suggest relooking at Framework because I’ve seen so many positive reviews from people I respect, and it’s good to support that project. FWIW I’d buy one myself if I needed a new laptop. Might not be the solution for you, but I don’t think it’s worth discounting due to ‘Beta’ status!


I imagine everyone's answer will begin with "It depends". I can only give you feedback on my workflow & setup.

My dev hardware is an external SSD (USB3) running Debian. I virtualized my dev environment using qemu/kvm.

I have several old laptops with no hard drives stationed at various offices. I just plug in, boot from the SSD and off to the races.

If I need a laptop while traveling, I just pull from the old laptops pile and remove it's hard drive. Good to go.

I do have minimum specs for the hardware: 1TB Samsung SSD (be sure the cable supports TRIM!) 16GB Memory (Virtualization) nVidia graphics (hard to find those non-hybrid types) decent screen size.

In addition to normal backups of the host & VM, I do a weekly image of the VM. This helps greatly against damage/loss of the SSD.

Hope this helps


I bought an HP zbook studio g8 and I am running ubuntu on it. It worked pretty good when I first installed it but some things weren't working correctly like the hdmi output and the sd card reader.

Then I disabled secure boot and now everything I have tested works out of the box.

I am running the latest edition of Ubuntu Desktop. I usually try to avoid HP but the new ZBook line works perfectly on linux with good support. Altough it uses Nvidia which is kind of cranky with the drivers and I also think the battery drain is a bit too heavy on linux.

I am happy with it tho. I got a great keyboard, trackpad, screen and is plenty fast for me and my use case. I think I got it for around the price you wanted it and I even think they ship Ubuntu pre-installed in the US.


Never had too much problems running linux on Dell or Lenovo laptops. The fact that no matter where I am in the world I can find parts or support was a strong point to me to go the traditional route.

Now I make do with a Mac M1 and a companion samsung book pro, a machine that I choose because I wanted a very light (in physical weight) intel evo as a companion mobile machine running linux for when I feel that using linux is better than using Mac OS.

I run fedora on it, and other than the fingerprint sensor that doesn't work (at least out of the box, never cared enough to figure out if I could find a workaround).

I find it great that there are all those niche sellers out there, but I don't think going this route is cost-effective for most people.


My recent experiences with Dells have been that they last up to two weeks after the warranty expires.

I couldn't physically pick up an XPS 15 without it freezing due to case flex. It's a laptop -- this was killer.


A thousand dollar second hand thinkpad now (t or x1) and another thousand dollar one in two years.


Framework. I use mine as a daily driver. Gets about 13 hours of battery life and It’s repairable.


You can pick up a Lenovo P1 Gen 2 with decent specs for about 1000 to 1500 on ebay. Max ram is 64MB and usually comes with an i7. The battery life isnt great if it has a built in Nvidia quadro card, I get about 4 hours. I bought it to be able to do ML with it. My only regret is getting one with the nvidia card built in. I believe it gets about 8 hours without it. I ended up buying a RTX 3080 Aorus Gaming Box to do ML instead via the laptops thunderbolt port. No matter what you get, if you want to do ML on it. I highly suggest just getting a laptop with at least a thunderbolt 3 port, and just skip on having an nvidia card built in.


Yah, unless you absolutely need the discreet GPU, avoid it like the plague on the P1s. Mine cannot be fully disabled in the BIOS/etc, and its required to drive external displays. With Linux its hit/miss whether the machine works properly with any given linux distro nouveau vs the proprietary driver setup.

I'm in the situation where neither driver works 100%, and I just wish the laptop was wired correctly to just use the integrated GPU for everything like my older thinkpad. (AKA nouveau suspends/resumes properly, but can't seem to drive my monitors consistently, while the nvidia driver refuses to resume properly and breaks secure boot, etc).


I saved this HN comment in my favorites a week ago, has some good options that should be available soon:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31036929


In europe, you can use a site that offers a comparison across all vendors, with actual market prices.

https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&asuch=&bpmin=&bpmax=1533&v=k...

Next step would be to add technical specifications, perhaps limit the list to vendors with generally well linux support, or set the OS to no-os/FreeDOS/Linux-preinstalled.

Is something like that available for north america, since the request was in dollars?


I ended up buying an MBP 14" because of the apps, but I very very nearly bought a ThinkPad P14s G2 [0]. It's fast, cheap (wait for a deal) has good battery life (for a non MacBook Air), has a great, bright, matte 4k screen, and an Ethernet port. If I could afford to be Linux only like I have been in the past I would've definitely gone this route.

[0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P14s-G2-AMD-la...


If you're going for small(er) brands, another entry to the list is the [Penguin J4](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-j4-gnulinux-l...), which has a replaceable battery.

Speaking of big brands, the Dell XPS developer edition is on paper very Linux compatible, although in pratice, it's (insulting) marketing fluff (I've had one). I second the Thinkpads compatibility (I had several, I think they were T/W).


I usually buy a refurbished or new dell XPS-13 that is one or two generations behind the current Intel offering. Runs fedora and ubuntu perfectly and should cost about 1K. I usually get them on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325032670333?epid=28035701461&hash=...

There's one with 16GB and a 4K screen. Get yourself a portable external monitor and you should be very productive.

'


I bought a Librem 15 before the 14 existed. I was very happy with it (including battery life/suspend) for about a year and used it with Linux as my daily driver. Then hardware started to fail and now it freezes randomly. (I've replaced the memory. Must be the mainboard?)

Maybe I was unlucky. Also, the 14 may be more reliable.

After that, I almost bought a Librem 14, but I took a chance on the Framework. The only real problem is battery life/suspend, but it's annoying enough that I can't bring myself to use it as a daily driver.


Why the number goes backward?


Screen size. They had a 13 and 15.

Now they just sell their second-generation flagship, the 14.


Play around with laptop builds on https://xoticpc.com/ and see if any configuration there works for you.

Just check the hardware compatibility lists to make sure certain things like the WiFi chips have Linux support.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31014306

https://www.linuxcompatible.org/


Any device that can build its own kernel is a good SWE device.

However, I'd recommend a DELL or Samsung with a high-res OLED display. Those are gorgeous and have great color and luminance contrast for text.


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.


Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu is a lower cost alternative to Purism 14 and you get some possibly totally false mental guarantees about quality and linux integration via the Dell base.

The touchpad, at least on my model from a few years back, was horribly sensitive to palm touches. There were some config changes I made that may or may not have done anything, and I don't notice it anymore but definitely type a bit differently.

The other aspect is a 13'' screen is a bit small for dev work.

A purism is next on my list fwiw.


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.


I picked up a Dell Inspiron 7000 17" and liked these details: - Large 17" screen with slim design similar in size to many 15". - 2560 x 1600 resolution. 4K is too small, 1920p not enough pixels. - Dedicated Nvidia graphics. - Effective keyboard for coding. - Lower cost than XPS yet seemed more full featured.

Battery life is somewhat lower due to the size and higher performance components. But seemed like a good trade-off in the end for the better coding experience.


I think you're missing an obvious option: Lenovo supports Linux on all Thinkpads, and the AMD models like the T14 are a great bang for your buck, much less than $2000 even with 3y next business day warranty service.

I've been doing dev on recent Thinkpads for the past couple years, and honestly they're the least hassle of any laptop I've used in the past decade. I've run Arch, Ubuntu, whatever. work great, reasonably priced, excellent support.


Have you considered cloud machines for software dev?

Full disclosure: I'm a co-founder in a business that provides cloud environments for software dev.

One of my cofounders used to code daily from his ipad. I switch between my gaming pc and my mac. The flexibility and peace of mind is unbeatable for me. Plus its great for intensive computing usage since you can scale up and down.

That said, if Linux is your general purpose OS of choice (in addition to programming), than I completely get it :)


I've got ThinkPad X1 Carbon (gen 6) since it showed up at Costco (2018 maybe? idk) years ago and didn't have any real issues with it. The only thing that is not working is a fingerprint scanning, but I don't care. The battery never let me down.

I develop on the laptop with vscode and docker. This is intensive computing for me, but I don't do npm installs. Can you unpack what's intensive computing for you?


If you're already planning to use Linux daily, the Framework is a solid choice. I personally sent mine back (because of that "beta" feel), but it was more the software than the hardware- I am a Mac user and expected Linux desktop to just be a bit better than it is today.

The Framework hardware is easily my favorite laptop hardware (aside from Apple, but really they're a different category than Framework).


I bought a Dell Latitude 7490 refurbished from the Dell Outlet a few years ago for < $1k and it suited my needs. I’m not sure what the newest Latitudes are like but the one I bought had the following qualities:

1. Installed Ubuntu on it, never had any driver issues 2. Keyboard was pretty nice 3. Screen wasn’t very good, although I did appreciate it having a matte finish. Not in the same ballpark as a MacBook screen.


I've had great success with Lenovo X1 Carbon laptops running Linux (Debian with XFCE). I've also had good luck with the older Dell XPS laptops. Getting either of these for $2k would require a sale and if you want to run a lot of Docker containers you'll need to pick a beefier model.

My only annoyance, which seems to cross brands, is that none of the newer laptops support the deeper sleep modes.


I highly recommend you just start buying laptops (plural), install different Linux distros on them, see how they work, return them if they have issues. There's just too many weird combinations of chipsets and hardware configurations and power profiles etc etc. You will spend all of your time looking for "good hardware for a good price" and end up with crap Linux support.


This guy gets it.

Also, recent ThinkPads do not come with good Linux support unless they are explicitly sold with Linux OS. Lenovo has different firmware for Windows vs Linux now. I recently got a Lenovo P15v Gen 2i that does not work with Linux (I ended up returning after a failed installation).

Lenovo has a >4 month backlog on Linux laptops at the moment. So we will have to make do with something else.


notebookcheck.net has excellent in-depth review and "top 10" lists in various categories (gaming, office, workstation, etc)


Huawei’s MateBooks are really good: great hardware, good specs, and good Linux support (doesn’t ship with it but you can install it)


Have you checked frame.work?

They offer fully customisable laptop where each pieces can be replace.

Ps: I've just bought mine and tested it for few days so should take my view with a pinch of salt but so far the laptop is inline with my expectations.

You can check some reviews on YouTube as well.

https://youtu.be/jmgBwMHpP1w


AMD based Lenovo (5xxx or 6xxx CPUs - best performance per watt, very good open source drivers) from X, T or P series. X will be slimmer, lighter and likely with better screen (for media consumption), T and P will be bulkier but have a bigger battery.

Ignore MSRP on Lenovo websites: discounts ranging from 30 to 50+ percent are active more often than not.


I've been using the Tuxedo Pulse 15 for quite some time and I'm happy with it.

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


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.


I’ve been very satisfied with a Thinkpad E15, AMD Ryzen 7, 32GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD. Costed $1800

Before that I had another thinkpad that served me well for 5 years. It was actually still going strong but I figured out I wanted to upgrade before the coming Taiwan crisis just in case. Now I plan to own this laptop for hopefully a decade


I've been using a Dell XPS 13" 9310 for a year now with Endeavour OS/Gnome. It's perfect, IMO.


This seems relevant wrt Purism 14: https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/my8u2l/psa_librem_1...


Highly recommend the Librem 14 personally. Pureboot, great set of mainline Linux drivers in PureOS, plus a very easily hackable firmware (I hacked mine to change the keyboard layout/behavior).

The build quality is also surprisingly good, and you’re supporting a special purpose company that fights for the user!


I would go for framework.

Maybe if the Lenovo X13s (ARM) is out and reviews are good, that might be an alternative.

When 13 is a bit small, you could go for Lenovo T14s...

But honestly, if you just wanna use this machine for development, a used Lenovo T480s with 24GB RAM and HiDPI display would be more than enough and costs about 500 bucks.


I highly recommend Slimbook everyone I know they tried they loved.

It's built for linux (as others that you mentioned) and they contribute to KDE and others open source projects so as you can expect if you have any issue they will reply to your queries.

On the other hand purism probably is the worst you mentioned.


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


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.


While these are good guidelines, I came to the conclusion that life's too short to spend so much mental energy on this. If your devices need to be charged - charge them. That's it, that's the only rule.


Lenovo has a tool that can keep the battery at around 70%. If you are 80% working in the same location, then it can really keep your batter life longer. If you are moving all the time, then certainly keep it charge to 100%.


Apple has started doing this and I can't say I am impressed. When I unplug I expect my laptop to be at 100% not randomly at ~80% based on a guess as to when I might unplug.


> - 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.


I've been very happy with my Dell XPS 13 (a bit small, but my work laptop is also an XPS 15 which is a good size for daily use IMO). I recommend the developer editions for better network driver support (they use an intel one iirc).


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 I left off, battery still holding charge, so I'm just curious what is worth the tradeoff, especially when your priorities are battery life, computational performance, and hardware longevity (I get a new MacBook every ~5 years)


Not OP, but MacOS has very different ergonomics than Linux. My latest frustration on MacOS is switching between desktops/workspaces quickly. In any Linux distro, I can use both alt-tab and desktops to manage windows and switch instantly between programs. On MacOS, even when I disable animations using accessibility settings ("Reduce Motion"), switching workspaces comes with a delay during which the workspace appears switched, but keyboard input is eaten because the application window hasn't been given focus by the WM yet. Linux gives me the freedom to switch WMs, but on MacOS, I'm trying to cobble together something workable using alt-tab (the app) and accessibility settings, and still not succeeding. I've searched for a fix[0], but no luck so far.

I agree about power management, but having freedom to configure things like this is a bigger factor for me personally. As far as package management, my experience with apt has been better than my experience using brew, though both are serviceable.

[0]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-di...


Yabai + SKHD will totally change your workflow for the better. Sometimes I forget most people don't have it set up by default so I get confused when I read comments like these.

Tiling is snappy, workspace switching is instant. And I'm on a pre-m1 machine with 16GB RAM.


It's this kind of response that motivates me to post on HN about topics like this! I use Rectangle[0] for tiling, and I'm quite happy with it, but have not explored SKHD yet. Will give it a try now, thank you!

[0]: https://rectangleapp.com/


> serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux?

For a daily driver? Poor UI experience on MacOS. On Linux usually one of Mate, Plasma, WindowMaker, XFCE or Gnome will have the Window behaviour (snapping, tiling, maximising, switching) I want.

All of the Linux options have file-selection dialogs that don't suck. All of the Linux distros I have used for a daily driver have better software than brew.

MacOS kernel certainly has some nice surprises (compressed memory is impressive), it doesn't ever crash and it sleeps and wakes correctly.

OTOH, all the non-kernel software is, frankly, crap. They're unintuitive, hard to use and limited in variety.


> it doesn't ever crash and it sleeps and wakes correctly.

Maybe I have been unlucky, but I have experienced many panics across several different machines running recent MacOS releases. 2 of those being corporate machines, so I can blame the "security" software that gets deployed. My home Mac mini, does not have any crapware deployed, and it still managed to crash once or twice.

In contrast, my ancient desktop running Windows 10 has not had a single BSOD in the years since I built that Ivy Bridge machine. And this included running much more intensive workloads than the terminal/docker/text editor workloads on my Macs.


Serious answer: My work laptop is a toolbench, and I want the tools to operate exactly as I expect them to. For me, that means that I want a Linux environment, not a BSD-ish environment. I want my standard Unix tools to be the GNU variants, and for them not to be named with an extra "g" prefix. I want the OS to install binaries roughly where I expect them to be. I want the init system to work in a way I understand.

Basically, I want Linux because I am familiar with how Linux and Linux tooling works, and that makes me very efficient on Linux. Using MacOS is acceptable but it feels somewhat like having one hand tied behind my back. A seasoned MacOS user probably has the same feeling but in reverse.

(As an aside: In 2022, I don't recognize the comments about modifying WiFi drivers, compiling from source or having sleep/resume issues. That definitely used to be the case in the distant past, but over the last five years or so Ubuntu have really got their stuff together. I don't think I would have ever recognized the comments on brew, which I always found infuriating and messy compared to apt. Perhaps it all comes down to taste, and that's okay?)


Containers are a constant headache on MacOS. The likes of Lima have greatly improved the situation, but there are still several issues (network reliability and performance are significant issues).

> Do you have a habit of modifying your wifi drivers and recompiling the source?

Not even once. But thank god for the people who do put in the effort to code support for shitty walled gardens[1]. This age old strawman argument diverts attention away from many of the other virtues of Linux.

My personal coding and gaming machine runs Linux. My work laptop is MacOS. Almost every day (as no exaggeration) there is something new that doesn't work on MacOS, that yet another hostage of the Apple ecosystem has fixed for Apple.

> improved chasing dependencies vs just brew install

This is a very strange comment considering that brew was inspired by Linux package managers. Brew is incredible compared to what is available on MacOS (which, to be clear, is nothing), but it doesn't hold a candle to what's happening in the Linux world - especially with the likes of ostree, guix, and nix.

MacOS is an operating system designed for creators and influencers. It can be modified to the bare minimum of development competency. Even Windows pulls ahead of it with WSL, and that's saying something.

I can't comprehend why developers voluntarily subject themselves to it.

[1]: https://asahilinux.org/


+1 agree with your points. Although I wasn't sure about things on mac breaking every other day. I agree with your sentiment on Brew - it sucks incredibly hard compared to any other package managers from any Linux distro lol. Currently trying out Windows + WSL to decide between full-on Linux or Windows


The UI is atrocious on Mac OS X or on Windows.

Out of the box, Linux UI is a bit better - but it's easy to make it excellent and make it fit like a glove. Tiling or partially tiling managers outside of Linux are terrible.

Whether you like a default full fledged desktop experience with Plasma or you go with a super tuned sway, you can really get what you want out of your machine.

The UI is the main reason I try to use Linux as much as I can but there are tons of other advantages. Docker works natively and fast, developing anything (but iOS apps) is a smooth experience. Package managers are 20 years ahead brew or chocolate on Windows.

If you use Arch you get an even better package manager experience compared to other distro: you get bleeding edge packages + AUR, a user contributed repository of scripts to build and install custom packages.

If you use something like NixOS you get to define your system with a configuration file and you can truly bootstrap and switch between different systems with a CLI command.


The thing I miss most from Linux is strace. This is far outweighed by

1. The much frequency with which stuff just works on OSX.

2. The opportunities to spend $30 on an app instead of $300-$800 worth of time on software that is Free as in Puppy.


Are you serious? There is nothing comparable to strace on MacOS? strace can save you so much time if some software (your own or not) just doesn't work like you want. Of course problems 100% in user space are not covered. But I find a fair share of real world problems are.


> Are you serious? There is nothing comparable to strace on MacOS?

There's dtruss, but the information and options are nowhere near as useful as strace, and for some system calls it prints errors instead. read() and write() print access errors so you can't see what's read and written, same with stat/fstat, you just get an address, no file information.

Perhaps strace could be ported to MacOS but it's not. "brew install strace" says "strace: Linux is required for this software." :-)


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 company that supposedly is obsessive about user experience make one feel helpless and frustrated.

Overall, Mac feels less janky from a GUI/visual point of view than Linux, but frankly I'm spending more and more time on Linux because it's just more predictable. Also lots of Raspberry Pi tinkering.

A rogue Windows update bricked my machine the day before an important deadline. This is just so unbelievably unacceptable that I can't believe we collectively put up with this nonsense.

Yes, default macOS is more aesthetically pleasing than default Linux, but the helplessness when something goes wrong ...


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


I like being able to replace individual parts of my laptop with newer, better hardware without having to throw out the whole device. I like that this new hardware just works, instead of the OS vendor only supporting a handful of approved internal Wi-Fi modules.

It’s awesome that I can build custom PAM modules and disk encryption unlocking solutions to enforce that both a password and a YubiKey need to be present to unlock the disk. I love being able to configure my display manager to discard the decryption keys for my user pool when I log out to get the same kind of security that I’d have on a phone.

Being able to modify soft- and hardware allows you to add features that other OS vendors don’t yet support, or retrofit new features and functionality onto old hardware to make it usable far beyond its planned EOL.


> I like being able to replace individual parts of my laptop with newer, better hardware without having to throw out the whole device.

Do you actually do that, or do you just like the idea of being able to do it ? Even on a desktop PC, where upgrading is much easier and more common, I've never seen the point.

Either you upgrade fairly often, in which case you pay a relatively large amount for marginal improvements, or you upgrade every few years, in which case you need to replace so many parts you might as well replace the entire machine.

Say you upgrade the CPU to a newer model after a year, that's a fairly costly upgrade and how much additional performance will you get in return ?

If you wait a few years to upgrade your CPU, you'll find that the new CPU also requires a new motherboard, and the new motherboard requires a new type of RAM. They you find out that your old GPU is now a bottleneck, and when replacing that you realise your new GPU requires an new power supply as well. By the time you're finished all you've done is recycled the case.


See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31095339 for the replacements I did on my current device. I’ve replaced pretty much everything over the years. I only need to replace parts that actually become a bottleneck.

e.g., if just the RAM is an issue, I don’t have to buy an entirely new device and pay extra for everything else.


Choice? Good package manager and tool setup out of the box? Not having to buy a bunch of $10 utilities every 3 years to fix basic OS pain points that end up broken by an OS update or Apple killing some thing? macOS wants you do things the Apple way and going against that is a lot of pain in my experience for little gain.

My 2018 MBP would lose battery on sleep too. I don't even know what shutdown does because the force trackpad still keeps clicking while "off".


The really big thing that gets me on macos is not having focus-follows-mouse and works-everywhere select-to-copy middle-click-to-paste. Yes, this is "just" a UI thing, and yes, I can more or less get used to the macos choices (I used a macbook air as my "take to conferences" laptop for some years and still use it as my "video-calls machine" -- when I bought it no PC was close for hardware quality and weight at the price). But I've been using a Linux window manager with those behaviours for 25 years now, and I'm just more comfortable and familiar with them. macos makes a lot of choices for you, which is great when they're about stuff that you don't care about or isn't a deal-breaker. But if you're unlucky and one of those choices is a personal deal-breaker, then sometimes you can end up just having to rule out a macos machine.


For a start, the hardware. I hate working on glossy screens, and it's not possible these days to get macs with matte screens (I know I can install a diffuser, but for the price point apple operates at, I shouldn't need to spend extra money on adapting the hardware).

Also, bugs in the OS where you're completely at the mercy of Apple. I like to do custom re-mappings on my keyboard, and the last time I tried a mac (around 2016), the keyboard reverted to the default layout every time I viewed a pdf. At the time, there was no way of fixing this issue. Along with the glossy screen, this issue convinced me that MacOS was not at the time a viable platform for me.


sleep/standby on linux has really gone downhill in the last couple years, mostly because of microsoft's modern standby, which has become a price discrimination option for HP/dell/lenovo which only provide the better supported S3/etc ACPI methods on their "linux compatible" laptops.

So, what happens is that Linux tends to "work" on lots of lower end laptops/etc that ship with windows, but suspend will consume considerably more power vs just turning everything but the DRAM refresh off (what happens with S3). If you find a laptop with S3/etc support, the battery will last for days in linux as well. I have an older cheap dell inspiron from ~2016 and it can stay in S3 for more than a week from a full charge, and with a bit of powertoy/etc tweaking idles at about 3W which gives it about a 14 hour battery just sitting there with the screen/emacs running.

So, its definitely worth getting a "linux compatible" laptop if your not a kernel hacker who is willing to fix bugs in various drivers. Even then if your picky and you get a bleeding edge machine its quite likely there will be quality of life issues for the first couple years until all the fixes work their way through to all the distro's/etc everyone runs.

Its actually a good reason for avoiding the tier 1 OEM's, because acer/asus/msi/etc tend to ship with a full suite of BIOS options which allow better linux tuning. HP has gotten quite aggressive about changing/etc the password/hidden key sequences to unlock the hidden bios options.


Docker is very slow on MacOS


How slow? Using it every day here on MacOS with no difficulties. Using Rancher Desktop as well.


Go boot up a Linux machine and see for yourself. APFS has been a Docker bottleneck for years, and thats before we even get to the kernel issues...


I currently daily-drive a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen5. 4k touchscreen, 15in, awesome Linux support.

I've tried Fedora and Ubuntu on it, but I use Arch Linux daily on it (EndeavorOS at the moment), and its great for web development.

I think it was ~ $1600 USD when new


https://frame.work


Put 350USD aside and pickup the best Lenovo T series laptop you can find on Ebay.


get an hp elitebook in the 8 series (830, 835, 840, 845) the cheapest one with 400 nit screen and put as much ram and ssd as your budget allows, maintenance is easy nothing is soldered. I spent less than 2k on mine


If the intensive computing is GPU use a lambda machine might be a good choice.


A quick announcement on Ars Technica -- the Lambda is nVidia CUDA, Linux beast laptop with very nice Razer design.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/04/razer-designed-linux...


The Razer design is nice, but as someone with a blade who's battery bulged within only a year of moderate use because cooling was clearly an after-thought to looking good, I wouldnt be quick to trust it.

Then again, maybe they've improved since then. Mine was a 2019 model after all.


so it’s not just me! twice replaced a bulging battery so bad it caused the trackpad button to stop working.


Something to be wary of: Razer has a bad reliability reputation, in conjunction with bad customer support. The glowing remarks usually come from people who Razer has a vested interest in pleasing.


I’m running Archlinux on my Dell XPS 9750 and it’s pretty great. The downside is that the onboard GPU doesn’t have Linux drivers, but the CPU graphics work fine for what I’m doing (mostly web development).


I know it's off topic but you should get external monitors, bigger monitors greatly increase productivity.

They're cheap, Like 27 inch 4K *2, cost like $400, don't have to be fancy gaming monitors, I run 3.


My advice is wait. There is much interesting silicon coming out this year. Wait till the end of the yearish and you will have much better options. Especially if some of your compute can happen on GPUs.


If choosing to run linux on a laptop the model doesn’t matter very much. You’ll spend a chunk of time solving driver issues and managing power consumption with virtually every laptop out there.

Look at Lenovo and Dell


Razer's a bit overpriced (a la Mac) but I really like the build quality and the specs are typically great. My current Razer Blade Stealth was about $2000 and has worked flawlessly for about a year now (and my previous RBS worked flawlessly for about 3 years before I cracked the screen by stepping on it in the night).

Everything works OOTB on Linux. Battery life is around 9 hours or 5-6 with my full stack running and everything always feels snappy (I use 16 workspaces, so I typically have a TON open). Keyboard feels amazing, the chassis is probably the sturdiest one I've ever had (might be metal but doesn't get hot), and I prefer the touchpad over the mac one, which everyone seems to hold as a gold standard for some reason.


Look at System76

https://system76.com/laptops

Personally, I buy refurbed or upgraded Thinkpads from Ebay from years ago and slap Linux on them.


Don’t have a suggestion but I’d personally avoid ASUS. I’ve had 2 models within the recent few years and they have garbage battery life and run so hot with screaming fans on light loads.


I like the lenovo thinkpads as an alternative to macbook pro.

I find their track pad similar to the macbook pro.

Their performance is good enough and they are pretty durable.

Asus is also nice but i think it’s really hit or miss with them.


Unfortunately Windows with WSL is the best Linux out there in terms of hardware support and driver quality, so if at all possible, I'd recommend checking that out.


I have a 2nd gen Thinkpad P1 with an H-series intel chip, 64 gigs of ddr4 memory and 2 NVMe SSDs. And a 4k OLED screen. It is divine, I can't recommend it enough.


I got a lenovo P15 last year with some of the cheapest specs in that price range.

It has official ubuntu support, and you can get under the hood to add ram/ssd later.


The best $2000 laptop is ten used Latitudes.

Laptops are cattle, not pets.


I know you said you dont want mac, but I recommend apple only for the hardware. If you want linux, you can use Asahi Linux. Its in the beta stages but it allows your to harness mac’s superior hardware to develop on Linux. Apple is proven to make long lasting products that meet all the requirements you’ve list. Recommend M1 in particular, better than most intel and ARM laptops of its generation.

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1


n-gate, can you please start writing again?


Bought an XPS 15 9500 last March, ticks these boxes for me. I think these laptops are underrated as Linux machines, frequently overshadowed by ThinkPads.

- Good linux support, only had to manually install one driver.

- Good durability. I'm very careless with my devices, all my laptops have broken at the hinges at least once. This one has held up after multiple hard drops.

- Very quiet, fan noise barely noticeable even under load.

- You can upgrade the memory

- Easy to take apart and service as a user, which is great since I'm going to break something and have to service it eventually. Dell XPSs have always been the best for this IMO, at least of the mainstream laptops I've used.

TLDR: Good combo of linux+repairable+quality+rugged


Only drawback of P14s is battery which you can't upgrade, otherwise great to have an AMD Ryzen with 16 cores and 48 gigs or RAM.


I'd go for the framework. They're going so over the top that it's wrong to not support that company.


I got myself a T440p because the 4th generation is the last one with replaceable display, battery, RAM and CPU.

They're quite heavy but that's not an issue for me. Best bang for the buck I ever spent.

Bought it around 2015 in used condition for around 250EUR, then upgraded CPU, RAM, batteries (2x as of now), got a bigger SSD and HDD (512GB+4TB) and got an IPS display and a touchpad of the T480 which fits in there.

I just love that laptop. Superb linux support once you figured out how to setup the synaptics driver configs with synclient.

Oh and it's also the last generation (afaik) that can run coreboot as a BIOS.

Overall I probably spent around 800EUR on it, but considering its lifetime (sold in 2013-today) I say it's definitely worth it. So many "Ultrabooks" and Macbook Pros died on me before, because I always overstressed their GPUs.

There's a German Thinkpad wiki that contains all kinds of quirks and potential problems you can get, it's an amazing resource.

The tldr is you should update the BIOS first and update the firmware of your dockingstation with windows running, and then install linux to be safe. [1]

[1] https://thinkwiki.de/ThinkPad-Modelle

edit: Oh and I used an external m.2 adapter to PCI-e occasionally when I have to do ML related work when I'm not at home on my tower. It kinda works but performance is limited to somewhat PCI-e 4x speed even when it says 8x mode is being used.


I can confirm that. Also have a T440p And I'm very happy with it. Added a 1 TB SSD, 16 GB RAM, Kubuntu, keep some spare CPUs with different performance levels because I travel a lot. Everything is very easily interchangeable, designed to military standards. I've had my device for 3 years, and it's already suffered bumps and scratches that would break other devices. Got myself a docking station for 25€ for when I am home. It hasn't even crossed my mind to get another device since then.


> It hasn't even crossed my mind to get another device since then.

Honestly, I don't even know what to get in case it would break. I even have a spare mainboard just because it was 30 bucks on eBay. But in case it would fail completely, I don't know how to replace it.

Most other devices would be a major downgrade in repairability, which I meanwhile value so much that getting yet another Ultrabook that runs 2 years would be no option for me. The framework laptop and the System76 devices look nice, and either of those would probably win in that case, depending on which system is more easily repairable.

But still, they're by far not as easily repairable when components break down.


If replaceable CPU isn’t a priority, I can recommend the T470 or T480.

I’m currently using a T470 [1] with 16 GB DDR-3 3200MHz RAM [2], a 2 TB NVMe SSD [3], a Wi-Fi 6AX card [4], the Innolux N140HCG-GQ2 1080p 100% sRGB 8-bit 400 nits panel [5] (based on the T14 / T490 display), and the Lenovo 61++ battery [6].

The result is a laptop that can hold 17 hours of battery (95Wh), supports a Thunderbolt 3 dock and the old Lenovo dock, supports USB-C PD charging and the old Lenovo charging port and is the perfect mix of performance, repairability, and compatibility.

You can build this laptop yourself, depending on how the pricing is where you are, for about 600 €.

----------------

[1] https://www.afbshop.de/notebooks/20668/lenovo-thinkpad-t470-... [2] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08LQG2SDS/ [3] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MLJD32L/ [4] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B087WVLPXW/ [5] https://www.xelent-store.de/Innolux-N140HCG-GQ2-400cd-Low-Po... [6] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B06WGMPFCD


see this thread from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31074881 , it was also about desiring linux support.


I got an old X series thinkpad for 120USD. upgraded ram, and HDD to SSD. Does its work.


I'd say get an M1 mbp and use the shell script to install Asahi Linux on it.


M1 MacBook Air and use a linux VM, docker container or remote in to a linux machine. You can't beat the hardware for the price even with the extra hassle of having to work inside a Guest OS for whatever reason. Don't torture yourself with some Libre Laptop hardware just for an OS.


I'm gonna re-post this by @Tommy_Tran on Reddit.

This is not me, but the comment was too good not to share it again on HN.

This is from the self-post here, titled `Is Linux more private and secure than Mac OS?` https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/u6ws24/is_linux_mo...

Worth considering security when about to buy a daily-driver laptop!

-----------------

Linux is not more secure than macOS. Infact, it is not even remotely nearly as secure as macOS.

Linux for the most part lacks access control for apps. Flatpak and portal reduce some of this problem, but flatpak lacks granular control and no one is enforcing the usage of portals. As an example, controlling audio recording permission with Flatpak is a mess, as most things will just use the PulseAudio socket directly and you cannot deny them audio recording permission. You can revoke the PulseAudio socket, but that will deny both audio in and out. And this is only limited to apps which you install via Flatpak - any apps that you install via your package managers are not restricted whatsoever unless you spend hours and hours making an SELinux policy or AppArmor/Bubblewrap profile for each of them.

The X11 server on Linux is also a huge problem. Any X11 window can snoop on any other X11 window and keylog + screen record you. Nested X11 is not great for performance at all and its hard to enforce it system wide. Wayland solves this problem, but not all apps work with it yet, and XWayland windows can still snoop on each other.

None of the issues I described above exist on macOS. Unless you give an app elevated privileges, they all have to play by the rules with the permission system.

Linux also lacks the concept of verified boot or system integrity verification. In fact, most distros don't even do UEFI Secure Boot right - the verification ends at the kernel and the initrd is left unverified, unencrypted and vulnerable to evil maid attacks. There is no protection against persistent malware whatsoever too, even if you manage to protect the initrd, because there is no verification that extends to /usr, /bin, /sbin, and various other directories. macOS on the other hand has proper verified boot from the firmware to the system volume, protecting it from both evil maid attacks and persistent malware. Beyond verified boot, it also has system integrity protection, limiting what the root user can do.

There are also various miscellaneous things that macOS has such as system-wide umask setting (as opposed to just the shell), app signature verification, and so on.

Telemetry on macOS, for the mot part, is optional. Unless someone can prove otherwise (by capturing it on the network or something), any claim about invasive telemetry will not hold. Also, remember that being open source doesn't imply being trustworthy. You are still placing complete trust in whoever distributing the compiled version of your software (which will be your OS vendor most of the time if you use a traditional Linux desktop distribution) to not add nasty code in there and screw you over.

Some of Apple's apps do have mandatory telemetry or lack E2EE sync, but that is about it - you can simply not use them. One annoying aspect about macOS is that they really want you to make an apple account to do a major macOS version upgrade via the App Store (though you can still obtain the installer via their CDN if you know where to look) and that they collect hardware IDs.

In short, macOS has superior security when compared to Linux, and privacy wise it is still a great option as it has great protection against the third party software that you install. It is not great for threat models where you require anonymity, but most people don't have such threat models to begin with.

Some people will say Linux is targeted less and is therefore safer, but that is simply not true. Irrelevance != security. ReactOS is even less targeted than Linux, macOS or Windows because no one uses it, does that make it a secure operating system? And remember, malware for Linux does exist, and it's not hard to make one either. The security model is so bad that it's basically "if you execute bad code, you are screwed". There is not even a need for an OS exploit to compromise your system if the app you are running is malicious. The OS itself doesn't protect you from anything.

And before anyone jumping in accusing me of being an Apple shill - I am a Linux system administrator, and most of the systems I use daily (both on my servers and personal laptop) are Red Hat systems, not Apple ones. As much as I want to say that Linux desktop is better than macOS - that is simply not the reality, I'd be lying to you if I say so.


Underrated comment, very factual. I skimmed through the reddit thread that this comment came from and its full of the usual arguments based on ideological belives and/or extensive reconfiguration possibilities way beyond the out of the box experience, mixing privacy with security.


dell xps laptops are (a) pretty nice and (b) do ship in some models with ubuntu as the main OS.

personally, i use an xps15/windows/WSL, mainly because i also use the laptop for video games and so on.


Check the Slimbook Executive. I think it's the coolest Slimbook.


System76 makes some awesome laptops. Linux as a first class citizen.


Thinkpad T series maybe, I have a t480s, it's a workhorse.


A good laptop is one without the UEFI.

Un-socketable, solder-on BIOS chip.


Thinkpad X1 or Extreme runs Pop!_OS flawlessly


dell lattitude. getting a framework laptop when you need something proper and reliable is how you screw yourself.


Lenovo? T495/X1 carbon/etc.?


What does "a bit beta" mean?


Thinkpad T480s. Your search is over.


Lenovo, in their wisdom (penny pinching I guess), has been soldering either 4 or 8G of ram into the thinkpads for the last few years. This is one of the things that drove me away from them, because it seriously limits the amount of ram that can be installed (vs what is possible) and it messes up any kind of dimm striping one might want to run, as well as restricting you to the generally not great timings of the soldered on ram.

Its irritating and destroys what might otherwise be a pretty desirable machine, compared with any number of less expensive machines that have two DIMM slots.


You can still install more RAM into a T480s as there is an open slot.


Yah, I thought that was clear. But if you get one of the machines with 4G soldered, your basically limited to 1/2 the full capacity of the hardware (36G vs 64G IIRC).

edit: Its actually 20-24G max according to the spec sheet, compared with my similar age cheepe dell which does 32G because it has two dimm slots so I have a pair of 16G dimms in it.


Put a 32G dimm on an 8G and you get 40G


I'm not sure that actually works on that machine, the intel specs list 32G max on the chips, which likely if its like some of their other designs caps the individual DIMM channel capacity. I've gone over the lenovo recommended RAM configs before when the intel spec supports it, but intel has been enforcing capacity limits on many of their parts (presumably in the low level binary firmware blobs which refuse to train DIMMs which otherwise might work) for the last few years.

Even so, if you get it working, its the equivalent of 1/2ing your ram bandwidth.

PS: what you probably want is a T480, same generation little thicker, with both ram slots, and the extended battery if one wants a beefier version.


A MacBook with M1 processor. Air, Pro, I don't know. Just max it out with RAM or storage or whatever until you reach 2000


Whatever laptop you already own.


www.tuxedocomputers.com I never had hand on them yet, but they appear very promising.


I am using this one from 2018: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/de/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note... Which is a https://clevo-computer.com/en/clevo-pa70ep6-g/pa71ep6-g in fact.

It is an excellent laptop, but more on the side of a workstation than on the side of mobility


tl;dr: Find a used T480s for like $500. Upgrade its RAM and replace its battery if you need. Install PopOS and Regolith PPA. You'll be a happy camper.

---- MORE: Librems looked pretty cool. I might get one next.

But I've been running my T480s since 2018 and it is still going strong, I don't imagine I'll replace it unless I drop it on hard ground... wait I've done that. or spill coffee on it... wait I did that too. Did I mention they were durable as heck?

For software: I run PopOS for ubuntu-easy software and compatbility with a Regolith PPA because i3 window managers are amazing. Since its a thinkpad, you can swap out and replace most parts easily including the battery when it eventually wears out (literally takes <10 minutes).


Refurbished Dell XPS


MacBook Air M1 works wonderfully for me


Frame.work


lenovo. slap linux on it


2022 12th gen intel

Asus rog strix

You'll thank me later


With linux?


Msi


Framework laptop. I think the concerns about it being beta are unfounded, the few quirks it has are also had by Lenovo/Dell etc but you don’t have a discerning userbase talking about a single model so much.


Get the latest thinkpad in X series or X1C. Might not be the best choice, but it still works. Rugged, good keyboard.


How’s the trackpad?

Is good keyboard quantifiable somehow? As good as old T?


[flagged]


True, but it is not a tool that works for everyone.

In my case, I consider the Mac one of the cons of working at my current place of work. My days are filled with minor hassles that I could really do without. Doing simple things takes longer, and I have to deal with random freezes, slowdowns and even crashes that I did not have to deal with when using my own laptop for similar needs over the past couple of years (mostly dev related with minor content editing).

So again, it is a tool, but it is not the best tool for the job for every person, especially developers.


Random freezes, slowdowns and crashes? Care to elaborate? What languages and tooling are you using that is giving that sort of grief? That is completely counter my experience.


Sounds like the poster is having power management issues. Could be a dirty fan or a bad chip. I’ve dealt with the latter and it was fixed under warranty.


I've been using a MacBook Pro 2015 for a while now for my personal stuff - it's been nothing but reliable for everything from programming to surfing the web to DJ mixing. Just recently, the battery cycles exceeded normal usage and I got a notification from the system that the 'Battery should be replaced soon' - almost as soon as this happened, I experienced random slowdowns, freezing, etc just doing low-intensity tasks like browsing this site. Open up Activity Monitor and find that the 'kernel_task' is absolutely throttling my CPU. Long story short, this particular MacBook Pro had a battery recall and Apple replaced mine for free - worked just like new after that, which I'm grateful for since it's basically the best laptop I've ever used.


I normally don't participate in these type of discussions on this one I will make an exception.

Macs are extremely bad in terms of thermal management in the long run. Yes sure, they will work absolutely fine in the store but they will slow down with your dev environment installed.

1. The Apple store is cooler and has better airflow than your cubicle/desk/room.

2. The vanilla operating system runs fast on any computer and os

3. intel CPUs are getting extremely hot when doing everyday ops on the computer (too early to talk about M class CPUs) 4. Random freezes are a real thing and there isn't much you can do about it.

5. Logic board changes are also a thing, I've witnessed temperature sensors breaking because of the bad thermals.

6. fan noise is awful. yes it won't run in the store or when the computer is new, but you will definitely notice once the issues begin

7. macbooks are not made to work with monitors - they support them. the primary usecase for a apple laptop is to work without a monitor. so be surprised if your monitor is not supported.

8. on pre m1 cpus any external monitor was also triggering the radeon gpus to fire up, causing thermal throttling to become active very quickly. kernel_task anyone?

This is a long one. recommended workarounds are:

- disabling turbo boost (why buy a "pro" computer in first place?)

- buying an egpu (external gpu) with an average price of $700

- use custom fan programs that ignore the SMC reported temparatures and dictate their own fan speed (can cause further thermal damage)

- using a specific 4k monitor (does not work)

Here are some interesting videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX6kZ3-UBuE

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=macbook+pro+int...

Try taking your intel macbook to the apple store and ask about this problem. they will really tell you that they have never heard about it. now try searching google and you will see thousands of people with the very same issues. apple will absolutely stonewall the issue and claim that you are the only person in the world experiencing this problem.

the list could go on for much longer but I'm too tired for that.

Do yourself a favor, if you are not planning to travel with the device, buy yourself a decent desktop computer with sufficient cooling for half the price.


I owned an Intel Mac and now own an M1 Max. The Intel and M1 are completely different beasts. My Intel would die in an hour and was always hot with the fan running. The battery life on my M1 is ridiculous. Hours and hours. I don't even know if it has a fan. It's silent and runs cool.


I'm VERY happy for you, I hope it stays the same.

I have returned all my macs and I am a happy Windows 11 user now. No fan noise, no thermal problems.


For me, the issue is that Mac isn't what we deploy to. We spend so mamy man-hours working around Mac-specific issues when we exclusively deploy to x86 Linux at the end of the day. M1 has brought even more issues with the architecture change, to the point where I'd say ~50% of our DevOps time is spent solving Mac issues. It sucks.


Does your workplace use MDM (mobile device management) or other security software? Do they use aftermarket AV?

Is it old enough to be a hybrid HDD?


Maybe you have an older Mac ?

Any of the M1 variants should have no performance issues even under pretty heavy load.

And if you're having random freezes or crashes then that is a symptom of a hardware fault.


Motivation is important for your work. I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Linux is absolutely good enough to get most development work done without issue. Even if Macs might be a slightly smoother experience in some areas.

I used to spend a lot of time to fiddle with Linux and my desktop in the past. You can do that if you want. But it's not necessary. Nowadays in 98% of the cases I say "good enough", in rare exceptions I might still use my freedom to fiddle and patch.


>I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like.

Most of the Development flow (and even most of the non-dev flow) happens in Open Source areas:

- Safari - Apps you download, like VSCode - Command line tools

The areas that aren't open source (The Calendar app, file browser) can be replaced as you choose.

I won't tell you to use a Mac, I just want to make it clear that the areas a developer works in are open. And, for anyone worried about things like SIP, that has a fully functional off switch

Oh, and you can run Linux (albeit with some work-in-progress features) - I've done it myself.


Safari and VSCode are not open source.

Most people who value freedom in software for practical reasons are motivated by having a way to fix or work around inconveniences, having a community and an active discussion on features, general composability and hackability of software, …

macOs (with all respect to their UI achievements) gives you none of that.


Safari isn't, you're correct - but WebKit is. And Safari does fall into the category of things that can be fully replaced.


That's a bit of a ridiculous argument. Xcode is not only closed source, it is required for publishing to the App Store. You can't modify the hardware or the software. It's a virtual prison.


> You can't modify the hardware or the software.

It’s a tool to get a job done - I don’t need to modify it.


I don’t know what kind of tool users you hang around, but there isn’t a profession that doesn’t modify or customize their tools (through making jigs, combining pieces from different toolkits, outright rebuilding, making your own tools, …).


That’s the great thing about software - it’s already able to do whatever I need.


Note that the argument you've called ridiculous is a response to someone who does not want a

> closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like

Such a person probably won't be using Xcode, nor has any plans of publishing to the App Store, so Xcode being closed-source isn't a factor at all here.


It's the main factor for a developer, actually. We're talking about Apple so it makes sense to discuss their products. It doesn't make sense to talk about Microsoft products.


Well, Xcode only needs to be used if you're publishing to the App Store, which you wouldn't do with a linux machine anyways so that's a moot point when comparing them...


As a professional software engineer I choose to use the best tools for the job. In my case that tool happens to be a a Mac.


Yup - the tool that will randomly prevent you from opening any 3rd party app if Apple's signature checking service goes down.

The tool that defaults to a case insensitive but confusingly case preserving fs.

The tool that has been issued in variations that literally can't be used while closed, or if you plug the charging cable into the wrong "all the same" usb-c port.

The tool that licenses away virtualization, making development slower and harder, in an attempt to force companies to buy them.

The tool that used have a nice little $500 dollar surcharge if you want to put an extra 8gb of ram in it. (Don't worry - it's only $800 to go from 16gb to 32gb today - much better...)

That tool?

That's the best tool for your use-case?

Guess you must develop iOS apps, because otherwise... ooof.


I'm a Linux user who previously used Macs for years. This list barely touches the actual reality of developing on a Mac for most people. It is not nearly as strong an argument as the arrogant tone suggests.


Hey - Fellow linux user here, I get issued a macbook by work because I touch mobile related code. I can tell you - I'll take win10 over macOS any fucking day.

This list is literally just the most obnoxious fraction of items that have impacted me over the last 5 years of use. I can absolutely keep going.

You want me to discuss the rapid phase out of kernel extensions that allowed VMs to operate well?

Or the minor annoyance that is allowing execution for every fucking brew installed tool, since macOS blocks it by default.

Or should I look at the random 2 hour update times, where the computer is completely unusable?

Or the utterly insane memory usage when running even a small scattering of containers? 4 fairly simple containers will eat 10gbs of ram running a mid sized RoR app, elastic, and a db.

Or how about the xcode install times required to use simple tooling, like git, because "muh system integrity protection!!!" - but don't worry, at least you can get away with "just the command line" version of the tooling, which only eats a few gbs, instead of the fucking 40gb that xcode proper wants.


> the tool that will randomly prevent you from opening any 3rd party app if Apple's signature checking service goes down

You mean the Mac needs an internet connection to "work" - there is no "airgapped Mac"?

And that they have an execution blocker you cannot disable? How could you code - make your software run on it?


Apple does signature checking for malware - a year or two ago this service went down. The result was that absolutely no 3rd party apps could be opened on macbooks by default. They would spin for a second, then close. The issue is that the machine was online, but could not get a proper response from the signature checking service.

There are work-arounds, and by default this check is disabled while the machine is offline, but it's not exactly confidence building.

My general take on Apple is that the hardware is decent, the software is absolute dog-shit, and the marketing is TOP NOTCH.


I write Go for a fintech company. I'll take a Macbook running MacOS over Linux or Windows every day of the week. It's simple and easy to set up and maintain my local dev environment. I don't understand why using Linux or hating a Mac is like a religious calling to some people. In my experience I jump few far fewer hoops managing my dev environment in MacOS than Linux for the work I do.


Hey man - you're the one pitching a macbook to the guy who explicitly stated he didn't want a macbook.

I'm just here disputing that a mac is "the best development tool".

My opinion is pretty simple - Apple makes decent hardware that they absolutely ruin with their software.

Honestly - the closer you can be to running the same platform/tooling that you're deploying to, the better off your life will be as a developer, and I bet you money you aren't deploying to a macOS box.

Linux and Windows are both entirely functional - frankly, windows 10 with WSL is a better experience than macOS, in my opinion - and they cost a lot less.

I have used quite a few languages professionally - Java, Golang, C++, C#, Ruby, Js (from the bad days predating jquery to the decent days of not needing jquery any more), Rust, Python, fuck - I've even professionally used Netlogo, which is not something I will ever recommend, and it still boggles my mind occasionally.


Elsewhere in the comments there is a message saying that containers are constant headache under MacOS. Not having used it I can't comment. But containers are a regular part of my work. We have them in production and additionally I use them because I cannot install every required tool / environment to my machine at the same time. In that light the position of the best tool for the job doesn't sound to be undisputed.


icharters is a victim of apple's marketing.

Apple makes decent laptops, and the new m1 machines are not a bad pick. They are absolutely not the best tool for the job unless that job is developing iOS apps.


I have several Docker containers running at any given time with no issues.


I can get Docker working on Mac too, but honestly its much easier and faster on Linux. Might even be better on Windows, too.


Seriously, I can't recommend anything but a Macbook Air to anyone who has $1000 to spend. Top comment is recommending a machine that gets 6 hours battery life. Wild.


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 use Emacs on my Linux machine).

FancyZones courtesy of PowerToys makes for an acceptable tiling experience. I tried to use Komorebi but at least 0.1.8 has too many issues to recommend at this point.

Kind of excited to dive into PowerShell in a Month of Lunches next.


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!


Hey thanks for the attention, I think the project is awesome and when it works I feel right at home.

Two big issues I encountered today running 0.1.8 installed with Scoop on Windows 11 Education N:

1. The empty space around apps gets bigger as you move them to new workspaces not primary (this is with Komorebi's workspaces, not Windows' Virtual Desktops which you have indicated have poorly documented APIs). It seems to be this issue [1] but that issue was closed as fixed

2. Sometimes apps left empty spaces when they were minimized. That might have been VS Code or Spotify (or Slack?). Spotify when visible didn't resize appropriately.

All my user-installed apps if that is helpful:

- KeyPirinha

- Mochi

- PowerToys

- Slack

- Telegram Desktop

- TickTick

- Ubuntu on Windows

- VS Code

- Thunderbird

- Ditto

- Everything

- 1Password

[1] https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi/issues/15


Eh - not even that controversial in my opinion. The people still bitching about windows are the ones who haven't used it in 10+ years and have no idea how usable WSL is.

linux -> windows -> mac.

Mac is by far the least pleasant OS to use. Some of the hardware is ok (although avoid the 16inch intel line like your life depends on it) but overall I don't want a walled garden with happy paths.

I want a general purpose computer, and mac ain't that.


OP has emphasized that they do not want to use Windows or MacOS and yet you recommend a Mac like some Apple fanboy. Why?


[flagged]


You don't need any approval, I just don't understand that after saying "I don't want to buy a mac" you come with "You should buy a mac". What was the point of it?


Maybe they’re a parent. :)

Telling people to do things they tell you they don’t want to do becomes almost automatic if you live with a toddler or teenager.

All kidding aside, It seems that this general observation applies to half of the comments here today, many of which are talking about pro Mac, anti Mac, or but what about windows?

It would have been nice if it just said up front “want recommendation for best non apple Linux machine.”


What a ridiculous comment. Which is the "statement", the MacBook or a Linux laptop??? If you want to run Linux, why pay the Apple tax (not to mention all the aggravation), unless you really want the form factor or the hardware?


I'll give you one guess which is the "statement"

hint - it's the one that spends an outrageous amount on marketing, SO MUCH SPEND that they stopped revealing how much they were spending in 2015, after the marketing budget grew above 1.8 billion USD.

That one - I can absolutely promise you that that one is the "statement" computer.


How easy is it to install Linux on a new Mac?


Asahi exists but is not yet fully featured.


Very difficult. Has been since mid 2010s.

There is progress - but I would not assume support for at least another generation or two of machines, and you will be fighting uphill, or running the old hardware to get it.


No proper M1 GPU -drivers right now probably pretty much makes it unusable.


How do I run Linux on a macbook? Also where can I buy one without paying the macos license fee?


“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.


M1 MacBooks have better performance than the top tier X1C, and 2x the battery life.

Seems kind of weird paying for something that is just worse.


M1 Macbooks support OSX only. That's a deal breaker.


Have you thought about a 16G M1 Mac? They are in that range and are incredibly well built. And MacOS is a fine BSD.


> I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS


Got to that part after posting this. I too like Gnome better, but I don’t like it better enough not to be tempted.


> 2. Linux support: I use Linux as my OS of choice and I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS

If there is any leeway here, I would seriously recommend switching. You cannot beat the M1 MacBooks and macOS is close enough to Linux anyway.


And with Asahi, you may not even need to compromise on the linux part, though it will take some time before the first stable release.




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