6 ms·

“The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop is nearly perfect”

17 points by quantumtremor 10y ago

Bromskloss 10y ago
> I ended up needing to lower the resolution by half for desktop environments that just weren't built for such high DPI displays. About that, what should one do if one wants to run Linux on a computer with a high-resolution screen? For example, does it work well on the Ubuntu that this computer comes with?
- SEMW 10y ago
  I have a high-res XPS 13. I can't speak for unity, I use Xfce on it. After a bit of setup (set Xft/DPI, panel size, fonts), most things work pretty well. There's a few special snowflake apps that need custom setup - firefox ignores system dpi, but has its own layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting that works well. Rarely there'll be an app that ignores dpi and doesn't have its own settings, which you can use xfwm's full-screen-zoom feature to make usable. The main problem comes when you connect to a (normal-resolution) external monitor, because in X, different monitors (which are just views onto the same underlying X screen) can't have different DPIs. To solve that I set the system dpi correct for the external monitor, and use xrandr screen scaling, ie `xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 0.5x0.5`. (Which means I'm not taking advantage of the high res then, but when I'm using my giant external monitor, it and my laptop are pretty far from my eyes, so I don't care so much. I use a fork of xrandr which uses exact pixel quadrupling when you set a scale of 0.5x0.5, by default it blurs to antialias everything even when it doesn't need to, ie reciprocal-integer scaling values). I have a pair of scripts[0] that run when I plug and unplug my external monitor that make the change reasonably seamless (except for having to restart firefox). [0] https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useHighDpi.sh https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useHighD... and https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useScreenScaling.sh https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useScree...
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    > firefox ignores system dpi, but has its own layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting I found that this affected only the rendering of pages, not buttons and stuff belonging to the Firefox UI. Did I do it wrong?
    - SEMW 10y ago
      It does change the ui, but you need to restart firefox for that to take effect
cburgas 10y ago
Do any of you have experience in using the QHD Display in this version of the XPS13? I read somewhere that is a lot glossier than the Full HD non-Developer Edition and is nearly useless with a lot of light in the room or outside.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  That's my fear as well. A matte screen is the most important property of a computer, in my opinion. It's like rear-wheel drive on a car: it's not worth having one without it.
lmm 10y ago
Would be nice to see a comparison with the Surface Book - I've fallen in love with mine, and I understand there's a substantial community for running linux on them.
JamesBaxter 10y ago
I find Thunderbult quite useful (but I'm on a Mac). Not sure why this guy is so against it, presumably there's reasonable peripheral support on other OSes by now? He talks about editing video on the machine, Thunderbolt should allow for high capacity/speed external storage. I'd prefer the options Thunderbolt provides over HDMI.
- pawadu 10y ago
  But are there any real benefits for having Thunderbult on a PC? I have a few expensive firewire audio equipment that I can no longer use. Sure, they were faster than USB when I first bought them but now they are just paperweights. So next time I am buying high-end equipment I am going to "think different" and go with the majority (i.e. USB 3.0)...
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    Buy a thunderbolt monitor and you'll then realize the benefits. I plug one cable in and I have two 34" monitors running at near 4K resolution, gigabit Ethernet, external storage, and a gamut of USB3 ports. Sure, a lot of that can be done with USB3, but not all. Thunderbolt performance is significantly higher too and the cable is very solid and durable.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      I think you missed my point. Firewire was also significantly faster than USB when it was announced and see where we are now. I paid extra for a laptop with Firewire ports and then paid extra for equipment that had firewire ports, they are all now expensive paperweights. I am not falling into that trap again. Also, out of curiosity, do you believe that this laptop has the horsepower to run your 2 x 4K monitors with reasonable performance? Without the fans spinning at max speed all the time?
      - jsjohnst 10y ago
        Not sure, but a 13" MacBook Pro w/ integrated graphics certainly does. I've only done two cinema displays with a 13" MacBook Air so sadly can't comment on it, will try that tonight if I get a second, but the specs of this put it more in the MBP category anyway.
douche 10y ago
Still, 13". That's too small for serious work, even if it super high resolution - that's only 1/4 of the surface area of a decent monitor.
- bruce_one 10y ago
  All a matter of personal preference :-) (I've been 100% on a 12.6" screen for the last year; and was 11" for 3+ years before that (and only moved to the 12.6 because I couldn't find anything smaller that was as powerful as I wanted).) I'm always hoping for more A4-paper-sized (or smaller) powerful laptops (and I think this is the best option at the moment (just over, but close enough :-) )).
  - pawadu 10y ago
    But how can you comfortably code on 11"? I mean, sure it is doable but is it worth the shoulder and back ache it will eventually give you?
    - combatentropy 10y ago
      11.6" is a good size when the laptop is in your lap, especially in bed. The screen is less than two feet away.
      - pawadu 10y ago
        But we are talking "developer edition". Do you code laying down in bed? (not that what you suggest is very ergonomic anyways)
- hbcondo714 10y ago
  I personally find the size of 11'' and 13'' screens to be fine but their cramped keyboards cause aches in my fingers and wrists after a hour of coding
giovannibajo1 10y ago
Technically speaking, the worst parts is that their SSD is quite slow compared to Macs, and they ship wireless cards that don't support DFS on the 5ghz frequency, that's getting more and more necessary for solid deploy of a 5Ghz network. Not supporting DFS means that you can't use it on a 5Ghz DFS network. The QHD version has a nice screen but it's hard to use it at its best in Linux, especially when using an external monitor (you can't configure different PPIs on the two monitors because of limitations on X; I know you can try to use Wayland but it's not what it's being shipped; YMMV). This said, it's obviously a very nice laptop.
- NhanH 10y ago
  You can configure two different PPIs, but you need a WM that supports it. Basically you start two X servers with two different PPIs. Not specifically to the laptop but last time I used awesome (the tiling VM) with a 4k and a 1080 monitors.
  - oarsinsync 10y ago
    Can you then move windows between screens / X server instances?
    - NhanH 10y ago
      No, in fact for a couple of programs (Chrome to be the prominent one), if you want to change X server instances you have to make sure it's really close. Also I think copy and paste doesn't work.
me_bx 10y ago
Oh, if only things like this came with a trackpoint (a decent one). I live in the anxiety of Thinkpads getting not worth the investment anymore, and having to opt for another machine without this so efficient keyboard/trackpoint combination...
- bgamari 10y ago
  Give the Latitude E7470 a shot. I recently switched to one with very similar specs to the XPS 13 and have been very happy with it: Great screen, solid keyboard, 7 hour battery life, and built like a tank.
  - TurboHaskal 10y ago
    I think the Latitude 7370 would be a better comparison. It's basically an sturdier version of the XPS 13, same tiny bezels and all.
- soyiuz 10y ago
  Check out Thinkpad 13. The Chromebook version will be sub $500.
wrong_variable 10y ago
Seems like a PR piece [1]. I wouldn't buy the DELL XPS 13 due to my experience with the Samsung Series 9 and seeing other people use Macbook Air. All these classes of laptop are not really durable - they last maybe 2-3 years with heavy use - so unless you are ready to shell out a huge amount of money every 2 years for a laptop it it not worth getting these shiny laptops. My current laptop - Thinkpad X1 Carbon is like a wife - durable and I can have some garantee of failure tolerance. # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ? [1] '.. Bryan is a writer and works as the Social Media Marketing Manager of SUS ...' how does this person know this laptop is good for developers without being a developer ? It says right there that his job is marketing ! wake up sheeps !
- modzu 10y ago
  ^
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  > # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ? That's amazing, I never knew that. I loved my old Thinkpad T42, got a good 4 years out of it before the hinge on the screen broke. I thought that was impressive too, given how poorly I treat my equipment. It fell out of my bag numerous times but never had any problems except for the screen hinge finally wearing down at a corner from overuse. Then I got a 2010 MacBook Air. I'm still using it today. It's got numerous dents on top, bottom and all corners, and a small crack at the bottom of the screen (which strangely hasn't resulted in any dead pixels), but otherwise it's still in full working order. I remain hugely surprised at how well it's lasted. Despite the general consensus of Macbooks being very well built, and Thinkpads being built like tanks, this anecdote is definitely the opposite way around. Now if I could get a nipple on a Macbook, or a decent trackpad on a nippled-Thinkpad, I'd have found my perfect laptop!
  - wrong_variable 10y ago
    I think your experience was an exception, maybe you were more careful with the MacBook Air subconsciously because you knew it couldn't withstand being thrown around like a cheap whore ? Also you can watch how the markets values second hand laptops, generally you will see that second hand thinkpads retain more of its original market price then second hand any other laptop. Having said that thinkpads usually do not have the best screens - but even though its slightly brutal to not have a good screen anymore, I am more comfortable with the fact that I do not have to worry too much about my laptop not working or overheating.
sethish 10y ago
I hope you don't program on a back monitor. The display turns down the brightness when you're looking at dark things, and up when you're looking at bright things. The only way to disable it is to install windows...
wolfgke 10y ago
Come on: Calling it "Developer Edition" and not having an ethernet port?
- random778 10y ago
  This.

17 points by quantumtremor 10y ago

> I ended up needing to lower the resolution by half for desktop environments that just weren't built for such high DPI displays. About that, what should one do if one wants to run Linux on a computer with a high-resolution screen? For example, does it work well on the Ubuntu that this computer comes with?

SEMW 10y ago
I have a high-res XPS 13. I can't speak for unity, I use Xfce on it. After a bit of setup (set Xft/DPI, panel size, fonts), most things work pretty well. There's a few special snowflake apps that need custom setup - firefox ignores system dpi, but has its own layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting that works well. Rarely there'll be an app that ignores dpi and doesn't have its own settings, which you can use xfwm's full-screen-zoom feature to make usable. The main problem comes when you connect to a (normal-resolution) external monitor, because in X, different monitors (which are just views onto the same underlying X screen) can't have different DPIs. To solve that I set the system dpi correct for the external monitor, and use xrandr screen scaling, ie `xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 0.5x0.5`. (Which means I'm not taking advantage of the high res then, but when I'm using my giant external monitor, it and my laptop are pretty far from my eyes, so I don't care so much. I use a fork of xrandr which uses exact pixel quadrupling when you set a scale of 0.5x0.5, by default it blurs to antialias everything even when it doesn't need to, ie reciprocal-integer scaling values). I have a pair of scripts[0] that run when I plug and unplug my external monitor that make the change reasonably seamless (except for having to restart firefox). [0] https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useHighDpi.sh https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useHighD... and https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useScreenScaling.sh https://github.com/SimonWoolf/dotfiles/blob/master/.useScree...
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  > firefox ignores system dpi, but has its own layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting I found that this affected only the rendering of pages, not buttons and stuff belonging to the Firefox UI. Did I do it wrong?
  - SEMW 10y ago
    It does change the ui, but you need to restart firefox for that to take effect

cburgas 10y ago

Do any of you have experience in using the QHD Display in this version of the XPS13? I read somewhere that is a lot glossier than the Full HD non-Developer Edition and is nearly useless with a lot of light in the room or outside.

Bromskloss 10y ago
That's my fear as well. A matte screen is the most important property of a computer, in my opinion. It's like rear-wheel drive on a car: it's not worth having one without it.

lmm 10y ago

Would be nice to see a comparison with the Surface Book - I've fallen in love with mine, and I understand there's a substantial community for running linux on them.

JamesBaxter 10y ago

I find Thunderbult quite useful (but I'm on a Mac). Not sure why this guy is so against it, presumably there's reasonable peripheral support on other OSes by now? He talks about editing video on the machine, Thunderbolt should allow for high capacity/speed external storage. I'd prefer the options Thunderbolt provides over HDMI.

pawadu 10y ago
But are there any real benefits for having Thunderbult on a PC? I have a few expensive firewire audio equipment that I can no longer use. Sure, they were faster than USB when I first bought them but now they are just paperweights. So next time I am buying high-end equipment I am going to "think different" and go with the majority (i.e. USB 3.0)...
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  Buy a thunderbolt monitor and you'll then realize the benefits. I plug one cable in and I have two 34" monitors running at near 4K resolution, gigabit Ethernet, external storage, and a gamut of USB3 ports. Sure, a lot of that can be done with USB3, but not all. Thunderbolt performance is significantly higher too and the cable is very solid and durable.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    I think you missed my point. Firewire was also significantly faster than USB when it was announced and see where we are now. I paid extra for a laptop with Firewire ports and then paid extra for equipment that had firewire ports, they are all now expensive paperweights. I am not falling into that trap again. Also, out of curiosity, do you believe that this laptop has the horsepower to run your 2 x 4K monitors with reasonable performance? Without the fans spinning at max speed all the time?
    - jsjohnst 10y ago
      Not sure, but a 13" MacBook Pro w/ integrated graphics certainly does. I've only done two cinema displays with a 13" MacBook Air so sadly can't comment on it, will try that tonight if I get a second, but the specs of this put it more in the MBP category anyway.

douche 10y ago

Still, 13". That's too small for serious work, even if it super high resolution - that's only 1/4 of the surface area of a decent monitor.

bruce_one 10y ago
All a matter of personal preference :-) (I've been 100% on a 12.6" screen for the last year; and was 11" for 3+ years before that (and only moved to the 12.6 because I couldn't find anything smaller that was as powerful as I wanted).) I'm always hoping for more A4-paper-sized (or smaller) powerful laptops (and I think this is the best option at the moment (just over, but close enough :-) )).
- pawadu 10y ago
  But how can you comfortably code on 11"? I mean, sure it is doable but is it worth the shoulder and back ache it will eventually give you?
  - combatentropy 10y ago
    11.6" is a good size when the laptop is in your lap, especially in bed. The screen is less than two feet away.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      But we are talking "developer edition". Do you code laying down in bed? (not that what you suggest is very ergonomic anyways)
hbcondo714 10y ago
I personally find the size of 11'' and 13'' screens to be fine but their cramped keyboards cause aches in my fingers and wrists after a hour of coding

giovannibajo1 10y ago

Technically speaking, the worst parts is that their SSD is quite slow compared to Macs, and they ship wireless cards that don't support DFS on the 5ghz frequency, that's getting more and more necessary for solid deploy of a 5Ghz network. Not supporting DFS means that you can't use it on a 5Ghz DFS network. The QHD version has a nice screen but it's hard to use it at its best in Linux, especially when using an external monitor (you can't configure different PPIs on the two monitors because of limitations on X; I know you can try to use Wayland but it's not what it's being shipped; YMMV). This said, it's obviously a very nice laptop.

NhanH 10y ago
You can configure two different PPIs, but you need a WM that supports it. Basically you start two X servers with two different PPIs. Not specifically to the laptop but last time I used awesome (the tiling VM) with a 4k and a 1080 monitors.
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  Can you then move windows between screens / X server instances?
  - NhanH 10y ago
    No, in fact for a couple of programs (Chrome to be the prominent one), if you want to change X server instances you have to make sure it's really close. Also I think copy and paste doesn't work.

me_bx 10y ago

Oh, if only things like this came with a trackpoint (a decent one). I live in the anxiety of Thinkpads getting not worth the investment anymore, and having to opt for another machine without this so efficient keyboard/trackpoint combination...

bgamari 10y ago
Give the Latitude E7470 a shot. I recently switched to one with very similar specs to the XPS 13 and have been very happy with it: Great screen, solid keyboard, 7 hour battery life, and built like a tank.
- TurboHaskal 10y ago
  I think the Latitude 7370 would be a better comparison. It's basically an sturdier version of the XPS 13, same tiny bezels and all.
soyiuz 10y ago
Check out Thinkpad 13. The Chromebook version will be sub $500.

wrong_variable 10y ago

Seems like a PR piece [1]. I wouldn't buy the DELL XPS 13 due to my experience with the Samsung Series 9 and seeing other people use Macbook Air. All these classes of laptop are not really durable - they last maybe 2-3 years with heavy use - so unless you are ready to shell out a huge amount of money every 2 years for a laptop it it not worth getting these shiny laptops. My current laptop - Thinkpad X1 Carbon is like a wife - durable and I can have some garantee of failure tolerance. # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ? [1] '.. Bryan is a writer and works as the Social Media Marketing Manager of SUS ...' how does this person know this laptop is good for developers without being a developer ? It says right there that his job is marketing ! wake up sheeps !

modzu 10y ago
^
oarsinsync 10y ago
> # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ? That's amazing, I never knew that. I loved my old Thinkpad T42, got a good 4 years out of it before the hinge on the screen broke. I thought that was impressive too, given how poorly I treat my equipment. It fell out of my bag numerous times but never had any problems except for the screen hinge finally wearing down at a corner from overuse. Then I got a 2010 MacBook Air. I'm still using it today. It's got numerous dents on top, bottom and all corners, and a small crack at the bottom of the screen (which strangely hasn't resulted in any dead pixels), but otherwise it's still in full working order. I remain hugely surprised at how well it's lasted. Despite the general consensus of Macbooks being very well built, and Thinkpads being built like tanks, this anecdote is definitely the opposite way around. Now if I could get a nipple on a Macbook, or a decent trackpad on a nippled-Thinkpad, I'd have found my perfect laptop!
- wrong_variable 10y ago
  I think your experience was an exception, maybe you were more careful with the MacBook Air subconsciously because you knew it couldn't withstand being thrown around like a cheap whore ? Also you can watch how the markets values second hand laptops, generally you will see that second hand thinkpads retain more of its original market price then second hand any other laptop. Having said that thinkpads usually do not have the best screens - but even though its slightly brutal to not have a good screen anymore, I am more comfortable with the fact that I do not have to worry too much about my laptop not working or overheating.

sethish 10y ago

I hope you don't program on a back monitor. The display turns down the brightness when you're looking at dark things, and up when you're looking at bright things. The only way to disable it is to install windows...

wolfgke 10y ago

Come on: Calling it "Developer Edition" and not having an ethernet port?

random778 10y ago
This.