As the title says, I am currently learning to be a programmer, and my tablet does not suffice for the job.
I have already finished a small MEAN-Stack application for learning Typescript, learned some Java syntax (I expect nothing more exciting than a sorting algorithm, but exam language is Java, so…) and the next stop will most likely be plain vanilla C to learn about handling hardware.
Windows I hate with a passion, and I don’t know squat about Macs, so I am thinking of getting myself a decently sized laptop for a sensible Linux install.
History (I started my Liux journey with SuSE Linux 4.4.1, way back when) taught me to be very wary of driver issues on laptops, so I thought I could ask you for recommendations that play fair with Linux.
(as an aside, if I could play GuildWars2 on it in the evening and attach my two big monitors when at home, that would be super cool)
Eh you can get new major version updates for about 6 years on Macs, and several more unofficially. It’s nothing compared to the 20+ years you could get with Linux, but let’s be honest, there’s no point in keeping a laptop for that long.
If you don’t need the latest and greatest MacOS, I can tell you that the 2012 non-retina Macbook Pro I gave to my mom after I was done with it is still kicking strong and still got security updates up till last year. Sometime this summer I’m gonna have to install the unofficial patch so I can get Monterey or Ventura running on it for 2-3 more years of security updates.
Now I still wouldn’t recommend a Mac for a student though. Reason being, I wouldn’t recommend a student get a brand new machine unless their parents are rich and I wouldn’t recommend Intel Macs to anyone at this point. The ARM ones just blow them out of the water, with ridiculous performance and especially performance per watt metrics. In particular, compiling any big projects is a BREEZE with the ARM chips. But as a student that barely matters if you’re mostly doing small to medium sized school projects, not compiling the Linux kernel. And afterwards it should be your employer providing you with the machine, so unless you do hobby projects of huge magnitude or work on large established open source projects, compile times on a personal machine won’t matter too much.
2012 macbook pro retinas with nvidia cards have a very fun problem where you won’t get graphics due to motherboard flex when the screen is opening. This flex causes the solder to crack on the chip that provides power to the GPU. So, avoid that one… Lol.
Oh yeah, definitely. And also avoid the 2010-2011 models with dedicated graphics. 2012 13" non-retina and L2013-2015 models are all ok. But still wouldn’t recommend them anymore since those old Intel CPUs just aren’t all that great and even the original M1 Air is superb, beats the crap out of even the last i9 16" MBP, at a good price point.