My setup - Student Budget edition
I am a student with little to no money to waste. With that said, my setup is always very intentionally picked. Without a further ado, this is my setup I use to develop.
Notebook
My notebook of choice is Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 Onyx Black. The parameters I chose were extremely good for the price, when this configuration was available for purchase.
- Intel Core i5 10300H - quad core, 8 threads, 2.5 GHz base speed, up to 4.2 GHz turbo
- 16 GB DDR4 RAM, 2933 MHz
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile 4 GB
- Samsung M.2 NVMe SSD - 512 GB
- Western Digital Green SATA III SSD - 500 GB
- Full HD 15.6" matte screen - 250 nits
- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
The only downside to this notebook is the battery life. On Windows, you could technically get up to 5 hours of mileage, given that the tasks you are doing are super lightweight. However, I am using Ubuntu and I often connect to HDMI with the notebook. For that reason, I am always using the dedicated graphics card which is connected to the HDMI port directly. If I use the integrated graphics card, I experience screen tearing when the notebook lid is closed. This greatly affects the battery life though, so I usually get about two to three hours of work on battery.
Peripherals & Accessories
- Mouse: ASUS Cerberus Mouse
- Keyboard: SPC Gear GK630k CZ Kailh Brown RGB
- Headphones wired: Superlux HD681
- Headphones wireless: Intezze Evo Black
Operating System
I generally use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Until recently I have been distro hopping a lot. When it came to Ubuntu, I just needed an operating system that would finally work well with NVIDIA drivers. After a bit of tweaking, I can say I am very pleased about the performance and overall feel of the system. One day, I will try either Arch based distro or Arch itself. And one day, I will probably even try to dig into Gentoo. Maybe one day...