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Comment by Ingon | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a decent MBA, however it feels a little bit too late.

I got rid of my MBA 2013 in 2018, in hopes to get a proper replacement, but the unreliable keyboard and weak spec stopped me from getting one. Eventually, I got tired of waiting. Tried linux, first at work (with System76/Pop!_OS), then at my home laptop (Manjaro and Pop!_OS), and I don't think I'm coming back to Apple.

Yes, linux requires some adjustments to your workflows and playflows, but I was surprised how little. And as with everything, the more you are at it, the easier and more natural it becomes.

The only thing I'm really missing is iOS development. However, that might be a good thing, and if I really need to do it I've got a MBP 2012 waiting for me in the basement (although, it will be obsolete really soon).

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My problem is the Apple track pad and physical form is just so hard to beat. I could take my Macbook with me wherever I went because of how light and slim/small it is.

If anyone has some decent alternatives which I could load up Ubuntu on I'm all ears.

On a Desktop I would pick some flavor of Debian in an instance.

100%

The average dev seems to be looking for a behemoth if a laptop but I’m at the other end. My daily until recently was a 12” MacBook and it’s been my favourite laptop so far

Would love something Linux-friendly in that form factor (incl build quality and weight)

I've had good success with Thinkpads. Many people mistake the carbon fiber for cheap plastic which it definitely is not. They handle Linux very well and have great durability. I've currently got an X1 yoga 4th gen since they're all metal and I like the premium feel, but I've owned many other Thinkpad devices over the years. The X1 series is what you'd be looking at if you want an ultrabook. As an added bonus, companies buy and sell tons of Thinkpads so there's a good used market.

If you are looking for a MacBook Air replacement, check out the Dell XPS 13 or ThinkPad x2xx series. The Dell in particular has very impressive build quality.

If you want a MBP, the ThinkPad x1 Carbon or T4xxs series (note the s, for the slimmer version) are still the best replacements IMHO.

Yep, thinkpad carbon X1 are probably the best non-mac I've owned.

I tried quite a few replacements, including ThinkPad X1 and LG gram. Something felt off in all cases, until I realized that 16:10 aspect ratio for 13in laptop was key. That frankly eliminated quite a few options. Additionally, X1’s trackpad and Gram’s keyboard felt quite bad.

At the end, in a whim, I tried a cheap Motile 142 from walmart ($329 at the time). 14in monitor seems to offset the aspect ratio quite well, the trackpad and keyboard are decent. Additionally, it is Amd 3500U, which seems well supported by the newer kernels. Upgrading with 16gb ram and NVMe ssd, also pushed the performance and usability of the machine.

At the end, I don’t think there is an universal answer to this. But with some experimentation, I’m pretty sure you can find a nice machine that works well for you.

PS: Motile laptop is also 2.55 lbs, which is a great weight for that size.

The new XPS 13 is 16:10 and has a good trackpad, supposedly.

XPS trackpads have been pretty awesome for years. Source: Owned an XPS 13 a couple years ago.

I've been wondering about getting a razer blade stealth 13" for some time, I'm just worried a bit about its built quality.

I do prefer Mac OS as a daily driver, but I would like to be able to do some light proof of concept ML training on a laptop with an nvidia card, and also sometimes some CAD (I've had terrible experience dual booting windows on this current mbp)

I'm currently trying google colab to see how much I can do with doing everything in the cloud

from my experience linux mint + think pad + synaptic drivers for gesture support = mac experience. with 1/10th the cost.

Yes, I'm also one of those people who stubbornly refused to switch.to Linux and was a Window's user for almost all my life.

Thankfully I hated Windows 10 so much (cortana, privacy, etc) that I finally pushed myself to try it again (my new laptop was incompatible with Win 7).

Finally installed Linux mint few months back and I'm a super happy user. I didn't have to make that many changes to my workflow either just maybe small things like looking for replacement software. I'm amazed how long it has come in regards to usability and design.

How'd you like Pop!_OS? It recently came up on my radar and seems really polished; a great alternative to the polish of a commercial desktop os

I recently used Pop!_OS and it was great. It's a better Ubuntu, with less junk preloaded. It's probably the nicest linux distro I've used. Nothing earth-shattering, but just a very good user experience.

I like it a lot and keep coming back to it. I’m using the LTS/18.04 variant of it. Some of the things I like include:

- great installation experience that just works. Most of the distros I’ve tried have had problems with this

- comes with a newer kernel and the correct set of drivers, so most of the time I’m not battling with it

- its an Ubuntu derivative, so every tutorial on the internet works for it. I’m not seasoned linux user just yet, so this has been quite helpful

- its relatively lightweight and for the most part gets out of your way

- superficially, I like its theme more then Ubuntu proper

I hope they keep doing the right things with the next lts.

I use it on my Gazelle and have been surprised how well it works. All the user friendly helpers, even including their "app store" (which is essentially an APT GUI) are actually useful.

The only issues I had with it were the lack of setup wizard support with LUKS and Dualboot to Windows w/ Bitlocker (for Games) over GRUB, so I had to configure everything manually.

Other than that, it works like a charm - unless it hits the proprietary Nvidia blob driver (no real hotplug for HDMI and mini-DP, sometimes screen tearing on big displays). But that is not a popOS! issue and most of the time it works fine.

Wait until your wifi, suspend, or graphics breaks in a software upgrade few years down the road, and either spend up to a week figuring it out or just give up on it. Used mainstream linux on a thinkpad (the most supported thing out there) from 2013-2018, but with so many regressions got a mac and never looked back.

That's funny, because I stopped using a Mac a few years ago out of frustration that its OS updates consistently broke things.

Now I use Linux (on a Chromebook no less - GalliumOS), and I'm thrilled with how well-supported everything has been over the past few years even in a non-mainstream distribution.

Different experiences, I guess.

IDK - I have been using fedora on thinkpad carbon for 2-2.5 years now and have had none of these problems.

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