The Setup: John MacFarlane | Hacker News Reader

The Setup: John MacFarlane

john.macfarlane.usesthis.com

19 pointskeithpeter32 comments

This Professor/Programmer uses a 6 year old laptop at work and a consumer laptop at home. Just what do you actually need to get work done these days if you are not compiling 100k lines of source code?

I'm thinking of dumping the desktops and going for a single laptop.

Why pay the extra cost for a laptop if you are always going to use it in one place?

I suspect 'at work' might include schlepping down to the lecture hall and plugging into the projector now and again. Or popping over to the Library to make notes. Or sitting in a faculty meeting to take the minutes.

To directly answer your point: portability within the building/location.

Most schools have dedicated setups for classroom presentations. I think jgm is at stanford, I imagine stanford has the cash and competency for a decent classroom setup.

Running Linux? Excellent. The PCs in my classrooms all run Windows and are fairly heavily locked down so I just swap the VGA leads.

In addition to portability for when you do need/want it, like others mentioned, just plain saving space. If I didn't still want to play the occasional game of Civ V with high graphics settings, I'd love to ditch the tower that sits next to my desk at home.

so you don't have to be in the same place.

If you are talking about replacing a desktop it seems to imply stationary.

Er, yes, should have said 'replacing a desktop and a small netbook used for presentations'. I was after views on proper laptop only.

He does have linodes and s3.

i have his very same setup. Just replace the s3 with a desktop, xmonad with ion3 (i know), and the mac book with a T40.

Also I thankfully do not use latex too much.

Dude, ion3!? That hurts ;)

In my opinion it has been a long time since external displays and wireless networks were a problem in linux (at least in debian).

More importantly I <3 pandoc!!!

Wireless and graphics still cause major heartburn on a lot of devices. For example, laptops with hybrid graphics (dual, switchable cards) still don't work properly after multiple versions of bumblebee/ironhide. Just last week, I spent all night trying various ways to install a wireless adapter. The adapter came with drivers for OS versions as recent as Windows8 and as old as Windows Me, but the linux version only had kernel 2.4. I got it working finally using ndiswrapper. After that I performed an upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 and that killed it.

Ofcourse, all of the above was really just manufacturers not open sourcing or updating their drivers. But I think the linux ecosystem is direly in need of more device manufacturers taking it seriously for it to gain wider adoption. Canonical is doing a great job but we are not there yet.

Switchable graphics works flawlessly on my lenovo w500. I've never had a problem in the four years I've had the laptop. I don't know what ironhide/bumblebee is. Is it an ubuntu thing or some proprietary driver?

Its 2012, what are you doing buying hw that needs ndiswrapper?

I think switchable is something different; ironhide/bumblebee are for the newish "optimus" setups, which currently only work properly for windows AFAIK. It's quite neat: rather than switching between cards, the discrete card is used only for the windows/apps that need it, while the integrated card handles the rest of the desktop.

The ironhide/bumblebee solutions work by running another X display, and using virtualgl to draw the window from the discrete card on the main desktop -- but you have to explicitly invoke the applications that you want to run in this fashion.

bumblebee[1] etc are open source efforts to get the proprietary optimus systems working on linux. The wireless adapter I bought is an Asus Usb N10 from a popular computer store last week.

[1] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/History-...

Ubuntu: 95% no problem with wifi, a couple of local hotspots have strange redirection pages that won't work properly with Ubuntu 12.04/Debian/Centos (Firefox/chrome) but which will work with Mac OS, Kindle and Win. I just avoid those.

Displays: no problem with projectors or 1080p monitor.

12.04 fixed my multiple monitors issue, but for a while it took around 2-3 hours of setup to get dual monitors working with my AMD/ATI card.

NVIDIa on Ubuntu 12.04 took about 10 minutes to work out twinview. You should put your method on Ubuntuforums or askubuntu. There are always threads running about AMD cards on those forums.

While external monitors with twinview work pretty well, it is a huge pain to configure. You have to open up the nvidia configuration application and set it up, not autodetection or panel applet.

Yes, I should have said that, nvidia settings just bypasses the display applet. Didn't take ages though although not friendly.

Ten bucks says you are using proprietary drivers...

Yup, can't get Unity (Ubuntu) or GS (Debian) otherwise. Gnome Shell works with nouveau drivers on Fedora 17 beta although it is clunky.

Have you tried Debian unstable?

Not yet, I was using Testing with GS 3.2. Might give Sid a go over the four day bank holiday weekend we have in the UK for Her Majesty.

This pretty much mirrors my setup on the software side (in the Linux camp). I really love The Setup, mostly because it's just awesome knowing how other people get things done.

This is the about the third time that I encounter a distinguished hacker working on such tiny screens. How the heck do they manage to be comfortable on such a small display? I don't know whether this has anything to do with it but all the other known hackers using small screens are well past youth. Perhaps it's a habit from using the screens of the old days?

Yes, good catch, I had not thought of age as a variable. I go back to when 1024 by 768 was large, and I do use applications full screen and have one or two per workspace and switch between them with Shift-Tab/Alt-Tab. I'm no hacker though.

Zed Shaw's setup: "I honestly could probably code with nearly anything, so having the same setup as the end user is more important than having the most awesome piece of tech ever."

Mary Cook's "When I’m at work, I sometimes plug the Air into a 24” Dell monitor and use an external Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse. However, often, I find it much easier to get into the zone when I’m just using the laptop unadorned. It’s something about hunching over the small screen, I think."

I remember reading somewhere else that someone found the position and feel of typing into a laptop was reminiscent of using a portable typewriter.

Took a course of his at Berkeley. A fantastic and generous man.

Why do you say generous?

With his time. Always interpreted student questions charitably and took them seriously. Not something all professors do.

Asking questions takes a bit of courage at what ever level the student is at, simply because the questioner is revealing something about their understanding of the topic to the other class members. Good teaching skills suggest taking all questions seriously; the ones who ask questions help you to gauge the level of understanding in the room.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com