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Careful with the Dell, it's not sunshine and rainbows there either. Got the XPS 13 9310 in the Dev Edition (that is, with Ubuntu pre-loaded). I'm using that mac

Careful with the Dell, it's not sunshine and rainbows there either. Got the XPS 13 9310 in the Dev Edition (that is, with Ubuntu pre-loaded). I'm using that machine for Pentesting, so I went with Arch (+ Black Arch). Anyway, I already summarized this 7 months ago on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32562329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32562329 [...] I'm not too happy with the Linux support [in the 9310] as well. I replaced Ubuntu with Arch (was the plan anyway) and had to fiddle with the fingerprint sensor, plus the WiFi is not suitable for pentesting (but worked out of the box on Arch). Bluetooth causes lockups, so I disabled that (maybe fixed with recent kernels?). Not exactly what I expected from a laptop that's sold with Linux. Next one will probably be not Dell. [end quote] Maybe it's much better with the 9370.

tomxor 4y ago
> Maybe it's much better with the 9370. In general, it's usually not a good idea to chase the latest models for Linux support. This is common advice with thinkpads, intel chipsets, but is also true for Dell in my experience, I have an older xps 13 9370, The wifi driver for Linux was super flaky for the first 6 months, it takes a while for the community to catch up and iron out issues with the hardware - no matter what their "Linux Support" advertising may say... I prefer buying new machines because I will use them into the ground, I guess the only way around this is to buy with overlap, knowing that it might be a bit of a brick initially, but if it's a well adopted model in the Linux community you have comfort in knowing it will reliably improve.
- archi42 4y ago
  When the ad says "Linux support" I expected well tested hardware. It's not 2001 anymore, the era of GPU switcheroo is also mostly over (at least for this kind of laptop), and we're beyond wrapping NDIS drivers into the Kernel because we have a much better manufacturer support for Linux these days. Even a decade ago I would have agreed with you, but not in 202x. Especially the WiFi+BT chip was/is a huge gripe for me. These are nothing novel about these anymore (unlike e.g. P and E core scheduling). They could have used an Intel chip with proven great driver support on Linux, but instead went with a chip that's poorly supported from the getgo, from a manufacturer that doesn't really seem to care about Linux. I mean, not having promiscious mode and frame injections and all these sheningans isn't even an essential feature (I knew that I will probably need an extra adapter for that anyway, let alone to attach big antennas) - but BT crashing the system is a joke. I get that the used chip is cheaper, it is soldered on the mainboard and they use the same mainboard for Windows and Linux machines to facilate economics of scale. But it's very frustrating, because from all the things I expected to work poorly, outright break or perform worse than on Windows (fingerprint, touchscreen, LTE modem, power consumption), that's really not the thing that I expected would happen. (Also, the company has a contract with Dell and will usually buy nothing else, so my selection was limited - and getting another 2.5kg machine to carry around was something I was not willing to do).
PennRobotics 4y ago
I also saw the later models were having issues, which was part of my decision to go with Lenovo. Now, back to square one: not sure who will make my next laptop, but it will have Linux, and I'll probably curse about that a lot.

tomxor 4y ago

> Maybe it's much better with the 9370. In general, it's usually not a good idea to chase the latest models for Linux support. This is common advice with thinkpads, intel chipsets, but is also true for Dell in my experience, I have an older xps 13 9370, The wifi driver for Linux was super flaky for the first 6 months, it takes a while for the community to catch up and iron out issues with the hardware - no matter what their "Linux Support" advertising may say... I prefer buying new machines because I will use them into the ground, I guess the only way around this is to buy with overlap, knowing that it might be a bit of a brick initially, but if it's a well adopted model in the Linux community you have comfort in knowing it will reliably improve.

archi42 4y ago
When the ad says "Linux support" I expected well tested hardware. It's not 2001 anymore, the era of GPU switcheroo is also mostly over (at least for this kind of laptop), and we're beyond wrapping NDIS drivers into the Kernel because we have a much better manufacturer support for Linux these days. Even a decade ago I would have agreed with you, but not in 202x. Especially the WiFi+BT chip was/is a huge gripe for me. These are nothing novel about these anymore (unlike e.g. P and E core scheduling). They could have used an Intel chip with proven great driver support on Linux, but instead went with a chip that's poorly supported from the getgo, from a manufacturer that doesn't really seem to care about Linux. I mean, not having promiscious mode and frame injections and all these sheningans isn't even an essential feature (I knew that I will probably need an extra adapter for that anyway, let alone to attach big antennas) - but BT crashing the system is a joke. I get that the used chip is cheaper, it is soldered on the mainboard and they use the same mainboard for Windows and Linux machines to facilate economics of scale. But it's very frustrating, because from all the things I expected to work poorly, outright break or perform worse than on Windows (fingerprint, touchscreen, LTE modem, power consumption), that's really not the thing that I expected would happen. (Also, the company has a contract with Dell and will usually buy nothing else, so my selection was limited - and getting another 2.5kg machine to carry around was something I was not willing to do).

PennRobotics 4y ago

I also saw the later models were having issues, which was part of my decision to go with Lenovo. Now, back to square one: not sure who will make my next laptop, but it will have Linux, and I'll probably curse about that a lot.