Ask HN: Best Developer Linux Laptop?

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:<p>Day 1: Ooh, pretty.<p>2-3 days: I fucking hate iTunes. Luckily ports install mpd works.<p>1 month: Ooh, the pretty magsafe connector saved me from dropping it when I tripped over the wire.<p>1.5 months: Arrgh, finally numpy works.<p>2 months: I miss XMonad.<p>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.<p>4 months: I want to get work done. Open up virtualbox, boot ubuntu server in a VM.<p>2 years later: load linux onto a thinkpad. Woohoo!<p>[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.<p>Also, I don't mean to be unduly negative on macs. They just didn't satisfy me as a development box.<p>Lastly, <i>things might have changed recently</i>. I gave away my macbook early this year.]

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').<p>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.<p>EDIT - adding my one X201 complaint<p>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.)

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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>You might also consider system76, but I don't have experience with those.<p>EDIT: I'm currently running Linux on my T410. Suspend was broken with Ubuntu 10.4, but everything works perfectly now with 10.10.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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...).<p>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.

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

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.

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.

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.<p>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.

It depends on what you are running.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.)<p>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.

I have a ZaReason Strata Pro 13" with an SSD. The processor is by no means fast, but its fast enough for coding &#38; web design. Any heavier work (like high-res graphics, video editing, or intensive compiling) would probably be annoying.<p>Its a good laptop with Ubuntu 10.10, only thing not working is suspend automatically when the lid is closed.<p>Money no object and you <i>need</i> Linux than a ThinkPad would be your best bet. Expensive, but awesome keyboards and pretty durable &#38; reliable.<p>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.<p>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.

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?<p>(X200 feels cheap, plastic breaks, lcd dies, battery replaced twice, hibernation does not work all the time, sound problems, logos flew off, ....)<p>I was using a small Dell laptop at my last job and the quality was much much better than the X200.<p>Essentially after IBM sold them the quality tanked.

MacBook Pros have their ups and downs:<p>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.<p>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.<p>I had the option of getting a macbook pro at work but went with a Dell instead.

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 &#38; 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 &#38; 12% discount on top of that... for no reason (except to make me happy)<p>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.<p>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 &#38; Fink for OSX suck, so if you do go with a MBP, look into <a href="http://j.mp/mxcl-homebrew" rel="nofollow">http://j.mp/mxcl-homebrew</a>.

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.<p>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.<p><a href="http://www.linux-drivers.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.linux-drivers.org/</a> might be a good starting place.

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.

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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.

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).<p>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).<p>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.<p>... Man, I am <i>such</i> a fanboy! :)

&#62; 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?<p>Shortly, yes. Mac as a platform (hw &#38; 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.<p>Your Linux skills will be in great use on server side.<p>&#62; Do I easily get all the software I'll need (svn, git, django, python, vim)?<p>No problem. You can have even apt-get. Check out these:<p><a href="http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/" rel="nofollow">http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/</a> &#38; <a href="http://www.macports.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.macports.org/</a><p>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.

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.

Currently having the same debate. Will I stick with a MBP, or go with a non-Apple and run Ubuntu?<p>I currently run VMWare Fusion on 4gigs of ram. The decision points, for me, revolve around:<p>* 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.<p>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...

I made the switch to a macbook pro a few months ago<p>Its nice to have a laptop that just works, suspend resume is really awesome. The polish on the whole thing is pretty nice too.<p>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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

I've just bought a cheap Acer 4741G (something like that anyway?) to run as my dev machine with Ubuntu.<p>It's not exactly a high-end machine, but my logic went like this:<p>1) 15" is too big, 13.3" is too small. This is a 14.3" widescreen, which seems perfect.<p>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)<p>3) Cheap enough (&#60; $800) that spending extra to get a SSD to use as my boot drive makes sense (arriving today).<p>4) Has an internal DVD drive, which I'm going to replace with a drive caddy and the original 500GB HD.<p>5) It even has a dedicated (NVidia 310M) video card. I'm not a gamer, but CUDA support might be fun to play with.<p>I haven't installed Ubuntu yet, but I did boot it off a USB and all the hardware seems ok.<p>The disadvantages:<p>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.<p>2) Screen resolution is 1366x768. This looks fine on a 13.3", but on the 14" a little higher might be nice.<p>3) Not as nice looking as a MacBook Pro

I have developed with several laptops and several Linux flavors during the years.<p>But I will certainly recommend the Dell Studio 15 + Ubuntu.<p>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.

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

check out <a href="http://www.linuxcertified.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.linuxcertified.com/</a>, 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.

Have used 3 Asus systems in the past 6 months, none of them were dumped as bad machines, merely changing requirements;<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>awesome</i> 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.<p>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).

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.<p>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).<p>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.

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<p>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.

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.<p>$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).<p>Get a ThinkPad if you want to spend more.

ThinkPad X or T series. Booyaka.

I have ubuntu on a Dell Latitude. Highly recommended. <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e6410/pd?refid=latitude-e6410" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e6410/pd?refid=la...</a>

I'd normally recommend a ThinkPad, but they've been pretty disappointing lately. Two very recent experiences:<p>T410s:<p>* sound doesn't work in latest Ubuntu, need a kernel update for a new PCI ID.<p>* battery charge percentage goes from 0-10%, where 10% is "full". Apparently the embedded controller decided to change which units it reports current in.<p>T510:<p>* black screen when booting Fedora or Ubuntu installers. Caused by lack of drivers for the embedded DisplayPort connection to the LCD panel.<p>* display backlight brightness controls don't work<p>* 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.<p>Sigh.

+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.

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: <a href="http://thewaffletech.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/ubuntu-10-04-on-envy-14/" rel="nofollow">http://thewaffletech.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/ubuntu-10-04-o...</a> it sounds like it runs it pretty well. Possibly some minor issues that may be resolved with 10.10.

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.

I've been using a Dell XPS 1530 with an SSD, and couldn't be happier.<p>All the stuff I've tried worked out of the box (built-in wireless, webcam, sound, graphics card w/ NVidia driver, etc).<p>It's a great laptop and the SSD and 4 Ggis of RAM make coding much more enjoyable.<p>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.<p>So if you want to get a PC, definitely look into the XPS 1530.

Please do Linux a favor and buy a preinstalled: ZaReason, System76.<p>Their machines work great with Ubuntu - unlike many laptops from other vendors.<p>And yes, you get all the software you'll need - it's Debian at least.

Dell occasionally has systems for sale without Windows, or with Linux preinstalled:<p><a href="http://www.dell.com/ubuntu" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/ubuntu</a>

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.

I have this at work: <a href="http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&#38;products_id=99" rel="nofollow">http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&#38;produc...</a><p>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.

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.<p>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.

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

No, the experience on the MBP is not so much better as to warrant getting it for development.<p>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).<p><i>BUT</i> the iApps are <i>SWEET</i>. iPhoto/iMovie are rocking my world.<p>I say this as a recent dabbler in Mac.

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

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:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* Wireless is not reliable in more complex setups, e.g., sometimes WPA doesn't work.<p>* Sometimes wireless doesn't come back after going into airplane mode.<p>* 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.<p>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.

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 <i>for me</i>. Everyone is different but this is something you may want to consider since most laptops will run a form of *nix.

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

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.<p>But, to each their own...

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

Edit: I need to learn to read better.<p>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).

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.

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

I would go with a T or X series ThinkPad with Intel graphics and Ubuntu.<p>I've seen a team of Python web developers with MacBook Pros. They all used Ubuntu virtual machines for the actual development.

Hello<p>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.<p>I really cannot say enough about this laptop. Not pretty at all but durable.<p>Everything works - except the fingerprint reader which I have never cared about to get to work.<p>It has been great. Currently am on Ubuntu 10.10/ xfce. Have used this laptop since 2007 - initially had Win2k on it.<p>the current incarnation is the 6550b: <a href="http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13616_ca/13616_ca.PDF" rel="nofollow">http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13616_ca/13616...</a><p><pre><code> My lspci</code></pre> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)<p>00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)<p>00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)<p>00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)<p>00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)<p>00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)<p>00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)<p>00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)<p>00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)<p>00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)<p>00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)<p>00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)<p>00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)<p>00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)<p>00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)<p>00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)<p>00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)<p>00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)<p>00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)<p>02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b6)<p>02:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 02)<p>10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)<p>18:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

For me the three OSes <i>feel</i> like this:<p>- 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

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

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

Lenovo Thinkpad FTW

Eeepc 1000.<p>No noise sad.<p>Truly portable.<p>5h plus battery<p>Do not heat your lap.<p>Got last year for 300. Amazon has now for 700 :(<p>And most important. It does not have CPU to run things like silly flash games :)

01010100 00111101<p>The end.

Macbook pro, because Linux on a laptop sucks balls.

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.<p>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.