

Do Devs Need Custom Linux Laptops? Dell Thinks So - rhufnagel
http://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2012/12/custom-linux-laptops.aspx

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SiVal
It seems to me that Google, with its almost ridiculous surplus of CS PhDs and
no legacy desktop OS baggage to drag around is almost perfectly suited to
taking Linux and building a power user desktop OS on top of it. If they did,
they could build the hardware, too, or at least spec it so that there would be
a lot of hardware options that all "just worked" out of the box.

As Apple built a beautiful consumer OS on top of a *nix core, Google could
build a power-user OS on top of Linux for the business / developer / smart,
skilled people-with-work-to-do market that its PhDs ought to understand more
than they understand consumers.

With their money, they could come up with the next gen business platform and
build into it the web services orientation they live for and make the hardware
/ OS / drivers combo to rival Apple, but for influencers instead of the
consumers. (They have enough money to buy nvidia if they can't get Linux
drivers.)

Who else is better positioned to produce the next gen power-user platform as
Windows fades and Apple makes it clear they are a consumer electronics
company?

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fakeer
They should first build an IDE for Android rather than keep piggybacking
forever on Eclipse which is not very lightweight or suitable for a specific
purpose, let's say.

~~~
jrockway
Why? Eclipse is just reusable UI widgets and a Java editor. That's basically
what you want for writing an "Android IDE", whatever that might be. (I
personally just use Emacs.)

~~~
fakeer
It never works seamlessly. I would love to do away with all the clinks and
cracks which becomes an integral part of it. Becomes more painful when you
have to deal with the "whole code" (say guys at those OEMs and those indie
ROMs).

~~~
jrockway
I fail to see how throwing away Eclipse would solve this problem. What you
probably want is more engineer time thrown at Android tools, which is
something I can certainly agree with.

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jiggy2011
Do Devs need more choice of 1366x768 laptops? No.

~~~
vhf
Exactly. Lenovo was on the right track a few years ago with X200(s), providing
1440x900 on 12.3" with hardware very well supported on Linux.

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w1ntermute
> Canonical added the idea of connecting the laptop to the cloud, so that
> users could develop on LXC containers, replicate the environment on the
> actual client, and then jettison it to the cloud via the JuJu service
> deployment and orchestration framework.

This is a very nice idea (although with mobile share plans, we may see 4G
support gain popularity in laptops, making this less of a factor). However, I
feel that the hardware was neglected to the point that software gimmicks can't
make up for it.

I wrote about my experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon on HN a week back[0],
and the hardware simply blows the XPS 13 out of the water. The fact that
installing Xubuntu (which is much more pleasant for devs and power users than
Ubuntu) on an X1 Carbon is laughably easy doesn't help Dell's case.

0: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848375>

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kephra
where have all the Linux netbooks gone?

my requirements for a Laptop are:

\- it must be cheap, $300 is fine, because a Laptop can easily be stolen, or
damaged.

\- it must be light, less than 2lbs, because I don't own a car, and still want
to carry my laptop around

\- it must boot Linux from network to boot into backup cycle.

\- the hardware must be 100% supported by free drivers.

\- it should not bundle a Microsoft tax.

I don't care much about the preinstalled OS. I'll replace it anyway. I see no
sense in bundling a spyware Ubuntu, and even less in some cloud service
crapware on a developers laptop. I don't know if other developers think
similar, but I fear that the hyped Sputnik will just give Dell the excuse to
abandon Linux laptops again, because of low sales.

The class of $300, 2lbs Linux laptops created fear for Intel and Microsoft
instead. Thats why they are no longer sold.

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jdboyd
The Samsung Chromebook is $249 and doesn't include MS tax. Alas, it is 2.5
pounds rather than 2. I don't know about the boot into backup cycle.

~~~
kephra
_oops_ "boot into backup cycle" is my method of installing new systems. I
create them in a chroot/lxc on a NFS server, and boot the real system or
laptop by PXE, rsync it on the disk and make it bootable. The real system will
also rsync itself to this master, and the master is doing incremental backup.

So every system has a backup before it even exists on its own disk, and
installation is just a normal restore of a backup.

Also on Chromebook, specs tells some funny CPU, and only 2+16GB of SSD. Thats
much lower than an old eeepc1000. Especially as it likely ships some funny
crippleware, and not a minimal Debian, Arch or Gentoo.

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acc01
If by "custom" you mean rebranded consumer hardware coming with some Linux
distribution I'm never going to use preinstalled, the answer is likely to be
"no."

Clarification added later that I never anticipated to be needed: my point here
is that there are more significant departures from mainstream needed to call
something a "custom Linux laptop for developers": most likely, significant
hardware changes.

~~~
VonGuard
You've never heard of Ubuntu?

~~~
acc01
You've probably misread "going to use" as "heard of."

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fharper1961
I'm suffering through the usual problems of setting up a new linux
transportable laptop right now. It is an ASUS R900V, and Ubuntu 12.04
currently has problems with wifi, graphics, and sound! I would love to be able
to buy a transportable (large screen 1920x1080, 8GB, fast cpu) for a reasonabl
price in Europe, and that is well supported by Ubuntu.

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chank
No, but the Dell XPS 13 seems to be a step in the right direction as far as
something that could be competitive with a MBA.

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AYBABTME
The only thing is that it costs about twice the price.

~~~
drivebyacct2
That's so untrue, I'm embarrassed for your comment.

~~~
AYBABTME
Maybe it's untrue in your part of the universe. It happens to be untrue in the
US:

* Dell Price $1449: <http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/xps-13-linux/pd>

But for the rest of us, for instance in Canada (where I'm automatically
redirected):

* Dell Price $2,344: <http://www.dell.com/ca/enterprise/p/xps-13-linux/pd>

On the other hand, the MBA averages (both Canada/US) at ~1199$.

I don't feel embarrassed.

~~~
chimeracoder
Canadian goods are often still marked up, I find, even though the Canadian
dollar reached parity with the US dollar a long time ago. Fortunately, it's
relatively straightforward to get around that.

Furthermore, you should keep in mind that you're not comparing two machines
that are identical spec-wise. The Macbook Air has an i5 processor whereas the
XPS 13 has an i7, and memory/storage-wise, the comparable Macbook Air would be
the model that sells for $1499 in the US.

In other words, in the US, the XPS 13 is comparable to the Macbook Air that
seems to cost $1,699 when I enter in all the upgrades on Apple's website.

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ErikAugust
<http://zareason.com/shop/UltraLap-430.html> Gonna purchase this.

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gauravvijay
Without any hardware choices !!!

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Karl_Rove
Yes or at least VM's :)

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drivebyacct2
They put a better screen in the Dev XPS 13 and it will replace my MBA as fast
as they will let me place an order.

