
Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop? - khandelwal
What's a good laptop to install Linux (Ubuntu) on? I'm looking to buy a new machine for work. System76 seems to make good laptops. Does anyone have experience with them? Is there anything else you would recommend?<p>People seem to rave about their MacBook Pros. Is it easy to make the switch from Ubuntu? Do I easily get all the software I'll need (svn, git, django, python, vim)?<p>Essentially I think, my question is, is the experience on a MBP so much better, that it's worth having to learn the MacOS platform?
======
yummyfajitas
If you want to do development in a language other than python/ruby, or even
want to use python libraries written in c, avoid the macbook. If you are
certain you will stick to {svn, git, django, python, vim}, you'll be fine. My
mac ownership timeline:

Day 1: Ooh, pretty.

2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works.

1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I
tripped over the wire.

1.5 months: Arrgh, finally numpy works.

2 months: I miss XMonad.

3 months: Fuck, random C/C++ library (e.g., amqp_lib, boost for a while,
quantlib, some Fortran medical imaging libraries) doesn't work. Or maybe it
would work if I messed around with it more. Neither do many Haskell libraries
(e.g. HFuse). I never managed to get postgres working either, though I've
heard others have.

4 months: I want to get work done. Open up virtualbox, boot ubuntu server in a
VM.

2 years later: load linux onto a thinkpad. Woohoo!

[edit: I am being a little unfair to the macbook. It has one fantastic feature
which I still miss: keynote + LaTeXit + that little remote control. This makes
pretty and very effective scientific presentations. OpenOffice Impress is not
in the same league. It's less relevant to me now, since I'm no longer an
academic mathematician.

Also, I don't mean to be unduly negative on macs. They just didn't satisfy me
as a development box.

Lastly, _things might have changed recently_. I gave away my macbook early
this year.]

~~~
buro9
Uncanny. I'm also 4 months in and am running Ubuntu in VMWare. That's now
where I spend all of my time and I'm wondering why I haven't just dual-booted
already or just over-written the OSX partition.

~~~
lusis
Last company I was at provided me a quad-core 8GB mac pro. After the first
week I wiped it and put Ubuntu on it so I could actually get some work done.

The biggest problem with OSX is that, for a unix-based system, it's so un-unix
alike in key places that it's frustrating.

~~~
igrekel
You mean un-unix or un-linux?

Which parts?

~~~
lusis
That's a fair statement. I think there were two big ones: \- the service
registry/init system \- filesystem paths

The second is minor in the grand scheme of things. It only affects my user
account but the first one was greatly annoying. My history is in AIX/HP-UX
before going Linux full time so I'm familiar with the smit/sam model of doing
things but have you ever tried to actually usea traditional unix/linux model
for managing apache in the default OSX install? What about LDAP? It's weird
and annoying. Launchd? Seriously?

~~~
igrekel
The Mac I have is in the living room for family use so I have not "worked" a
lot on it. I didn't use much of the default tools and relied more on macports
for unix stuff. I was asking because I am considering a Mac to replace the
windows laptop with cygwin I use for dev. I use Linux for servers but I am
from the world of Solaris I also had HP and Irix workstations at different
jobs in the past and a NeXT at home.

I know the defaults are all Linux oriented these days so any different flavor
of unix is always a little extra work if the filesystem differs to much.
Macports also adds a little twist to that.

I found launchd verbose (and the xml is not even that self descriptive) and I
am not sure its worth the departure from the usual way of doing things but I
didn't think it was so bad. I only did a few simple things anyway.

These seem like things I don't rely on too much on a dev laptop anyway. But I
now believe I have to investigate a bit more before I buy the new machine.
Thanks

~~~
lusis
In my case I find myself fullscreening a vm if I can't change to base install.
I have too much muscle memory that I can't implement on other os:

Cmd-t new terminal Cmd-w new browser Cmd-e new vim session Cmd-f new file
manager window

Then I have my ctrl-shift keybinds for terminator and my vim keybinds. I'm
especially unproductive without the cmd-t option available and the terminator
keybinds.

------
aconbere
I can not rave enough about the Lenovo X201 small, fast, usable. I switched to
the lenovo machine after using a MBP for the previous 4 years. But it really
depends on what you need and want. I commute with my laptop, travel with my
laptop, and generally like to carry it arround. I'm not willing to accept
either of the choices that Apple has for me, excessive weight (MBP 15' or
17'), or last generation processors (MBP 13').

That being said almost all the developers I know use MBPs. Just not me. I was
CPU constrained for the work I was doing, wanted to easily upgrade my hard
drive, and spent all my time in OSX in XMonad anyway. So making "the switch"
was simple for me.

EDIT - adding my one X201 complaint

No built in digital video out (W.T.F.) I'm sure this is to accommodate some
suit who has to attach to projectors. But feels like the past. If you shell
out for a docking station you'll get DV but otherwise you're out of luck.
(This is not an issue with Lenovo's larger laptops like the T410 etc.)

~~~
notauser
I tried out a X201 and really liked it, but it has two other problems as well
as the video out which were deal breakers for me:

\- Low screen resolution.

\- Very tall screen (especially for a 12" - due to the huge bezel) so it won't
open comfortable in the back of an economy seat.

I ended up with the bottom of the range Vaio Z series instead (1600x900 res
13.3" screen that is more than an inch shorter than the X201, with HMDI and
VGA out). I run Ubuntu in a VM 99.9% of the time. That setup is working really
well for me and I actually like the keyboard at least as much as the IBM one.

Running Linux in VMWare player doesn't seem to be any slower in practice
thanks to VT, and it has greatly improved the ease of installing, upgrading
and backing up my main Linux installation. I don't even bother to back up
Windows - if it goes wrong I'll just blow it away and do a clean install.

~~~
aconbere
I can buy that this is a serious drawback for some users. Personally even at
1280x800 the pixel density is so high that I end up with my text size so large
that having the extra pixels afforded by the x201s (1400x900) wouldn't buy me
anything.

When I'm on the go, I'm mostly working in vim, or browsing the web. Neither of
these activities stress my resolution (especially as an XMonad user). When I'm
at work or home I have an external monitor that provides me with all the
resolution I could ever want.

------
mahmud
You can't go wrong with a Thinkpad, in fact, I wouldn't use any other laptop
if it came free. I ran thinkpads exclusively for the last 10 years. My last
desktop machine had an AMD Duron and 256 megs, that's long ago it was.

They're not the most good looking, but they're rugged and functional as hell.
A Thinkpad looks the same after 5 years, most others peel and scratch. When I
was backpacking, my road-mate had his macbook come apart .. literally, the
case feel out of the bottom and the top came apart. Mine? I threw it into
truck beds, buses, ferries, sat on it, slept on it, and it endured everything
including the humidity in the Mekong and freezing weather in north-east China,
not to mention power surges.

~~~
mironathetin
You cannot go wrong with a Thinkpad, but you can do better, IMHO.

I enjoyed my last Thinkpad (t40) a lot. Still have and use it after 6 years.
But especially with linux, battery life wasn't very good (now the battery is
completely dead of course). The fan never stopped.

To answer the question of the OP: yes, it is totally worth to learn Mac OS.
First, the effort is small. Second, you will save a lot of admin time. Third,
backup is easy, reliable and bootable. This alone recommends Macs as developer
notebooks.

~~~
jerf
Earlier power-saving technologies were pretty proprietary from what I recall;
there was "pre-ACPI" and also a fairly substantial period of "ACPI that still
only worked through Windows because Windows could tolerate a lot of errors in
the ACPI tables where Linux actually believed the tables". Now most of them
are through standardized interfaces and work in Linux just fine.

~~~
mironathetin
My Thinkpad had ACPI.

But - no offense meant - this is the standard answer, if something does not
work. Just upgrade. You do that 20 times, and then you get something that
works now, and not after the next upgrade.

~~~
jerf
For Linux, I _personally_ separate the issues into two issues: "Hardware
support is possible but doesn't exist", and "hardware support is impossible
because the hardware vendor or standards bodies are either withholding
documentation, failed to follow their own standards, or in some cases even
actively fighting Linux developers". The "ACPI that only works in Windows"
spent quite a lot of time in the latter case. If you had an IBM laptop that is
now 6 years old, it probably fell into that category, based on the timing.

(A surprising amount of hardware fails to follow standards. I have a hard time
laying the blame on Linux when that happens. I realize that as a user you may
not care, but assigning blame to the proper entities is important if you want
it to be _fixed_ ; cussing out Linus when in fact the hardware vendors are
deliberately withholding specs may feel good but is not productive otherwise.)

~~~
mironathetin
Alright, point taken. A valid remark.

------
Jun8
I went through the same exact process you are going through a few months ago,
my manager wanted to replace our laptops with new, Linux-based ones and asked
us what to get. I switched to a 15" MBP, being never a Mac person before.

The first week or so was painful. Mac OS wasn't as intuitive as I though it
would be and it may be hard to find how to do things as a power Linux user.
But after that initial learning curve, god it's good. Just the hardware itself
is worth it, the feel, and of course the screen, which is one of the most
important parts of a laptop I think. Finding and installing packages is OK
with Homebrew (or MacPorts), not as intuitive as apt perhaps, though.

I have friends using a Thinkpad and if you ask me again today, I would
definitely repeat my decision to go with the MBP. Maybe you're giving away a
wee bit of Ubuntu goodness but you gain tremendously from hardware and being
able to use other Mac software, which is very very good.

~~~
jacoblyles
I feel stupid whenever I sit down at a computer without multi-touch and
spotlight now. The software of a mac is just so nice and polished.

~~~
kls
I could not live without multi-touch now. It is a true mouse killer. I am sure
it has added 30% to my productivity alone. Someone turned me on to
BetterTouchTools and the rest has been history. With 3 finger click copy, 4
finger click paste I can blaze through a lot of tasks.

~~~
jaxn
I love multitouch, but keystrokes are so much faster than using the touchpad.

~~~
kls
Sure it depends on what task I am trying to accomplish, I should have prefaced
that. If I am in the IDE I use the keyboard. But, if I am doing tasks like
managing files I tend to use the pad.

~~~
simonft1
Even for copying files, the keyboard is often quite a bit faster. Especially
if you take the time to learn bash well.

~~~
kls
I prefer the finder to the shell for file management.

~~~
jaxn
And the joy of OS X is that you have both a polished GUI and a solid shell.

------
Symmetry
Pretty much everyone I know who runs Linux on their laptop uses a Thinkpad.
They don't come with Linux installed but they tend to have good driver support
and pretty good quality.

You might also consider system76, but I don't have experience with those.

EDIT: I'm currently running Linux on my T410. Suspend was broken with Ubuntu
10.4, but everything works perfectly now with 10.10.

~~~
samstokes
Got a T510 here (with the extra-high-res 1920x1080 display) and it's great.
Everything works in Ubuntu 10.04 (I don't have any problems with suspend-to-
RAM or -to-disk).

I spent a while looking into MBPs and it seems the Linux support is still
fairly laughable - the latest models won't even boot it, and even the older
ones require a kernel recompile to get sound working. I'd buy an MBP without
hesitation if I wanted to run OS X, but not as a Linux machine with a nicer
case.

~~~
pocoloco
Same here. I got mine about two months ago. I also installed 10.04. I love the
trackpoint (the red pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard) and the
mouse buttons just below the space bar (don't have to leave the keyboard to
use the mouse). The only major issue that I have now is the inability to
control the backlight. This seems to be due to a bad driver by nvidia [1]. The
backlight controls work if you use non-nvidia drivers. This will shorten your
battery charge considerably. Other than that, everything works out of the box.
I use the 64-bit version.

[1] <http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=150069>

~~~
samstokes
Yes, the backlight is the only thing that doesn't work so well. I can control
the backlight - I think I had to tweak some setting that I found on Google,
but I don't remember which - but its auto-darkening on inactivity is pretty
broken. When I move the mouse or type a key, the screen brightens again, but
only about halfway back to what it was before the auto-darken, so I then have
to manually jack the brightness up each time this happens.

Hoping some new driver release will fix this some time, but it's only a minor
irritation.

BTW, your link [1] seems to be broken?

I love the trackpoint. I've disabled my touchpad completely.

~~~
pocoloco
Yes, the forums' website is down. Here is the google cache [2]. The link [1]
entitled "NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M on Lenovo Thinkpad T510: NVIDIA Backlight
Control Causes Buzz" is the first result in the search for "t510 backlight"
[3].

The issue has also made it to Canonical's launchpad [4]. The link [1] is
mentioned in comment #27 [5].

[2]
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4dJW3r_...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4dJW3r_kZRIJ:www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php%3Ft%3D150069+t510+backlight&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

[3] <http://www.google.com/search?q=t510+backlight>

[4] Bug #562005: Backlight controls of laptops with NVIDIA NVS and Quadro FX
880M GPUs no longer function while using proprietary drivers
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
dr...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
drivers/+bug/562005)

[5] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
dr...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
drivers/+bug/562005/comments/27)

------
kls
Yes the MBP is a good machine, and you can get all of the items you listed on
OSX. It is a good development platform if you decide to go that route. I have
worked exclusively on MBP for the last two generations of my machines. This is
coming from a guy that got burnt really bad on the 68-PPC conversion a while
back (had basically a brick within 6mo of buying a new 68). That is another
story but sufficient to say, I swore off Apple computers and after using a MBP
for a while, I decided that it really was worth the switch. I don't consider
myself a fanboy so I feel that I offer a pragmatic opinion to people on the
advantages of switching.

Also a thing to consider is that with the MBP if you decide that OSX is not
for you, you can always install Linux or do Bootcamp and dual boot, or run
Virtual Box and have a Linux VM. I do the latter for any odds and ends Windows
only software that I need to run, but those are getting fewer and fewer these
days.

If you decide to stay in the PC world I recommend Sager laptops. They are
probably close to or superior to the MBP in terms of quality.

~~~
trevelyan
Ubuntu runs hot on the MBP and will chew through your battery power even if
you aren't running it in a VM. So MacOS is Unix anyway, you say? Too bad the
default libraries are a pain to upgrade, trivial applications like "locate"
and "wget" are missing and you'll have to manually configure stuff like page
up/page down if you want the terminal to be useful.

I've had repeated issues compiling different "cross platform" applications on
MacOS that compile painlessly under various Linux distributions and even
Windows! So you end up being heavily reliant on "port" to install software
instead of "./configure / make / make install". The last thing that drove me
up the wall was a bizarre failure in statically-linking SQLite into a QT
application. Every other platform worked. MacOS failed spectacularly.

If you want a Linux laptop, get a Linux laptop. I'm only on a Macbook for
video editing and iPhone/iPad development. It is excellent for that and it is
a beautiful machine in many ways (love the chassis), but it is not nearly as
good a platform for developers as Ubuntu by any means.

~~~
kls
_So MacOS is Unix anyway, you say?_

I don't recall saying that it is or is not in my post above. Please don't put
words in my mouth.

 _but it is not nearly as good a platform for developers as Ubuntu by any
means_

you are painting a pretty broad stroke there.

I do web and mobile development, both require application like Photoshop,
professional video editing tools while web specifically Chrome, Firefox,
Safari, Opera and IE, Flash and a few others. For me Linux is not a superior
development platform because getting some of these running is just as hacky as
getting libs to work correctly on OSX. I use Netbeans as my development IDE
which is available on OSX and I have to run a virtual for IE so for me OSX
offers a happy middle-ground because I get iOS development while only having
to trade running IE in a virtual. So while Ubuntu may be a superior
development platform for what you do, it may not be for other developers. The
original poster specifically highlighted web development tools. And for web
development OSX offers a good value proposition. It has its frustrations just
as other OS's do.

~~~
bradleyland
Just a heads up, you can feel perfectly confident saying that OS X is Unix.
Snow Leopard is UNIX 03 certified.

<http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm>

~~~
dmm
I don't know what UNIX means to you but where I come from UNIX means an atomic
rename(2).

<http://www.weirdnet.nl/apple/rename.html>

~~~
bradleyland
I said specifically in my post that OS X is UNIX 03 certified.

<http://www.unix.org/version3/>

The Open Group owns the Unix trademark, which is what we're all referring to.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group>

So I don't know what UNIX means to _you_ , but where I come from, it's based
on a certification that adheres to a defined set of standards.

What you posted is an unresolved bug report that doesn't prove or disprove
that OS X is Unix certified.

~~~
dmm
I'm well aware of what UNIX 03 means. Are you? The core of it is IEEE Std
1003.1. Here's a quote from the Rationale section of the rename(2) page from
IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 edition:

"This rename() function is equivalent for regular files to that defined by the
ISO C standard. Its inclusion here expands that definition to include actions
on directories and specifies behavior when the new parameter names a file that
already exists. That specification requires that the action of the function be
atomic."

So to comply with the Single Unix specification, rename(2) must be atomic. The
rename(2) function on OS X has been empirically shown to not be atomic. What
reasonable conclusions can be drawn here?

~~~
bradleyland
The reasonable conclusion is that a bug exists where -- under certain
circumstances -- rename(2) fails in a way that is not expected. It's a bug.
It's not as if rename(2) is intentionally implemented in a way that is not
atomic; it's that there is a bug. Should it be fixed? Yes. Does it mean that
OS X is not Unix? No.

~~~
dmm
> Does it mean that OS X is not Unix? No.

What exactly are you arguing? What is your definition of unix? A label
purchased from the Open Group or an implementation of a specification?

If it's the former, I completely agree with you, OS X is UNIX. If it's the
latter, what standard of proof would it take to convince you otherwise?

~~~
bradleyland
Ok, I'll state it clearly. I'm arguing that:

One may feel comfortable claiming that OS X is "Unix" based on the fact that
all versions of OS X since 10.5 have been "Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered
Product" (from an archive of the Apple website), signifying that they have met
the requirements for the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specification.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070823040630/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070823040630/http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/technology/unix.html)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification>

------
tsuraan
For the past few years, I've been using a Sony Z590. My major concerns with a
laptop are battery life, portability, and screen real estate. For the Z590, I
get 8-10 hours of battery life (8 with wifi on, 10 on a plane). The machine is
a 13.3" laptop, and it's light, so portability is there. Those two features
can be found in other laptops, but the screen is a 13.3" 1600x900 display; I
haven't found any laptops from any other manufacturers that do that on such a
small laptop. The new Sony Z-series have full 1080p displays, so they're a bit
higher res at the same size.

The machine runs Linux well enough; suspend works, all the hardware works
except for the fingerprint reader and the built-in camera. The video is a
hybrid graphics with nVidia and Intel; IME nVidia sucks under linux, so I've
just had it disabled and use only the GM45 card. I've heard that the latest Z
series users are sometimes having trouble with their video, but I think the
latest rc kernel has the support required (always the case with linux and
latest hardware...).

As far as using Linux on a Macbook, how do you get around the lack of a middle
and right click? Is the multi-touch/gesture stuff actually in the touchpad
hardware so Linux sees a proper three button scroll mouse, or what? I think
I'd go mad trying to use Linux on a single-button touchpad.

------
balu
I just switched to Ubuntu again - on a two year old Macbook Pro 4,1 though.

To tell a bit about the software side on a Mac: As long as you don't mess with
the system, it runs nicely. Recently I wanted to have a look at clutter
("software library for creating (...) graphical user interfaces") which
depends on newer versions of the libraries that ship with OS X. After fiddling
around with building it myself (or building Formulae for Homebrew which is a
simple and nice package manager for OS X) I decided to go with Ubuntu and
Awesome as my window manager. There was just too many barriers in the way. For
web development, OS X was nice. Unfortunately I'm also toying around with a
lot of music software which rarely has an OSS equivalent.

Some points on Apple hardware: The build quality is very nice. It might not
have the latest stuff, but all components they ship are well integrated and
usually don't get you into hassle (as long as you stick with OS X). I honestly
don't want to miss the multitouch trackpad.

Conclusion: If you can live with the system that OS X is, go for it. Perhaps
you'll get pissed some day about the missing freedom some day. Don't expect
that the hardware in a MacBook will fully supported in a Linux distro

~~~
kls
_For web development, OS X was nice_

 _I honestly don't want to miss the multitouch trackpad_

These are the key take aways, OSX is good for web / mobile development and the
track pad is one hell of a plus for going with a MBP. I would not use OSX for
C or C++ development or any system development for that matter, but for web
and mobile it is a great system.

------
Maro
On a MBP you can easily run all the software you listed. We use MBP for cross-
platform C++ and Python programming. A somewhat complete list of tools we use
in our startup: XCode, Textmate, Araxis Merge, Makefiles, python, svn (or
Versions), git (or SmartGit), python, vim, joe, OpenOffice, MS Office (the new
2011 version rocks), Keynote, FF, Chrome, Safari, Pixelmator, TexShop,
CyberDuck, Dropbox, MacPorts.

~~~
djhworld
'joe'?

~~~
CrazedGeek
This, presumably: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/>

~~~
Luyt
The first thing I install on every new FreeBSD machine ;-)

------
thomas11
I'm extremely happy with my 11.6" Acer Aspire 1410. There must be newer
variants by now. With its one-core Intel CULV it doesn't have much horse
power, but then it's dirt cheap. You can get four for the price of a Macbook,
which makes you not worry about taking it everywhere. It feels pretty fast
doing regular work and programming. Linux works great on it. It still feels
like a laptop to me, not like a netbook. There's both VGA (for projectors) and
digital video out.

------
lfnik
I have a System76 laptop and I really like it. The built in speakers are
terrible but I usually use headphones so who cares. The touch pad buttons are
a little stubborn too.

Other than that boot-up time is pretty fast, and I don't spend hours trying to
find drivers for hardware. And it cost me half of what a Macbook Pro would.

~~~
chapmanb
I can second the System76 laptop recommendation. I got a Lemur laptop from
them last year:

[http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&produc...](http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=106)

Sound, wifi and the camera work fine and it's been through a couple of Ubuntu
upgrades with no issues. I was specifically looking for something that would
be zero maintenance and have been very happy.

------
rbanffy
It depends on what you are running.

I run Emacs a lot, develop for Django, run Eclipse very rarely and I am quite
happy with a very modest Acer netbook. Most of the time, it sits on my desk
connected to a big monitor, keyboard and mouse. Web browsing and Flash-heavy
sites are a problem, as is the Intel GMA due to the 2048x2048 screen size
limitation for hardware acceleration.

I can't overestimate how welcome is the portability it affords carrying my
whole "desktop" environment in a small bag. If I drop it, everything important
is backed up thanks to the twin miracles of rsync and version control.

I have long given up on high-end notebooks. They are typically big and heavy
and faster than I usually need. Also, losing one is a bit more painful than
just having to pay US$400 for a faster equivalent and doing an environment
restore.

------
kgo
I personally find long-term use of X annoying and clunky, so the Mac interface
wins out there. (Please don't try to convince me I'm wrong about X. If you
don't have a problem with it, that's cool.)

If you're just doing basic run-of-the-mill web development, and it looks like
you are, then a MBP will work just fine. If you're in Vim and Bash all day
long, there isn't really much for you to learn. Some things are a little
quirky, off the top of my head I think Apache2 is installed in a weird
location, and command line app X may not be installed by default, but it's
probably no more obscure than switching to a BSD or Solaris.

------
futuremint
I have a ZaReason Strata Pro 13" with an SSD. The processor is by no means
fast, but its fast enough for coding & web design. Any heavier work (like
high-res graphics, video editing, or intensive compiling) would probably be
annoying.

Its a good laptop with Ubuntu 10.10, only thing not working is suspend
automatically when the lid is closed.

Money no object and you _need_ Linux than a ThinkPad would be your best bet.
Expensive, but awesome keyboards and pretty durable & reliable.

You can install Linux on a MBP as a commenter has already mentioned, but you
have to install a weird open source EFI thing for boot, and it'd be tricky to
get support for the newest hardware.

Another option is to use Ubuntu in VirtualBox on OS X. You can install all of
your favorite Linux packages in OS X, but they're patched and you can't always
get the latest release without some work. AFAIK all of the open-source package
management systems for OS X are source based so you get to watch things
compile. I used to have a MBP and compiling new software was always annoying
to me.

~~~
hogu
how's the battery life on that thing?

------
Uchikoma
Am I the only one who is using a Lenovo machine (X200) and hating it and would
do nearly everything to go back to a MBP?

(X200 feels cheap, plastic breaks, lcd dies, battery replaced twice,
hibernation does not work all the time, sound problems, logos flew off, ....)

I was using a small Dell laptop at my last job and the quality was much much
better than the X200.

Essentially after IBM sold them the quality tanked.

~~~
drats
For me it's the opposite, I had a white macbook and the casing cracked and the
hdd failed (along with an iPhone with 3G that didn't work - powercord that
frayed and headphones that died). The X200 on the other hand has a much higher
quality keyboard and seems to be a higher quality than all my past Apple
products. After being locked into paying for 3G for two years and not having
the phone work with it I will not be buying Apple ever again as they have
personally cost me hundreds and hundreds and don't support their products in
the slightest. That's to say nothing of how Ubuntu decimates the horrible
package management on OSX and is light-years ahead in many other areas.

~~~
mkramlich
1\. the white macbook is by intent their cheapest, and therefore, lowest
durability/quality laptop. that's the whole point really. their more expensive
product models do have a reputation of being more robust. everything costs.

2\. "don't support their products in the slightest" <\-- this is hyperbole
because it's easily shown to be false by hundreds of stories on the web from
people who have had good support experiences with Apple.

~~~
drats
1\. I have a white plastic netbook too that cost almost half. I don't see any
cracks in it. You are arguing that a $1000+ machine can have cracks in it
after a month because it's not a "premium" product. That just sounds like the
bleating of an Apple apologist. Furthermore, you don't address the dead HDD,
the fraying power cable, the dead earphones and the non-functional 3G on the
phone.

2\.
[http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliab...](http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf)
Quote and write properly please, learn to capitalise. Apple are mediocre with
good product aesthetics (I'll give them that, although see below) and
excellent PR and an ok-ish window and application manager (which has nothing
on apt-get) they whacked on top of existing open source. They may be big now
but it took an emergency investment from Microsoft to save them, and even then
it took masses of open source software (and a few iterations of OS X) before
they had anything passable to run on their doddering hardware. Also, as you
sound like an Apple fanatic who notoriously get these things wrong, I'd point
out that the mouse was taken from Englebart window manager concept was taken
from Xerox (in addition to the OS from BSD and Webkit from KDE). There are
also posts showing Johnathan Ive plundered product designs from the past. So
the innovation is paper thin, the engineering is massively taken from
elsewhere, some of the product design is taken too and the reliability is
mediocre as proven by the stats.

------
aidenn0
MacBook Pros have their ups and downs:

Ups: 1) Really nice construction 2) Really well put together GUI 3) In general
it's a nicer experience than a non-mac with similar tech-specs.

Downs: 1) No standard central packaging system; All the software you mention
is available on the mac but you have to either: a) Build it yourself b) Use
macports or fink, etc. Furthermore, some of the more gui focused things have
very nice mac-native ports (e.g. MacVim) but you'll have to track those down
yourself. 2) Price. You can get a very nice non-mac laptop every year for the
same price as getting the 17" Macbook Pro every 2 years. I compare to the 17"
since I won't code on anything with less that 1200 vertical lines. If you plan
on only coding with an external monitor, this may not apply. 3) Not super
configurable. You get something very well put together and designed, but that
also means there aren't a lot of options.

I had the option of getting a macbook pro at work but went with a Dell
instead.

------
jc00ke
I'm in total awe of the MBP from a hardware point of view, yet just cannot get
myself to spend that much money. I've ran 9.04, 9.10 & 10.04 with little to no
problems on a Lenovo Y650 "consumer grade" laptop and have been very happy.
2.53GHz dual core Intel, 4GB RAM, HDMI, wifi, etc, all the same specs as last
years MBP, but I paid ~$700 for what was normally a $1300 laptop. Lenovo had
$500 off & 12% discount on top of that... for no reason (except to make me
happy)

The only upgrade I made was an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD. It screams. Get one, or
whatever SSD in that bracket or above that suits your pocketbook.

Last thing: I'm working on a brand new iMac at my current gig and I don't like
it. I'm not a fan of OSX. I've tried several times but I just prefer Linux.
Debian based systems with apt are so easy. Ports & Fink for OSX suck, so if
you do go with a MBP, look into <http://j.mp/mxcl-homebrew>.

------
ohyes
In contrast to the army of Thinkpad/MBP users; I've been using a (fairly
generic) Toshiba laptop (It is an older satellite model) to run Ubuntu. It has
been rock solid for me for 2-3 years now.

The key thing is to make sure that all of the hardware in whatever laptop you
buy has proper drivers. This can either be accomplished by buying a cheaper
laptop with slightly less top of the line hardware (hardware that is slightly
aged is more likely to have had someone debugging driver issues on it), or by
checking that all of the hardware has appropriate drivers.

<http://www.linux-drivers.org/> might be a good starting place.

------
bsaunder
I faced the same question a year ago. My solution was a MBP with Parallels
running Ubuntu. I couldn't be happier. I'm still working more in Ubuntu than
MacOS, but it's nice to have the fall back of the host operating system.

~~~
jamwt
I do this same thing (but with VMWare Fusion); the only significant drawback
is the substantially slower disk I/O within the VM.

I spend all my time in an Ubuntu VM running XMonad, mainly so that I can use
nice os x apps (mac end-user apps are just freakin' awesome, especially 3rd
party apps) and so that I don't spend 2 days fixing my sound or my wireless
card after an overzealous apt-get upgrade screws it up.

Ten years ago I considered it fun endlessly tweaking my OS to play nicely with
my hardware, but these days, I just want to get stuff done. So, the Mac pretty
much guarantees the host machine is running harmoniously since the OS and
hardware were purpose-built for each other.

------
metamemetics
For linux just avoid anything with an ATI graphics card and go with nvidia.
ESPECIALLY if you want to attempt triple booting MacOSX\iATKOS on it.

I've gotten good mileage out of a Dell XPS Studio 16 w/ubuntu but can't
recommend it due to driver issues with wireless (avoid intel5100) and graphics
(radeon hd3760).

If I was buying a new laptop I would search the hackintosh and iATKOS forums
to find models that can install OSX out of the box and triple boot it.

After that, figure out exactly what resolution\size pixels per inch you want
the display. I like 1600x900 for laptops myself. That should narrow it down to
only a couple models.

~~~
RossM
I have a Dell Studio 15 (laptop) and while it's a fairly nice build I'd have
to say stay away from Dell if you want to run Linux - when I started using
Ubuntu (around 8.04) I had so many driver issues it was silly. 10.04 hasn't
been bad though (yet to test out 10.10).

------
jamesg
I love my Thinkpad. It's had all sorts of tortuous treatment and just keeps on
ticking. It was kind of amazing the first time I spilt water on it to have it
drain out through the holes in the bottom of it and just keep going (I've also
stepped on it, dropped it, etc; I'm actually very careful with my computers,
but when you work with it 14+ hours a day for a few years, sooner or later
you're going to do something stupid with it).

I have the x61, which is great. If I were buying one today, I'd probably get
one of the x300 series; they seem to have a slower CPU than the x61 (and
x200), but faster graphics, and better screen resolution. CPUs are fast enough
that it almost doesn't matter these days (for web dev anyway), but faster
graphics are always good -- I really feel the screen redraw when switching
desktops with it plugged into my 26 inch monitor (still, this machine is like,
2.5 years old).

For me, having a lightweight and portable machine is pretty key. I also have
an MBP (15 inch), but it's so much more work to throw into my backpack and lug
around. I always have my Thinkpad with me, which is a huge part of what makes
it valuable.

... Man, I am _such_ a fanboy! :)

~~~
juiceandjuice
I have the X61s, totally maxed out the 9 cell battery, 1.8Ghz ULV processor,
4GB ram, and a 7200RPM 160GB hard drive. It still feels faster than most other
laptops after more than two years. I had to replace the battery, which was
okay because they had them at the lenovo outlet for 45 bucks, and so now I get
6+ hours (true) battery life once again.

Way better than my original first-run 13" white macbook. That being said, I
started a new job and I'm getting a maxed out 15" macbook pro. I miss Mac OS,
and I'll be living in an IDE, so that's why I chose the macbook. Otherwise
it'd be a hard choice between a macbook and a T400S.

The x3* series is now discontinued.

------
Yaggo
> Essentially I think, my question is, is the experience on a MBP so much
> better, that it's worth having to learn the MacOS platform?

Shortly, yes. Mac as a platform (hw & sw) is really solid and beautiful,
letting you to focus on your work, instead of configuring your machine. I used
various Linux distros (Redhat, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu) as my primaly OS from
1998 to 2006, until switched to Mac with no previous experience. It took few
months before it felt like home, but after that I have never considered to
swithing back.

Your Linux skills will be in great use on server side.

> Do I easily get all the software I'll need (svn, git, django, python, vim)?

No problem. You can have even apt-get. Check out these:

<http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/> & <http://www.macports.org/>

PS. As a FOSS advocate, in my wildest dream the FOSS community will some day
come up with something as elegant as OS X, but unfortunately it's hard to see
that happening.

------
templaedhel
System 76 is good if you want to pay extra for the convience of having all the
drivers ready to install. The machines work out of box, end of story. Thy are
solid, fair battery life, and not an eyesore. However you pay more then an
equivilent laptop with windows, and they aren't amazing from a design
standpoint either. The service is good, your calls are answered in an office,
not a call center in India. If you opt to go with some other brand, use nvidia
for graphics, as the support for drivers is much better. Asus makes good
machines, and I find ubuntu runs on them almost out of the box as well.
MacBook pros are solid machines. If you are big on design, they look and feel
great. However in my opinion it's not worth the extra $700. I have never tried
programming on a mac, but the feeling I get from friends, and reading the
comments is that anything besides web design/development and you will start to
run into problems.

------
hendler
Currently having the same debate. Will I stick with a MBP, or go with a non-
Apple and run Ubuntu?

I currently run VMWare Fusion on 4gigs of ram. The decision points, for me,
revolve around:

* battery life - quad cores are 48nm, which is why MBP stuck with i7 32nm presumably. * price/performance - for $800 I have a 6 core desktop with 8 gigs of ram. For a $2000 budget I can get a desktop and a laptop, and have the VM on an external drive, swap the drive between machines out depending on where I'm working from. * durability, convenience and stability - can you do what you need to do without things breaking? DRM? Package management. There are a lot of trade-offs in either direction * job requirements - still need to debug in browsers on mac and windows. running osx in a virtual machine isn't super easy/legal.

Since I've come to terms with most of the issues above, I've been wanting to
not get a MBP. I can always keep my old mac, too. I'm not developing
ipad/iphone apps...

------
daleharvey
I made the switch to a macbook pro a few months ago

Its nice to have a laptop that just works, suspend resume is really awesome.
The polish on the whole thing is pretty nice too.

It still isnt a flexible as ubuntu and I dont feel quite as productive in it
yet, lots of little nagging issues with installing stuff and hardware support
which I havent had with ubuntu for a long time.

------
dlokshin
Not to add to a bevy of positive reviews for Lenovo, but the quality of these
laptops is just so far above the rest. And I found driver support for them to
be excellent with Ubuntu. Pretty much everything worked out of the box.

My T30 recently died after six years of excellent service and I switched to an
Asus to save $200. I have regretted that decision more than I can tell you.
Ubuntu has taken endless tweaking to get working, keyboard buttons started
falling off after only a year, plastic moldings are pealing off, touchpad is
of poor quality, and I could go on. Do yourself a favor and buy a Lenovo, the
quality is outstanding.

If you choose to go the MBP route, it does come with its own problems. Take a
hard drive failure, for example. 20+ screws to remove the thing and replace
it. You basically have to take the entire bottom apart. On a lenovo, unscrew a
single screw, run whatever processes you can on it to save your data, and pop
a new one in.

------
nl
I've just bought a cheap Acer 4741G (something like that anyway?) to run as my
dev machine with Ubuntu.

It's not exactly a high-end machine, but my logic went like this:

1) 15" is too big, 13.3" is too small. This is a 14.3" widescreen, which seems
perfect.

2) Decent, if not outstanding specs. i5 430M processor, 4G RAM, 500GB HD.
(Most Google results are for an i3 version, but it seems the newer ones are
i5)

3) Cheap enough (< $800) that spending extra to get a SSD to use as my boot
drive makes sense (arriving today).

4) Has an internal DVD drive, which I'm going to replace with a drive caddy
and the original 500GB HD.

5) It even has a dedicated (NVidia 310M) video card. I'm not a gamer, but CUDA
support might be fun to play with.

I haven't installed Ubuntu yet, but I did boot it off a USB and all the
hardware seems ok.

The disadvantages:

1) Low battery life. It's only a small, 6 cell battery and lasts 3-4 hours.
This isn't a huge issue for me ATM.

2) Screen resolution is 1366x768. This looks fine on a 13.3", but on the 14" a
little higher might be nice.

3) Not as nice looking as a MacBook Pro

------
jagbolanos
I have developed with several laptops and several Linux flavors during the
years.

But I will certainly recommend the Dell Studio 15 + Ubuntu.

Drivers work without problems (just a small step to take with the wifi) and is
quite stable. My partners that own MPB had problems with theirs during this
time, plus if the need to have a presentation they need to carry additional
HW.

------
sonnym
I've been using an HP dv6113us for ~4 years now, with every version of
openSUSE through that time span working without any deal breaking problems.

When the laptop was brand new, I had some problems with the sound drivers, but
contacted someone working on a patch for ALSA and was able to test it out
before it was merged. Broadcom wireless is easy on openSUSE as a script is
provided, but that should be a solved problem for Ubuntu as well; NVIDIA
caused some problems which were easily resolved by installing the proprietary
drivers. Today it seems that Nouveau is far enough along to function as a
replacement for the proprietary drivers.

That said, the laptop was a gift and were the choice mine, I would probably go
with a Thinkpad.

------
misterm
check out <http://www.linuxcertified.com/>, I got a decent laptop from there
for pretty cheap. I am very happy with it. They come preloaded with your
choice of linux distro, including the ubuntu option.

------
etherael
Have used 3 Asus systems in the past 6 months, none of them were dumped as bad
machines, merely changing requirements;

Asus UL80vt; Extremely good battery life, quite good performance, initially
had a problem with the hybrid graphics setup between the integrated intel and
discrete nvidia but stock 10.04 worked fine on this, the only catch was the
ath9k chipset for wifi, which although it did work would randomly drop out and
require a reboot for reconnection, switching to the preempt kernel line fixes
this issue.

Asus N71JQ; Good middle of the road system bang for buck wise, ATI drivers
were significantly shakier than Nvidia, but not enough to dissuade me from ATI
entirely in future purchases, exact same problem with the ath9k chipset as
with the ul80vt.

Asus G73Jh; Ridiculously awesome performance and the hybrid drives on the
system make this perform significantly better than even desktop 7200rpm drives
(at least for read), the cost is significantly lower than even a mid range MBP
and you simply cannot get these specs on an MBP at any price. The drawback is
that the video card is past the bleeding edge that is gracefully handled by
the stock fglrx drivers from ATI.

I spent days first fixing this in ubuntu 10.04 by manually patching kernel
driver files and rebuilding the fglrx modules myself, followed by this being
broken a month later when upstream went ahead and fixed the same problem in a
different way, resulting in extensive maintenance to push out the conflicting
fglrx mods. That said, this issue should actually be fixed as of the present
10.04 release and the double dose of pain I got may have been an artefact of
my specific case. If this is really the case this is an _awesome_ development
rig. The only other drawback is that old ath9k chestnut, same fix as required
for the other two mentioned model, the preempt line of kernels fixes this.

The only other issue affecting all three systems is that the touchpad freeze
function does not work without extensive kernel level messing around and I
couldn't be bothered to go that far to fix what I felt to be a minor issue (it
was most pronounced on the ul80vt due to the size relative to my enormous
hands and least on the G73jh for the same reason).

------
kunalb
I've tried Ubuntu on a C series Vaio (long time back) which pretty much died
on me a hardware failure at a time within 2 years and right now am using a
15'' HP Probook (4510s) which runs Ubuntu like a dream. The ATI drivers are
picked up directly and the only issues that I've run into involve screen
brightness screwing up after suspend/resume -- HP seems to be able to support
Ubuntu really well.

This laptop didn't cost that much -- around $1000 but the build quality isn't
that good -- though the keyboard is excellent (with a numpad).

As a side note -- the best solution seems to be getting a MBP and then running
Ubuntu virtually for development and OSX stuff for everything else.

------
ahi
I used to have a Thinkpad, but the battery/power connector kept crapping out
on me. I'm not convinced Lenovo has maintained the commitment to quality. I'm
a little embarrassed to admit it, but I currently use a (copy/paste from
newegg) Gateway NV59C57U Intel Core i5 450M(2.40GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 500GB
HDD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 NoteBook

Was only $650 and runs Mint (Ubuntu derivative) just fine. Only problem with
it is that the trackpad sucks, but why would you be using the trackpad when
you spend all your time in vim? In short, it's plenty fast and since it's a
third the price of an MBP there's no guilt in buying a new laptop every year.

------
enduser
I bought a Toshiba Portege r705 (13") last weekend and run Linux (ArchLinux)
on it exclusively. The only issue I have had with it is that backlight control
goes away after resuming from a suspend. Everything else works flawlessly, and
the laptop is vastly superior compared to a Macbook Pro as far as what you get
for your dollar.

$780 at Best Buy for 3.0lbs, 2.4GHz Core i3, 4GB, 500GB 5400RPM drive, dual-
layer DVD writer, SD slot, HDMI and VGA out, eSATA port, built-in 4G (Linux-
compatible with mainline kernel drivers), chiclet keyboard similar to
Macbooks, 13" 1366x768 display (glossy but less glossy than a Macbook).

Get a ThinkPad if you want to spend more.

------
bitwize
ThinkPad X or T series. Booyaka.

------
coderholic
I have ubuntu on a Dell Latitude. Highly recommended.
[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e6410/pd?refid=la...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e6410/pd?refid=latitude-e6410)

------
cjbprime
I'd normally recommend a ThinkPad, but they've been pretty disappointing
lately. Two very recent experiences:

T410s:

* sound doesn't work in latest Ubuntu, need a kernel update for a new PCI ID.

* battery charge percentage goes from 0-10%, where 10% is "full". Apparently the embedded controller decided to change which units it reports current in.

T510:

* black screen when booting Fedora or Ubuntu installers. Caused by lack of drivers for the embedded DisplayPort connection to the LCD panel.

* display backlight brightness controls don't work

* suspend doesn't work, because it has a USB3 controller which fails to suspend, because the upstream kernel doesn't have any suspend/resume support for USB3 controllers yet.

Sigh.

~~~
mgedmin
This is often the story with the latest hardware: you have to wait 6 months
for it to be supported in Linux :(

When I got my T61, the current Ubuntu (breezy, IIRC) didn't run on it. I
installed the alpha of the upcoming version (gutsy) and it kind of limped
along; all the newer versions worked just fine out of the box.

------
simonjoe
+1 for Apples. I have run virtual machines in the past when necessary, but I
find that I don't do it anymore as there isn't any software I have to use
right now that doesn't run natively. OS X has a few decent package managers,
though none as good as apt-get or portage, so that might be a concern if
you're used to that kind of thing. If you're not aware that the software you
mentioned is available for OS X and specifically mentioned ubuntu, i'm willing
to bet that's not the case…but I have a bad image of ubuntu users, mostly
because I used gentoo back when I was on linux.

~~~
slantyyz
Lately, instead of running Linux in a VM, I've been messing with EC2 micro
instances. At .02/h, it's fairly inexpensive, and the load isn't on your own
machine.

------
tnorthcutt
I recently purchased an HP Envy 14, and really like it. It's quite similar to
a MBP from a hardware standpoint - hi resolution screen, aluminum case, fairly
lightweight, overall great build quality. I don't run Ubuntu on mine, but from
reading this blog post:
[http://thewaffletech.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/ubuntu-10-04-o...](http://thewaffletech.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/ubuntu-10-04-on-
envy-14/) it sounds like it runs it pretty well. Possibly some minor issues
that may be resolved with 10.10.

~~~
aidenn0
Hi resolution screen? I've come to associate the macs with low-resolution
screen. You can't get 1920x1200 unless you go up to 17" I'm used to getting it
as an option on 15" laptops

~~~
tnorthcutt
My mistake, I assumed 1280x768 or 1280x800 was typical for a 15" laptop. I
thought 1680x1050 (MBP) and 1600x900 (E14) were considered high resolution.

------
megamark16
I use a MBP at work and I'm not really a huge fan. I find the interface
requires that I use the mouse way to often, and I have to know all Apple's
special key combinations to get anything done. I spend most of my time in my
Ubuntu virtual machine, and I wish I were booting Ubuntu natively, but I just
haven't had time get it working correctly. I am also in the market for a new
dev machine for personal use, and I'm leaning heavily towards a Thinkpad, just
based on what I've heard around the Linux community.

~~~
bradleyland
> I find the interface requires that I use the mouse way to often, and I have
> to know all Apple's special key combinations to get anything done

If you expect to get anything done without using the mouse, knowing all the
"special key combinations" is a pre-requisite for any OS. I hate to be the
kool-aid drinker that jumps to Apple's defense, but I hear a lot of complaints
about OS X keyboard accessibility that simply aren't true. A single checkbox
enables access to "all controls" through your keyboard. It's turned of by
default because, frankly, most people don't use the keyboard. I do, but my
computer is my instrument.

~~~
robgough
It took me over two years to find that checkbox, as I didn't know to look for
it.

Not being able to dismiss a dialog box with the keyboard was driving me mad.

System Prefs>Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts>"All Controls"

~~~
msbarnett
You can dismiss dialogs without enabling that.

Enter = Ok, Escape = Cancel, Command-D is "Don't Save" in "Would you like to
save?" dialogs, etc.

------
ze_dude
I've been using a Dell XPS 1530 with an SSD, and couldn't be happier.

All the stuff I've tried worked out of the box (built-in wireless, webcam,
sound, graphics card w/ NVidia driver, etc).

It's a great laptop and the SSD and 4 Ggis of RAM make coding much more
enjoyable.

As a side note, it takes 5-10 seconds to boot into Kubuntu from a complete
shutdown (i.e. not suspend-to-disk), whereas it takes over 45 seconds to get
into Vista (on the same laptop)... And Windows isn't starting up database and
web servers.

So if you want to get a PC, definitely look into the XPS 1530.

------
macco
Please do Linux a favor and buy a preinstalled: ZaReason, System76.

Their machines work great with Ubuntu - unlike many laptops from other
vendors.

And yes, you get all the software you'll need - it's Debian at least.

~~~
maco
wow, our usernames are similar... but yes, +1 for ZaReason. I have two of
their systems. The company is a pleasure to deal with.

------
davidw
Dell occasionally has systems for sale without Windows, or with Linux
preinstalled:

<http://www.dell.com/ubuntu>

~~~
khandelwal
I'm hoping to avoid Dell. Their laptops (at least the ones I've been familiar
with) seem to have poor build quality.

~~~
joezydeco
Using a Dell Latitude E6500 and it's pretty solid. Lots of metal.

~~~
khandelwal
If I install Ubuntu on it, does pretty much everything work? I don't care too
much about suspend/resume, but I do need the wireless to work.

~~~
sandGorgon
I have not had problems with Dell's wireless for the past 1 year.

If you are using Ubuntu 10.04 or 10.10, I havent seen a Dell laptop where the
wireless wasnt out-of-the-box.

------
lkozma
Lenovo SL510 here: picked it up for ~ 400 euros with FreeDOS, installed
Ubuntu, everything worked out of the box. I use it for all development.

------
Dmunro
I have this at work:
[http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&produc...](http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=99)

Just upgraded to 10.10 and everything works just as expected (provided you've
installed the System76 drivers), including wifi and the webcam. It really is a
beast too, performance-wise, with 8 cores and 4 gigs of ram.

------
adamkittelson
I can recommend System76 if you go the Ubuntu route. My desktop at home is a
System76 Leopard Extreme that I dual boot Ubuntu / Windows, and prior to
getting my MBP I was using a Pangolin Performance laptop.

Since getting a MBP I can say that I do prefer OSX to Ubuntu, but I'm a
Ruby/Rails dev surrounded by other Apple guys using Textmate so it's the path
of least resistance for me for sure.

------
mcxx
I use an Asus UL-30 and recommend it - great keyboard and touchpad, long
battery life, lightweight, good display, no problems with Ubuntu.

~~~
jzawodn
The touchpad drives me nuts on that machine. :-(

Thankfully I have a Thinkpad 410s replacing it tomorrow.

~~~
erikwiffin
I have a UL-30 and the wildly sensitive touchpad is my only complaint.

I love the keyboard, battery life, and how light it is. It performs more than
well enough for web development, web browsing, video watching.

~~~
mcxx
I on the other hand love the touchpad. It taught me not to use the mouse
anymore (and I was a hardcore mouse person before).

------
anonymous245
No, the experience on the MBP is not so much better as to warrant getting it
for development.

IMHO, it's worse. My biggest gripes: (1) built-in terminal doesn't do
fullscreen, (2) built-in terminal doesn't have easy way to emulate different
keyboards (tmux requires function keys behave like xterm).

 _BUT_ the iApps are _SWEET_. iPhoto/iMovie are rocking my world.

I say this as a recent dabbler in Mac.

------
marcocampos
While I love Thinkpads and was going to buy a T410 I end up buying a HP
Elitebook 8440p. It's sturdy as Lenovo laptops, all Intel hardware (not having
to worry about crappy ATI/NVIDIA graphics drivers) and it comes with a kick-
ass 14" 1600x900 LED backlit LCD.

Installed Ubuntu 10.10 yesterday. Everything worked, all hardware works
correctly. Couldn't be happier. :)

------
ianb
Like many people running Linux I also have a Thinkpad (T400). It works okay,
but it still has some significant issues. The specific things I have problems
with:

* Sleep; unlike some previous experiences the laptop does pretty reliably come back after sleep, but it's slow to wake up and the experience feels crude. The locked screen login screen for instance requires a keypress, and then another second before you can actually enter the password making it easy to leave out the first character of your password. I'd remove it entirely but I can't find a preference for that.

* Automatic sleep via closing the screen is a pain, primarily because of the slowness. If you regret having closed the laptop (i.e., you forgot just one thing) then you open it up only to see it pokily trying to sleep, waiting, and trying to wake it up. I've resorted to turning off all automatic sleeping, which also causes lots of problems but at least is predictable.

* External monitors work great now, they've finally figured that out (at least with the video hardware in a Thinkpad; though it seems generally good these days). Still it's tweaky and annoying. I run a lot with two monitors, and everytime I reconnect I have to tweak the settings and go through a little dance to avoid bugs in screen layout (connect monitor, orientation is wrong, mirror screens, apply, unmirror, rearrange, fix resolutions, apply). With my previous Dell laptop I had to logout to connect a screen, so at least it's better.

* Sometimes when I go into suspend it fails. So I'll tuck my laptop away, not wanting to wait 20 seconds to see if it successfully slept, and then later realize my backpack is hot because it's running full speed in there.

* Battery life is poor. One cool feature of Thinkpads is you can remove the DVD drive and replace it with a battery. This takes a long time to charge, but it's cool (and hotswapping works great, in case I want the DVD drive). Still I only get a couple hours of battery life. When I've tried to apply tweaks to improve battery life I've broken things or disabled hardware.

* Wireless is not reliable in more complex setups, e.g., sometimes WPA doesn't work.

* Sometimes wireless doesn't come back after going into airplane mode.

* The hardware has good and bad parts. The physical build quality is unimpressive. The dock is nice, and only available with a couple kinds of laptops (Thinkpad, Dell... not sure what else?) The speakers are passable, about the same as a Macbook. You don't need a dongle for a VGA monitor, but you need a dock to do DVI. It's not terribly hot. The Mac screens are definitely better. I like the mouse nipple, but the touchpad on a Mac is way better than the Thinkpad's touchpad. Three mouse buttons, very nice for Linux. The camera works, video chat works, bluetooth works, and probably a bunch of other things that wouldn't be givens a few years ago on Linux.

I would seriously consider a laptop specifically designed for Linux (like
System76; someone tweeted me another one a while ago but stupid Twitter
doesn't let me look back to old replies). But it feels weird because I've
never known someone who personally has such a laptop. And it's very hard to
trust someone who says "Linux works great on X" because there are a lot of
people who have a very low standard of what "great" means.

~~~
alaithea
In the latest version of Ubuntu (Meerkat), the annoying delay before being
able to enter a password in the lock screen on resume is gone.

------
_jz
I got a MBP a frew years ago as a gift/compensation for some free lance work.
I've been battling trigger point pain for the past 4 years and the MBP
keyboard is the most comfortable laptop keyboard I have found _for me_.
Everyone is different but this is something you may want to consider since
most laptops will run a form of *nix.

------
niels
Thinkpad X series (or T410). By far the best.

------
tvon
After ~8 years with Linux as my desktop OS I moved to OSX in '06 and have been
very happy. My unibody MBP is by far the nicest laptop I've ever owned or
used... I do web development with Django for a living, so it sounds like you'd
use the same tools.

But, to each their own...

------
sushi
I use Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 1525 and it serves my purpose well but
because I also have to use Photoshop a lot I have Windows in partition.

I will die out of joy the day Photoshop comes to Ubuntu. That is the ONLY
reason I have Windows installed.

------
twymer
Edit: I need to learn to read better.

I've never used System76 but saw them at a recent Linux fest. Seemed like very
quality machines: actually have their logo as part of the case and windows key
replaced with an Ubuntu key (neither are stickers).

------
midnightmonster
I had a macbook but found I preferred my Linux desktop. I ended up giving the
macbook to my wife. I'm thinking about getting another mac for iPad
development, but I still expect to do everything else on my Ubuntu machine.

------
ashitvora
I am loving my Mac. But if you have budget constraints, I would suggest
Ubuntu. I was using Ubuntu before I switched to Mac and I was loving it too.

You can get almost all the softwares on Ubuntu which you get on Mac OSx.

------
mgedmin
I would go with a T or X series ThinkPad with Intel graphics and Ubuntu.

I've seen a team of Python web developers with MacBook Pros. They all used
Ubuntu virtual machines for the actual development.

------
mbubb
Hello

My HP 6510b has run every version of Ubuntu since 8.04. I put a 12 cell travel
battery on it when I travel so it is a bit heavy. 4GB RAM. Usually run xfce. I
am a sysadmin so often have a handful of xterms open and VirtualBox running XP
for vSphere, etc. chrome open with HN in the background. Jabber session or
two.

I really cannot say enough about this laptop. Not pretty at all but durable.

Everything works - except the fingerprint reader which I have never cared
about to get to work.

It has been great. Currently am on Ubuntu 10.10/ xfce. Have used this laptop
since 2007 - initially had Win2k on it.

the current incarnation is the 6550b:
[http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13616_ca/13616...](http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13616_ca/13616_ca.PDF)

    
    
      My lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory
Controller Hub (rev 0c)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960
Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated
Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #4 (rev 03)

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #5 (rev 03)

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #2 (rev 03)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
Controller (rev 03)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1
(rev 03)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2
(rev 03)

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3
(rev 03)

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5
(rev 03)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #1 (rev 03)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #2 (rev 03)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #3 (rev 03)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #1 (rev 03)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface
Controller (rev 03)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE
Controller (rev 03)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA
AHCI Controller (rev 03)

02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b6)

02:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev
02)

10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan]
Network Connection (rev 02)

18:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit
Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

------
swah
For me the three OSes _feel_ like this:

\- Windows: snappy until it fucks up, best fonts, Flash runs perfectly, you
feel mainstream, pragmatic \- Linux: great support for developing, ugly fonts
and lousy hardware support, you feel a hacker \- MacOS: Youtube makes the MBP
hot, never need to boot again, just close/open the lid, good looking apps, you
feel modern and cool

~~~
cskau
Actually I think Ubuntu has made a good push in the fonts area - especially as
of lately. The repos contains installers for (all?) the Windows fonts plus
they just launched a brand new Ubuntu font which IMHO looks great. The Ubuntu
repos are literally stuffed with fonts.

------
narrator
I have a Sony Vaio VGN-SR520G. Everything Ubuntu-wise works perfectly.

------
dangrossman
HP Envy 14. It's the MacBook Pro of PCs.

------
vdoma
Lenovo Thinkpad FTW

------
gcb
Eeepc 1000.

No noise sad.

Truly portable.

5h plus battery

Do not heat your lap.

Got last year for 300. Amazon has now for 700 :(

And most important. It does not have CPU to run things like silly flash games
:)

~~~
qjz
What model? I have a 1000HE. Its portability and battery life are great for
travel, but its form factor makes it painful for development (without an
external monitor/keyboard/mouse).

~~~
gcb
the pure 1000. i think it's the only one with ssd... never cared much for the
others.

it's ok for running vim. :)

------
acconrad
01010100 00111101

The end.

------
nightlifelover
Macbook pro, because Linux on a laptop sucks balls.

~~~
technomancy
2003 called, it wants its stereotypes back.

------
cskau
Nobody /needs/ a MacBook Pro. They're just fancy toys. Spend half the money on
an inexpensive brand and get the same laptop. Linux will run on anything (
literally! ), so just buy the laptop that fits you the best, and don't worry
too much about the rest.

Personally I've been developing on a modest 10' ASUS eee PC for years. Ubuntu
loaded with all of the above and much more have been no problem at all. Lately
I've been considering replacing it for the new 12' model though, since both
the keyboard and the mousepad buttons are beginning to show wear from using it
so much.

~~~
slantyyz
Are you serious?

Macbook Pros are premium notebooks in the exact same way high end Thinkpads
are. The price between a Macbook Pro and any other high end notebook is
competitive.

With an inexpensive brand, you're getting inferior screens and flimsy plastic
bodies. The specs might line up on paper, but that's as naive an approach to
comparing hardware as you can get. Buying based on a flimsy spec checklist
versus matching up the device to your real-world requirements is going to
result in a great deal of buyer remorse.

If you're a road warrior, the last thing you want is a laptop with a flimsy
body and weak solder points on the ports. If you are using your laptop as your
only screen, you don't want to be spending >= 8h a day looking at a cheapass
LCD.

Just like you don't see professional carpenters using dollar store tools, as a
professional developer, you need to invest in quality hardware - _regardless
of the brand_.

~~~
cskau
I'm quite serious. I am however also aware that I'm upsetting the entire Apple
fanboy segment in here. (with slight intent admittedly)

MacBook Pros are premium indeed. But unless you're looking specifically for
the "premium" look, then there's no reason to default to Macs.

Please bear in mind that I base all my comments on first hand, personal
experience. As stated I've been running on a tiny, flimsy, plastic thing for
years. My trusty machine have been thrown around and even landed on a stone
floor from ~2m, with me onto. I have the marks to show for it, but the machine
merely chipped at the edge.

Your argument about the LCDs being inferior I simply don't follow. What makes
you think you're getting a different LCD in your MBP than everybody else does?
It's the same technology as in all other machines out there.

I know specs are easy to dismiss, but honestly, it's not the extra shine that
makes your computer run faster.

You hit the nail on the head (pun intended) with your analogy - why should the
carpenter choose a specific brand or hammer just for the aluminum handle?
Inexpensive is not the same as "cheapass". You get plenty of quality machines
at half the prices of a MBP.

