12 ms·

A word of warning: German magazine c't tests this laptop in its newest issue, using the pre-installed Ubuntu but also with Fedora 25 Workstation Edition (also w

• dest 10y ago
  If it is a driver issue, it should improve other time, shouldn't it?
  • g4k 10y ago
    I had the first XPS13 developer edition and it had so many driver issues. After one year things were better.
• oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  To be fair, "battery life is fantastically good on Linux, and stupendously good on Windows" doesn't exactly sound like a downside to me.
  • SG- 10y ago
    50% worse is pretty bad no matter how you spin it.
    • davidw 10y ago
      13 hours is still 'good enough'. You could go a full day at work without charging it.
      • SG- 10y ago
        You're completely missing the point. You're paying for double of that battery usage and not getting it. Imagine if Linux was so unoptimized that it needed twice the CPU cores and RAM; your argument would be that "but it comes with twice as much as the other guys" and ends up being twice as expensive and twice as big.
        • enraged_camel 10y ago
          >>You're completely missing the point. You're paying for double of that battery usage and not getting it. The point is that the marginal value of that extra time is absolutely negligible for most people.
          • chinhodado 10y ago
            I don't know, 10 hours of extra battery use on a laptop doesn't seem "absolutely negligible" to me.
            • barrkel 10y ago
              10 more hours on 1 hour would be amazing. 10 more hours on 5 hours would be great. 10 more hours on 10 hours would be a fine thing, but most people's working day isn't that long. 10 more hours on 20 hours wouldn't be very useful. This is the concept of diminishing marginal returns. You cannot look at "10 hours" in isolation; its value is lower when the baseline is higher.
              • dzhiurgis 10y ago
                You are impacting battery longevity though.
          • ninja_quack 10y ago
            I'm not sure I really believe any os can actually drive NVMe, 3somethingx1080 touchscreen, 16GB of ram and a quad core 17 for 22 hours with this hw setup while doing anything remotely resembling normal use..... This machine will be my work luggable, I'm pretty sure it'll hold up all day. First real run is tomorrow (dev+infra stuphz), I'll drop back in and let you know how it lasted if you're interested? edit: anyone/any-os
  • 5ersi 10y ago
    Also, real numbers on Windows are nowhere near 22h: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life
• manaskarekar 10y ago
  I'm curious, did they install and configure laptop-mode-tools, tlp and/or intel powertop on linux?
• aexaey 10y ago
  Regarding 13h vs 22h battery life - I wonder if c't did any test with manually enabled SATA power management? This is a big deal on recent Intel hardware and unfortunately is still not enabled automatically by linux kernel, as described here: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/42156.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/42156.html Easiest way to enable this is to run "powertop", switch to "Tunables" tab, then toggle all lines that look like this: >> Bad Enable SATA link power management for host0 >> Bad Enable SATA link power management for host1
  • manaskarekar 10y ago
    Or if you want to be a little heavy handed, you can run: powertop --auto-tune That should add a nice boost to battery life. Also, just enabling laptop_mode using laptop-mode-tools also improves the battery life a lot. You can go and tweak stuff individually if you want, but these two are easy wins.
    • tbrock 10y ago
      Honestly though in 2016 why can't whatever is done during auto tune be done without intervention based on a power profile?
      • selectodude 10y ago
        "If laptop -> powertop --autotune" I should submit a patch.
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    Some people know how to tune and others just want to work on the laptop. As this one comes with Ubuntu pre install, in my opinion, Canonical should provide a patch or script to Dell which tunes this on par with Windows out of the box instead of having the user do it. Seems MS arranges aggressive powermanagement out of the box for Windows so Ubuntu should have the same. This is an example of the wrong way around anyway; you should not have to install and run powertop etc ; you should have to deinstall it if you do not want it... IMHO that it. I use powertop and some of my own scripts on my X220's (my go-to laptops for years now and hopefully years to come) and I get the same battery life as Windows on it.
• Cyclenerd 10y ago
  Here is the link to the test. Only in German and behind a payment barrier: https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2016-25-XPS-13-Developer-Edition-9360-Neuauflage-des-Linux-Ultrabooks-von-Dell-3493490.html https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2016-25-XPS-13-Developer-Edi...
• igravious 10y ago
  Is this the article? https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2016-25-XPS-13-Developer-Edition-9360-Neuauflage-des-Linux-Ultrabooks-von-Dell-3493490.html https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2016-25-XPS-13-Developer-Edi... With respect to the HDMI port on the separately sold docking station, define "does not work correctly" :) Usually if people are having issues they post them to Barton's blog so that the issues get visibility and to discover whether other people are having similar issues. The problems that you refer to will probably be mentioned there in soon-ish.
  • deng 10y ago
    Yes, that's the one. The problem with the HDMI on the DA200 docking station is that they tested several monitors and and they either did not work at all or only with low resolutions. They asked Dell about it and Dell itself says that they do not recommend using the DA200 and similar docking stations with Linux.
    • igravious 10y ago
      Gah, that's not good. Thanks!
• Aldo_MX 10y ago
  But that's the state of the art using Linux with bleeding edge hardware. "Developer Edition" doesn't mean "built for developers", it means "fix your drivers yourself". If Dell did their homework and ensured a silk smooth experience with Linux, the laptop would be priced higher and people would be upset that the Linux version is more expensive arguing that "Linux is free". So bad performance is a short-term compromise. If you don't want to join the effort to fix the drivers, or you can't wait some months until the community fixes the drivers, you should get an older model.
  • ninja_quack 10y ago
    I'm using Arch Linux on one of these and absolutely everything (including the touchscreen, suspend/resume, etc) has worked out of the box; the only things I had to mess around with were UEFI (since I've been on macs for years and just came back) -- "libvaapi" so that mpv uses hardware accel, and to install the intel-microcode initrd, and hacking dwm's config.h for ages...
• userbinator 10y ago
  This is only from little experience with Ubuntu and the like, but it seems that mainstream Linux distros, by their very nature, contain many separate components installed by default that could be doing something with the CPU despite not really being necessary, with no one group responsible for overall power management/resource use (unlike Windows or MacOS). It may be open-source and free, but if the user doesn't want or need it and it's installed and actively consuming resources, it's bloatware nonetheless. I'd be interested in knowing the battery life with a far more minimalist distro.
  • kjax 10y ago
    Did a fairly standard install of Lubuntu 16.04 + full disk encryption, and I seem to get about 10 hours (i5, 8GB, 128GB). I'll have to try powertop and see if that changes anything.
• JohnBooty 10y ago
  Note: Unless I'm missing something, these have a max of 16GB RAM. Disappointing. > The battery lasts for 13h under Linux, which is not too shabby. However, it lasts a whooping 22,5h with Windows 10. This makes me wonder how it would fare when booting into Windows and running Linux inside a VM. I'm pretty sure that's going to be my next laptop setup now that Apple's notebooks seem to have finally diverged too far from my needs. I'm not in love with Windows, but as long as you don't go out of your way to screw it up it makes a pretty decent bootloader & hardware abstraction layer that also plays games. =)
  • pyre 10y ago
    With Windows as your host OS though you are only as secure as Windows...
    • philliphaydon 10y ago
      Wow are we still in 2003 with the security fud still?
      • pyre 10y ago
        My point was more that you can't treat Windows as "just a bootloader" as the parent to my post was implying. You also need to worry about security. I'm sure that a stock Windows install has more remote security vulnerabilities than lilo or grub. No matter how much you lock down the guest VM, the host OS is still a weak point.
      • dzhiurgis 10y ago
        You need to get Pro version of Windows 10 to get full disk encryption...
    • bmon 10y ago
      I don't think the difference between linux and windows in terms of security is as big as you're implying. https://www.cvedetails.com/product/32238/Microsoft-Windows-10.html?vendor_id=26 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/32238/Microsoft-Windows-1... https://www.cvedetails.com/product/20550/Canonical-Ubuntu-Linux.html?vendor_id=4781 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/20550/Canonical-Ubuntu-Li...
• kleiba 10y ago
  And then there's the price difference to the US. For instance, the cheapest model: - $949.99 in the U.S. - $1323.07 in Germany (1249 Euro)
  • morsch 10y ago
    A tad over 1100 USD when you account for the VAT. Still quite the difference.
  • moeffju 10y ago
    Add sales tax, some forex risk buffer, and import VAT. Normally the difference is rather negligible...
    • eb0la 10y ago
      Do not forget warranty! In Europe you must provide 1 or 2 year warranty vs 90 days in the US. We are also paying for this insurance.
    • vetinari 10y ago
      Pick sales tax OR VAT. They are mutually exclusive. Import duties for computers are 0% in EU.
• ninja_quack 10y ago
  I have one of these laptops (since Friday): * ) Batt -- Still tweaking things, I dropped the ubuntu install pretty quick for arch, but I recon 9-10 hours is where I'm sitting atm. ) Headphones sound fine here... ) Wifi Perf? I get ~250mbit on fast.com from my house The bigger issue is the graphics card whine under high load....
  • deng 10y ago
    A few more details: Regarding battery: They mention they could tweak the power consumption from 4,7W to 4W by setting i915.enable_psr=1 but that this setting lead to temporary freezes of the picture on the screen for several seconds, so they don't recommend it. Regarding the headphones they mention that it is worse when running on battery and when using the trackpad (they say it's a mosquito-like noise). They also say that there already is a fix for the audio driver but that it does not work. As for WiFi: it's OK for for receiving (they measured 300MBit/s) but with sending they only got 29MBit/s. In conclusion, they also say that except for the HDMI issues with the docking station, all those problems are driver issues which will eventually be fixed, but at the moment it is what it is.
    • ninja_quack 10y ago
      Hmm; I've not tweaked that one -- I'm using: options i915 semaphores=1 i915_enable_rc6=7 i915_enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1 And things are fine graphics wise -- I'm going to give it a proper run in tomorrow @work and we'll see how it goes.. Played a 1080p film on it earlier with mpv and it ate about 20% -- had brightness at about medium.. Not sure if that's good or not.. 4W seems a bit optimistic though doesn't it? I've tweaked things quite a bit, but maybe I'm missing some extra magic or I just don't know the machine enough to know what the baseline is... I've got skype, spotify, maybe 20 firefox tabs, dozen terms or so, dwm, wpa_sup wifi, and some other stuff, and i'm currently at: System baseline power is estimated at 11.8 W Freq Throttling (this isn't controlable, seemingly, and handled by the intel_pstate driver) currently has me on: current CPU frequency: 526 MHz (asserted by call to hardware) Don't really have a baseline yet -- I can drop a reply in here tomorrow if you're interested in how it holds up with some real use?
  • 10y ago
• _Robbie 10y ago
  I got a Developer Edition XPS 13 9360 two weeks ago. My compatibility experience: - DisplayPort over USB-C alternate mode did not work at all in Ubuntu 16.04 (unplugging the USB-C cable froze the computer). So I upgraded to 16.10, and DisplayPort over USB-C now works, probably because 16.10 has a newer Linux kernel with better support for USB-C. I do encounter this bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1634449 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1634449) where the external monitor will sometimes flash black when the mouse moves between monitors. - The headphones are very noisy. When playing audio the hiss can be eliminated by running "alsamixer" and increasing the "Headphone Mic Boost" to 10 db gain. Depending on the monitor, there is 0 to very very little hiss when routing the audio through DisplayPort or HDMI and using my monitor's headphone jack. Annoyingly, when first playing audio, it takes about 2 seconds for the audio to start playing though the headphone jack on my DisplayPort monitor. - Sometimes the touchscreen does not register touches after waking from suspend. A workaround is to close and open the lid. - Occasionally (this has not happened in a few days), the wifi will disappear. Running "sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service" gets it working again. Also, iwconfig always reports "Bit Rate=1 Mb/s" even though the actual speed is much faster than that. - Dell disables the super key out of the box. You have to uninstall the "dell-super-key" package, and add the super key keyboard shortcut with ccsm. (see http://askubuntu.com/questions/751661/dell-developer-edition-ubuntu-14-04-super-key-not-working http://askubuntu.com/questions/751661/dell-developer-edition...). Dell says that disabling the super key is not their choice (http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/p/19682028/20901684#20901684 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...) Otherwise, everything seems to be working well. I have not tested it, but as far as I know Thunderbolt 3 does not work with Linux yet, so Thunderbolt 3 docks probably won't work.
  • m_mueller 10y ago
    "Otherwise, everything seems to be working well" Sigh, back to Apple who don't seem to want to serve pro customers anymore, but apparently still do it better than anyone else (in nix land)...
    • confounded 10y ago
• Veedrac 10y ago
  I had a noisy headphone port on a slightly older XPS 15. There was a simple `echo 1 > ???` fix, but I have no recollection of the specifics. I could probably look for it if someone else has the problem and needs it, though there's no guarantee that the new XPS 13 would be fixed the same way.
• gshulegaard 10y ago
  As an owner of a previous generation XPS 13 I have a couple of comments. > The battery lasts for 13h under Linux, which is not too shabby. However, it lasts a whooping 22,5h with Windows 10. Not likely Dell's fault. User "aexaey" commented about this. > WiFi performance is dismal in Linux. No problem with Windows. There were some driver issues in my generation for WiFi but this was eventually sorted out. I would prefer Intel wireless cards over Killer since Intel typically has better Linux drivers but this is usually not up to Barton and/or the Sputnik team. > The HDMI port on the separately sold docking station does not work correctly with Linux. If this is talking about the USB 3.0 dock from Dell (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=452-BBPG&ST=pla&dgc=ST&cid=298721&lid=5704670&acd=12309152537501410&ven1=452-BBPG:101952148149:901q5c14135:c&ven2=:&ven3=265503620342496457 http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l...), this is because the underlying USB to display driver is from DisplayLink (http://www.displaylink.com/ http://www.displaylink.com/) and (last I checked) they have repeatedly refused to support Linux due to lack of perceived market demand. No USB dock is going to work with linked displays over Linux (that I know of/use DisplayLink under the covers). However, TB3 docks do not typically suffer from this same problem. So now with the Sputniks coming with Thunderbolt, look at TB docks (you should be anyway) and this won't be a problem. > The headphone port is very noisy with Linux. No noise whatsoever with Windows. Had a similar problem with mine. Can't remember how I fixed it. If you want to buy a laptop that has a team dedicated to supporting Linux on the hardware, you can't complain to much about Dell Sputnik. Dell has been doing good work and overall I think has made a positive impact on the Linux laptop/hardware support market. You are also more or less paying for support. It's a pretty neat thing to be able to file a support ticket with someone like Dell regarding a hardware issue on your laptop running Linux. But this is still Linux we are talking about...and it is still very much a second-class citizen at Dell. So as long as you know this, I have to say I rather enjoy mine still.
• deleted 10y ago
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