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IMO a solid dev machine simply does not exist right now. For about the past three years I’ve moved between Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS with crouton and Ubuntu. The

by city41 8y ago

IMO a solid dev machine simply does not exist right now. For about the past three years I’ve moved between Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS with crouton and Ubuntu. They all suck quite badly in their own ways. I’ve chosen Ubuntu as the least bad of the bunch and stuck with it. But I’m hopeful crostini will be my savior.

shimms 8y ago
I’ve just switched to new MacBook Air (after feeling the same way for the past few years). Use case is typical Rails dev work, react front end, databases, docker etc. I was worried going from a 12 core Mac Pro, to the dual core MBA, but so far I haven’t noticed any difference except for those things that are faster now. The keyboard isn’t as good as the 2015 MBP, but is far better than the previous butterfly. I don’t mind typing on it at all. Great battery life too. I think the new MBA might actually be the first decent apple laptop for devs in a few years.
- jmkni 8y ago
  I thought the new MacBook Air had the older butterfly keyboard?
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    Nope, it’s got the latest 3rd gen one, same as the Pro. You’re thinking of the MacBook which is stuck on gen1.
zozbot123 8y ago
Ever tried Debian? It's a lot snappier than Ubuntu, especially when running a lighter desktop-- MATE and Xfce are easiest to set up IMHO. (The one pitfall I've run into is that you do need to install from media with non-free firmware if you want Wifi to work on hardware that's anywhere near current. With hardware that's newer than ~2016 you might even need to use a pre-release installer for the "testing" release)
- city41 8y ago
  I have, but many years ago. It’s on my todo list to try out some more distros and Debian is top of the list. My main problems with Ubuntu are things like it doesn’t always suspend, sometimes waking up from suspend the keyboard doesn’t work, etc. Minor things, but they add up after a while.

by city41 8y ago

shimms 8y ago

I’ve just switched to new MacBook Air (after feeling the same way for the past few years). Use case is typical Rails dev work, react front end, databases, docker etc. I was worried going from a 12 core Mac Pro, to the dual core MBA, but so far I haven’t noticed any difference except for those things that are faster now. The keyboard isn’t as good as the 2015 MBP, but is far better than the previous butterfly. I don’t mind typing on it at all. Great battery life too. I think the new MBA might actually be the first decent apple laptop for devs in a few years.

jmkni 8y ago
I thought the new MacBook Air had the older butterfly keyboard?
- robin_reala 8y ago
  Nope, it’s got the latest 3rd gen one, same as the Pro. You’re thinking of the MacBook which is stuck on gen1.

zozbot123 8y ago

Ever tried Debian? It's a lot snappier than Ubuntu, especially when running a lighter desktop-- MATE and Xfce are easiest to set up IMHO. (The one pitfall I've run into is that you do need to install from media with non-free firmware if you want Wifi to work on hardware that's anywhere near current. With hardware that's newer than ~2016 you might even need to use a pre-release installer for the "testing" release)

city41 8y ago
I have, but many years ago. It’s on my todo list to try out some more distros and Debian is top of the list. My main problems with Ubuntu are things like it doesn’t always suspend, sometimes waking up from suspend the keyboard doesn’t work, etc. Minor things, but they add up after a while.