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Comment by SpacePortKnight | Hacker News Reader

I've seen your post as a comment before. For India, I recommend buying Dell / Lenovo if you really want on-site repairs for cheap, otherwise I recommend Asus.

I recently bought Asus Zenbook 14 Oled (12th gen) over M1 MacBook Air and I absolutely love it. It has 75Wh battery, excellent speakers and with a nice 90Hz 14inch display.

However, I can't use Fedora on it since sound over speaker doesn't work yet.

Dell's Inspiron 14 is a decent purchase for around 65k ( with on-site & accidental damage warranty )

On a side note, my gaming laptop MSI GF 65 died and I was able to walk into a service centre in Bangalore, and they literally replaced the motherboard for free and returned it in 3 weeks. The entire process was extremely simple.

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Are you sure this is India? I thought India had an Apple-owned service center in Bangalore. And their company-owned stores are coming eventually (Apple's consistently been meeting the local manufacturing requirements)

It’s completely unreasonable to not be able to play audio through your built in speakers in 2022 (or even 2002). The things people will justify to keep using Linux is insane.

Read that comment again, but slowly this time.

It's not a matter of what year it is. It isn't Linux's fault, it's a consequences of split responsibilities. On a laptop, Linux is essentially an aftermarket addon -- the product has to be released before it can be adapted.

And if Linux is a viable choice, then there really isn't a viable alternative to Linux. On the one hand, Mac OS is probably already ruled out due to some property of Apple and Windows is probably ruled out because it is too excentric to make for a smooth development platform. On the other hand, a lot of people who would prefer to use FreeBSD use Linux on their laptop as a pragmatic compromise (others use MacOS - this is one case where Linux and Apple are probably both legitimately in contention).

And so people just have to live with the fact that, when you buy a new laptop, it might be better after six months than it was on the day you got it. This isn't actually that big a deal. Most people are capable of tolerating disappointment and incomplete satisfaction, and it's usually considered as sign of emotional maturity not insanity.

If you don't like that, it's a matter of different priorities, not insanity.

Fedora is one of the most beautiful and functional Linux distros out there. I don't think it is the Fedora's ( read: real humans working behind Linux) fault at all.

But since manufactures don't provide an out of the box support for Linux, it takes time for the community to catch up.

Linux can work just as well as any other operating system if there is a commercial entity maintaining it, like SteamOS for Steam Deck. And that is true for all software, not just Linux.

The speakers work fine on mine, but I have to say they aren't much of a killer feature. How often do you use your laptop speakers? Even if you cheap out, it is pretty difficult to find a pair of headphones that sound worse than laptop speakers.

> 14inch display.

Yeah, but for serious dev work, 14 inches is just a flat out no.

16 inch is the bare minimum and already feels cramped.

Serious dev work is not done mostly on a small screen. Your laptop is a moveable computer that will be connected to your workstation monitor. I own a 14 inch macbook and rarely use it without a display.

If you use it hitched to a monitor, then why not have a proper workstation?

The whole point of having a laptop is being able to use it on the go.

I travel by train and plane extensively and I write code on it during the trips.

14 inches is unusable.

Very narrow minded attitude. Might be unusable for you but great for others. Try to keep the tone a bit more friendly.

I think it depends on your eyesight and programs. I have a 13.3″ laptop, but I just use vim and a pretty small font. My favorite laptop ever was the Toshiba NB305. At 10.3″ it was a "one app full screen at a time" machine, but that was appropriate for the processing power anyway.

Why drag around a laptop, if you have monitors everywhere anyway, and I assume you could easily add a full PC too?

In my case I sometimes work from home and sometimes from the office. The laptop is handy since I can bring it with me and use the same computer at both workstations, both of which have external monitors.

I had a NUC that was even better for this, it fit in a pair of cargo shorts.

Laptop is nicer for coffee shops, though. Lots of things are aided by an external monitor, but not everything requires one.

Because I am disallowed from accessing company tools and network with my personal devices. This is exceptionally common and has been the policy at every company I ever worked for.

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