Ask HN: HP Dev One, any buyers remorse? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: HP Dev One, any buyers remorse?

19 pointskermatt17 comments

I'm switching companies, and will be assigned a beefy Windows 10 laptop. WSL2 has been a good developer experience, so I'm not disappointed about going non-Mac.

That said I need a new personal machine, and while I have a few MacBook Pros, I'm disappointed with their lack of expandability (RAM), and more so that they won't take the latest macOS versions (without workarounds that have caveats). Was not a problem until I found apps I use won't upgrade because the OS won't upgrade.

The HP Dev One may not be the best in class option for a laptop that ships with Linux, but for the price it checks most of my boxes. Upgradable, works with multiple distros (Pop OS is nice enough), reasonable cost.

I have seen comments about the screen resolution. But not knowing too much about the panel options today, don't know if that would be a problem for me. My comparison would be a 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, the last 15" or less laptop I worked on.

I mostly work in a terminal, Vim: SQL, Python, Go. Desktop environment is for a browser, email, chat UI, and little else.

Anyone with this specific laptop wish they did not buy it, and if so, why?

I’m very happy with it, no regrets. It has flaws, but nothing that prevents me from enjoying working with it on a daily basis.

I have no issue with the resolution of the screen myself - it is a 14” screen, which is great for portability (more usable in a car/train/bus ride, less obtrusive in a coffee shop, etc) and 1080p is about right for that size.

My only major issue is with the viewing angles of the screen. They aren’t great, and a MacBook Pro puts it to shame. That said, it’s nothing I notice when working in front of it normally.

For reference, my priorities when buying it were to have a good out of the box experience on Linux, a keyboard that was compact but with home and end keys, a “clickable” track pad similar to the MacBook’s, and finally to support a solid effort to bring a proper Linux laptop (with a proper super key instead of a Windows key) to market, and on all fronts I’m very happy with the Dev One.

My prior experience with a couple of Dells (including their XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu) were not nearly as nice (especially on the keyboard and trackpad fronts).

That said, others in the thread have other recommendations, so I will only offer one other anecdote in my recent Linux laptop trials - I have been WAY happier with AMD-based PCs than with Intel. Several distros (including Debian based and Arch based) required constant tinkering with Intel drivers and settings to combat weird stutters, while the AMD Dev One as well as a recent Beelink mini PC I picked up, have each run everything Linux without issue.

The MacBook Pro is still my gold standard in terms of hardware quality, but the Dev One is still very comfortable to work on daily.

Beelink... What are the odds you're a no agenda listener? John C. Dvorak recommended them a few months back

I had only recently learned of No Agenda from an acquaintance a week or two ago. Very interesting perspectives! I plan to listen more regularly when I can.

I bought a Beelink mini PC a few months ago because theirs stood out as a solid AMD alternative to the Intel NUCs that I was previously a bit underwhelmed with.

Had no idea the No Agenda guys were also talking about them!

Not what you asked, but would you consider the Lenovo Z13 instead? Runs Linux out-of-box[0], runs AMD with similar to i7 12th gen performance, better battery life, better GPU performance. Also includes a 4G LTE modem (optional, though sold out in the US) and offers up to 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD.

Downsides: all-black model seems to be not available in the US, limited ports, no dongles included, SSD is 2242 up to Gen4 (so, hard to source; the Lenovo one delivers up to Gen3 speeds).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mfvAvcpstY

I've been using a framework with Fedora and so far the experience has been fantastic. The only cons I've noticed is half the battery life of my MBP and loud fans. I'm often near an outlet and don't do CPU-heavy tasks unplugged, so the framework has been all I need and I'm listening to music so I don't notice the fans. I would seriously consider a framework instead of HP.

I'm saving up for a framework laptop after having thermal issues with a newer thinkpad device which turned out to be impossible to fix even though I could unscrew the case.

The Dev One is basically an Elitebook with a Linux sticker on it. If you don't care about the sticker you widen your available choice of screen, CPU, memory and storage a fair bit.

I switched to an HP 845 G9 (quite similar to the Dev One but with AMD inside) as my daily driver running Arch a couple of months ago. It's a very decent machine with enough processing power to make me not regret switching from a desktop PC. My only complaints are:

- GPU crashes that happen every few days. It's a newish platform so I'm hopeful it will be resolved by the work done in more recent kernels.

- Power consumption on battery is a bit high for my taste, hovering around 6W.

The Dev One has an AMD chip, FWIW.

You are right, sorry I meant to say a 6000 series chip as opposed to the 5000 series in the Dev One.

Yeah that's a difference worth noting.

I'm late to the show, and also not a buyer, but I did work for System76 in a different department while they built this relationship. I can definitely say that the devone isn't just an Elitebook with a Linux sticker on it. System76 easily spent hundreds of hours testing Pop!_OS on the dev one and writing documentation for HP's support folks. From the start they knew it was their reputation going into this hardware and almost everybody in the company was part of making it as solid as they could.

I know S76's reputation in the Linux laptop realm isn't pristine on Hacker News ("it's just a rebranded Clevo, yadda yadda"), but a lot more goes on behind the scenes than most people know or acknowledge, and they pulled out all the stops for the dev one.

It's a great little AMD laptop and I think the big concern is if you like the screen. Everything else is pretty amazing.

For me glossy screen is deal breaker, 1080p is just right resolution.

No that model, but anyway may help?. At work I have a ThinkPad and a HP Z-Book. I'm not remotely happy with any of the 2. The keyboard in the Lenovo is fantastic, but 1 drop of water will kill it (already 2nd change, only from literally a couple of clean water drops). The keyboard of the Z-book is just horrible. The monitor of the Lenovo is horrible, the one of the Z-book is much better. The Z-book runs Ubuntu: Some issue with the drivers, the touch-pad is not usable. I need a mouse.

1080p at 14-15" is about 150 PPI. Not a retina screen, but that still makes fairly crisp text to me, much better than displays from 10 years ago.

Never trust HP for anything

I have said the same for Dell. Running out of vendors.

ThinkPad or Mac....the rest sucks

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