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> 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 think

by 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).

by tomxor 4y ago

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).