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I cannot conceive how Mace became defacto development devices. They're always heating up, their implementation of POSIX is sketchy at best, their peripheral sup

I cannot conceive how Mace became defacto development devices. They're always heating up, their implementation of POSIX is sketchy at best, their peripheral support is horrendous in the name of aesthetics, and the keyboard is atrocious. This is not to say that there are better alternatives. I have a Dell laptop running Manjaro, which is the second worst laptop experience I've had by far (the first was my 2019 Intel Macbook Pro). I ordered a ThinkPad P15 AMD Ryzen 7, which hasn't shipped yet (its been 2 months). And recently I've discovered how horrible my network is at home and I doubt I can build a desktop unless I route ethernet wires through the walls. (Can't do that). I wish there was a better solution for a Linux laptop which was sturdy, worked well (sleep, hibernate, wake from lock, bluetooth, wifi), and had a good screen and a lot of external ports.

watermelon0 5y ago
MacBooks have a great form factor (that's just a personal preference, but I believe that most people like it), including keyboard (except a butterfly one), hardware actually works (bluetooth, wifi, sleep), and OS is more consistent and less buggy than Windows from XP/Vista days. POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers. macOS shell feels like using Linux, with some differences, and mostly used developer toolchain work as expected (RoR, Python, Nodejs, .NET, PHP, etc.) Similarly with microcontrollers, most Linux tools and toolchains (for AVR, ESP32, ARM) just work out of the box, and can be easily installed via brew. Whereas on Windows you either have native builds for Win32 (which are harder to acquire and you cannot easily script them with bash), or you need to run a Linux VM, since WSL2 doesn't support USB passthrough.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Apple implements POSIX correctly, it's fully SUSv3 compliant and has been for many years.
- nickjj 5y ago
  > POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers The non-GNU versions of popular command line tools and running Bash 3.x ends up being a nuisance. Scripts that work fine on WSL 2, native Linux and CI (also Linux) end up not working on macOS. It usually comes down to some flag not existing or working the same on macOS' version of [INSERT_POPULAR_CLI_TOOL] or a Bash 4.x feature not existing so you need to do things a different way. As someone who often writes shell scripts getting macOS compatibility feels like having to support IE 6 back in the good old days of web development.
gligorot 5y ago
> I wish there was a better solution for a Linux laptop which was sturdy, worked well (sleep, hibernate, wake from lock, bluetooth, wifi), and had a good screen and a lot of external ports. Have you tried Pop!OS? It SHOULD have most of those features, including a custom power management system. I haven't tried it but am seriously considering to find time and do it, base ubuntu + i3wm isn't cutting it for me anymore.
moreira 5y ago
> This is not to say that there are better alternatives. I think you just explained it to yourself.
h3mb3 5y ago
> the keyboard is atrocious. The keyboards they've been using since the flawed butterfly mechanism are imo quite good to type on (16" 2019 model here, the first one to reintroduce the scissor switches iirc). Sure, not as good as older MacBooks (or ThinkPads, etc), but totally acceptable among the modern laptops.
rejectfinite 5y ago
>And recently I've discovered how horrible my network is at home and I doubt I can build a desktop unless I route ethernet wires through the walls. (Can't do that). There are PCIe wifi cards or USB wifi adapters for desktops... If you are building a new desktop there is even motherboards with wifi built in Quick search on your fav search engine https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-add-wi-fi-to-a-desktop-pc-1569231692 https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-add-wi-fi-to-a-desktop-pc-1... You dont have to use ethernet cables for a desktop! And where did you get this notion from??? Sounds like the best for you is to build a desktop or buy one as you are using laptops and desktop replacement anyway. Thats said, ethernet is the best experience. With covid video calls it gets pretty obvious who has bad wifi and who has crystal clear ethernet wires (◕‿◕)
- mishafb 5y ago
  Many realtek wifi adapters cause issues on Linux, and require buggy kernel modules. You should do some research before getting a wifi adapter. I just repurposed a wifi extender to be a wireless "bridge" from wifi to ethernet.
amelius 5y ago
> I wish there was a better solution for a Linux laptop which was sturdy, worked well (sleep, hibernate, wake from lock, bluetooth, wifi), and had a good screen and a lot of external ports. Perhaps the Framework laptop would fit the bill? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962

watermelon0 5y ago

MacBooks have a great form factor (that's just a personal preference, but I believe that most people like it), including keyboard (except a butterfly one), hardware actually works (bluetooth, wifi, sleep), and OS is more consistent and less buggy than Windows from XP/Vista days. POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers. macOS shell feels like using Linux, with some differences, and mostly used developer toolchain work as expected (RoR, Python, Nodejs, .NET, PHP, etc.) Similarly with microcontrollers, most Linux tools and toolchains (for AVR, ESP32, ARM) just work out of the box, and can be easily installed via brew. Whereas on Windows you either have native builds for Win32 (which are harder to acquire and you cannot easily script them with bash), or you need to run a Linux VM, since WSL2 doesn't support USB passthrough.

saagarjha 5y ago
Apple implements POSIX correctly, it's fully SUSv3 compliant and has been for many years.
nickjj 5y ago
> POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers The non-GNU versions of popular command line tools and running Bash 3.x ends up being a nuisance. Scripts that work fine on WSL 2, native Linux and CI (also Linux) end up not working on macOS. It usually comes down to some flag not existing or working the same on macOS' version of [INSERT_POPULAR_CLI_TOOL] or a Bash 4.x feature not existing so you need to do things a different way. As someone who often writes shell scripts getting macOS compatibility feels like having to support IE 6 back in the good old days of web development.

gligorot 5y ago

> I wish there was a better solution for a Linux laptop which was sturdy, worked well (sleep, hibernate, wake from lock, bluetooth, wifi), and had a good screen and a lot of external ports. Have you tried Pop!OS? It SHOULD have most of those features, including a custom power management system. I haven't tried it but am seriously considering to find time and do it, base ubuntu + i3wm isn't cutting it for me anymore.

moreira 5y ago

> This is not to say that there are better alternatives. I think you just explained it to yourself.

h3mb3 5y ago

> the keyboard is atrocious. The keyboards they've been using since the flawed butterfly mechanism are imo quite good to type on (16" 2019 model here, the first one to reintroduce the scissor switches iirc). Sure, not as good as older MacBooks (or ThinkPads, etc), but totally acceptable among the modern laptops.

rejectfinite 5y ago

>And recently I've discovered how horrible my network is at home and I doubt I can build a desktop unless I route ethernet wires through the walls. (Can't do that). There are PCIe wifi cards or USB wifi adapters for desktops... If you are building a new desktop there is even motherboards with wifi built in Quick search on your fav search engine https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-add-wi-fi-to-a-desktop-pc-1569231692 https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-add-wi-fi-to-a-desktop-pc-1... You dont have to use ethernet cables for a desktop! And where did you get this notion from??? Sounds like the best for you is to build a desktop or buy one as you are using laptops and desktop replacement anyway. Thats said, ethernet is the best experience. With covid video calls it gets pretty obvious who has bad wifi and who has crystal clear ethernet wires (◕‿◕)

mishafb 5y ago
Many realtek wifi adapters cause issues on Linux, and require buggy kernel modules. You should do some research before getting a wifi adapter. I just repurposed a wifi extender to be a wireless "bridge" from wifi to ethernet.

amelius 5y ago

> I wish there was a better solution for a Linux laptop which was sturdy, worked well (sleep, hibernate, wake from lock, bluetooth, wifi), and had a good screen and a lot of external ports. Perhaps the Framework laptop would fit the bill? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606962