4 ms·

Never underestimate doing something you feel passionate about. I understand the sentiment, but it's worse to work on something you don't really care about. You

Never underestimate doing something you feel passionate about. I understand the sentiment, but it's worse to work on something you don't really care about. You can put in 3x as many "human-hours" and you still still go nowhere.

arnaudsm 4y ago
I understand the early hacker mindset came from an era where we wanted to unlock hardware. But in 2023, good unlocked hardware exists and needs more love
- hedora 4y ago
  What good unlocked hardware exists that is comparable to current apple silicon laptops? (In price, performance, heat, keyboard, trackpad, display quality, battery life, etc.)
  - arnaudsm 4y ago
    The Lenovo Yogas and LG Grams are my favorite in the MacBook class. But if you want more upgradability I recommend the classical Framework 13 and HP elitebooks
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mike_12345 4y ago
      Lenovo and LG also have closed hardware that is reverse engineered to run on Linux.
      - arnaudsm 4y ago
        Most of their Linux drivers are contributed by the chipmakers themselves
        zer0zzz 4y ago
        tell me you've only used Linux since the mid 2010s without telling me you've only used Linux since the mid 2010s This is very very very recent trend. This wasn't even the case when I was in school. You used to have to use the NDIS wrapper (Windows network driver support in the Linux kernel) for lots and lots of wifi chipsets to get any kind of wifi working.
        Epa095 4y ago
        So what?
        _ph_ 4y ago
        The point being that it was vital for the success of Linux that there were hackeres willing to reverse engineer closed hardware to make it run. That there are now official and open source drivers for a lot of hardware is a directly consequence of it.
        zer0zzz 4y ago
        Exactly
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        freehorse 4y ago
        For GPUs AMD yes, but for example when the Asahi project started there was no open source driver from NVIDIA. These trends are very recent, and they do not guarantee anything more anyway (like who knows if they will continue contributing in the next generation).
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        [dead]
    - deaddodo 4y ago
      I wouldn't call either of those in the same class, unless you're specifically referring to the base model MacBook. The Dell XPS and Razer models are much more similar in build quality, hardware capabilities and price range to the MBPs.
  - tannhaeuser 4y ago
    Anecdotally, none. 2021/2022 I received five different Dell and Lenovo notebooks (Lattitude, Precision, ThinkPad, not consumer models) for customer projects to work on and every single one had battery or memory problems OOTB. Battery running times were a joke compared to a MBP, and so were the monitors. Mac notebook monitors aren't matte though, and I find the 14" Alu MBP a bit heavy and bulky. Mind, I was a big fan of my old 2016 XPS but even that had a swollen battery which needed replacement out of warranty. Of those five notebooks I only kept a Thinkpad x13 gen 2 Ryzen (the last one/only one that wasn't broken) but it's not great either with dysfunctional power management/BIOS under Ubuntu 22.04, something I never had problems with so far on Thinkpads.
- freehorse 4y ago
  Intel/AMD based laptops are no more "unlocked" than apple's (and they are much worse in performance). Documentation is a different thing than "locking/unlocking".

arnaudsm 4y ago

I understand the early hacker mindset came from an era where we wanted to unlock hardware. But in 2023, good unlocked hardware exists and needs more love

hedora 4y ago
What good unlocked hardware exists that is comparable to current apple silicon laptops? (In price, performance, heat, keyboard, trackpad, display quality, battery life, etc.)
- arnaudsm 4y ago
  The Lenovo Yogas and LG Grams are my favorite in the MacBook class. But if you want more upgradability I recommend the classical Framework 13 and HP elitebooks
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Mike_12345 4y ago
    Lenovo and LG also have closed hardware that is reverse engineered to run on Linux.
    - arnaudsm 4y ago
      Most of their Linux drivers are contributed by the chipmakers themselves
      - zer0zzz 4y ago
        tell me you've only used Linux since the mid 2010s without telling me you've only used Linux since the mid 2010s This is very very very recent trend. This wasn't even the case when I was in school. You used to have to use the NDIS wrapper (Windows network driver support in the Linux kernel) for lots and lots of wifi chipsets to get any kind of wifi working.
        Epa095 4y ago
        So what?
        _ph_ 4y ago
        The point being that it was vital for the success of Linux that there were hackeres willing to reverse engineer closed hardware to make it run. That there are now official and open source drivers for a lot of hardware is a directly consequence of it.
        zer0zzz 4y ago
        Exactly
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - freehorse 4y ago
        For GPUs AMD yes, but for example when the Asahi project started there was no open source driver from NVIDIA. These trends are very recent, and they do not guarantee anything more anyway (like who knows if they will continue contributing in the next generation).
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      [dead]
  - deaddodo 4y ago
    I wouldn't call either of those in the same class, unless you're specifically referring to the base model MacBook. The Dell XPS and Razer models are much more similar in build quality, hardware capabilities and price range to the MBPs.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Anecdotally, none. 2021/2022 I received five different Dell and Lenovo notebooks (Lattitude, Precision, ThinkPad, not consumer models) for customer projects to work on and every single one had battery or memory problems OOTB. Battery running times were a joke compared to a MBP, and so were the monitors. Mac notebook monitors aren't matte though, and I find the 14" Alu MBP a bit heavy and bulky. Mind, I was a big fan of my old 2016 XPS but even that had a swollen battery which needed replacement out of warranty. Of those five notebooks I only kept a Thinkpad x13 gen 2 Ryzen (the last one/only one that wasn't broken) but it's not great either with dysfunctional power management/BIOS under Ubuntu 22.04, something I never had problems with so far on Thinkpads.
freehorse 4y ago
Intel/AMD based laptops are no more "unlocked" than apple's (and they are much worse in performance). Documentation is a different thing than "locking/unlocking".