7 ms·

Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops

120 points by CrankyBear 3y ago

petepete 3y ago
I bought an XPS13 in 2012 or so with Ubuntu preinstalled and it was rock solid for years (although I ran Fedora on it). I remember buying it was really difficult, it wasn't listed on the UK website and in the end I had to phone their sales number and was passed through several people who'd never heard of Ubuntu. A few days later I received an email with a link to an unlisted store item that had the same photos as the equivalent Windows model, but it was about £30 cheaper. Snook is an apt word for my experience, hope it's improved.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Dell is definitely weird about this; I had the same experience. Perfectly satisfied with my laptop (an XPS 13 with Ubuntu on it bought a few years ago), but Dell's online store is just bonkers.
  - mcbutterbunz 3y ago
    I Googled XPS 13 and go to configure it but can’t find an option to choose Ubuntu, only downgrade to Windows 11 Home. It is weird.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
      I see nothing weird here, Microsoft has been punishing OEM manufacturers for bundling Linux (or, more precisely, for not bundling a MS system on the computers they are selling) since at least 1983.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows
    - frei 3y ago
      I had to search "developer edition" https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexcucto9320rpl01 https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-dev...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pja 3y ago
      IIRC with the current XPS range only the "pro" variants offer you the choice of a Linux install.
    - mattl 3y ago
      Used to be dell.com/linux
- jchw 3y ago
  I suspect this happened because when DELL first launched laptops with Linux, it gave them some surprising bad press. Certainly the most famous being the woman who apparently was dropping out of college as a result of accidentally ordering a Ubuntu DELL laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI This probably seems like a weird one-off, but this story went pretty viral, of course it went viral on the internet for other reasons, but I'm sure the blame being placed squarely on DELL probably did lead to them being a bit spooked about consumer confusion. The fact that nobody at DELL or elsewhere could just tell her that she can in fact, pretty easily install Windows on the machine is... well, a little frustrating to say the least. The college's IT department was aware enough of Linux to be able to say they can handle it, but not enough to say "Y'know, just for what it's worth... You can just buy and install Windows."
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    I have no evidence for this but you can imagine someone at Microsoft saying "Dell has started selling laptops without Windows! We need to run an 'information campaign' to tell people why they should not use Ubuntu! Let's cough 'find' a college student who lost everything because of this operating system and then feed it to a local news channel." I can't say if this happened, but the whole story sounds like a dark PR campaign to spread fear about Dell's choice and try to take some steam out of their rollout. Microsoft obviously had a lot of money on the line if Dell found success with Ubuntu.
    - ndiddy 3y ago
      Microsoft did an anti-Linux retail PR campaign around the Windows 7 launch, as netbooks with vendor-specific Linux distributions were starting to gain traction. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/microsoft-teaches-best-buy-employees-how-to-troll-linux-users/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/micro...
  - bloqs 3y ago
    This absolutely REEKS of earlier-time corpo PR skullduggery.
- cryptoz 3y ago
  I also bought an XPS13 around 2012, and paid for the Ubuntu version. The receipt even said Ubuntu on it. But they shipped me the Windows one! Returned and refunded based on their phone support, they said installing Linux on it would void the warranty. Never tried again, too much hassle.
csdvrx 3y ago
In theory, laptops from Dell should work with Linux. In practice, not so much, especially if you like to sleep and wake up from sleep everytime without a crash + a reasonable power consumption, both during use and during sleep. IMHO consumption during sleep far more important: if I didn't plug the computer, I expect it to wake up immediately (no S4/suspend to disk) and with less than 0.5% of battery lost per hour (so for 10h of sleep and 80% battery before sleep, at least 75% battery left), if I put it in a bag, I expect it to stay asleep and not be a fire hazard: dells run hot when closed and in a bag, to the point of battery exhaustion or thermal shutdown) I prefer Lenovo for everything, especially the keyboard but also ECC ram, OLED displays ... things almost impossible to find anywhere else! I've been moving to a eink tablet but I purchased a Lenovo wireless keyboard: every key being in the exact same position on all my hardware has sizeable benefits in comfort. Also, I want PageUp and PageDown around the Up key, something impossible to find outside of Lenovo.
- gtaylor 3y ago
  Had great results with my Dell XPS 17. Everything but the fingerprint reader works out of the box.
- theodric 3y ago
  >eink tablet That's my fetish! Which one did you go for?
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    Bigme (10 inch color eink) but the Boox are also great if you like color eink. It's a matter of preferences: I got both, kept the Bigme and gifted the Boox. I was asked about my setup a few days ago. I'm preparing a tutorial to help with rooting, removing unwanted apps etc.
- Astronaut3315 3y ago
  My work machine, a Precision 5550 (XPS 15) has never been able to reliably wake from sleep. Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Windows 11- it doesn’t matter.
DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
> The Dell XPS 13 is the best-known developer-focused, high-end Linux laptop. Not a good ol' ThinkPad T-series?
- simonebrunozzi 3y ago
  I guess not anymore. I'd say that until a bunch of years ago, you'd be right. Nowadays, I don't see Thinkpads often anymore. My 0.02.
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    I see them everywhere. On the last 4 companies I worked straight, they were either the only option, or an option between ThinkPad or Mac.
  - wrd83 3y ago
    Unfortunately. Even a T490 beats an XPS13 easily. I own both and I'm happy I switched back to ThinkPads.
    - _cenw 3y ago
      The T490 is the worst ThinkPad generation to buy right now. The generation they took out the removable battery, soldered half the RAM and generally made some other anti-improvements. So you get the oldest hardware without any of the pre-redesign benefits. I guess the T495 is worse. Those first gen Zen chips are just terrible.
      - roblh 3y ago
        Really liking my refurb t480 with Ubuntu, however the most annoying thing is that it’s seemingly impossible to get the 2 finger swipe back trackpad gesture working. Otherwise it’s been great.
        kuschku 3y ago
        Switch the trackpad with that of the X1C, and it'll work flawlessly. I did the same on my T470.
acover 3y ago
Why does it cost more if I select Ubuntu versus windows? Edit: It looks like just a Canadian thing. 1899 for windows home and 1984 for Ubuntu. https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/caexchbts9320ghhw https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-...
- kleiba 3y ago
  For me, it's the opposite: Windows is preselected, but when I switch to Linux, the price goes down.
  - queuebert 3y ago
    Same here. Linux was $100 cheaper. Which makes me wonder ... why is an OEM Windows license still ~$100? And not only that, you'd think Dell could negotiate a lower rate.
    - Old_Thrashbarg 3y ago
      Hard to negotiate when Windows has monopoly pricing power and Dell doesn't.
- littleodie914 3y ago
  When I configured a base model (in the US) it was $1,399 for Ubuntu, $1,499 for Win 11.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Tried it out, got the same results. Also in Canada. I'll assume some retail magic, Microsoft subsidy, and the life-in-Canada tax.
- deathanatos 3y ago
  … I do wish people could just use some round price tags like $1,400 so that I could easily price what the various features are. Nothing says "we value the customer" (/s) like a 0.08% discount and a website that won't tell me straight-forwardly what the cost of the components is.
dlahoda 3y ago
3 days ago my system76 oryx pro 4k 2023 just died dead. i had 2022 dell xps with 17 4k touch screen. i thought, okey, will plug encrypted nvme system disk. i was doubt it will boot at all, not speaking about sound, wifi and touch. but magically, after reboot, some firmwares installed. it all worked perfectly. sound, voice, touch, sleep, keyboard, camera.
molly0 3y ago
I’ve been running Ubuntu on a Dell Latitude for about two years. Works good and is cheaper.
- heywire 3y ago
  I’ve been rocking a Latitude 7370 for around 5 years now. Picked it up used in 2018 for $475. It has been a great machine. Works great under Fedora. 3200x1800 touch screen, 16GB ram. Swapped the m.2 SATA SSD for an NVMe drive. It’s not a super powerful machine, and the battery life could be better, but overall I really like it.
- dcminter 3y ago
  Same on a 7490. My favourite thing about it is that I was able to cheaply upgrade it to 64G memory! Plus it's fairly sturdy and cheap to replace if it ever does die on me. Very happy with it. I have had a couple of minor Linux specific (I assume) issues, but nothing too hard to resolve. Edit: this was one of the minor issues: https://paperstack.com/fixing_the_freeze/ https://paperstack.com/fixing_the_freeze/
pjmlp 3y ago
Well, I am still waiting for the day one can finally buy them on the German shop. At least there are some gaming laptops available now. https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/sr/laptops/ubuntu-linux?appliedRefinements=37832 https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/sr/laptops/ub...
- ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
  First I didn't want to respond, because I didn't read the article in detail. What is the difference? https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus-laptop/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/cn93352cc https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus-laptop/s...
smallerfish 3y ago
The camera doesn't work on the current XPS13 if you upgrade to a 6.X kernel (which, to be fair, means moving outside of Dell's packaging.) Technically this is Intel's fault, as they haven't released firmware for it yet. Still, hopefully the Dell team avoid similar issues in future configs by ensuring better driver support. It's a nice laptop otherwise.
- Darmody 3y ago
  My cam doesn't work on my 5 year old Inspiron either. It's one of the reasons I'm not buying the Inspiron 16 plus in this moment.
  - gerdesj 3y ago
    Whichever distro you use, there will be a selection of kernels to choose from. Even Arch has an elderly LTS option. Gentoo obviously offers all kernels since 0.97 (dig out egcs) including several that haven't been released and a couple that will never exist outside of a parallel reality! I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based. Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".
    - Darmody 3y ago
      I've been using different kernels since 4.x up to 6.5.4 and many distros. There are no drivers for the webcam.
- jadbox 3y ago
  Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?
  - senkora 3y ago
ulrischa 3y ago
Microsoft also offers Linux introduction tutorials. Seems like a wind of change
mixmastamyk 3y ago
I looked at several precisions this month and they all had Ubuntu options. The /developer/ page doesn’t seem to exist any longer however.
jdlyga 3y ago
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Dell is high end hardware. The specs may be good, but it’s cheaply manufactured and frequently fails. And if you’re not a business customer, support is terrible.
GoofballJones 3y ago
Got an XPS 13" with Linux pre-installed on it like 5 years ago. I put in a bigger HD and it ran for quite a while. It started showing it's age. I didn't upgrade to another one. I mean, it wasn't bad and it did what I wanted, but I was ready for a change.
AvImd 3y ago
Not a high end device (Dell Vostro 15 3515), but it comes with preinstalled Ubuntu as well. It has some serious problems with wireless (10ec:c821). The default driver frequently loses connection on some wifi networks (it has issue with many networks though surprisingly not all of them). Sometimes reloading the driver helps, sometimes it just hangs my system. https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 seems to work a bit better though still has the same problem sometimes. It turns out that rfkill block wlan && sleep 3 && rfkill unblock wlan works better than reloading the driver. At least this way I haven't hanged my system yet. And wifi does not seem to be able to work at the same time as bluetooth. Otherwise a fine device.
- bartvk 3y ago
  Have you tried a USB based WiFi adapter? Last time I checked (unfortunately many years ago), these were quite small.
  - AvImd 3y ago
    I am considering doing that. I also considered replacing the wireless card though I was unable to find reliable information if the BIOS has some kind of whitelist that would prevent me from doing that.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      Lenovo definitely has blocklists for its laptop upgrades (otherwise I’d have repurposed the empty WWAN slot on my X1 Nano for a second SSD), but I’ve not heard of Dell doing the same. At the very least my old 2008 Dell laptop has no hint of anything like that.
Koshkin 3y ago
> Otherwise a fine device. > It's a nice laptop otherwise. These have always reminded me of: Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise, Tout va très bien, tout va très bien, Pourtant, il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise, On déplore un tout petit rien: Un incident, une bêtise, La mort de votre jument grise, Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise, Tout va très bien, tout va très bien!
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Everything is going very well, Madam Marquise, Everything is going very well, everything is going very well, However, it must be said, We regret a tiny little thing: An incident, a foolishness, The death of your gray mare, But, apart from that, Madam Marquise, Everything is going very well, everything is going very well!
  - accoil 3y ago
    See also: https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Tout_va_tr%C3%A8s_bien_madame_la_marquise_(chanson)?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Tout_va_tr%C3... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn28uEI4_4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn28uEI4_4c
uneekname 3y ago
I got a recent Precision at work, and it's OK re: Linux support. Even with an up-to-date Fedora install, the fingerprint reader and official Dell peripherals have given me some trouble. The support is good but not worth touting IMO. But, it's better than it was! I had a highish-end XPS 13 from '18 that refused to ever sleep with the lid shut, despite my best efforts. If Dell wants to get serious about this stuff, they need to test and fix all of these issues before they release a laptop.
NorwegianDude 3y ago
Been using XPS 13s since it was called XPS m1330. Linux has been fine on all of them, but the latest XPS 13 Plus with 13th gen i7 and FHD screen has terrible battery life. Only getting ~4,5 hours battery life coding in Intellij or browsing with under 50 % screen brightness... I have XPS 13s that are nearly 10 years old with 2x the battery life...
GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago
I have an XPS 13 running the Dell-installed version of Ubuntu. There was jankiness with my Dell docking station (I still had to mess around with DisplayLink drivers by hand) and early screen-sharing problems (which I blame on Wayland, but have been resolved.) Otherwise, it's been pretty rock-solid for me. Camera, network, sound, etc. all work as expected now. Is it for everyone? No. Even with explicit support by Dell on their hardware, it is not seamless, as my two anecdotes above illustrate. The time you waste on tinkering isn't going to make up for the extra money you pay to Apple or Microsoft. But I just couldn't take any more telemetry and ads, and I think it is only going to get worse from here on out.
dotBen 3y ago
For $1500 I can buy a well spec'd MacBook and own a laptop with a first class citizen, commercially supported, *nix OS installed. Unless I was truly a FOSS zealot I don't get why I would select Dell over Apple here.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  It might be UNIXLike, but what about Snap/PipeWire/NetworkManager/DBus/SystemD/Wayland/etc? The features I actually interact with the most are going to be very different even if the lower level stuff is the same.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Writing this from a Dell XPS 9343 from 2015 running Fedora. It still works, still does what I need it to do. Only real downside is that the battery life is about 4 hours, but I've basically had it in permanently docked desktop replacement mode for 11/12 months of the year, so, not really an issue. Honestly, my biggest concern is that I only reboot it about once a month to do updates, so, I do worry that, like an old server that has been kept on for 10+ years, it will be one of those reboots that finally kills it.

120 points by CrankyBear 3y ago

I bought an XPS13 in 2012 or so with Ubuntu preinstalled and it was rock solid for years (although I ran Fedora on it). I remember buying it was really difficult, it wasn't listed on the UK website and in the end I had to phone their sales number and was passed through several people who'd never heard of Ubuntu. A few days later I received an email with a link to an unlisted store item that had the same photos as the equivalent Windows model, but it was about £30 cheaper. Snook is an apt word for my experience, hope it's improved.

Freak_NL 3y ago
Dell is definitely weird about this; I had the same experience. Perfectly satisfied with my laptop (an XPS 13 with Ubuntu on it bought a few years ago), but Dell's online store is just bonkers.
- mcbutterbunz 3y ago
  I Googled XPS 13 and go to configure it but can’t find an option to choose Ubuntu, only downgrade to Windows 11 Home. It is weird.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
    I see nothing weird here, Microsoft has been punishing OEM manufacturers for bundling Linux (or, more precisely, for not bundling a MS system on the computers they are selling) since at least 1983.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows
  - frei 3y ago
    I had to search "developer edition" https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexcucto9320rpl01 https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-dev...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pja 3y ago
    IIRC with the current XPS range only the "pro" variants offer you the choice of a Linux install.
  - mattl 3y ago
    Used to be dell.com/linux
jchw 3y ago
I suspect this happened because when DELL first launched laptops with Linux, it gave them some surprising bad press. Certainly the most famous being the woman who apparently was dropping out of college as a result of accidentally ordering a Ubuntu DELL laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI This probably seems like a weird one-off, but this story went pretty viral, of course it went viral on the internet for other reasons, but I'm sure the blame being placed squarely on DELL probably did lead to them being a bit spooked about consumer confusion. The fact that nobody at DELL or elsewhere could just tell her that she can in fact, pretty easily install Windows on the machine is... well, a little frustrating to say the least. The college's IT department was aware enough of Linux to be able to say they can handle it, but not enough to say "Y'know, just for what it's worth... You can just buy and install Windows."
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  I have no evidence for this but you can imagine someone at Microsoft saying "Dell has started selling laptops without Windows! We need to run an 'information campaign' to tell people why they should not use Ubuntu! Let's cough 'find' a college student who lost everything because of this operating system and then feed it to a local news channel." I can't say if this happened, but the whole story sounds like a dark PR campaign to spread fear about Dell's choice and try to take some steam out of their rollout. Microsoft obviously had a lot of money on the line if Dell found success with Ubuntu.
  - ndiddy 3y ago
    Microsoft did an anti-Linux retail PR campaign around the Windows 7 launch, as netbooks with vendor-specific Linux distributions were starting to gain traction. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/microsoft-teaches-best-buy-employees-how-to-troll-linux-users/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/micro...
- bloqs 3y ago
  This absolutely REEKS of earlier-time corpo PR skullduggery.
cryptoz 3y ago
I also bought an XPS13 around 2012, and paid for the Ubuntu version. The receipt even said Ubuntu on it. But they shipped me the Windows one! Returned and refunded based on their phone support, they said installing Linux on it would void the warranty. Never tried again, too much hassle.

csdvrx 3y ago

In theory, laptops from Dell should work with Linux. In practice, not so much, especially if you like to sleep and wake up from sleep everytime without a crash + a reasonable power consumption, both during use and during sleep. IMHO consumption during sleep far more important: if I didn't plug the computer, I expect it to wake up immediately (no S4/suspend to disk) and with less than 0.5% of battery lost per hour (so for 10h of sleep and 80% battery before sleep, at least 75% battery left), if I put it in a bag, I expect it to stay asleep and not be a fire hazard: dells run hot when closed and in a bag, to the point of battery exhaustion or thermal shutdown) I prefer Lenovo for everything, especially the keyboard but also ECC ram, OLED displays ... things almost impossible to find anywhere else! I've been moving to a eink tablet but I purchased a Lenovo wireless keyboard: every key being in the exact same position on all my hardware has sizeable benefits in comfort. Also, I want PageUp and PageDown around the Up key, something impossible to find outside of Lenovo.

gtaylor 3y ago
Had great results with my Dell XPS 17. Everything but the fingerprint reader works out of the box.
theodric 3y ago
>eink tablet That's my fetish! Which one did you go for?
- csdvrx 3y ago
  Bigme (10 inch color eink) but the Boox are also great if you like color eink. It's a matter of preferences: I got both, kept the Bigme and gifted the Boox. I was asked about my setup a few days ago. I'm preparing a tutorial to help with rooting, removing unwanted apps etc.
Astronaut3315 3y ago
My work machine, a Precision 5550 (XPS 15) has never been able to reliably wake from sleep. Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Windows 11- it doesn’t matter.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago

> The Dell XPS 13 is the best-known developer-focused, high-end Linux laptop. Not a good ol' ThinkPad T-series?

simonebrunozzi 3y ago
I guess not anymore. I'd say that until a bunch of years ago, you'd be right. Nowadays, I don't see Thinkpads often anymore. My 0.02.
- kwanbix 3y ago
  I see them everywhere. On the last 4 companies I worked straight, they were either the only option, or an option between ThinkPad or Mac.
- wrd83 3y ago
  Unfortunately. Even a T490 beats an XPS13 easily. I own both and I'm happy I switched back to ThinkPads.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    The T490 is the worst ThinkPad generation to buy right now. The generation they took out the removable battery, soldered half the RAM and generally made some other anti-improvements. So you get the oldest hardware without any of the pre-redesign benefits. I guess the T495 is worse. Those first gen Zen chips are just terrible.
    - roblh 3y ago
      Really liking my refurb t480 with Ubuntu, however the most annoying thing is that it’s seemingly impossible to get the 2 finger swipe back trackpad gesture working. Otherwise it’s been great.
      - kuschku 3y ago
        Switch the trackpad with that of the X1C, and it'll work flawlessly. I did the same on my T470.

acover 3y ago

Why does it cost more if I select Ubuntu versus windows? Edit: It looks like just a Canadian thing. 1899 for windows home and 1984 for Ubuntu. https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/caexchbts9320ghhw https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-...

kleiba 3y ago
For me, it's the opposite: Windows is preselected, but when I switch to Linux, the price goes down.
- queuebert 3y ago
  Same here. Linux was $100 cheaper. Which makes me wonder ... why is an OEM Windows license still ~$100? And not only that, you'd think Dell could negotiate a lower rate.
  - Old_Thrashbarg 3y ago
    Hard to negotiate when Windows has monopoly pricing power and Dell doesn't.
littleodie914 3y ago
When I configured a base model (in the US) it was $1,399 for Ubuntu, $1,499 for Win 11.
doubled112 3y ago
Tried it out, got the same results. Also in Canada. I'll assume some retail magic, Microsoft subsidy, and the life-in-Canada tax.
deathanatos 3y ago
… I do wish people could just use some round price tags like $1,400 so that I could easily price what the various features are. Nothing says "we value the customer" (/s) like a 0.08% discount and a website that won't tell me straight-forwardly what the cost of the components is.

dlahoda 3y ago

3 days ago my system76 oryx pro 4k 2023 just died dead. i had 2022 dell xps with 17 4k touch screen. i thought, okey, will plug encrypted nvme system disk. i was doubt it will boot at all, not speaking about sound, wifi and touch. but magically, after reboot, some firmwares installed. it all worked perfectly. sound, voice, touch, sleep, keyboard, camera.

molly0 3y ago

I’ve been running Ubuntu on a Dell Latitude for about two years. Works good and is cheaper.

heywire 3y ago
I’ve been rocking a Latitude 7370 for around 5 years now. Picked it up used in 2018 for $475. It has been a great machine. Works great under Fedora. 3200x1800 touch screen, 16GB ram. Swapped the m.2 SATA SSD for an NVMe drive. It’s not a super powerful machine, and the battery life could be better, but overall I really like it.
dcminter 3y ago
Same on a 7490. My favourite thing about it is that I was able to cheaply upgrade it to 64G memory! Plus it's fairly sturdy and cheap to replace if it ever does die on me. Very happy with it. I have had a couple of minor Linux specific (I assume) issues, but nothing too hard to resolve. Edit: this was one of the minor issues: https://paperstack.com/fixing_the_freeze/ https://paperstack.com/fixing_the_freeze/

pjmlp 3y ago

Well, I am still waiting for the day one can finally buy them on the German shop. At least there are some gaming laptops available now. https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/sr/laptops/ubuntu-linux?appliedRefinements=37832 https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/sr/laptops/ub...

ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y ago
First I didn't want to respond, because I didn't read the article in detail. What is the difference? https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus-laptop/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/cn93352cc https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus-laptop/s...

smallerfish 3y ago

The camera doesn't work on the current XPS13 if you upgrade to a 6.X kernel (which, to be fair, means moving outside of Dell's packaging.) Technically this is Intel's fault, as they haven't released firmware for it yet. Still, hopefully the Dell team avoid similar issues in future configs by ensuring better driver support. It's a nice laptop otherwise.

Darmody 3y ago
My cam doesn't work on my 5 year old Inspiron either. It's one of the reasons I'm not buying the Inspiron 16 plus in this moment.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  Whichever distro you use, there will be a selection of kernels to choose from. Even Arch has an elderly LTS option. Gentoo obviously offers all kernels since 0.97 (dig out egcs) including several that haven't been released and a couple that will never exist outside of a parallel reality! I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based. Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".
  - Darmody 3y ago
    I've been using different kernels since 4.x up to 6.5.4 and many distros. There are no drivers for the webcam.
jadbox 3y ago
Why did the new kernel break the drivers when every release is supposed to be (usually) non-backward's breaking?
- senkora 3y ago

ulrischa 3y ago

Microsoft also offers Linux introduction tutorials. Seems like a wind of change

mixmastamyk 3y ago

I looked at several precisions this month and they all had Ubuntu options. The /developer/ page doesn’t seem to exist any longer however.

jdlyga 3y ago

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Dell is high end hardware. The specs may be good, but it’s cheaply manufactured and frequently fails. And if you’re not a business customer, support is terrible.

GoofballJones 3y ago

Got an XPS 13" with Linux pre-installed on it like 5 years ago. I put in a bigger HD and it ran for quite a while. It started showing it's age. I didn't upgrade to another one. I mean, it wasn't bad and it did what I wanted, but I was ready for a change.

AvImd 3y ago

Not a high end device (Dell Vostro 15 3515), but it comes with preinstalled Ubuntu as well. It has some serious problems with wireless (10ec:c821). The default driver frequently loses connection on some wifi networks (it has issue with many networks though surprisingly not all of them). Sometimes reloading the driver helps, sometimes it just hangs my system. https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 seems to work a bit better though still has the same problem sometimes. It turns out that rfkill block wlan && sleep 3 && rfkill unblock wlan works better than reloading the driver. At least this way I haven't hanged my system yet. And wifi does not seem to be able to work at the same time as bluetooth. Otherwise a fine device.

bartvk 3y ago
Have you tried a USB based WiFi adapter? Last time I checked (unfortunately many years ago), these were quite small.
- AvImd 3y ago
  I am considering doing that. I also considered replacing the wireless card though I was unable to find reliable information if the BIOS has some kind of whitelist that would prevent me from doing that.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Lenovo definitely has blocklists for its laptop upgrades (otherwise I’d have repurposed the empty WWAN slot on my X1 Nano for a second SSD), but I’ve not heard of Dell doing the same. At the very least my old 2008 Dell laptop has no hint of anything like that.

Koshkin 3y ago

> Otherwise a fine device. > It's a nice laptop otherwise. These have always reminded me of: Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise, Tout va très bien, tout va très bien, Pourtant, il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise, On déplore un tout petit rien: Un incident, une bêtise, La mort de votre jument grise, Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise, Tout va très bien, tout va très bien!

CharlesW 3y ago
Everything is going very well, Madam Marquise, Everything is going very well, everything is going very well, However, it must be said, We regret a tiny little thing: An incident, a foolishness, The death of your gray mare, But, apart from that, Madam Marquise, Everything is going very well, everything is going very well!
- accoil 3y ago
  See also: https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Tout_va_tr%C3%A8s_bien_madame_la_marquise_(chanson)?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Tout_va_tr%C3... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn28uEI4_4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn28uEI4_4c

uneekname 3y ago

I got a recent Precision at work, and it's OK re: Linux support. Even with an up-to-date Fedora install, the fingerprint reader and official Dell peripherals have given me some trouble. The support is good but not worth touting IMO. But, it's better than it was! I had a highish-end XPS 13 from '18 that refused to ever sleep with the lid shut, despite my best efforts. If Dell wants to get serious about this stuff, they need to test and fix all of these issues before they release a laptop.

NorwegianDude 3y ago

Been using XPS 13s since it was called XPS m1330. Linux has been fine on all of them, but the latest XPS 13 Plus with 13th gen i7 and FHD screen has terrible battery life. Only getting ~4,5 hours battery life coding in Intellij or browsing with under 50 % screen brightness... I have XPS 13s that are nearly 10 years old with 2x the battery life...

GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago

I have an XPS 13 running the Dell-installed version of Ubuntu. There was jankiness with my Dell docking station (I still had to mess around with DisplayLink drivers by hand) and early screen-sharing problems (which I blame on Wayland, but have been resolved.) Otherwise, it's been pretty rock-solid for me. Camera, network, sound, etc. all work as expected now. Is it for everyone? No. Even with explicit support by Dell on their hardware, it is not seamless, as my two anecdotes above illustrate. The time you waste on tinkering isn't going to make up for the extra money you pay to Apple or Microsoft. But I just couldn't take any more telemetry and ads, and I think it is only going to get worse from here on out.

dotBen 3y ago

For $1500 I can buy a well spec'd MacBook and own a laptop with a first class citizen, commercially supported, *nix OS installed. Unless I was truly a FOSS zealot I don't get why I would select Dell over Apple here.

eternityforest 3y ago
It might be UNIXLike, but what about Snap/PipeWire/NetworkManager/DBus/SystemD/Wayland/etc? The features I actually interact with the most are going to be very different even if the lower level stuff is the same.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Writing this from a Dell XPS 9343 from 2015 running Fedora. It still works, still does what I need it to do. Only real downside is that the battery life is about 4 hours, but I've basically had it in permanently docked desktop replacement mode for 11/12 months of the year, so, not really an issue. Honestly, my biggest concern is that I only reboot it about once a month to do updates, so, I do worry that, like an old server that has been kept on for 10+ years, it will be one of those reboots that finally kills it.