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Dell’s Skylake XPS 13, Precision workstations now come with Ubuntu preinstalled
- davidw 11y agoI've been very happy with the various XPS 13 systems. This one looks even better. Most likely my next computer.
- stinos 11y agoI've been extremely happy with XPS 15z as well. Not a single bluescreen/kernel panic since I got it 4 years ago, which is (in my opinion/experience) a sign the hardware is not only good, but also that all components properly work together which is just as important. Had similar experiences with the Dell workstation/server lines.
- krzyk 11y agoI wonder why they make the keyboard on XPS 15 so small, there is so much space on the left and right, that they could make those keys slightly bigger (but without the pointless numeric pad).
- th0br0 11y agoI've got a new XPS13 edition. There's a few downsides like I absolutely have to run the latest kernel - 4.5.0-rc7 - to not have iGPU issues and not all WMI keys being supported properly (running Fedora rawhide). But other than that, I get about a 7w/s power consumption without optimising anything. That makes for 9-10hrs of usage, even under Linux! Oh, and repairing them seems to be dead cheap as well. My XPS13 took a little dive, replacing pretty much the whole ultrabook put me back 320 EUR.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoNitpick: 7w/s is not the correct unit for power consumption. Watt is already energy per second, i.e. power consumption. Watt per second is the unit for change in power consumption.
- tholford 11y agoBought a used first or second gen Developer Edition XPS13 last year, installed Mint 17.2 on it and have been very pleasantly surprised. Pretty much just as functional as my old MBP for half the price :)
- maartenpi_ 11y agoDid sth similar here with a XPS15 (9530). Installed Ubuntu 15.10 on it, most of it works pretty smooth. A second screen is a bit of a hassle if you don't get a 3200x1800-one. Besides that I didn't really have issues. Touch also works fine ;)
- jpalomaki 11y agoI was surprised to notice that the XPS 15 comes also with quad core CPUs and supports 32GB max memory. Interesting option for those looking for desktop level performance in reasonably sized package.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoAnyone know how thermal management is on high-end laptop-version Skylakes? I have a three-year-old Dell Precision 15" with a quad core i7 (Sandy Bridge) at work. If I throw work at all the cores simultaneously, it takes about 60 seconds before it starts throttling the CPU to avoid thermal overload... Which makes it a bit useless IMO. Has this improved recently?
- tavert 11y agoMy i7-6700HQ (Lenovo Ideapad Y700) has been behaving much better under high load than the old Sandy Bridge i7-2630QM (Samsung RC512) I had been using. Though it being a "gaming" design with extra vents and heat exchangers may be helping there.
- JetSetWilly 11y agoI have the 6700HQ in an XPS-15, it never seems to throttle - for example earlier today when I built firefox with -j8 it just pegged all cores and never let up. I can be a tad noisy in this situation as you would expect, but from what I have seen - and reviews back me up - it doesn't throttle.
- kylec 11y agoApple better hurry up with Skylake MacBooks, these look very tempting.
- mamon 11y agoOne more week - on March 21st Apple will probably debut MacBook Pro 13 with Skylake. For 15 inch version we would probably need to wait untill June
- jaseemabid 11y ago> They come with Windows by default, but you can pick Ubuntu instead and shave about $100 off the price. How awesome!
- Luyt 11y agoA Windows 10 license is about $50. What is the other $50?
- Vlaix 11y agoDell tax on options, I'd wager. If you look at the cost on everything that isn't the base, laptop manufacturers generally add an extra 100% on the retail price of these parts. 200% if you're Apple.
- FireBeyond 11y agoNot sure why you got down voted, Apple's single most insidious, egregious rip off? Memory. To upgrade your iMac from base 8GB, 4x4 to 32GB is SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. Alternatively you can buy this aftermarket from Crucial, same timings, etc, for $139.98. There is no earthly way that can possibly be justified - a four hundred and thirty per cent mark up on retail prices - even more when you consider the after market lets you keep the original 8GB, whereas your six hundred bucks at apple.com does not.
- alkonaut 11y agoI thought the "Microsoft tax" was effectively negative these days, i.e that Microsoft wanted Dell to sell Windows machines so OEM licenses are very cheap, but more importantly that the crapware bundlers were also paying the manufacturers to have the trial of their particular AV software pre installed. That's why I'm surprised the Ubuntu isn't more expensive than the Windows version even if a Windows license itself would add to the cost.
- StavrosK 11y agoI love the random Swedish word in an otherwise flawlessly English comment!
- pfh 11y agoSo is it vanilla Ubuntu, or will sleep stop working with the next distribution upgrade?
- siscia 11y agoI am a little scared by the touch screen, I have never had one and I don't think I need it... Anyway the extra complexity that come with it doesn't makes me comfortable... Any experiences so far ?
- truncate 11y agoIts useless. Hopefully doesn't get in your way. I had it disabled for a while, until some update overwrite my settings. I perhaps didn't realize this for quite some time, and later just didn't care to re-edit the config. Otherwise, it good laptop. I'm happy with my decision.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tudorw 11y agoLove it, thought I would not use it, but actually, when typing, if it's a pop up window, touch is quicker then trackpoint or pad to tap away, swiping windows to lock them to the sides is good, swipe to go forward and back in a browser, sure, it's not viable to hold your arm up and do anything intensive, but for single location taps, I like it!
- treffer 11y agoXPS13 / QHD / Touch user here (last years model). I've used it rarely but it works without flaws. (Well, firefox can't really handle multitouch on X11, but that's a whole different story). Only problem is that it's incompatible with kids. "Hey, what's that? TAP" Oh, let me press reply on the screen :-)
- Ruud-v-A 11y agoI am running Arch on the non-developer edition XPS 15 (late 2015 edition). Initially the touchpad was occasionally not recognised, then having a touchscreen is really useful :) Other than that, I got it because there was no HiDPi screen without touch. And HiDPi is definitely worth it.
- ewYuck 11y agoYeah, but Ubuntu kind of fucking sucks. 2009 was that last time Ubuntu was worthy of attention. In 2010 they massacred the GUI and now we're all still paying for it, and no end insight.
- once-in-a-while 11y agoI tried latest Ubuntu (after using many other distros over the years), and I'm perfectly fine with it. The GUI is simple and does all what I need, with useful default behaviour.
- bpizzi 11y agoJust `apt-get install xmonad` and get on with your life.
- andreaso 11y agoDoes it really matter that much what distro it ships with? As long as the laptop ships with any distro preinstalled that hardware tend to be properly supported by the Linux kernel, allowing you to feel safe about installing any other (up-to-date) distro.
- 9248 11y agoFrom personal experience, yes. I've got an older dell laptop that came with Ubuntu 12, bought in 2013. I assume everything worked back then, but I needed Windows for school. Some months ago, wanting to switch, tried Ubuntu 14 and Debian 8. Couldn't get the graphics driver to work on either. Proprietary drivers, other than the ones in the Ubuntu repos, required a mismatch of older/newer library/kernel versions which I couldn't figure out how to get in Ubuntu. The open source driver claimed my hd7670m worked, but in reality I was getting the hd4000 performance out of it. Everything else worked, a bit noisier though. Either way, I would definitely not feel safe when buying another Linux laptop, proper research is still required.
- mbel 11y agoUnity is default, not only supported desktop environment. I haven't tried all availalbe environments but getting rid of Unity for xfce is just `apt-get install xfce4`, and it's the same for more exotic options like xmonad.
- latch 11y agoI've oft wondered if these would sell better without the Dell branding. Put a nondescript logo on the back (no word), remove all "Dell". This really annoyed me years ago when I spent a small fortune on a beautiful TV that had "COMPANY" in white letters on the otherwise perfect dark bezel.
- benevol 11y ago> sell better without the Dell branding Of course it would be nice, but you can't seriously ask a commercial company to remove its identity from its products.
- rahimnathwani 11y agoIt doesn't need to be on the same side as the screen, though. Neither my iPad nor my Nexus have any branding visible on the front of the device. The screen's border is perfectly black. Even the hardware button on the iPad is almost invisible. Sure, the iPad has a big apple on the back, but I never see that when I'm using it as I can't see around corners.
- edvinbesic 11y agoThis. You already know you're using a Dell machine. There is not point to advertise to the user. You might want to advertise to everyone else and put it on the back of the lid, which is fine, but I just want a clean bezel. It's the same annoyance I have with all the stickers you used to get on any PC, not sure what that situation is like now.
- mseebach 11y agoWhy would the branding matter? Any halfway serious person knows that Dell makes decent (if slightly boring and enterprisy) stuff, and that it's about what you do with it that matters, anyway. The hipsters are going to see that it's not a Macbook from a mile away, Dell logo or not. If anything, I myself would be likely to assume that an unbranded laptop is something dodgy picked out of a supermarket clearance bin. > a beautiful TV that had "COMPANY" in white letters on the otherwise perfect dark bezel That distracts from watching the screen and so actually affects the primary operation of the TV. I'd argue that's a very different matter than the presence of a logo on a laptop lid that you can't even see when using the computer.
- jkot 11y agoPrice is not that great. 16GB RAM version is more expensive than Windows edition at my local shop (Prague). At least it has Intel wifi.
- tomschlick 11y agoRAM is usually a terrible thing to upgrade via the manufacturer (too expensive) unless its soldered in like some of the macbooks.
- jkot 11y agoXPS 13 has RAM soldered on board
- tomschlick 11y agogood to know, didn't think anyone but apple did that currently
- richardboegli 11y agoRazer do as well.
- sethhochberg 11y agoThe RAM options on the current crop of ultraportables annoy me to no end - all soldered, and all basically require grabbing the top of the line i7 + massive SSD models to get 16GB of RAM. I just want that much RAM on a mid-tier CPU and a big-enough-but-not-overkill SSD config, but I can't find anyone who will sell it to me.
- treffer 11y agoYou can ping Barton (the project Sputnik head) on twitter about pricing and availability bugs. He usually gets them sorted quickly and is happy about feedback. I've reported issues when the XPS13 launched. It works. They fix this stuff. But keep in mind that the EU/Prague pricing might be different once launched there.
- xkiwi 11y agoIf anyone needs or have to install windows 7 on DELL brand laptops for any reason, I highly recommend you to wait until you confirm it can be done. I have Dell XPS/Precision 11 and 13, the problem is the Windows 7 have difficulty to boot from UEFI, and you will stuck because AHCI is not supported by these DELL's BIOS.
- izacus 11y agoWhat does any of that have to do with Ubuntu shipped Dell XPS 13s?
- xkiwi 11y agoI bought some XPS 13 with ubuntu installed. By the time I need windows 7 on the field, but I found out it is not possible because you will stuck at "AHCI not competable" BSoD no matter what ever you do. I bet not everyone realized it is not possible(with my limited knowledge) to install Windows 7 on DELL laptops with UEFI bios.
- bitwize 11y agoPut Windows 7 in a VM on the Linux partition.
- zavandor 11y agoI booted Linux in UEFI and Legacy mode on my XPS 13 9350, it works fine. AHCI is not related to UEFI. It's a SATA disk controller mode and these laptops ship with new NVMe disks which use PCIe bus instead of SATA.
- Timshel 11y agoLooked really good until they had to botch something: let's put hdmi 1.4 and no DisplayPort, it's not like we're selling 4k screen ...
- jkot 11y agoUSB-C is display port. Reduction is $10
- Timshel 11y agoO yeah missed that there is direct usb-c cable to DP thought it needed another adapter.
- krzyk 11y agoYeah, I'm wondering why Dell does that. I have M2800 and they give only HDMI, while most monitors require either Display Port or DVI (I'm ignoring VGA connector).
- yitchelle 11y agoCan anyone share their experience when compared to Macbook Air?
- zavandor 11y agoI've recently switched from Macbook Air 11", running Linux, to XPS 13. They are practically same size, XPS is a bit bulkier, its plastic attracts fingerpints like crazy unlike Mac's aluminium, and I absolutely hate it that Fn and Ctrl positions are swapped and there's absolutely no way to override that. But beside all this, it's a very nice machine technically and I'm quite happy with it.
- Ruud-v-A 11y agoI’ve been running Arch Linux on the non-developer edition XPS 15, and I’ve experienced very little problems. Occasionally the touchpad does not work, and sometimes headphone audio is silent. Other than that, everything works like a charm, even the Broadcom WiFi adapter.
- natch 11y agoDoes this have a magsafe-type connector for the power cord? I did look for it in the review but maybe I missed it.
- radicalbyte 11y agoNo it doesn't, unfortunately.
- davidbanham 11y agoNo, but it does allow you to charge via USB-C which is pretty great.
- giovannibajo1 11y agoThe previous models didn't support DFS in wifi 5ghz making them unable to work in high density wifi environments. Actually what's worse is that they randomically lose connection on a DFS AP (when the channel gets into one of the DFS-reserved ones they can't access). So you basically have to force them on 2.4 or disable DFS on the APs. This applied to both the Broadcom and Intel wifi. Any chance these models are better in this regard?
- treffer 11y agoThe only cards that support DFS are atheros ath10k (I've tried DFS frequencies with an openwrt AP). Anyway, I've yet to see an ath10k mini-pcie cards that would fit into this machine. The wireless can be easily replaced (at least on last years machine), so hardware hints welcome.
- forgotpwtomain 11y agoI have a new XPS 15 running the 4.4 Kernel - Skylake is very buggy as is the broadcom wireless firmware. Also slight physical tremors can cause complete system crashes. I would stay away from it.
- nyc640 11y agoAll the laptops mentioned in the article ship with Intel WiFi.
- forgotpwtomain 11y ago>> We really liked the updated Skylake-powered Dell XPS 13, and its bigger brother, the XPS 15, was also pretty great. > All the laptops mentioned in the article ship with Intel WiFi. This is wrong - the XPS 15 does not. > 02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC (rev 01)
- nyc640 11y ago*All the laptops mentioned in the article as shipping with Linux from Dell will in fact come with Intel WiFi.
- forgotpwtomain 11y ago> *All the laptops mentioned in the article as shipping with Linux from Dell will in fact come with Intel WiFi. Source? I see no indication of that (here is where they link to for the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-bigger-version-of-the-best-pc-laptop/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...)
- ajsalminen 11y agoYeah, this certainly wasn't the case with the previous Developer Edition XPS13. You apparently got Intel with some versions of it and not with others and information about which version included what was pretty difficult to come by. Broadcom supplied a binary blob driver for their wireless but that's not ideal...
- ThePhysicist 11y agoI think it's really impressive what Dell has put together here. As my old Thinkpad T430 is nearing it's fourth anniversary I have been looking for an upgrade for a while and compared different options with a focus on lightweight, powerful laptops with good Linux support. And so far the XPS 13 seems way more attractive than the new Lenovo Skylake laptops (e.g. the 460s), which have lower resolution displays (some models still start with a 1.366 x 768 (!) display, which is just ridiculous in 2016), less and slower RAM, smaller hard drives and -as far as I can tell from the specs- less battery life as compared to the XPS 13 but are actually 300 - 400 $ more expensive, even when choosing three year guarantee for the XPS. The only thing I don't like about the XPS is Dell's guarantee, which is "send in", meaning that I probably won't see my laptop for a few weeks if it has to be repaired, whereas Lenovo will send a service technician to me who will usually be able to repair the laptop immediately (I already had to make use of this service twice, once to exchange a noisy fan and once to replace a broken display bezel). I guess I'll wait for Apple to reveal the new MB Pro line before making a decision, but it seems that for the first time in 10 years my next laptop will not be a Lenovo/IBM.
- rahimnathwani 11y agoI'm pretty sure Dell sells 'premium support' as a paid add-on, and that it covers on-site hardware repairs. I've used this service myself, albeit many years ago, to have a laptop motherboard replaced. If you add this option, then the two laptops you're comparing may be closer in terms of price and support. Then it's just about the other factors you mention.
- ThePhysicist 11y agoGood point, I wasn't aware that Dell offers this kind of service, will check that again!
- marklyon 11y agoThey do. I bought my XPS 13 (9343) through the Microsoft Store because they had a rather significant discount and then called Dell to add on an extended next-business-day onsite warranty. Just like with the Lenovo, when I had a key get stuck on my keyboard (the space bar was double-spacing every time, by itself) a nice third-party tech showed up at my office and swapped it out.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vegabook 11y agoI love my now 3-year old Precision M3800 which is basically an XPS with quadro discrete GPU. I have run Ubuntu on it the whole time and it works beautifully. One issue I did have though was trying to run Cuda with an external monitor. The drivers were problematic mainly due to the optimus power saving system. I hope these latest XPSs and driver combos have solved that problem. Overall though, I commend Dell's production of these beautiful machines, which are right up there with macbooks on design and build, and also Dell's commitment to Ubuntu Linux for many years now. Separately, I am watching Lenovo's 'retro thinkpad' project with interest. I am hopeful that it might conjure up the perfect engineering laptop-workstation, in the same bullet-proof, no nonsense vein as their 90s era forbears. Personally, also owning a mac, I have this nagging sense that OSX is falling behind Linux for hard tech developers, mainly because, away from web stack technologies, OSX seems to losing ground as a first-platform target for some scientific computing and data science libraries. This is probably because of the prevalence of Linux in cloud computing platforms. I have been a hard core mac user since the early 90s, I stuck with Apple well through its travails and before it was popular, right through to the present, and I feel a little let down by OSX and the Mac's neglect in favour of candy-tech IOS, the mac pro notwithstanding. But that machine, stunning as it is, is just completely uncompetitive on price vs performance even after factoring in the Apple price premium. Its literally 3 times the price of an equivalent generic box. I don't understand how a company with 180bn of cash to hand cannot advance this product line more effectively. Apple should understand that content creators and fundamental tech researchers, punch far above their revenue share weight in terms of health of the ecosystem.
- Raed667 11y agoThe only thing holding me back is the CPU.
- boothead 11y agoAny info on when this (or the XPS 15 with linux) will be available in the UK? I just had a look on Dell's website, and as expected it's still a shower of shit WRT finding what you want. I bought one of the first or 2nd gen XPS 13s and loved it. However the experience of buying from Dell was awful and customer service was so intractable as to be useless too.
- abrowne 11y agoAccording to the project lead†, "Europe [is] being readied for launch as we speak, stay tuned for more details." †: http://bartongeorge.net/2016/03/10/xps-13-developer-edition-launches-in-us-ubuntu-based-workstations-available-worldwide/ http://bartongeorge.net/2016/03/10/xps-13-developer-edition-...
- storrgie 11y agoSeems like there isn't a way to get a 15 without being forced into hybrid graphics.... :(
- cududa 11y ago"forced into hybrid graphics" you mean 'modern hardware'? Sorry if your OS of choice doesn't support the trends of this decade
- tiatia 11y agoI use an XPS 13 with Kubuntu. I have no experience with preinstalled Linux, but similar to Android, I would be afraid of presinstalled crabware. Just remove the windows and make a clean install.
- manaskarekar 11y agoI've had great luck with Dells for Linux support. Lubuntu on Latitudes has run flawlessly over the years. It is unfortunate that Dell chose to use small arrow keys and at the same time overload the arrow keys with the 'Home-End-PgUp-PgDown'. Hard to believe this layout was chosen for their Latitude and Precision lines too.
- Zer88 11y agoI've had the XPS 15 since December and that is my only complaint. PgUp/Dn is not an issue, but having to hit two keys (Fn + Arrow) to Home / End is simply unacceptable when you're used to spam those while writing and refactoring code. I did some tweaking to mirror my old setup that had Home / End above backspace and that I love, because you can have your left hand thumb on the arrows while your middle finger drives Home / End. The rightmost 3 keys above backspace are PrtScr / Ins / Del, which I re-mapped to Del / Home / End, and put PrtScr / Ins on the Fn+Arrow instead.
- Glyptodon 11y agoYeah, I have a Dell (a cheap plastic 13" of some kind) and don't mind the small arrow buttons. But I can't stand that they used them with fn for begin/end/page up/page down.
- Vlaix 11y agoNow make a laptop with a keyboard and touchpad that justifies me stopping frankensteining my old machines to keep them alive. That chiclet keyboard and phone-sized pad nonsense is very limiting.
- mistat 11y agoAre these available in Australia yet? I can only ever find reference to the US store
- tunichtgut 11y agoHell, its about time!
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoI don't understand. Dell has been shipping Linux on laptops for a very long time.
- mixmastamyk 11y agoIt's been a long wait for Skylake, 16gb+, and hi-dpi... personally I've been waiting about two years for the last two.
- davidy123 11y agoThis is great, but Thinkpads have always had good Linux support. I have a friend who bought the previous XPS 13 Ubuntu edition and it had all kinds of problems which are only being worked out now, problems that aren't present on most Thinkpads. I got the X1 Yoga one month after it came out, installed an alpha version of Ubuntu 16.04 on it and everything just works, including the touch screen.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- otar 11y agoOne tiny detail that bothers me is that there's a Windows logo on the keyboard. It could be Tux or Ubuntu logo. Tux Penguin sticker solved my problem on my XPS 13, but would be nice to see it coming out of the box.
- jon-wood 11y agoI reconcile the Windows logo on my keyboards by using it as the meta key in XMonad, meaning the windows key is used to manage windows.
- ersii 11y agoIf it makes you any happier, there is a Ubuntu logo on the metal flap on the bottom of the first XPS Developer Edition laptops (Project Sputnik). On the regular ones, there's a Microsoft/Windows logo instead.
- akerro 11y agoWhy is this a news? I bought two laptops before, both of them came with Linux, one Asus one Dell.
- ciokan 11y agoJust got the xps 15 (9550) yesterday which had windows on it. Installed ubuntu 16.04 beta and works very well. I had huge problems trying to install any lower version of ubuntu & variants.
- arca_vorago 11y agoI have ordered a few midline desktops from dell for testing their Ubuntu setup. In the end I wiped and installed my own, and the eula that pops up on first boot was fucking ridiculous, I mean I know they like tonpush the boundaries for self protection, and I understand things like wanted to keep any issues in their jurisdiction and stuff like that, but clauses in the eula stated you waved all rights including constitutional ones (yes, the word constitutional was used in the actual eula,) agreed to forfeit any trial by jury or anybother legal procedure except private arbitration in Dells jurisdiction, and some other stuff that really bothered me to see as the first thing that popped up on first boot. Lots of it is obviously totally unenforceable and wouldnt stand in court, but they put it in there anyway just because they can get away with it. Does no one do reasonable eulas/tos?
- nivertech 11y agoI waiting for Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4th gen with Skylake CPU. Anybody knows if it's already available?
- bliti 11y agoHow much does this thing cost?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoHistory repeats: the Dell Inspiron that just crapped out on me (somewhat) after years of use was their first Linux model. It also had Ubuntu by default. Great laptop. Interesting enough, after all the updates, I'm having trouble finding something that works out of the box that's not Ubuntu. It's running Fedora fine right now but software management is totally different from my Debian-based experience. Might ditch it. ;)
- modzu 11y agolooks great on paper, but the 2015 xps13 had some serious issues like useless webcam and trackpad... it's the laptop that flipped me to mac. wont go back.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- intrasight 11y agoIs it less expensive than one with Windows?
- moonbug 11y agoAt the other end of the spectrum, the 5" Inspiron 3552 that comes with Ubuntu, which I'm typing this on, is quite the best 200 dollar laptop you can get.
- listic 11y agoYou have missed a significant digit. For a moment there, I thought I have missed something and netbooks are back again (with screens as small as 5", this time).
- dblooman 11y agoIs there a 13 or 15 inch laptop without a number pad that supports Ubuntu for less than £500 that uses an Core i5 Skylake CPU?
- rcthompson 11y agoThe placement of the webcam in the lower left corner is truly idiotic.
- _RPM 11y agoI seriously can't tell if this article being here is an advertisement. Is it possible the site owners have been paid to have this post here?
- pascalo 11y agoFor all the people dealing with shitty dell customer support on the phone, try using their @dellcares twitter account. Had a broken acreen glass and later a faulty fan on my 2014 xps 13, and they sent around a technician each time, all via twitter. Much less painfull than hanging on the phone. Excellent customer support.
- jjawssd 11y agoThis is really strange. Why is this?
- passivepinetree 11y agoIt could be because of the immediate negative publicity complaints on social media get. Irate customer complains via Twitter, @ mentions Dell => a bunch of people see it. Irate customer complains via a private communication channel => others are much less likely to notice/find out.
- Mikeb85 11y agoIt's nice to see Dell beginning to actually adopt Linux and Ubuntu. I always kind of figured part of the strategy of going private was to be able to move away from the status quo of being just another Windows vendor... By offering choice and eliminating lock-in, they can go after techie types and serious users who otherwise would have probably just bought a ThinkPad or MBP.
- jgalt212 11y agoI have a new (purchased Dec '15) XPS 15. And despite having dual booted about 10-15 different PCs and laptops (mostly Dell and HP) have thus far have had zero success getting Ubuntu on my new box. I suspect it has to do with two internal hard drives, but I've sort of given up at this point (I bricked the first box, and Dell sent me a new one) and relegate this otherwise very nice laptop to the accounting department to run Quickbooks and Office.
- cttet 11y agoThe keyboard though.
- krob 11y agoIf you're not looking for an ultra book. I've got a 7510 Dell Precision Laptop base. i7-6820HQ supports upto 64gb of ram in the laptop, 2 ram slots above keyboard, 2 below. Supports 1 m.2 epci nvme, 1 sata3. I've Samsung 950 Pro NVME 512gb ssd, 1 2tb Samsung Evo 850. I don't believe the NVME works w/o AHCI booting. My experience with linux on this laptop was bar none one of the best. I did have to install ubuntu 15.10, but everything worked without a hitch. This laptop also worked with optimus graphics chip switching. Quadro 4gb DDR4 M2002 chip. Battery is really impressive. Monitor is 4k matted. It's probably the best laptop I've ever owned. Since I purchased it, it now comes with usb type-c w/ thunderbolt 40gbit support. So you can get a really nice fancy docking port for it. Also I've a 2014 macbook pro fully loaded and this is only 1lb heavier than that was. You can also get a xeon chip on this platform. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstation/pd?oc=xctomp751015us http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstatio...