My ideal developer laptop

May 29, 2012

Posted By:  dcleal

7 Votes

Status: Archived

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I think the project is great, in that Dell are addressing developers. However, the direction is misconceived.

I don't need help with installing the tools I need to develop software. Those tools - including the OS - are a moving target, and for different projects, I need different versions of the tools. These days I and most of my colleagues do most of our work inside virtual machines for just this reason. The idea that you can predict a set of tools - let alone versions - for a project - is just wrong.

What I need is a machine on which I can install Ubuntu and which can run virtual machines comfortably. I say "...on which I can install...": it's really not good enough for the OS to come preinstalled, because I will need to upgrade sooner rather than later. On that day, I'm going to want to be using entirely open source drivers, both for cost, ease of upgrade, and confidence that the drivers will have been updated.

So: forget about github and toolsets and all that. Forget about a beautiful supplied-by-Dell OS install. Just build some powerful hardware that runs vanilla Ubuntu perfectly on opensource drivers.

- Dave

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  • Jun 5, 2012     Comment Link

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    Posted By: scalpel4k

    you absolutely nailed it.

    In terms of hardware, one of the most important things in my eyes (literally;-) is screen space in numbers of pixels, and particularly vertical pixels! I don't know if 13" is the ultimate choice to host those pixels though ...