Switch again?

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Switch again?

I'm in the market for a new laptop and I've been thinking about doing the very same thing that Mark Pilgrim just did, switching from a Mac to a Linux laptop. I wasn't thinking about Freedom 0 so much as I was thinking about my lap and my wallet. I don't want to burn a hole in either one. I've read too many blog entries about Mac Books running too hot, too loud or not running at all. And all the while, I've been seeing rave reviews of Ubuntu everywhere I look.

I don't want to give up on Macs altogether. I like the multimedia stuff like iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto and GarageBand, but I don't necessarily need those on my laptop. I can buy a Mac Mini for that stuff. I use my laptop for work and everything I need for development would run just fine on Ubuntu or maybe even Solaris/x86 (see Sun's HCL and the one at Bolthole.com). What I need is speed, Java, Netbeans and sometimes Open Office (which I know will run better on Linux). Clearly I need to do some research. Are the Mac Books really too hot and flakey? Will be savings be significant? Will wifi and sleep-mode work as flawlessly on Linux as with Mac OS, what about Solaris? Will I be able to live without NetNewsWire?

Dave Johnson in Open Source 06:22PM Jun 05, 2006 Comments [7]
Tags: opensource

Comments:

I've been using Thinkpad+Kubuntu and WiFi, sound and sleep/suspend all work flawlessly, althought I think sleep/suspend might be slower than on the Mac.

Posted by didier on June 06, 2006 at 02:23 AM EDT #

As far as non-Apple laptops go, I've been pretty impressed with the Thinkpad hardware-wise. (and as you know, I'm completely non-bias ;) Can't comment on how well Linux runs, but I've heard good things. You may want to see Sam Ruby's thoughts on the matter.

Posted by Josh Staiger on June 06, 2006 at 02:40 AM EDT #

The MacBook Pro is hands-down the best laptop for Java development. It's amazing how fast it is to run things like Ant copy tasks. I really, really like mine. The heat (to me) isn't any worse than my PowerBook, but I generally set it on a desk or use it with a cinema display. I cannot recommend this machine highly enough.

Posted by Matt Raible on June 06, 2006 at 04:05 AM EDT #

I just got my MacBook Pro 17" today and it's fantastic. Java runs faster on it than my Pentium D desktop. It's the first time I've been completely satisfied with Java performance on a Mac.
I suspect performance on the cheaper MacBook would be good, too.
Keeps my lap warm, too.
We'll see if there's any flakiness...

Posted by Sean Gilligan on June 06, 2006 at 06:06 AM EDT #

can't speak at all to the new MacBooks, but i trust folks like Raible when they say they're great machines. i can say, however, that having made the jump from Windows to Linux maybe 2 years ago, i have no regrets. Thinkpads have generally solid Linux support, and everything from wifi to suspend works just fine for me. better, in fact, as until i started screwing around with Xgl/AIGLX my laptop had never not recovered from a suspend. ever. while i'm on Gentoo rather than Ubuntu, i can recommend the latter given my experiences with it on both laptop and server platforms. great os.

Posted by stephen ogrady on June 06, 2006 at 02:01 PM EDT #

While it is not yet as slick as NetNewsWire, BlogBridge is making steady improvment and is what I use across all my systems.

Posted by Matthew Montgomery on June 06, 2006 at 04:33 PM EDT #

I just went from Linux/Windows to MacBook Pro 17". I have a 1.7GHz Centrino HP laptop 15" 1900x1200 with ubuntu Dapper Drake installed. It is great, fast with almost everything working. The dual boot is nice and I am quite productive on that. I found that I still used my old mac for so much home stuff and web browsing that I really wanted a mac next time which is what led me to the MacBook Pro. The heat takes some getting used to. Performance is nice. Parallels rocks! I have XP,Suse, Ubuntu all running there when I need to use something on the "PC" side of the house. I forgotten how productive I can be on the mac though. Especially with the kids movies, pictures, and of course my work too. I would still recommend the MacBook first, just not if you are going to be using it in your lap all the time. ( Way Hot when CPUs loaded! ) My 2 cents.

Posted by Chris Replogle on June 23, 2006 at 01:53 PM EDT #

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