8 ms·
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition
- brettbl 12y agosoooo, they give you Ubunutu instead and call it the "developer" edition?
- brettbl 12y agothey used to just give you ubuntu as an option in the business class computers to save a couple bucks
- dang 12y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097
- Splendor 12y agoThis looks like the perfect laptop for me at this moment. I just worry that a ceiling of 8GB of RAM means it won't be the perfect laptop for me next year. And I'd like my laptop to last me 2-3 years.
- SuperKlaus 12y agoSecond that, 8GB of RAM is a bit meager.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoMy current laptop has 8GB of ram, and I have to agree. It's not at the point where it's constantly an issue, but it does become an issue relatively commonly. Especially if I have, say, Eclipse and Pale Moon (FireFox fork) open at the same time.
- skroth 12y agoI think it is mainly supposed to compete with Macbook Air, which is only configurable to 8GB. If you need more you should consider something more like a mobile workstation like a MBP or the Dell M3800.
- djhworld 12y agoGoogle Chrome takes up at least 2.5GB on my Mac, 8GB is a complete joke
- ulfw 12y agoTime to get rid of Chrome then.
- dijit 12y agothe alternative is firefox, and that's just as bad. the issue isn't necessarily chrome, chromes only crime is correctly jailing tabs. the issue is in certain sites adding an absolute metric tonne of javascript and javascript libraries. my previous workplace had over 10MB of javascript on the home page alone, new devs reduced it to 1.5MB or so, but that's _still insane_. and a 1.5MB download isn't 1.5MB in memory, it's much more. we need to tone down the "richness' of our sites.. your users aren't _only_ using _your_ site!
- Alupis 12y agoI think it's safe to say, any browser with 50-80+ tabs open will gobble up ram. Especially if it does tab-process isolation (each tab having it's own memory space, etc...)
- zerd 12y agoMore like time to close some tabs. But I really like having my tabs open!
- tluyben2 12y agoI moved to Safari because of that. I like Chrome better functionality wise but Safari seems to be better optimised at least for Mac OS X.
- Someone1234 12y agoI've read that Safari on OS X (and IE on Windows 8) use less battery than third party browsers these days. So that's a good reason also.
- avinassh 12y agoEven I felt same and 8GB RAM did not bother me much. But then I read a comment[0] yesterday's thread and it changed my plans. I did bit of Googling and looks like people still facing issues. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332619
- cdnsteve 12y agoIt runs Ubuntu and costs about the same of a ChromeBook Pixel here a few weeks back. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185526). Seems to be limited to 8 gigs ram, Pixel gives you 16 but has less HD space. No USB Type-C either... How does the keyboard compare to a MBP? Love that keyboard. Do they also include free Ubuntu stickers to cover up the Windows logo on the keyboard? :) Would love to hear from real devs using this.
- sandGorgon 12y agoget them from here - http://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux-keyboard-stickers http://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux-keyboard-stickers
- cdnsteve 12y agowow these exist, amazing!
- sandGorgon 12y agoyou should join us over at the Thinkpad gang... you know, with coreboot and laptops that can actually go to the moon ;)
- cookrn 12y agoThis was posted yesterday as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097
- untog 12y agoMy Macbook Pro isn't even a year old yet, so I won't be replacing it any time soon. But hardware like this is finally competitive with Apple - I'd be taking a close look if I was in the market. The fact that OS X has gotten worse and worse with every version makes me switching next time even more likely.
- GrinningFool 12y ago8GB max RAM kind of rules it out for any heavy duty development.
- cdnsteve 12y agoI'd be concerned when trying to run a VM or two. Since it's Ubuntu, it should have native Docker support so resource usage may not be all that bad?
- Alupis 12y agoDocker (and containers) are not a replacement for a VM. Sometimes you really do need a completely different OS running isolated... like emulating a cluster of independent servers, etc.
- flurdy 12y ago:( 8GB rules out me.Fitting inside that with constant swap file writes will kill the SSD quickly. 16GB is fine for now but it wont be long beofer I need to look for 32GB. Multiple VMs, Docker clusters with several memory heavy JVM apps (Scala), too many browser tabs, etc. just don't play nice with 8GB anymore. A nearly $2K laptop aimed at developers with 8GB is a bit of a joke to be honest. Shame, as otherwise it seems like such a nice piece of kit.
- draven 12y agoHonest question: why run all that stuff locally? It looks like you're looking for a portable server. I'm working on a Macbook Pro w/ 16Gb of ram but I'm not doing anything I couldn't do on a machine with 8 or even 4 Gb of ram (replacing Intellij w/ Emacs, as I'm planning to do anyway.)
- flurdy 12y agoTrue, a personal development server(s) may offload my needs but remote servers don't work well when offline a lot, or intermittently offline on my long commute by train. Not having the full stack locally is usually very frustrating. Whilst I also use clients and my own aws or gke servers etc, but that is more for staging integration testing not during development. Oh yes I forgot the memory hog of IntelliJ, especially with Scalaz, and if multiple projects/windows openend at once... Currently using 9GB on my mbp, used mostly by chrome, intellij and sqlserver in a vm and without any sbt, tomcat or docker containers running. Sure this memory hog is down to my chosen tech stack and tools, and how I choose to use them. But I already use multiple vagrant dev boxes and will spin up more and more docker containers for minute tasks so I can't see my memory needs go down.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- spot 12y agodoes ubuntu really handle HiDPI? i have a 4K screen at home and it is a disaster.
- dman 12y ago1. Chrome is the most visible app that breaks. 2. Sublime Text works okay if youre running Gnome since it uses the gtk text scaling factor. But if you use something like dwm it will not work correctly. 3. Gtk apps as such work well. 4. XFCE is the window manager that works best because it has a simple no nonsense knob to set the dpi exposed via the control panel. 5. Oddly enough dwm works fantastically well since I can control all the font sizes manually via things like .emacs / .Xresources
- nickysielicki 12y agoDepends on what desktop environment / window manager you use. `echo "Xft.dpi: XXX" >> ~/.Xdefaults` typically takes care of everything.
- PopsiclePete 12y agoUbuntu itself may handle it, but lots of applications look terrible. Chrome is one of them, last time I checked. Firefox had certain scaling issues as well. Sadly, Apple is still the only game in town when it comes to automatic and correct resolution scaling.
- spot 12y agowell the kernel has no trouble :) i would consider the file explorer nautilus to be part of ubuntu and it's broken too.
- techaddict009 12y agoHow much is the battery backup of it?
- therebase 12y agoA dell notebook? Never again.
- josteink 12y agoTo ask those complaining about 8gb not being enough... Please name one thing that won't allow you to do which is crucial in your day to day workflow. I'm not saying i don't believe you, I'm just genuinely curious. Edit: Looking at this thread, I have to say there has to be a cause and effect here somewhere. You have a million web-developers saying they need more than 8GB to use Chrome to surf web-pages and web-apps. I'm pretty sure web-apps sucking that amount of resources was caused by giving web-devs machines with 8GBs+ of RAM to begin with. Giving them more, wont fix the problem. It will only make it worse. As for a developer-anecdote: Almost all bugs post-shipping bugs I've experienced and had to fix, more than 50% has only been reproducable on low-resource constrained environments. By super-specing your dev-environment, you are shipping bugs you cannot detect. You just don't know it.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoMy laptop has 8GB of ram, and I hit the wall fairly frequently. In particular, I tend to run a tab-heavy browsing style. Between that and Eclipse and whatever I'm puttering around on in Eclipse, it adds up. And it's not a 8GB limit, unfortunately. In practice it's substantially less. If I go above about 5GB in use, I start dropping file cache, and things slow down substantially. (It doesn't help that I'm not running an SSD currently.) Is any of this crucial? No. I could work around it, and did so frequently on my previous machine. But, if nothing else, the time adds up. And RAM usage isn't exactly going down over time. And that's not even getting into when I boot up a VM.
- konceptz 12y agoI often run static analysis tools against large code bases. As a consultant I need to be able to travel and won't always have access, or be able to send code across the internet. I think my case is common for technical consultants doing deep code inspection.
- maccard 12y agoFrom yesterday: I compile a large C++ code base in work, and a full rebuild takes about 15 minutes on my 40 core, 32GB ram desktop, and uses almost 20GB of RAM while doing so.
- dijit 12y agothe lack of a native ethernet port rules it out for any operations work that requires working on the datacenter floor. actually this is a frustrating trend, native ethernet adapters are 0 cost to CPU instructions, I know you can use thunderbolt (and I've not looked at the spec in detail) but USB ethernet controllers use the CPU when plugged in- and I'm not a large fan of that honestly. what happened to the very small, fold out ethernet ports? like the one on the old XPS 15 (or: http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201304/sam540U3C_edge2.jpg http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201304/sam540U3C_edge2....) Maybe I'm too much of a power user for a 13" but for me this feels like a step back from netbooks from a functionality and mobility standpoint, and not far enough a leap forward for performance to justify stepping "up" from a Thinkpad X201. (which I have loaded with an SSD and 8G ram) but, I agree that my use-case is significantly different from most peoples. I'm still left recalling a time where manufacturers were reluctant to stop shipping with 56k modems- but seem to have dropped Rj45 pretty quick.
- mattbeckman 12y agoUnless you need to use a crossover cable, why not just add a wireless hub to your DC LAN? We have one at our DC, but it's only ~3 cabs worth of equipment, so YMMV.
- dijit 12y agoPCI requirement (and good security in general): never run any radio equipment inside your datacenter.
- skwirl 12y ago>USB ethernet controllers use the CPU when plugged in- and I'm not a large fan of that honestly. I thought the issue was that these laptops are thinner than an Ethernet port.
- meritt 12y agoI'm continually shocked at the lack of options when it comes to having 16GB of memory in a <15" laptop. As far as I know, the only options are: MBP Chromebook Pixel System76 Galago Anything else that even exists?
- shillx 12y agoSager NP7339 13" and Sager NP2740 14" can both be configured with 16GB. I believe Sager is a Clevo reseller like System76.
- more_original 12y agoThere's also the T450.
- timtadh 12y agoI know some are disappointed by the lack of ram in the XPS 13. If you need a beefer laptop there is another Dell "Project Sputnik" (aka Ubuntu) laptop the Precision M3800. http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop?c=us&l=en&s=biz http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt... It is more comparable to a Mac Book Pro and can be configured with 16 GB of memory as well as the hi res display.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- endlessvoid94 12y agoDevil's advocate time! What's to keep Dell from heavily customizing and releasing / packaging a version of Ubuntu in the same vein that apple customized, released, packaged nextstep as OS X? The only thing I can think of would be "talent at the company". And I know next to nothing about the internals of dell, let alone what they've done since being repurchased and privatized. Kind of a fun thought, even if it's a little far fetched.
- danwakefield 12y agoHP have an mostly internal linux distro hLinux[1]. Right now it is just used as an OpenStack base but it could be expanded. [1]: http://blog.mikebrito.com/?p=114 http://blog.mikebrito.com/?p=114
- SwellJoe 12y agoDell is historically monumentally incompetent at software. Michael Dell's own book discusses the epic failure of a large software project they embarked on many years ago now. That's not to say Dell has to remain incompetent at software...with a will to do so, and enough money and competent management (which Dell does seem to have), they could theoretically build a top-notch software engineering organization.
- endlessvoid94 12y agoAre you referring to "Direct from Dell"? (I haven't read, but want to add whatever book you're talking about to my reading list).
- SwellJoe 12y agoYeah, that's the one. It's been at least a decade since I read it. I didn't find it all that good, honestly. I wouldn't push it to the top of your reading list, anyway. It might be more of a "skim it" title.
- skynetv2 12y agoLong ago, Dell initially had plans to develop their own version of Linux, hired a bunch of Linux developers. Most of them are still there and things like DKMS came out from that team. But Dell will never ever have their own customized OS and definitely not like OS X. Dell focuses heavily on Profit & Loss for each team and that drives the investment. Their focus is to keep OpEx as low as possible. Unless the company culture changes heavily, which I dont see happening, esp. with Michael back at the helm, things wont change. They make good cheap hardware and thats about it. Everything else, including some hardware, they push work upstream to vendors.
- userbinator 12y agoIt seems almost every manufacturer is trying to make their laptops look like Macbooks, but what I'd really like to see is some Thinkpad clones.
- kbenson 12y agoI think what you are seeing is the Ultrabook[1] spec in action. Intel specifically spurred other manufacturers to compete in this segment. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook
- tluyben2 12y agoThe old thinkpads that is... Was looking at an X250 as i'm tired of the macbook battery life however that's now 8gb max (unless you fork over $350 for 16gb and put it in yourself), it's also an ultrabook. Still good battery life but... I rather have a bit thicker (but not wider) but better keyboard, more battery, more memory...
- skizm 12y agoI just want the older style Lenovo keyboards back. I'm sad they switched to island style keys.
- MichaelGG 12y agoMy daughters have X201s and while helping them out the other night I remembered what a great design ThinkPads used to have. Even on a 12" body, they had a full, no-compromises keyboard. Today it's like they're just experimenting at random. Printscreen between Ctrl and Alt? Sure! Fn key required to get Ins or End? Why not? Lenovo must be struggling. They even flipped the logo the wrong way, to mimic Apple. And my favorite offense: they removed Fn+Arrows as media control. Didn't replace it or have any justification. Just removed it to spite users. Or because they somehow forgot. Sigh.
- Kurtz79 12y agoHow exactly this resemble a Macbook in any way ? It is not unibody, it is not aluminum, the screen is basically without bezel. This is the first non-Apple ultrabook that is genuinely interesting to me, design wise.
- l-vincent-l 12y agoThe main problem for me is that you won't be able to use a docking station with this laptop since the DL-3000 Series Chips aren't supported...
- jraedisch 12y agoHaving a lot of ram is nice, but every time I read that people need at least 8gb for development, I ask myself what it is that they are running. I am running chrome, sublime, docker, hbase, redis, memcached, mongodb and probably some more stuff and I hardly swap with 4gb, or maybe I just do not realize it because of my ssd. Am I missing some ultra useful, memory annihilating dev tool?
- kbenson 12y agoI think the usual response is virtual hosts. On Mac, run windows or linux, on Windows, run linux, etc.
- simonebrunozzi 12y agoWhat do you use for that? What would be the best solution in 2015?
- davidw 12y agoI'm guessing massive Java projects. More memory is always good, but I'm pretty good with 8 for the Erlang and Ruby on Rails hacking that I do.
- stevebot 12y agoyes, its usually IDE's emulator's for me. Put xCode and Android Studio on there and run an emulator. Also, I've had a similar experience running Visual Studio + SQL Server.
- zatkin 12y agoThat iPhone Simulator is an insane memory hogger.
- yulaow 12y agoVirtual machines and especially smartphone/tablet emulators can really be voracious about ram. Also some ides with big projects/solutions
- 12y ago
- daddykotex 12y agoThat is the kinds of machine I was looking for when I bought my MBP. I was asking for a few things : 16GB of RAM An SSD drive An FHD display Unfortunately, most of the products available with these features were either similarly priced as the MBP but with clumsy trackpads reputation.
- MichaelGG 12y agoWhy oh why does it have a buttonless clickpad? I've got a ThinkPad T440p and it's terrible. I despise every minute of working on it and have to bring a mouse around. Is this just copying Apple for looks? I'm dying to buy a laptop that's as good as my X201 (and keeps 12" format, though thickness doesn't matter much), but with modern specs. I'm probably gonna break down and get an X250, which is limited to 8GB of RAM for no good reason, but I've heard newer processors can handle IM's 16GB SODIMM, so that particular problem might be solved. The X250 is the first gen ThinkPad after Lenovo partially realized they had destroyed the ThinkPad line and started, albeit slightly, listening to customers again. Any other suggestions? I've tried using a macbook, and the screen is great, but the keyboard, clickpad, and hot metal are very uncomfortable. I'd spend hundreds on a conversion kit to drop new guts into an X201. (And to mod it with mechanical switches... I'd spend a lot.) It seems you can't spend as much on a ThinkPad these days. My X201 was over $2000 without WWAN, but the X250 tops out around $1600.
- avtar 12y agoI bought a used X230, upgraded to 16GB of RAM, added an SSD, and it's been an awesome machine so far. But you're right, the X250 will offer a better display. At least Lenovo seems to have eased up on the hardware blacklist where this model and the T450 are concerned http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/31rnsv/t450_and_x250_no_longer_have_whitelists/ http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/31rnsv/t450_and_x2... Also, here's a link related to the 16GB SO-DIMM modules that you mentioned https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB-SO-DIMMs-work-in-X250/m-p/2035646 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB-...
- FelixP 12y agoI have the same setup, as well as a 15" retina MBP. Each one is optimized for different use cases, but it's amusing that a machine that ran me ~$400 is better for a lot of things than my $2500+ top of the line Apple. Biggest drawback of the X230 is the AWFUL trackpad and the low res screen. Highly recommend getting the extended battery.
- ntw1103 12y ago
- TYPE_FASTER 12y agoI've been using the previous gen XPS 13 and my 2009 MacBook Pro for the past eight months. My experience with the XPS 13, and Dell in general, has been disappointing. If I had to make the decision again, I'd definitely get the M3800 instead of the XPS 13. 1. Google about trackpad configuration (palm detection, etc.) on the XPS 13 Dev Edition, it seems to be a combination of the hardware and Linux driver support. Maybe it's fixed in this new rev, I'm not sure. 2. There are known issues with audio popping and crackling when you plug the XPS 13 Dev Edition into speakers. 3. When you're sitting in a quiet environment, like a home office at night, you can hear electrical noise coming from the laptop. It's a known issue, maybe it's resolved in this new generation. 4. One of our XPS 13s was DOA. It happens. It took eight weeks to get a replacement, starting from the first time I contacted support. Once I was connected to somebody in USA on-shore support, they were very helpful, and told me much of that turnaround time is based on their suppliers.
- andrewchoi 12y ago+1 for the M3800; running one with Ubuntu 14.04 for work right now and have no complaints.
- MichaelGG 12y agoIs the electrical noise a high pitched whine? Coil whine? Every Intel laptop I've used has it. It's supposedly due to power saving going on and off. At least on my ThinkPad, disabling power saving (ie running the CPU at full power all the time) made it go away. I think I may have developed tinnitus from it. It's unbelievably unprofessional. 'Course, disabling CPU power saving modes kill battery, but my T440p never got much life to begin with (I get maybe 70 minutes max now, down from around 2 hours. But I'm running VMware for everything, so perhaps that hurts.)
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoMy laptop (a Toshiba Satellite) has an annoying level of coil whine. If it's from power saving, it's GPU power-saving state related, not CPU. It's not noticeably affected by turning off CPU power saving modes, at the very least. It's most noticeable when scrolling image-heavy webpages, or with pretty much anything that ends up with framerates in audio frequencies. Older versions of Dwarf Fortress on the menu screen, for instance.
- _halgari 12y agoSadly I can't get too interested in a machine like this. What I want in a work machine is the following: 1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated crap) Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can anyone point me to a non-Apple machine that does these things? EDIT: Thanks for the pointers! I'll look into the Dell and Lenovo machines mentioned here. It's been a year or so since I've looked for machines comparable to my older MBP, so it's cool to see some new options.
- skynetv2 12y agoI am in the same boat. I am trying to replace a 2010 MBP 15" with nvidia card, 8 GB ram. for me, it needs to last 5+ years (sorry, company policy). Anything with comparable specs (15", core i7 quad core, 8-16 gb ram, 1920X1080+ screen, decent battery life, 3yr support and <=5 lbs) comes to same price as a 15" mbp. and this mbp and others in my company lasted 5+ years without any issues. Well, i had to get my logic board replaced due to some known issue, which was covered. battery life is awesome, dont care for keyboard but its ok, hate OS X. Also, I want to move 100% to Linux but not at the cost of a good hardware. Yes, I can install ubuntu on mbp but whats the point then in paying apple tax and not everything works flawlessly in ubuntu on mac hardware, already tried it. They just seem to make the best hardware at the moment. m3800 is very close to these requirements but ends up costing same as 15" mbp and battery life is not as good. w540 is heavy t series dont have discrete graphics
- shillx 12y agoAsus NX500