7 ms·

If the RAM is user-upgradable, this will make for an excellent dev machine. Given it's a chinese laptop, it will surely not be locked, so Ubuntu will run well a

If the RAM is user-upgradable, this will make for an excellent dev machine. Given it's a chinese laptop, it will surely not be locked, so Ubuntu will run well as well.

viach 10y ago
Are you saying Ubuntu runs well on all laptops which are not locked?
- csydas 10y ago
  I think he's talking about the UEFI non-sense that often happens with western manufacturers to lock it to windows (preventing the switching of the signing keys). I'm not sure how true his thought is in relation to china,but neither here nor there.
  - viach 10y ago
    I just wanted to point out that the absence of UEFI thing doesn't automatically make a laptop "work well" with Ubuntu, as someone could read from this comment. Ahh, it is edited already.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    There is nothing wrong with UEFI. I had a laptop with it that had no keys by default.
  - colemickens 10y ago
    Are there any x86 laptops sold that are locked down without the ability to enroll user keys?
eloycoto 10y ago
Ubuntu and batteries are not good friends :-( I tried few times and still using apple
- IE6 10y ago
  This is my gripe, unless you spend hours customizing each laptop ubuntu makes a 10 hour battery life shrink to around 2 hours with only the default 'power saving' features turned on.
- pgupta2596 10y ago
  Using tlp and powertop can significantly improve the battery life.
  - eloycoto 10y ago
    I didn't know powertop, I'll give a try. Thanks
- kas0 10y ago
  And the bad NVIDIA support !
- baldfat 10y ago
  Well was that with Apple products?
  - baldfat 10y ago
    The reason why I mentioned Apple Products is that Macs battery life on non OS X operating systems have poorer battery life. http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-other-hidden-cost-of-running-windows-on-a-mac-battery-life/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-other-hidden-cost-of-runnin...
merb 10y ago
pretty naive. especially since it has a dual graphics with nvidia. which is really akward to "correctly" install on linux. and then there are drivers. pretty sure that there won't be many stuff that directly works on linux.
- personjerry 10y ago
  In my experience nvidia has always been much easier to install than amd (fglrx).
  - xorcist 10y ago
    That there even worse alternatives isn't helping. Avoid third party binary modules. Sure, they might work right now but you'll have no guarantees it'll work in the future. You also risk interactions with other subsystems (sleep etc.). It would be like Windows, where your printer might prevent you from upgrading your operating system. If you intend to run Linux on the thing, buy things that Linux supports out of the box. That probably means sticking to the working Intel stuff for now. You'll thank me later (or not, because you won't miss the problems you don't have).
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      Go nvidia all the way. Ive got GT460 and it still gets up-to-date drivers (look how old that thing is!)
    - oblio 10y ago
      While your theoretical point of view is solid, reality kind of disagrees with it. The binary blob provided by Nvidia have been quite reliable across the years (and I think they've been available for more than 10 years) while the open source ATI/AMD drivers have frequently failed to deliver.
      - Aeolos 10y ago
        Nvidia drivers do fail quite regularly, especially on laptops. Brightness control randomly stops working, suspend/resume is extremely unreliable, there are login issues on systems with both Intel and Nvidia graphics (supposedly solved with Mesa 12, which can only be found on Arch and Gentoo right now.) It's certainly not a panacea. In my experience, the open-source radeon drivers are significantly more stable. Fglrx was a stinking pile of crap that has officially been abandoned - the whole driver team has switched to the open-source drivers, now.
m3adow 10y ago
If they use a good Wifi card or it can be opened easily (which should be a given if RAM can be upgraded). I bought the XPS13 2015 and had a lot of struggle with it until I exchanged the Broadcom card for one from Intel.
mtgx 10y ago
The $540 version uses Core M3, which basically has 15% lower performance than the latest iPad, so I doubt it's going to be too great of a dev machine (just because the iPad seems fast with 1 app per screen, doesn't mean the same performance will be enough for 20 tabs and 5 other programs running at the same time): http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-head-to-head-against-intels-core-m-in-arm-x86-grudge-match http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...
- tinco 10y ago
  What kind of development would we be talking about? I still use my 2009 MBP for day to day development. It's ~10% slower than a Core M3, I usually do webdev on it, but it's also fine for AOT things like Rust, Haskell and even some C here and there (I recently compiled RethinkDB, no biggy). Things that really hurt are short battery life which is ~1.45hrs, and that it misses the modern CPU extensions which will obsolete it soon. Both of this issues obviously won't be present in a Core M3, so I see no reason why you wouldn't dev on an M3 unless you compile big native projects with great frequency.
  - kccqzy 10y ago
    I'm surprised you find Rust and Haskell bearable. Because for both languages slow compilation is a pretty well known problem[1][2]. On my old laptop (2011 MBP) compiling and interpreting (ghci/ghcid) took so long that it was distracting. This isn't even a big project; just a medium-sized one with a little over a hundred Haskell modules. [1]: https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_being_done_to_remedy_the_soul/ https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_b... [2]: https://m.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2uxt46/rust_vs_c_inc_compile_speed/ https://m.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2uxt46/rust_vs_c_inc_co...
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      There's a PR open for supporting the beginnings of incremental recompilation in Rust, so hopefully it lands soon!
    - 10y ago
hex20 10y ago
This image from their website would suggest it's not. http://c1.mifile.cn/f/i/16/mibookair/design/design-mainboard.jpg http://c1.mifile.cn/f/i/16/mibookair/design/design-mainboard...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

If the RAM is user-upgradable, this will make for an excellent dev machine. Given it's a chinese laptop, it will surely not be locked, so Ubuntu will run well as well.

viach 10y ago

Are you saying Ubuntu runs well on all laptops which are not locked?

csydas 10y ago
I think he's talking about the UEFI non-sense that often happens with western manufacturers to lock it to windows (preventing the switching of the signing keys). I'm not sure how true his thought is in relation to china,but neither here nor there.
- viach 10y ago
  I just wanted to point out that the absence of UEFI thing doesn't automatically make a laptop "work well" with Ubuntu, as someone could read from this comment. Ahh, it is edited already.
- witty_username 10y ago
  There is nothing wrong with UEFI. I had a laptop with it that had no keys by default.
- colemickens 10y ago
  Are there any x86 laptops sold that are locked down without the ability to enroll user keys?

eloycoto 10y ago

Ubuntu and batteries are not good friends :-( I tried few times and still using apple

IE6 10y ago
This is my gripe, unless you spend hours customizing each laptop ubuntu makes a 10 hour battery life shrink to around 2 hours with only the default 'power saving' features turned on.
pgupta2596 10y ago
Using tlp and powertop can significantly improve the battery life.
- eloycoto 10y ago
  I didn't know powertop, I'll give a try. Thanks
kas0 10y ago
And the bad NVIDIA support !
baldfat 10y ago
Well was that with Apple products?
- baldfat 10y ago
  The reason why I mentioned Apple Products is that Macs battery life on non OS X operating systems have poorer battery life. http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-other-hidden-cost-of-running-windows-on-a-mac-battery-life/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-other-hidden-cost-of-runnin...

merb 10y ago

pretty naive. especially since it has a dual graphics with nvidia. which is really akward to "correctly" install on linux. and then there are drivers. pretty sure that there won't be many stuff that directly works on linux.

personjerry 10y ago
In my experience nvidia has always been much easier to install than amd (fglrx).
- xorcist 10y ago
  That there even worse alternatives isn't helping. Avoid third party binary modules. Sure, they might work right now but you'll have no guarantees it'll work in the future. You also risk interactions with other subsystems (sleep etc.). It would be like Windows, where your printer might prevent you from upgrading your operating system. If you intend to run Linux on the thing, buy things that Linux supports out of the box. That probably means sticking to the working Intel stuff for now. You'll thank me later (or not, because you won't miss the problems you don't have).
  - emp_zealoth 10y ago
    Go nvidia all the way. Ive got GT460 and it still gets up-to-date drivers (look how old that thing is!)
  - oblio 10y ago
    While your theoretical point of view is solid, reality kind of disagrees with it. The binary blob provided by Nvidia have been quite reliable across the years (and I think they've been available for more than 10 years) while the open source ATI/AMD drivers have frequently failed to deliver.
    - Aeolos 10y ago
      Nvidia drivers do fail quite regularly, especially on laptops. Brightness control randomly stops working, suspend/resume is extremely unreliable, there are login issues on systems with both Intel and Nvidia graphics (supposedly solved with Mesa 12, which can only be found on Arch and Gentoo right now.) It's certainly not a panacea. In my experience, the open-source radeon drivers are significantly more stable. Fglrx was a stinking pile of crap that has officially been abandoned - the whole driver team has switched to the open-source drivers, now.

m3adow 10y ago

If they use a good Wifi card or it can be opened easily (which should be a given if RAM can be upgraded). I bought the XPS13 2015 and had a lot of struggle with it until I exchanged the Broadcom card for one from Intel.

mtgx 10y ago

The $540 version uses Core M3, which basically has 15% lower performance than the latest iPad, so I doubt it's going to be too great of a dev machine (just because the iPad seems fast with 1 app per screen, doesn't mean the same performance will be enough for 20 tabs and 5 other programs running at the same time): http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-head-to-head-against-intels-core-m-in-arm-x86-grudge-match http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...

tinco 10y ago
What kind of development would we be talking about? I still use my 2009 MBP for day to day development. It's ~10% slower than a Core M3, I usually do webdev on it, but it's also fine for AOT things like Rust, Haskell and even some C here and there (I recently compiled RethinkDB, no biggy). Things that really hurt are short battery life which is ~1.45hrs, and that it misses the modern CPU extensions which will obsolete it soon. Both of this issues obviously won't be present in a Core M3, so I see no reason why you wouldn't dev on an M3 unless you compile big native projects with great frequency.
- kccqzy 10y ago
  I'm surprised you find Rust and Haskell bearable. Because for both languages slow compilation is a pretty well known problem[1][2]. On my old laptop (2011 MBP) compiling and interpreting (ghci/ghcid) took so long that it was distracting. This isn't even a big project; just a medium-sized one with a little over a hundred Haskell modules. [1]: https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_being_done_to_remedy_the_soul/ https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_b... [2]: https://m.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2uxt46/rust_vs_c_inc_compile_speed/ https://m.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2uxt46/rust_vs_c_inc_co...
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    There's a PR open for supporting the beginnings of incremental recompilation in Rust, so hopefully it lands soon!
  - 10y ago

hex20 10y ago

This image from their website would suggest it's not. http://c1.mifile.cn/f/i/16/mibookair/design/design-mainboard.jpg http://c1.mifile.cn/f/i/16/mibookair/design/design-mainboard...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]