On: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software developm...

[zamalek]

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.

[belthesar → zamalek]

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.

[bduerst → belthesar]

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.

[akvadrako → zamalek]

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.

[allisdust → akvadrako]

+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.

[brobinson → allisdust]

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.

[allisdust → brobinson]

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).

[brobinson → allisdust]

Thank you! This is very helpful.

[kellogs_aran → allisdust]

Will check this out too. Thanks!

[neverminder → zamalek]

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.

[kellogs_aran → zamalek]

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