Ask HN: Would you consider buying a Macbook Pro and replacing OSX with Linux? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you consider buying a Macbook Pro and replacing OSX with Linux?

3 pointsalonswartz10 comments

I'm in search of a new laptop, and am considering the Macbook Pro. Thing is, I need my primary OS to be Ubuntu, so dual booting or using virtualization isn't really an efficient option.

So why the MBP? Good hardware, excellent build quality and great battery life.

I've done some minor research into Linux compatibility on the MBP. It works but requires tweaks, and there are some reported issues related to the keyboard, EFI boot, power management, over heating and more...

I'm not sure it's worth the effort, or the premium price. None-the-less, I'd be interested in your opinions, and experience if you have any.

If you wouldn't recommend the MBP, what would you recommend? Things to consider: Linux support, 15", 8GB RAM, SSD.

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You might want to investigate what portion of the great battery life is because it has a honking great battery and what portion is because it's running OS X and has software/hardware written together.

I'd guess you can do better and/or cheaper, but the aesthetics may outweigh any other issues for you.

Good point on the battery life. Reports running Linux I've seen are 2.5 hours (which is really poor), as well as 6-7 hours (possibly due to power consumption tweaks). The aesthetics are nice to have, not the deciding factor.

I've been running debian sid daily on a macbook for 5 years now, and I'm happy with it. Even debian sid seems more stable than the original osx, I don't need the eye-candy. as for the hardware, it keeps being rock-solid, so not only a aesthetics issue. Under same intensive use, i've seen some dells seriously failing around in the same time.

The only serious annoyance is that, after completely wiping off your efi partition, grub has its troubles to detect keyboard on early stages.

Personally if I was not going to run OSX I would get a Sager. As high quality as the MBP for the PC world. That being said, OSX is a really good desktop os (I feel dumber for stating something so obvious). Anyway, I would really consider a BootCamp dual boot with OSX and Ubuntu. Hard drive capacity is pretty cheap so there is really no draw back to this arraignment other than spending a few more bucks on a higher capacity hard drive.

Get a Dell, and get the premium care options. It's probably still cheaper than the MB, and you will get a new one if you drop it or break it or whatever, and if you pick and choose, you can get fairly good hardware, and also purchase it without Windows, saving a bit of money.

I have a Latitude E6500, and it's working out well so far.

The problem with Dell's is that their keyboards suck. The keys actually fall off. You also don't get a backlit keyboard like you do on a MBP.

I'm sure I've seen Dell laptops with backlit keyboards.

You're right. The Studio 16 XPS comes with a backlit keyboard (optional).

Honest question: Are you basing that off personal experience, or is there evidence that this happens on a large scale?

To provide another data point, my Dell Latitude D520 still has all keys intact, and I've been using it roughly (in every sense of the word) every day since 2005. On the other hand, my HP notebook from work has already lost it's Shift key after just one year. (Maybe that's an indicator that I'm YELLING too much at the office...)

That's just an anecdote however. There's no way I would try to make claims about either keyboards based on that small sample size.

I run Debian in VirtualBox on my MBP and it seems efficient enough, and it works perfectly, with the VBoxAdditions installed. Why would you even want to worry about "tweaks", that's fine if you're just a hobbyist but for Real Work(tm) you need something solid.

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