Buying a programmer's laptop running Ubuntu

[christian.oudar]

So it's time for my laptop upgrade at work, and I get to pick it.

My constraints are hard limit of $1500, soft limit of $1200. It will be running Ubuntu, so paying for an operating system is unnecessary. I do a lot of work in VMs, so 4GB memory and a multi core processor are required. I won't be gaming at all, mostly shell, vim, and browser work. Big screen would be nice.

I'm considering a Lenovo ThinkPad T410 at the moment, configured to $1174.

Can anyone point me to some resources or reviews, or make a suggestion?

 

[mfenn]

Macbook Pro, wait for the upcoming refresh. It has ssh, vim, etc. and with MacPorts, you can get pretty much any FOSS software you want. As an additional plus, the battery life is good and you don't have to mess around with getting the right kernel modules, user-space software, etc (very much etc.) to get all of the esoteric devices found in most laptops to work.

 

[busydude]

Macbook Pro, wait for the upcoming refresh. It has ssh, vim, etc. and with MacPorts, you can get pretty much any FOSS software you want. As an additional plus, the battery life is good and you don't have to mess around with getting the right kernel modules, user-space software, etc (very much etc.) to get all of the esoteric devices found in most laptops to work.

+1

If you work on the go get a 15" pro otherwise, buy a 13" pro and buy a 22" monitor with the money saved.

 

[Fox5]

Dell and System 76 sell a few native ubuntu machines. (system76 has some nice hardware, including quad core laptops, haven't had any experience with them though)

Make sure whatever system you get has full hardware virtualization support, not all intel processors do.

Other than driver issues though, buying a laptop to run ubuntu will be no different than any other.
I'd avoid a macbook, there's always some small driver issues running other OSes on it.
Going for something that includes all intel hardware (graphics, sound, and wifi) would be safest. Does Intel still use the centrino brand to indicate an all intel hardware laptop?

 

[mfenn]

I'd avoid a macbook, there's always some small driver issues running other OSes on it.
Going for something that includes all intel hardware (graphics, sound, and wifi) would be safest. Does Intel still use the centrino brand to indicate an all intel hardware laptop?

You've missed the point on this part!

Of course you don't buy a Macbook to run Ubuntu, that would be silly. You buy a Macbook to run OSX. OSX is UNIX without the hassle. It seems like the OP needs a UNIX environment, but you don't want to be wasting time mucking about with drivers on a work machine!

EDIT: There's a reason the guys at Fermilab and CERN all use Mac workstations and Linux servers. The damn particle accelerators don't wait for people to mess with drivers!

 

[VinylxScratches]

13inch Macbook + 22inch monitor.

 

[Fox5]

You've missed the point on this part!

Of course you don't buy a Macbook to run Ubuntu, that would be silly. You buy a Macbook to run OSX. OSX is UNIX without the hassle. It seems like the OP needs a UNIX environment, but you don't want to be wasting time mucking about with drivers on a work machine!

EDIT: There's a reason the guys at Fermilab and CERN all use Mac workstations and Linux servers. The damn particle accelerators don't wait for people to mess with drivers!

Well, he didn't ask for a Mac, and if he wants a mac, it's not like there's much advice needed on what to get.

And I disagree that OSX is the perfect unix environment, unix is a second class citizen on osx. It's better than windows + cygwin, but not perfect. Personal preference I suppose, but I wouldn't use a Macbook for development unless I was specifically targeting the apple ecosystem.

 

[simonizor]

Why would he get a mac? At that price point, he could either get an awesome notebook with a lot of computing power, or he could get a mac so it looks pretty and performs the same as a $800-$900 PC.

 

[mfenn]

Why would he get a mac? At that price point, he could either get an awesome notebook with a lot of computing power, or he could get a mac so it looks pretty and performs the same as a $800-$900 PC.

The OP's concrete requirements are "I do a lot of work in VMs, so 4GB memory and a multi core processor are required. I won't be gaming at all, mostly shell, vim, and browser work. Big screen would be nice." The key to gathering requirements, is to figure out what the user needs. 9 times out of 10 this is not the same as what they think they need.

The point is that a dev machine doesn't need a lot of computing power. What a dev machine needs to do is get out of your way and let you work. Notice that I said to "wait for the upcoming refresh", he'll have plenty of CPU power for running a few VMs. Messing around with trying to get fglrx to work with Xorg 7.3 isn't exactly productive.

OP, if you have a concrete reason for absolutely needing Ubuntu (as opposed to another Linux distro, or another flavor of UNIX altogether), please chime in, and I will retract.

 

[mfenn]

Well, he didn't ask for a Mac, and if he wants a mac, it's not like there's much advice needed on what to get.

And I disagree that OSX is the perfect unix environment, unix is a second class citizen on osx. It's better than windows + cygwin, but not perfect. Personal preference I suppose, but I wouldn't use a Macbook for development unless I was specifically targeting the apple ecosystem.

I disagree with the second-class citizen part, but I see your point. It really depends on what type of development the OP is doing. If he's working in C++, then yeah Mac isn't the best choice. If he's working in Python or doing web dev, then it's just as good as Ubuntu, with much less hassle.

 

[christian.oudar]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

On the mac front, I know a lot of programmers who are very happy with their macs, but I'm not a mac guy. I have serious problems with the way they handle intellectual property.

Also, I've been using Ubuntu for a while, and am very happy with it, and don't want to put in the time to retrain myself.

I'll agree that a lot of computing power is not really a requirement, my current laptop is plenty adequate as far as that. But I'm still probably going to go with whatever is current and a good value on the performance front.

Besides adequate performance, I really just need a good screen, a good keyboard, and not-crappy battery life.

Any suggestions for review sites? Anandtech has some good specific reviews, but not a lot of recent overviews or roundups of the laptop market that I could find.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

On the mac front, I know a lot of programmers who are very happy with their macs, but I'm not a mac guy. I have serious problems with the way they handle intellectual property.

Also, I've been using Ubuntu for a while, and am very happy with it, and don't want to put in the time to retrain myself.

OK, fair enough.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.
I'll agree that a lot of computing power is not really a requirement, my current laptop is plenty adequate as far as that. But I'm still probably going to go with whatever is current and a good value on the performance front.

Besides adequate performance, I really just need a good screen, a good keyboard, and not-crappy battery life.

Any suggestions for review sites? Anandtech has some good specific reviews, but not a lot of recent overviews or roundups of the laptop market that I could find.

Getting a good screen is the hard part. Everything else is cake.

AT liked the Studio XPS 16 for its screen. THE RGBLED screen completely dominates everything before or since. They were also fans of the keyboard. Battery life wasn't that great though, and it is fairly big. The ASUS 61J also has a decent screen, but is another 16" laptop, and since it is an Optimus setup, I believe you are forced to use the discrete GPU in Linux. This isn't great for battery life. The Acer 1810T has a decent screen as well, but has the opposite problem for you, it's a 11.6" CULV. The SU7300 does support VT-x, so you might be able to get by with the CPU, but I think 11.6" is too small for a primary machine.

Bottom line, it's unfortunately (for you at least) that Apple is the only manuf. that consistently uses decent screens.

 

[Fox5]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

On the mac front, I know a lot of programmers who are very happy with their macs, but I'm not a mac guy. I have serious problems with the way they handle intellectual property.

Also, I've been using Ubuntu for a while, and am very happy with it, and don't want to put in the time to retrain myself.

I'll agree that a lot of computing power is not really a requirement, my current laptop is plenty adequate as far as that. But I'm still probably going to go with whatever is current and a good value on the performance front.

Besides adequate performance, I really just need a good screen, a good keyboard, and not-crappy battery life.

Any suggestions for review sites? Anandtech has some good specific reviews, but not a lot of recent overviews or roundups of the laptop market that I could find.

Cnet does a lot of reviews, but they're fairly generic.
Toms Hardware has more laptop reviews iirc.

Or you could just go by brands. Dell Latitude and Studio are better built than inspiron and such, thinkpads are also better built than whatever lenovo's generic consumer devices are.
There's also a few really premium brands, like the Dell Adamo, but I don't know much about them.

And again, I'd try to go for something centrino branded to guarantee linux compatibility, even though that isn't as much of a problem anymore.

 

[Cable God]

Another vote for MBP, but you're missing out imho.