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You want a couple things for an engineering laptop: Linux support, good hardware (screen, keyboard, build, trackpad, etc), and enterprise guarantees. XPS sort
by mrdoops 8y ago
You want a couple things for an engineering laptop: Linux support, good hardware (screen, keyboard, build, trackpad, etc), and enterprise guarantees.
XPS sort of does that, but you're still dealing with Dell which has it's own hiccups (variable build quality, archaic sales methods, etc.), also the XPS line isn't quite commercial grade. Thinkpads typically have good Linux support, but sometimes as with these last 6th gen X1's it takes some work to get it right.
The hard part is ultimately enterprise reliability. I want to confidence I can buy 2000 of these for my army of engineers and not overload IT with issues. This kind of support is common enough, but not necessarily for Linux laptops. Hell it'd probably be easier with Linux, the issue is more if the market is big enough to support the operational costs of enterprise support.
- balls187 8y agoI had assumed people who wanted to run linux were okay with dealing with driver hardware jank, and were more or less comfortable with the tuning and customization required to get the hardware to work as they desired. For those who just wanted a machine that "just worked" Windows based and Apple laptops would suffice, the latter having the power of a unix based OS underneath.
- Dylan16807 8y agoThere are a lot of people that would like to run Linux but don't want to deal with hardware problems. That and software compatibility are the biggest pushbacks by far.
- nl 8y agoI had assumed people who wanted to run linux were okay with dealing with driver hardware jank, and were more or less comfortable with the tuning and customization required to get the hardware to work as they desired. This is absolutely not the case. I can't emphasize it enough. I don't mind Macs and OSX, but I would like some different options. I like Ubuntu (run it on my desktop) but I refuse to play the driver/customization game. I want everything to just work.