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I'm not going to critique this laptop as others have done here. Just over $1K for a laptop with an 8 core Ryzen, 16GB DDR4 and a 1TB SSD isn't outrageous. The

I'm not going to critique this laptop as others have done here. Just over $1K for a laptop with an 8 core Ryzen, 16GB DDR4 and a 1TB SSD isn't outrageous. The main takeaways I get from this are that HP is now getting on the Linux developer bandwagon, and that they chose Pop!_OS as their distro due to the success and reputation of System76. And I think these are both good things, and a sign that we'll see more of the same with laptop hardware vendors.

hardwaresofton 4y ago
Definitely. Imagine a world where perennially late to the market HP is chasing the trend of Linux on the laptop. We now live in that world. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31391880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31391880
- Shared404 4y ago
  Turns out the fabled year was 202X all along. I'll admit, I'm delighted to see HP announce this, if only because it means System76 will (probably) get more funding for Pop_OS and that this may "legitimize" the Linux Desktop more with three major manufacturers carrying supported options.
  - hardwaresofton 4y ago
    Late but absolutely agreed. I fun an Oryx Pro and while I don’t use PopOS, all their hard work is on display constantly — their improvements there bleed over to other distros so easily (they’ve struck a great balance between releasing compatible stuff but staying sane and not exponentially increasing their support burden)
- oneplane 4y ago
  The weird thing is that HP undermines their effort a bit by they doing the consumer bloatware thing where they 'load it up with stuff for you to do your job' according to their marketing material.
  - lumost 4y ago
    somewhere, someone must want this bloatware - otherwise it would have had to die out at some point. Although I'd be hard pressed to find this person.
    - ghostly_s 4y ago
      The bloatware vendors pay them to include it.
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    Are you referring to the laptop in this announcement? If so, I can't find anything suggesting that there's anything installed by default other than Pop_OS.
    - oneplane 4y ago
      Yes. Click on the linked site and scroll down to the third row.
InfamousRece 4y ago
I can definitely see myself using this machine. 16GB is enough for me as I don’t use electron. 8 core Ryzen is decent too.
- julianlam 4y ago
  I feel like a lot of developers overestimate the hardware specs that they need. My main development machine is a simple Ryzen 3 with 8GB RAM, and I run two electron apps (VS Code and Slack) at all times. A comment in a separate thread here mentioned virtualization. That and gaming would be two legitimate use cases, but for plain-jane development, "8gb ought to be enough for anybody" (har har)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Glyptodon 4y ago
    Every 16 GB machine I've used for work in the last three years (until current 32 GB one) I'd occasionally run out of memory. Culprit? Web browsers... On Mac, Linux, and Windows. (Though occasionally other stuff needed significant memory too.)
    - jorvi 4y ago
      This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. I run 16GB and have never, ever had a browser cause me to start heavily paging.
      - serf 4y ago
        >This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. not really, you can just leave a leaky or script-laden page open for awhile to see the same behavior, depending on how things are put together. example: blue iris is a cctv package that has a webui module. That web-ui client-side browser tab will inflate to system-memory size if allowed within a few days. Not much of a point other than there are other (probably pretty esoteric) things that one can do to a browser that'll make them fall apart even on modern hardware.
crossroadsguy 4y ago
Looks like Apple really has the “charge outrageously and be hailed for it” license. If HP also had that license - even a second or a third tier one - they’d have priced it $2989 and make everything not upgradable and announced “Pre-installed Linux for the first time ever in any…… HP laptop” and HN would be filled with comments like “I only have 3GB RAM in my HP laptop and it even lifts my pickup truck. Best ever $3K spent. You don’t need more RAM. If you need then you’re doing it wrong”.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >Looks like Apple really has the “charge outrageously and be hailed for it” license. A new M1 Macbook Air starts at $999, and will put that Ryzen to shame. Not to mention infinitely better build quality and battery life. Apple has always been a great value for the price, even if that price is slightly higher than the bargain bin stuff.
  - samtheprogram 4y ago
    Even before the M1, you paid a small (IMO) premium for better build quality, a great trackpad and (before the butterfly) keyboard, a solid Unix with really great tailored applications, etc… With the M1 dominance (and inflation) there’s basically no premium at this point (although there is little to no low-end options).
    - adastra22 4y ago
      If only the MacBook Air was user upgradable like the old 2017 models. There’d be little reason to buy anything else.
      - MrDOS 4y ago
        There's a reason the RAM is soldered on: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1460108068637712384 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1460108068637712384. SSD is very annoying, though.
    - 4y ago
fatboy93 4y ago
Yeah, I didn't get the critique either. People are like we listen to music, have a few docker instances running and we use VScode, we need 32 gb Ram or more. Why do you need a text editor/ide which consumes so much ram? Is this the reason that apps have gotten more bloated and slow on older devices? Idk, I'm not a programmer. I think the price is fair enough, and if the ram isn't soldered (one would be and the other would be upgradable probably) Had it launched a few months ago, I'd have probably picked it up. Because AFAIK, this seems to be a fairly decent laptop.
- loosescrews 4y ago
  Linux seems to have much worse memory management for desktop usage than other popular desktop operating systems. I have found that I really need 64GB of RAM to make Chrome run well on Linux, but I can get a similar user experience with as little as 16GB of RAM on other desktop operating systems. Firefox does much better, but Chrome seems to be the standard these days, and a computer that doesn't run Chrome well is probably defective in most people's eyes these days.
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    Huh? I have 64GB of ram in my Ubuntu workstation. I run FF, Chrome, Docker, etc etc and regularly have some 55+ GB free.
    - sigg3 4y ago
      But you might not be running corporate security tools that invariably eat cycle after cycle, to the point crashing the desktop. I often have to defend Linux because unknowing colleagues blame the OS, when htop shows it's this or that mandated background process.
      - gigatexal 4y ago
        Yeah my 2020 work MacBook is always blasting its fans because corporate IT installed some monitoring software that is scanning everything all the time. The laptop is a nuclear hazard site cuz it’s so hot all the time. I need headphones on to drown out the fan noise.
rg111 4y ago
I work in Deep Learning and I have been using Pop OS entirely for more than one year now. The experience is really good. It is not too polished and not too barebones. And it is extremely reliable which, in my personal experience, matched by only Linux Mint. I use an high-end Asus TUF series laptop. And my experience with the laptop + OS is really good.
lelanthran 4y ago
> I'm not going to critique this laptop as others have done here. Just over $1K for a laptop with an 8 core Ryzen, 16GB DDR4 and a 1TB SSD isn't outrageous. I agree. My only beef is the keyboard: PLUS: No numpad so trackpad is more less centered (I hate using off-centered trackpads and usually don't care much for the numpad) MINUS: half-sized arrow keys. As a developer I tend to use those for navigation much more than hjkl, and the half-size arrows get mistyped all the time by my muscle memory. Not a dealbreaker, though. If I use it often enough the muscle memory will adapt. The rest of the specs are in line with my expectations for that price-point.
- slaw 4y ago
  Also power on/off button is among other keyboard keys, on the left to delete.
  - rostigerpudel 4y ago
    Yes, but it has a configurable delay to engage, so accidentially hitting the power key instead of DEL will not turn off your computer unless you changed the config and then it's really your own fault.
schmorptron 4y ago
Same here, this looks pretty good,especially if the ryzen 8-core is 6th gen. Developers are always going to have very specific wants for laptops and classify anything else as a dealbreaker, which makes sense: If you're used to one thing that fits your work flow and you use it every day, why would you not stick with the thing that works well for you?

hardwaresofton 4y ago

Definitely. Imagine a world where perennially late to the market HP is chasing the trend of Linux on the laptop. We now live in that world. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31391880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31391880

Shared404 4y ago
Turns out the fabled year was 202X all along. I'll admit, I'm delighted to see HP announce this, if only because it means System76 will (probably) get more funding for Pop_OS and that this may "legitimize" the Linux Desktop more with three major manufacturers carrying supported options.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  Late but absolutely agreed. I fun an Oryx Pro and while I don’t use PopOS, all their hard work is on display constantly — their improvements there bleed over to other distros so easily (they’ve struck a great balance between releasing compatible stuff but staying sane and not exponentially increasing their support burden)
oneplane 4y ago
The weird thing is that HP undermines their effort a bit by they doing the consumer bloatware thing where they 'load it up with stuff for you to do your job' according to their marketing material.
- lumost 4y ago
  somewhere, someone must want this bloatware - otherwise it would have had to die out at some point. Although I'd be hard pressed to find this person.
  - ghostly_s 4y ago
    The bloatware vendors pay them to include it.
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  Are you referring to the laptop in this announcement? If so, I can't find anything suggesting that there's anything installed by default other than Pop_OS.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    Yes. Click on the linked site and scroll down to the third row.

InfamousRece 4y ago

I can definitely see myself using this machine. 16GB is enough for me as I don’t use electron. 8 core Ryzen is decent too.

julianlam 4y ago
I feel like a lot of developers overestimate the hardware specs that they need. My main development machine is a simple Ryzen 3 with 8GB RAM, and I run two electron apps (VS Code and Slack) at all times. A comment in a separate thread here mentioned virtualization. That and gaming would be two legitimate use cases, but for plain-jane development, "8gb ought to be enough for anybody" (har har)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Glyptodon 4y ago
  Every 16 GB machine I've used for work in the last three years (until current 32 GB one) I'd occasionally run out of memory. Culprit? Web browsers... On Mac, Linux, and Windows. (Though occasionally other stuff needed significant memory too.)
  - jorvi 4y ago
    This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. I run 16GB and have never, ever had a browser cause me to start heavily paging.
    - serf 4y ago
      >This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. not really, you can just leave a leaky or script-laden page open for awhile to see the same behavior, depending on how things are put together. example: blue iris is a cctv package that has a webui module. That web-ui client-side browser tab will inflate to system-memory size if allowed within a few days. Not much of a point other than there are other (probably pretty esoteric) things that one can do to a browser that'll make them fall apart even on modern hardware.

crossroadsguy 4y ago

Looks like Apple really has the “charge outrageously and be hailed for it” license. If HP also had that license - even a second or a third tier one - they’d have priced it $2989 and make everything not upgradable and announced “Pre-installed Linux for the first time ever in any…… HP laptop” and HN would be filled with comments like “I only have 3GB RAM in my HP laptop and it even lifts my pickup truck. Best ever $3K spent. You don’t need more RAM. If you need then you’re doing it wrong”.

ramesh31 4y ago
>Looks like Apple really has the “charge outrageously and be hailed for it” license. A new M1 Macbook Air starts at $999, and will put that Ryzen to shame. Not to mention infinitely better build quality and battery life. Apple has always been a great value for the price, even if that price is slightly higher than the bargain bin stuff.
- samtheprogram 4y ago
  Even before the M1, you paid a small (IMO) premium for better build quality, a great trackpad and (before the butterfly) keyboard, a solid Unix with really great tailored applications, etc… With the M1 dominance (and inflation) there’s basically no premium at this point (although there is little to no low-end options).
  - adastra22 4y ago
    If only the MacBook Air was user upgradable like the old 2017 models. There’d be little reason to buy anything else.
    - MrDOS 4y ago
      There's a reason the RAM is soldered on: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1460108068637712384 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1460108068637712384. SSD is very annoying, though.
  - 4y ago

fatboy93 4y ago

Yeah, I didn't get the critique either. People are like we listen to music, have a few docker instances running and we use VScode, we need 32 gb Ram or more. Why do you need a text editor/ide which consumes so much ram? Is this the reason that apps have gotten more bloated and slow on older devices? Idk, I'm not a programmer. I think the price is fair enough, and if the ram isn't soldered (one would be and the other would be upgradable probably) Had it launched a few months ago, I'd have probably picked it up. Because AFAIK, this seems to be a fairly decent laptop.

loosescrews 4y ago
Linux seems to have much worse memory management for desktop usage than other popular desktop operating systems. I have found that I really need 64GB of RAM to make Chrome run well on Linux, but I can get a similar user experience with as little as 16GB of RAM on other desktop operating systems. Firefox does much better, but Chrome seems to be the standard these days, and a computer that doesn't run Chrome well is probably defective in most people's eyes these days.
- gigatexal 4y ago
  Huh? I have 64GB of ram in my Ubuntu workstation. I run FF, Chrome, Docker, etc etc and regularly have some 55+ GB free.
  - sigg3 4y ago
    But you might not be running corporate security tools that invariably eat cycle after cycle, to the point crashing the desktop. I often have to defend Linux because unknowing colleagues blame the OS, when htop shows it's this or that mandated background process.
    - gigatexal 4y ago
      Yeah my 2020 work MacBook is always blasting its fans because corporate IT installed some monitoring software that is scanning everything all the time. The laptop is a nuclear hazard site cuz it’s so hot all the time. I need headphones on to drown out the fan noise.

rg111 4y ago

I work in Deep Learning and I have been using Pop OS entirely for more than one year now. The experience is really good. It is not too polished and not too barebones. And it is extremely reliable which, in my personal experience, matched by only Linux Mint. I use an high-end Asus TUF series laptop. And my experience with the laptop + OS is really good.

lelanthran 4y ago

> I'm not going to critique this laptop as others have done here. Just over $1K for a laptop with an 8 core Ryzen, 16GB DDR4 and a 1TB SSD isn't outrageous. I agree. My only beef is the keyboard: PLUS: No numpad so trackpad is more less centered (I hate using off-centered trackpads and usually don't care much for the numpad) MINUS: half-sized arrow keys. As a developer I tend to use those for navigation much more than hjkl, and the half-size arrows get mistyped all the time by my muscle memory. Not a dealbreaker, though. If I use it often enough the muscle memory will adapt. The rest of the specs are in line with my expectations for that price-point.

slaw 4y ago
Also power on/off button is among other keyboard keys, on the left to delete.
- rostigerpudel 4y ago
  Yes, but it has a configurable delay to engage, so accidentially hitting the power key instead of DEL will not turn off your computer unless you changed the config and then it's really your own fault.

schmorptron 4y ago

Same here, this looks pretty good,especially if the ryzen 8-core is 6th gen. Developers are always going to have very specific wants for laptops and classify anything else as a dealbreaker, which makes sense: If you're used to one thing that fits your work flow and you use it every day, why would you not stick with the thing that works well for you?