[Poll] What notebook would you recommend for ROS development

asked 2017-08-28 16:43:00 -0600

Rr
15 ●6 ●9 ●10

updated 2017-08-29 10:04:35 -0600

Hi!

What notebook would you recommend for ROS development? Would MacBook Pro work good?

I work with ROS a lot in my projects. I also often need Gazebo, so Parallels on Mac would not efficiently, and I need either install ROS on MacOS or use Ubuntu on MBP. Does ROS and Gazebo work same at MacOS as under Ubuntu currently? Do you have experience using Ubuntu with ROS on MBP or what are your other recommendations?

Thanks!

Update: So there are 2 Alienware recommendations and I am not sure about MBP. Anybody use it? Because Alienware seems to be not very compact. Maybe we could make some poll "What notebook do you use for ROS" here.

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@Rr: ROS Answers isn't really well suited for discussions or polls (it's a 1-question-to-1-answer kind of site). It's fine to leave your question here now, but in the future, consider posting these sort of things to ROS Discourse instead.

gvdhoorn ( 2017-08-30 03:03:52 -0600 )edit

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answered 2017-08-28 17:06:40 -0600

Geoff

4203 ●18 ●103 ●63

While ROS can be installed under MacOS, you need to build it from source and the process is not as easy and smooth as installing it in Ubuntu. So while a MacBook Pro would have good hardware for ROS development, you would need to install Ubuntu to have a good software environment. Since you don't want to use a virtual machine, you need to install Ubuntu or another supported Linux alongside MacOS on the hard drive and dual boot.

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You'll find lots of results if you search here for the problems that people encounter while using a Mac or virtual machine. I've had a great experience dual booting with Windows.

jayess ( 2017-08-28 17:25:02 -0600 )edit

I have experience installing ROS on Mac, but the process is quite painful and Gazebo always gave me trouble. I have also tried with virtual machines, but they are excruciatingly slow for Gazebo. Nothing beats a native Ubuntu Installation. Currently I have an Alienware 13 R3 and it is wonderful.

Martin Peris ( 2017-08-28 20:14:57 -0600 )edit

Same here. Alienware 15 and no issues.

jayess ( 2017-08-28 20:32:21 -0600 )edit

I quite happily use a 2-year-old MBP, with Ubuntu running in a VMWare virtual machine. But I don't use Gazebo that much so I just put up with it being slow. RViz is fine, though.

Geoff ( 2017-08-29 16:42:05 -0600 )edit

I have seen someone running Gazebo inside of a VirtualBox VM at a speed better than I could get on a dualboot Asus. They 16GB of RAM and an i7.

jayess ( 2017-08-29 19:26:32 -0600 )edit

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[Poll] What notebook would you recommend for ROS development

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[Poll] What notebook would you recommend for ROS development