
Ask HN: System76 Laptop with Pop _OS as an Alternative to a Macbook for Dev? - kerkeslager
I&#x27;m in the market for a new development laptop. I&#x27;ve been doing my development on MacOS the last few years and originally was very happy with this. However, I develop mostly in Python for work, and C for some personal projects, and development environments on MacOS have been deteriorating on both ecosystems over the last few years. The Python which comes preinstalled is approaching end of life, and Homebrew has steadily become less and less &quot;plug and play&quot; with Python packages, requiring me to manage an increasingly complex balance of pip, homebrew, and conda, with unclear boundaries as to which should be used to install packages. But the real killer is that Valgrind still doesn&#x27;t work on the latest releases of MacOS, and there&#x27;s no sign of this changing. So I&#x27;m looking at other systems.<p>I&#x27;ve played around a bit with System76&#x27;s Pop!_OS, and in short-term use it looks like a viable replacement. The OS&#x2F;hardware integration seems similar, the apt packages are fairly up to date, and all the tools I use seem to install smoothly from apt or pip. However, I&#x27;m lacking long-term experience with using it, so I&#x27;m soliciting opinions from the HN community.
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db48x
This is what I use. Even if I didn't dislike OSX, it would be far too limiting
to give up valgrind and rr.

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tlb
I'm using one and I like it. I got the huge one with 4K display, 64GB RAM, and
a GTX 2080 GPU. It's definitely big to carry around. The desktop environment
(Gnome + Wayland) is adequate. And not having to write portable code between
Mac and Linux makes my life easier.

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kerkeslager
Yeah, I'm looking at the Galago Pro, the Apple laptop I'm replacing is the
Macbook Air. The Galago comes in a similar size and with an aluminum case I'm
hoping is similar.

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gaspoweredcat
i have to ask what exactly draws you to them specifically? im not familiar
with their OS but i assume its just a debian based linux. the systems
themselves dont look particularly impressive if you ask me, the casing looks
chunky and a bit dated on most of them (they remind me of the sort of thing
Acer were knocking out about 5 years ago)

i may be biased as ive had a preference for them for some time but id argue
youd get a much better experience spending that money on a thinkpad, you get
the best keyboard available on any laptop, solid build quality and a very good
warranty program

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kerkeslager
> im not familiar with their OS but i assume its just a debian based linux.

It's Ubuntu-based (so, indirectly Debian-based) but they've done a lot of
hardware integration work to make sure that device drivers not only work, but
are fairly optimized. My impression so far is that they do a better job than
Windows on that (which isn't really impressive until you compare it to
hardware integration on other Linux systems). Most reviews seem to back this
up--stuff like fan speed and processor management are pretty well-tuned
according to most reviewers. My biggest fear going back to Linux from MacOS is
that I'll be stuck with software that never quite works well on the hardware,
which is how things were when I used Debian/Ubuntu variants from maybe
1998-2008. I _can_ fix my computer, but I'd rather not have to. So something
with tight hardware/software integration like Macs have is a big selling point
for me.

> the systems themselves dont look particularly impressive if you ask me, the
> casing looks chunky and a bit dated on most of them (they remind me of the
> sort of thing Acer were knocking out about 5 years ago)

That's true for some of them, but some of them (i.e. the Galago that I'm
looking at) have aluminum cases and what looks like pretty nice trackpads.

> i may be biased as ive had a preference for them for some time but id argue
> youd get a much better experience spending that money on a thinkpad, you get
> the best keyboard available on any laptop, solid build quality and a very
> good warranty program

I have an older Thinkpad and while I agree with you on the keyboards, I've
never liked their trackpad, and I find the little nub thing annoying. I also
would prefer an aluminum case, though that's not a dealbreaker if there were
other factors. Maybe there have been some improvements since the last time I
used Thinkpads, though, so I'll see if I can find one to play around with in
the store.

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gaspoweredcat
as i say im somewhat biased (i currently have an X61, T420, X1C1, X1C6, P52s
and a Thinkstation S20) there is a difference of opinion online but i
personally think the glass touchpad on the X models is one of the best
touchpads you can get, im not so much a fan of the version on the lower T/P/E
models though but some people love them

case wise i kind of get, it metal is nice but im also a pretty big fan of the
sturdy yet light carbon shell on the X models, it never feels weak and has no
flex like metal but its much lighter, i always have my laptop with me so
having something lightweight is a real boon as im always on the go

the only other laptop i considered during my last upgrade last year was the
Dell XPS line which are also a damn fine device

as for linux its come a LONG way generally most everything these days just
works, even gaming on a linux system is pretty easy these days, if you use a
major distro with a debian/ubuntu base youll likely have few issues. Again
coming back to thinkpads lenovo have started allowing you to choose linux over
windows on the latest P series laptops, which if your budget will stretch can
also have a 4k OLED display which to me would make the P1 pretty attractive if
i werent averse to 15" laptops. but for reference i installed debian on my
P52s with no problems at all, even the Quadro GPU just worked

also if youre still a little uneasy about the switch to linux you could
consider either making your upcoming system a "hackintosh" or run OS X in a VM

its all personal preference at the end of the day though, the right system for
me may well not be the right one for you

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joshbaptiste
I mean for myself a recent Chromebook that supports Android/Linux containers
is good enough for my Vim/Python/Go work flow.

~~~
kerkeslager
I spend ~40 hours a week on my laptop. The only things I spend more time are
is my bed/sheets/pillows/etc. So there's really no reason for me to spare any
expense on my laptop--the per-hour cost is negligible. So really the concept
of "good enough" doesn't apply here--if it can be better I want it to be.

