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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is the usual recommendation as far as having the most "Macbook"-like design (e.g. slim, unibody aluminum, but powerful).* ThinkPads generally have pretty solid Linux support, and System76 makes a line of Linux-only laptops, although both of them will be a good bit chunkier than your MBP. Neither are bad laptops if you're willing to trade sleekness for a tad more power or durability. It really depends on what you're looking for.

* This excludes Huawei's "Matebook" line, which is more like a Chinese carbon-copy MBA clone, and doesn't come with Linux as a preinstalled option.

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XPS seems to me more like a replacement for the MacBook Air 11” size wise... except that it has a 13” HiDPI screen and a 6 core processor. I keep mine in an 11” MBA case.

I’ve found mine to be really good. They seem to have fixed issues with the trackpad that bothered me.

Only things I’m not keen on are the PgUp, PgDn key positions above the cursor keys and mixing the 4k screen with a 1440 external screen.

I opted to buy it over a Thinkpad because it comes with linux preinstalled and at the time the current X1C had some issues, as I recall. I think whatever it was has now been fixed but it’s still officially unsupported hardware in that you’re not paying Lenovo to support it.

> XPS seems to me more like a replacement for the MacBook Air 11” size wise... except that it has a 13” HiDPI screen and a 6 core processor. I keep mine in an 11” MBA case.

Well sure, but I have yet to hear someone say that they actually liked the 13" MBP's giant bezel. It was a testament, at the time, to the XPS 13's ingenuity that it managed to fit a 13" screen into what was basically an 11" laptop chassis.

My XPS 13 9343 has served me well for several years, although the battery life on this model was a meager four hours, and the QHD+ resolution on a 13" screen still feels like it's a DPI that modern OS's have yet to handle elegantly, even four years later.

It's also well worth using the mainline kernels with the XPS as power management along with any flakey drivers is vastly improved. It's easy when done with the ukuu utility.

Check out the System76 Galago Pro. You get a monster of a machine performance wise (easily surpassing a MacBook) in a case that's not at all chunkier than a MacBook and for half the price. Only downside is the pretty bad battery life.

After being plagued with a sideloaded linux on XPS15 which produced enough exhaust to keep me warm in winter, I bought a XPS13 last year and have never been happier!

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