That said I need a new personal machine, and while I have a few MacBook Pros, I'm disappointed with their lack of expandability (RAM), and more so that they won't take the latest macOS versions (without workarounds that have caveats). Was not a problem until I found apps I use won't upgrade because the OS won't upgrade.
The HP Dev One may not be the best in class option for a laptop that ships with Linux, but for the price it checks most of my boxes. Upgradable, works with multiple distros (Pop OS is nice enough), reasonable cost.
I have seen comments about the screen resolution. But not knowing too much about the panel options today, don't know if that would be a problem for me. My comparison would be a 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, the last 15" or less laptop I worked on.
I mostly work in a terminal, Vim: SQL, Python, Go. Desktop environment is for a browser, email, chat UI, and little else.
Anyone with this specific laptop wish they did not buy it, and if so, why?
I have no issue with the resolution of the screen myself - it is a 14” screen, which is great for portability (more usable in a car/train/bus ride, less obtrusive in a coffee shop, etc) and 1080p is about right for that size.
My only major issue is with the viewing angles of the screen. They aren’t great, and a MacBook Pro puts it to shame. That said, it’s nothing I notice when working in front of it normally.
For reference, my priorities when buying it were to have a good out of the box experience on Linux, a keyboard that was compact but with home and end keys, a “clickable” track pad similar to the MacBook’s, and finally to support a solid effort to bring a proper Linux laptop (with a proper super key instead of a Windows key) to market, and on all fronts I’m very happy with the Dev One.
My prior experience with a couple of Dells (including their XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu) were not nearly as nice (especially on the keyboard and trackpad fronts).
That said, others in the thread have other recommendations, so I will only offer one other anecdote in my recent Linux laptop trials - I have been WAY happier with AMD-based PCs than with Intel. Several distros (including Debian based and Arch based) required constant tinkering with Intel drivers and settings to combat weird stutters, while the AMD Dev One as well as a recent Beelink mini PC I picked up, have each run everything Linux without issue.
The MacBook Pro is still my gold standard in terms of hardware quality, but the Dev One is still very comfortable to work on daily.
Downsides: all-black model seems to be not available in the US, limited ports, no dongles included, SSD is 2242 up to Gen4 (so, hard to source; the Lenovo one delivers up to Gen3 speeds).
I switched to an HP 845 G9 (quite similar to the Dev One but with AMD inside) as my daily driver running Arch a couple of months ago. It's a very decent machine with enough processing power to make me not regret switching from a desktop PC. My only complaints are:
- GPU crashes that happen every few days. It's a newish platform so I'm hopeful it will be resolved by the work done in more recent kernels.
- Power consumption on battery is a bit high for my taste, hovering around 6W.
I know S76's reputation in the Linux laptop realm isn't pristine on Hacker News ("it's just a rebranded Clevo, yadda yadda"), but a lot more goes on behind the scenes than most people know or acknowledge, and they pulled out all the stops for the dev one.
It's a great little AMD laptop and I think the big concern is if you like the screen. Everything else is pretty amazing.