HP Preparing An AMD-Powered Linux Laptop Powered By Pop!_OS

[NobodyXu]

I was thinking the same. As a developer, I don't go lower than 64 GB, but that could be just me. It makes it easier to spin up as much VMs and containers as you need and laugh at those Mac team mates struggling with their docker containers running out of memory.

I often build small and medium size rust projects on my 16GB Macbook Air 2020 and never have experienced OOM and the incremental rebuild tasks usually finished fairly quickly.

[cynic]

I often build small and medium size rust projects on my 16GB Macbook Air 2020 and never have experienced OOM and the incremental rebuild tasks usually finished fairly quickly.

it depends on what you develop. If all you need is and IDE and a compiler, you'll probably be fine with as few as 8GiB.

The comment you're quoting was referring to the situation when you need to run VMs and containers.
I'm a developer and usually need to run VMs, containers and sometimes multiple DBs on my development machine.

Sometimes just running an Oracle DB container is enough to make my 16GiB ThinkPad sweat hard.

So, I do agree: 16GiB might often be too little for a laptop sold as a developer machine.

[scottishduck]

AMD means probably no coreboot

[NobodyXu]

it depends on what you develop. If all you need is and IDE and a compiler, you'll probably be fine with as few as 8GiB.

The comment you're quoting was referring to the situation when you need to run VMs and containers.
I'm a developer and usually need to run VMs, containers and sometimes multiple DBs on my development machine.

Sometimes just running an Oracle DB container is enough to make my 16GiB ThinkPad sweat hard.

So, I do agree: 16GiB might often be too little for a laptop sold as a developer machine.

I guess I just don't have that kind of requirements.

I do run postgresql locally and docker on my Macbook, which is run through VM anyway, though the database I load in postgresql usually isn't that huge and I usually don't create many containers, as I mostly use containers run some workflows to test my projects or run some softwares.

[Citan]

It's just you and some like you. Not everyone is silly and trying to build large software projects on resource-cost inefficient laptops. :P Also, your Mac team members are masochists. Seriously. (Not because of MacOS, which is a decent OS, but because they're doing it with insufficient hardware resources - hence dedicated build hardware).

Desktops and servers are far more cost efficient. With ubiquitous Internet access in places most people can afford a laptop, it's far more efficient to just remotely connect to a desktop or build/test server from a basic laptop if mobile access is needed.

It's your own personal opinion, heavily biased without proper source to boot in the first place.

1/ Internet access is not always a thing (especially decent thing). And working on the go is oppositely a more and more common thing.

2/ Mobile data is still costly in most countries, rare are providers allowing unlimited bandwith (and it's always with a steep reduction past some "X gigabytes of data consumed" threshold). Also, streaming data constantly is a big waste of energy which is bad for environment, if you have at least half a mind to consider humanity's life conditions in 50 years. Sure, more RAM uses more energy too, but definitely on a much smaller magnitude.

3/ RAM can not only be used for building projects, nor for development itself. Not only may you need to reproduce a production context on some projects with virtual machines (or containers if you fancy more modern approach), quickly building up the total RAM required, you can also simply want to get the snappiest ever experience by loading the whole system in RAM (even though that requires some technical steps only a professional developer or "hardcore amateur" would follow xd).

4/ If you're really living off development work, creating yourself such a dependency upon such a chain as "internet being available + internal network being available + distant computer being available" means you have to cater for many more things to ensure "maximum efficiency availability". Having good specs right on your laptop means you "just" need to care about *that* piece of hardware.

In the end, if one considers buying a "developer laptop", it's PRECISELY because one expects to be needing to work in many different conditions. Hence in contexts (s)he cannot necessarily control, hence favoring a "self-sufficient" hardware.
Oppositely, if one was that much convinced that streaming work from distant computer was always possible in good conditions, then one should go to the end of reasoning and pick up any bottom-tier piece of hardware to minimize investment. But then what happens when you stop working? Because...

5/ Not everyone is rich enough, or working in a company big enough, to get specific, dedicated pieces of hardware for each of both professional and personal side of life. Quite the contrary, many people have a *single* piece of hardware for work, multimedia, and possibly (light or not) gaming.
Editing photos is not that resource-hungry unless you're a professional. Video editing however, even on the amateur side, can quickly require lots of RAM on top of processing power. Then you have games...

[NobodyXu]

Citan While I agree on your points, I don't think doing heavy development on a laptop is sensible.

Laptops with good enough performance for these kinds of heavy developments are extremely expensive and not affordable at all compared to the corresponding (homebrew) PCs that provide more than enough performance for your workflow.

If I need that kind of performance, I would simply DIY one PCs myself and put it at home and use the servers provided by my employer at work.

Edit:

Also, laptops that can run that kind of heavy development workflow are often heavy to the point that carrying it around becomes a physical exercise, which I don't think many would like to use them.

[Leprechaunius]

A laptop "built for developers" without a numpad. LOL. HP must be smoking crack.

[sarfarazahmad]

who develops in 14inches man. I never get how people do it. Is it just me :/

[lejeczek]

I bet a $ it will NOT have support for LVFS.

[blackiwid]

I really don't get this one, someone said FHD on 14" is perfect, no it's at best absolute standard/minimum, what else do you want mit 2022 on a 14" 1024x700? or what? I could totally see at least 1440p on this if not go all the way to 4k. I get you don't neccesarily need the latter but the price will be probably high, so why not.

I could see that ram is acceptable for some people, but that keyboard? Can somebody explain to me what would you care the most as developer on a Laptop if not the keyboard? Even the choice of 14" it's to small to work comfortably on it, yet it's not really very mobile. I get you can use a external keyboard / dock, but if it's mostly only usable on a dock and the mobile use is only in a absolute emergancy why then 14" and not smaller? So that you can carry it from dockingstation to other locations more easily?