So you have a crapy computer or you just want to get a new computer. So what should buy? I can help you find the laptop for you.
What should you look for a laptop
-Ram - ram is a big thing while coding or pretty much doing everything. You should have at least 8gb ram but recommended is 12gb of ram or higher.
-CPU and GPU - You might think that GPU is not that big of a thing especially for coding, but it can be pretty big for things like Machine learning(ML) and Neural Networks(NN).
-Screen - Having a good screen for coding is very important so that you can look at code and look at more code at the same time.
-Operation system - Operation system can make your process of coding better or worse, the best one's are Linux, MacOs then Windows. Windows terminal is not that good and can make your process very bad. I feel that everyone should learn Linux because the whole internet work's on Linux.
My Recommendation for a laptop
- MacBook Pro 16 inch - Mac Os is a Unix based system so the terminal is very much like Linux. And the screen is amazing for coding and 16 inches is not bad for a laptop. While CPU and GPU are not the best they will get the job done.
Top comments (27)
I'm actually using an HP Pavilion 15-cw. 8gb of ram, a Ryzen 5 3500u and the integrated Vega 8. Is perfect for what I'm doing. I only see it struggle while using Unreal Engine, but for everything else I got no problems
Wow, that is amazing. I think that the mac book is the best overall device.
I'm sure is a very good device! Just doesn't fit my needs
Here is a linux-centric discussion about developer laptop recommendations: pointieststick.com/2020/05/17/help...
And here a review about the KDE Slimbook (AMD 8-core Ryzen 4800H): pointieststick.com/2020/07/23/the-...
Isn't KDE desktop env itself a bloat?
I would always recommend one to focus on being fast and easy to navigate, therefore perhaps Terminal and Spotlight.
Well, how do you measure bloat? Idle RAM usage? It's pretty low, actually. If this metric has any worth even.
But anyway, it's about laptops, not distros. If one distro is known to run well, you can be pretty sure others do so too, since hardware support is job of the kernel.
Although Windows is the most popular among developers it lacks certain things. I in no way is saying that windows is bad. Just that Linux and Mac Os do things in a faster way and work out of the box. For example, when I have a Windows computer I would have to go and install WSL but I can open the terminal and start working. That might now seem big but there a lot of other things where you need to install third-party applications for. While on Linux I can just launch terminal. There is this quote I really like: "Microsoft gives windows, while Linux gives you the whole house". Now after saying all this Windows just does some things better than other OS.
I agree that out of the box Linux and MacOs are better for development than on Windows. But it's still possible to develop on Windows by using WSL or WSL2 for having a true Linux terminal and coding experience. Bonus is that you can still do all your gaming (if you're into that) and keep all the programs you love (e.g Photoshop).
Things have changed for Windows since the introduction of WSL2 and Windows Terminal. Not to mention that Windows 10 will support linux GUI apps In the future.
To me, screen size is indeed an issue sometimes. Better tutorials would be, how to attach a second screen.
I have Asus Vivobook S14 with Ubuntu on it
It works great when I added extra 4gb of ram. Only down site to the product is that there is only 1 slot of ram u can replace :( but I am working with full 16gb RAM with no issues
Heres something that you might find interesting according to the Stack Overflow 2020 study Windows is the most popular OS among developers.
Developer Primary Operating Systems
For note taking I got a Dell Latitude 3350 laptop for like 400$ a few years ago (13", 12h battery on linux, i3, intel hd5500, lubuntu), and today I'm working on a MSI GL62M 7REX (16Gb ram, i5, gtx1050ti) with Kubuntu.
The msi laptop is not bad for gaming too, and it was the cheapest I could find two years ago :)
Wish I could afford one.
Yes, Mac Book Pros are pretty expensive.
I use simply MacBook Air.
Personally, I would say that you need both decent OS and hardware. macOS is a good trade off between both.
Windows may be OK, but it depends on the hardware and support.
Linux may or may not work well with the hardware. If you decided from the start, you might choose a Dell.
I maybe using macOS, but I do install VirtualBox to run PowerBI... nothing is perfect.
Which generation? (year)
I would say the get the latest models, costly but will save a trip to apple or even more money due to the keyboard issues.