3 ms·

I'll bite the bullet and be that guy. What about dual monitor support? What about suspend/resume? Do WiFi and Bluetooth work without issues?

by evacchi 10y ago

CityWanderer 10y ago
I've run it with one monitor, two would be hard since it only has a single USB C and I don't have any monitors that can daisy chain.. if that's even a thing. The issue is that Linux doesn't play nicely with having different pixel densities on each monitor. You can try to make it scale, but then apps appear in different sizes depending on which screen you open them on. It's pretty horrible, so I run the laptop at half-res (1600x900) so that it matches the monitor and everything is the same size. Suspend/resume works fine. I've had to restart the network-manager service just once to get WiFi to refresh. Otherwise it's fine reconnecting when you come in/out of suspend. Other things: battery isn't great but I don't use it away from a desk. On the first couple of days the Ubuntu Software Centre kept crashing; I think it's fine now but I don't tend to use it anyway. I disabled the Dell apt source because it was failing - I don't know if that was a one-off problem or it's just broken. But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it just feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X.
- bardworx 10y ago
  > But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it just feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X. Can you expand on that, please. Why were you months on OS X painful? Just curious to hear the use case that caused this.
  - CityWanderer 10y ago
    I've been using Linux of some flavour at home for the last 15 years, only straying onto Windows for gaming. I've been lucky to use Ubuntu at work for most of my professional career too (6-7 years?) - so it's what I know and what I'm used to. I started a new role a few months ago that forced me onto OS X and found physical and software issues. Physically OS X does not let you configure mice properly without installing third party drivers. Of course I ditched the "magic" mouse pretty quickly after my hand started hurting after a couple of days, but even with a normal mouse you simply cannot configure mouse sensitivity and acceleration properly - it cannot treat a mouse on par with what Linux or Windows will. You need extra drivers to even enable mouse buttons 3,4 and 5. The keyboard shortcuts hurt too, sometimes using Ctrl, sometimes using Cmd, but that could be just fighting 15 years of muscle memory - so take that with a grain of salt (but it indirectly caused more physical finger pain). Software-wise I don't know how objective I can be, but it feels faster/simpler to install software and things like the terminal are much better integrated - I can auto-complete git branch names on the command line for instance. Maybe OS X can do that kind of thing, but certainly not out of the box. To me, OS X feels like a 95% emulation of Linux, just that slightly bit lacking. Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to go to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I assume it's some combination somewhere.
    - sakabaro 10y ago
      > Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to go to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I assume it's some combination somewhere. Crt+a. Every emacs shortcuts work everywhere in MacOS.
      - RallionRl 10y ago
        The canonical way for the End key is fn + right arrow, fn + left arrow for Home, and fn + up/down arrow for Page Up/Down. And you can even use Del with fn + Backspace! But me too, I prefer the emacs shortcuts.
      - elexotico 10y ago
        Either emacs shortcuts do not work in MacOS, or you mean Ctrl+e to go to the end of current line :)
    - unrealhoang 10y ago
      I find your problems are mostly fighting your own muscle memory. The Cmd key is much more consistent for the entire OS. You can do Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + R, Cmd + Q pretty much anywhere (including the terminal), whereas in Linux you have to use Ctrl + shift + c/v. And the ergonomics of the Cmd key is way better than ctrl key. For installing development software, there's `brew`, and the terminal is exactly same. I don't know any feature that is Linux-only to feel the `better integrated` To go to the end of line, just use Cmd + right/left.
    - bardworx 10y ago
      > Of course I ditched the "magic" mouse pretty quickly I'm now questioning myself on this comment. I have med-large hands and the magic mouse, even though not intuitive at first, became my favorite mouse. I've tried many difference mouses (I believe that's the plural of the computer kind) since swiping to go back/forth on web pages is so much easier. I guess its dogmatic; I freely use shortcuts on web browsers to switch to specific tabs or going back/forth when doing research/googling/SO but when I'm browsing/reading/wasting time, and only using the mouse, the swipe is quite intuitive. Now I have to see if: it's easier to swipe between pages or use a 3rd/4th button to perform similar tasks...i'm sure it's nerdy/geeky but its an interesting question nonetheless, from the daily routine standpoint.
- JamesMcMinn 10y ago
  > I've run it with one monitor, two would be hard since it only has a single USB C and I don't have any monitors that can daisy chain.. if that's even a thing. Most of Dells Ultrasharp monitors from the past couple of years have supported Daisychaining through Displayport. I have an older XPS 9333 DE from 2014 and use it with Dell's U2715H and U2415H monitors through a single displayport connection.
bardworx 10y ago
Note sure why you would be "that guy", unless you mean you're asking questions without reading the article... However, I skimmed the article and searched for terms like resume/sleep/wake/suspend without a hit - which I assume means they're working fine. The article did quote that everything is running out of the box, so, again, the presumption is that those features work. Bluetooth and Wifi work but who knows in Real World experience since the more you tinker with Linux the more issues you run into (unless you're seasoned). Dual monitors I have no idea. Also, those are all valid questions which I think most intro-level folks to Linux ask. My personal issue with Linux has always been printing. At times, the drivers just stop working or crash a network company printer for no good reason. Not sure if its the novice in me or a SOP for most Linux users.
- aceperry 10y ago
  Crashing a printer sounds strange to me because linux has always had strong printer support. It became the default printer server software in a lot of large companies (Cisco where I was an intern) and has supported printers that were orphaned by windows. In fact on some printers, there is more than one driver available, and some of them work better than others. There are some proprietary printers that don't have good support from linux and that might be the issue here.
  - bardworx 10y ago
    On KonicaMonilta Bizahub series, anytime a Linux computer prints a large PDF, the printer basically memory leaks to hell. This is PCL and PS drivers. The two models we have are 283 and 284e; both have similar issues. I spoke with a tech thinking it was my ignorance when downloading drivers but they told me "I've never seen this issue before". I chalked it up to doing something wrong and quit trying. The Linux machines at work don't really need to print and I've attempted several times from different distros with similar results. Again, can totally be my ignorance and lack of time to tinker with so YMMV.
keyme 10y ago
I actually have Ubuntu 16.4 on the previous (non Dev Edition) generation of this laptop (HW almost identical), and it works almost out of the box for the things you mentioned (needed to solve a problem with touchpad palm detection, and touchscreen bug after resuming from sleep). Of course, mind you, dual monitor support on Ubuntu (or any other linux distro) sucks (I guess it's because X is crap). It is, however, functional. You get some annoying glitches when hot-plugging monitors, etc. Sometimes apps crash when both monitors "disappear" (laptop is closed an you disconnect the external monitor). But it works WAY better than I expected.
JamesMcMinn 10y ago
Dell make sure all of the hardware works with Linux out of the box before releasing new versions of the Developer Edition laptops. Everything you mentioned works fine, that's the whole point of the Developer Edition laptops.
bigger_cheese 10y ago
I purchased an XPS 13 in December last year. More specifically I have the 2016 - 9360 model. The laptop came with Windows 10 preinstalled (Dell did not offer Linux preinstalled in Australia). I installed Fedora 25 on it. I hit a major issues with the Linux installer failing to recognize the Laptop's built in SSD. I was able to fix this by entering the BIOS and changing the SATA controller to AHCI mode and disabling Secure boot (apparently intel is to blame because bios default SATA "RAID mode" only works under Windows). After I made bios changes Windows partition would no longer boot (not a huge deal for me as I nuked this partition during Linux install). The first time I closed the lid it failed to wake from suspend and I had to power cycle it. However since then I've updated the system packages quite a few times and it has successfully woken each time I have closed the lid subsequently. So suspect newer kernel fixed this. For dual monitor support I haven't noticed any issues. But rarely run with an external monitor attached. WiFi worked out of the box. Never used bluetooth on it. Trackpad is probably biggest issue it feels very poor to use and often does not register clicks. When I mentioned this on LWN some people mentioned changing from synaptics driver to using libinput driver for touchpad - for time being though I have been using an external mouse. Overall I'm mostly satisfied. For hardware as new as what I purchased everything has worked remarkably well.
FireBeyond 10y ago
I use this laptop. Suspend and resume work just fine, and resuming from hibernation, if you go the Windows route, is still <5s, thanks to the NVMe drive. Wifi and Bluetooth work just fine. Yet to have an issue. I drive a 4K Dell screen via a Kensington dock - this is a nice solution, one USB-C connector into the laptop, supplies power, and gives me Ethernet, 4k60 DP (which also allows chaining, but I haven't tried that, yet).

I'll bite the bullet and be that guy. What about dual monitor support? What about suspend/resume? Do WiFi and Bluetooth work without issues?

by evacchi 10y ago

I'll bite the bullet and be that guy. What about dual monitor support? What about suspend/resume? Do WiFi and Bluetooth work without issues?

CityWanderer 10y ago

I've run it with one monitor, two would be hard since it only has a single USB C and I don't have any monitors that can daisy chain.. if that's even a thing. The issue is that Linux doesn't play nicely with having different pixel densities on each monitor. You can try to make it scale, but then apps appear in different sizes depending on which screen you open them on. It's pretty horrible, so I run the laptop at half-res (1600x900) so that it matches the monitor and everything is the same size. Suspend/resume works fine. I've had to restart the network-manager service just once to get WiFi to refresh. Otherwise it's fine reconnecting when you come in/out of suspend. Other things: battery isn't great but I don't use it away from a desk. On the first couple of days the Ubuntu Software Centre kept crashing; I think it's fine now but I don't tend to use it anyway. I disabled the Dell apt source because it was failing - I don't know if that was a one-off problem or it's just broken. But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it just feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X.

bardworx 10y ago
> But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it just feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X. Can you expand on that, please. Why were you months on OS X painful? Just curious to hear the use case that caused this.
- CityWanderer 10y ago
  I've been using Linux of some flavour at home for the last 15 years, only straying onto Windows for gaming. I've been lucky to use Ubuntu at work for most of my professional career too (6-7 years?) - so it's what I know and what I'm used to. I started a new role a few months ago that forced me onto OS X and found physical and software issues. Physically OS X does not let you configure mice properly without installing third party drivers. Of course I ditched the "magic" mouse pretty quickly after my hand started hurting after a couple of days, but even with a normal mouse you simply cannot configure mouse sensitivity and acceleration properly - it cannot treat a mouse on par with what Linux or Windows will. You need extra drivers to even enable mouse buttons 3,4 and 5. The keyboard shortcuts hurt too, sometimes using Ctrl, sometimes using Cmd, but that could be just fighting 15 years of muscle memory - so take that with a grain of salt (but it indirectly caused more physical finger pain). Software-wise I don't know how objective I can be, but it feels faster/simpler to install software and things like the terminal are much better integrated - I can auto-complete git branch names on the command line for instance. Maybe OS X can do that kind of thing, but certainly not out of the box. To me, OS X feels like a 95% emulation of Linux, just that slightly bit lacking. Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to go to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I assume it's some combination somewhere.
  - sakabaro 10y ago
    > Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to go to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I assume it's some combination somewhere. Crt+a. Every emacs shortcuts work everywhere in MacOS.
    - RallionRl 10y ago
      The canonical way for the End key is fn + right arrow, fn + left arrow for Home, and fn + up/down arrow for Page Up/Down. And you can even use Del with fn + Backspace! But me too, I prefer the emacs shortcuts.
    - elexotico 10y ago
      Either emacs shortcuts do not work in MacOS, or you mean Ctrl+e to go to the end of current line :)
  - unrealhoang 10y ago
    I find your problems are mostly fighting your own muscle memory. The Cmd key is much more consistent for the entire OS. You can do Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + R, Cmd + Q pretty much anywhere (including the terminal), whereas in Linux you have to use Ctrl + shift + c/v. And the ergonomics of the Cmd key is way better than ctrl key. For installing development software, there's `brew`, and the terminal is exactly same. I don't know any feature that is Linux-only to feel the `better integrated` To go to the end of line, just use Cmd + right/left.
  - bardworx 10y ago
    > Of course I ditched the "magic" mouse pretty quickly I'm now questioning myself on this comment. I have med-large hands and the magic mouse, even though not intuitive at first, became my favorite mouse. I've tried many difference mouses (I believe that's the plural of the computer kind) since swiping to go back/forth on web pages is so much easier. I guess its dogmatic; I freely use shortcuts on web browsers to switch to specific tabs or going back/forth when doing research/googling/SO but when I'm browsing/reading/wasting time, and only using the mouse, the swipe is quite intuitive. Now I have to see if: it's easier to swipe between pages or use a 3rd/4th button to perform similar tasks...i'm sure it's nerdy/geeky but its an interesting question nonetheless, from the daily routine standpoint.
JamesMcMinn 10y ago
> I've run it with one monitor, two would be hard since it only has a single USB C and I don't have any monitors that can daisy chain.. if that's even a thing. Most of Dells Ultrasharp monitors from the past couple of years have supported Daisychaining through Displayport. I have an older XPS 9333 DE from 2014 and use it with Dell's U2715H and U2415H monitors through a single displayport connection.

bardworx 10y ago

Note sure why you would be "that guy", unless you mean you're asking questions without reading the article... However, I skimmed the article and searched for terms like resume/sleep/wake/suspend without a hit - which I assume means they're working fine. The article did quote that everything is running out of the box, so, again, the presumption is that those features work. Bluetooth and Wifi work but who knows in Real World experience since the more you tinker with Linux the more issues you run into (unless you're seasoned). Dual monitors I have no idea. Also, those are all valid questions which I think most intro-level folks to Linux ask. My personal issue with Linux has always been printing. At times, the drivers just stop working or crash a network company printer for no good reason. Not sure if its the novice in me or a SOP for most Linux users.

aceperry 10y ago
Crashing a printer sounds strange to me because linux has always had strong printer support. It became the default printer server software in a lot of large companies (Cisco where I was an intern) and has supported printers that were orphaned by windows. In fact on some printers, there is more than one driver available, and some of them work better than others. There are some proprietary printers that don't have good support from linux and that might be the issue here.
- bardworx 10y ago
  On KonicaMonilta Bizahub series, anytime a Linux computer prints a large PDF, the printer basically memory leaks to hell. This is PCL and PS drivers. The two models we have are 283 and 284e; both have similar issues. I spoke with a tech thinking it was my ignorance when downloading drivers but they told me "I've never seen this issue before". I chalked it up to doing something wrong and quit trying. The Linux machines at work don't really need to print and I've attempted several times from different distros with similar results. Again, can totally be my ignorance and lack of time to tinker with so YMMV.

keyme 10y ago

I actually have Ubuntu 16.4 on the previous (non Dev Edition) generation of this laptop (HW almost identical), and it works almost out of the box for the things you mentioned (needed to solve a problem with touchpad palm detection, and touchscreen bug after resuming from sleep). Of course, mind you, dual monitor support on Ubuntu (or any other linux distro) sucks (I guess it's because X is crap). It is, however, functional. You get some annoying glitches when hot-plugging monitors, etc. Sometimes apps crash when both monitors "disappear" (laptop is closed an you disconnect the external monitor). But it works WAY better than I expected.

JamesMcMinn 10y ago

Dell make sure all of the hardware works with Linux out of the box before releasing new versions of the Developer Edition laptops. Everything you mentioned works fine, that's the whole point of the Developer Edition laptops.

bigger_cheese 10y ago

I purchased an XPS 13 in December last year. More specifically I have the 2016 - 9360 model. The laptop came with Windows 10 preinstalled (Dell did not offer Linux preinstalled in Australia). I installed Fedora 25 on it. I hit a major issues with the Linux installer failing to recognize the Laptop's built in SSD. I was able to fix this by entering the BIOS and changing the SATA controller to AHCI mode and disabling Secure boot (apparently intel is to blame because bios default SATA "RAID mode" only works under Windows). After I made bios changes Windows partition would no longer boot (not a huge deal for me as I nuked this partition during Linux install). The first time I closed the lid it failed to wake from suspend and I had to power cycle it. However since then I've updated the system packages quite a few times and it has successfully woken each time I have closed the lid subsequently. So suspect newer kernel fixed this. For dual monitor support I haven't noticed any issues. But rarely run with an external monitor attached. WiFi worked out of the box. Never used bluetooth on it. Trackpad is probably biggest issue it feels very poor to use and often does not register clicks. When I mentioned this on LWN some people mentioned changing from synaptics driver to using libinput driver for touchpad - for time being though I have been using an external mouse. Overall I'm mostly satisfied. For hardware as new as what I purchased everything has worked remarkably well.

FireBeyond 10y ago

I use this laptop. Suspend and resume work just fine, and resuming from hibernation, if you go the Windows route, is still <5s, thanks to the NVMe drive. Wifi and Bluetooth work just fine. Yet to have an issue. I drive a 4K Dell screen via a Kensington dock - this is a nice solution, one USB-C connector into the laptop, supplies power, and gives me Ethernet, 4k60 DP (which also allows chaining, but I haven't tried that, yet).