4 ms·

Most people don't know this, but Dell actually has an amazing line of computers that come with Ubuntu on them already. Best part - there's a team of people who

Most people don't know this, but Dell actually has an amazing line of computers that come with Ubuntu on them already. Best part - there's a team of people who make sure there's 100% driver support for everything on the computer. Check it out: https://sputnik.github.io/ https://sputnik.github.io/

marktangotango 11y ago
I bought a dell 1525n in 08a with ubuntu preinstalled. Used it exclusively for several years. Tiday it has an ssd, 2 gb of ram xubuntu 1404, and boots tk login in 10 secs.
otar 11y ago
I'm very happy that I bought Dell XPS 13 (aka Sputnik 3) instead of MacBook Air. There were some problems regarding driver support thought... but in the latest Ubuntu 15.04 most of them, maybe even all of them, are gone. I've been using it for almost 1.5 years and can't recommend it higher.
- aroman 11y ago
  How's the battery life? Durability? Does the computer sleep/wake up when opening/closing the lid (as expected)?
  - otar 11y ago
    Note: I have a late 2013 edition, Sputnik 3, there's a newer - 2015 edition which has a much better battery life from what I've read. On average lasts ~7 hours, less if you're watching a video. Yes, sleep/wake up is working as expected. I myself was very impressed when I got the laptop, I didn't expect such beautiful and fine tuned laptop from Dell.
    - kogepathic 11y ago
      I have a Dell E6320 (Core i3-2310M) from 2011 that I'm running Arch on with a 6 cell battery. The laptop can easily go for 6 hours with WiFi on if you're just editing code or managing some servers via SSH. Upgraded to 16GB of RAM and an SSD. The only thing I wish was that the screen was higher resolution than 1366x768, but otherwise it's absolutely fantastic for Linux. The dock works so seamlessly it's amazing.
  - Adaptive 11y ago
    On my 2015 XPS 13 I my power will idle (with wifi/bt on and 50% screen brightness) down to under 5W. You can be more agressive with power savings (I run TLP, but in a pretty middle of the road configuration) and get better use out of it. 10 hours is reasonable use for general work, less if you're compiling while watching netflix of course :)
    - giovannibajo1 11y ago
      You really get 10hrs with normal/light usage? A friend of mine got one and doesn't get more than 7 hours with a reasonable light workflow.
      - lion0 11y ago
        I think the difference in time is probably due to FHD vs. touch screen
- mct 11y ago
  It looks like the new XPS models have a single trackpad soft-button area (as all new laptops seem to). Have you been able to middle click to paste in X with this configuration? Thanks!
na85 11y ago
Libre drivers or blobs?
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I see some Apache licenses on Github, but that seems to be tools built on top of the actual libs, and any blobs probably aren't on Github to begin with.
chisleu 11y ago
No, there totally isn't. I'm returning an Ubuntu certified Dell m3800. The hardware specs on the thing are amazing, but Ubuntu has no centralized method of controlling the UI, much like in Windows, it's up to the developer. All the crashing aside, when I scroll from the left to the right side of my screen, I get 3 different cursor colors and sizes. Some apps are unusable on the 4k screen because of font DPI scaling. The crashes are insane. When I turn it on, sometimes there is screen corruption before it even boots. Sometimes it works fine until it gets to the grub screen, but then it corrupts. Sometimes it never boots up and gets stuck on the ubuntu loading screen. Sometimes it never shuts down and gets stuck there too. Sometimes the thunderbolt monitor works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the touchpad works and sometimes it refuses to pick up multitouch unless I'm pressing firmly with the flat side of both fingers hard enough to almost click the button. Sometimes it registers button clicks when I'm hovering my palm or finger over the touchpad. It has been a nightmare. I was trying to move away from Mac OS X because I'm so tired of their lack of uniformity to keyboard commands. Each application decides if ctrl+arrow is going to be line home, page home, or previous word... I'm a system architect and that stuff is important to me. However it just isn't worth the struggle and I'm going to return this laptop tomorrow and order a Macbook Pro. I need 4 cores and 16GB of RAM. My Macbook air's 2 cores isn't enough for me to run the number of virtual machines I need to be able to use together.
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  I refuse to believe that what you described was a default experience. I've used the same model my self and never seen the issues you described. I've looked for reviews and all the ones I find only mention poor high DPI scaling, which has gotten better. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subnet/review-dells-ubuntu-powered-m3800-mobile-workstation-is-a-desktop-destroyer.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subne... If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website. The parent comment mentioned a Thunderbolt monitor. That's a more likely explanation for glitching issues. Linux users generally don't install random software from random websites.
lol768 11y ago
I ended up buying the XPS 13 developer edition (with the i7 CPU) and promptly returning it after the touchpad drivers didn't work correctly, causing glitching of the cursor and the X server seemingly frequently crashing (I'd get kicked back to the login screen in the middle of a session). Additionally I had issues with the keyboard repeating characters multiple times. This was whilst running the latest version of the BIOS (A03), using the OS which shipped with the laptop with minimal changes (some users have stated that 15.04 fixes the touchpad issue - then why does the laptop ship with 14.04?) and after trying to apply kernel parameter workarounds to no avail. I also tried adjusting the keyboard settings with no luck. Dell stated that the touchpad issues wouldn't impact any laptop built in 2015 and also stated that the keyboard debounce issue had been fixed. I experienced the issues above a few weeks back and got my money back yesterday after requesting a return (on a side-note, customer service was pretty good for returns). I did experience some issues with the high-DPI scaling, but I was able to work around most of these and I don't think this was an issue with the laptop itself anyway/ I was really disappointed given the positive reviews I'd read and the previous good experiences I've had with Dell, but it was as if the unit hadn't been tested and I wasn't happy given the amount I'd had to pay.

marktangotango 11y ago

I bought a dell 1525n in 08a with ubuntu preinstalled. Used it exclusively for several years. Tiday it has an ssd, 2 gb of ram xubuntu 1404, and boots tk login in 10 secs.

otar 11y ago

I'm very happy that I bought Dell XPS 13 (aka Sputnik 3) instead of MacBook Air. There were some problems regarding driver support thought... but in the latest Ubuntu 15.04 most of them, maybe even all of them, are gone. I've been using it for almost 1.5 years and can't recommend it higher.

aroman 11y ago
How's the battery life? Durability? Does the computer sleep/wake up when opening/closing the lid (as expected)?
- otar 11y ago
  Note: I have a late 2013 edition, Sputnik 3, there's a newer - 2015 edition which has a much better battery life from what I've read. On average lasts ~7 hours, less if you're watching a video. Yes, sleep/wake up is working as expected. I myself was very impressed when I got the laptop, I didn't expect such beautiful and fine tuned laptop from Dell.
  - kogepathic 11y ago
    I have a Dell E6320 (Core i3-2310M) from 2011 that I'm running Arch on with a 6 cell battery. The laptop can easily go for 6 hours with WiFi on if you're just editing code or managing some servers via SSH. Upgraded to 16GB of RAM and an SSD. The only thing I wish was that the screen was higher resolution than 1366x768, but otherwise it's absolutely fantastic for Linux. The dock works so seamlessly it's amazing.
- Adaptive 11y ago
  On my 2015 XPS 13 I my power will idle (with wifi/bt on and 50% screen brightness) down to under 5W. You can be more agressive with power savings (I run TLP, but in a pretty middle of the road configuration) and get better use out of it. 10 hours is reasonable use for general work, less if you're compiling while watching netflix of course :)
  - giovannibajo1 11y ago
    You really get 10hrs with normal/light usage? A friend of mine got one and doesn't get more than 7 hours with a reasonable light workflow.
    - lion0 11y ago
      I think the difference in time is probably due to FHD vs. touch screen
mct 11y ago
It looks like the new XPS models have a single trackpad soft-button area (as all new laptops seem to). Have you been able to middle click to paste in X with this configuration? Thanks!

na85 11y ago

Libre drivers or blobs?

jessaustin 11y ago
I see some Apache licenses on Github, but that seems to be tools built on top of the actual libs, and any blobs probably aren't on Github to begin with.

chisleu 11y ago

No, there totally isn't. I'm returning an Ubuntu certified Dell m3800. The hardware specs on the thing are amazing, but Ubuntu has no centralized method of controlling the UI, much like in Windows, it's up to the developer. All the crashing aside, when I scroll from the left to the right side of my screen, I get 3 different cursor colors and sizes. Some apps are unusable on the 4k screen because of font DPI scaling. The crashes are insane. When I turn it on, sometimes there is screen corruption before it even boots. Sometimes it works fine until it gets to the grub screen, but then it corrupts. Sometimes it never boots up and gets stuck on the ubuntu loading screen. Sometimes it never shuts down and gets stuck there too. Sometimes the thunderbolt monitor works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the touchpad works and sometimes it refuses to pick up multitouch unless I'm pressing firmly with the flat side of both fingers hard enough to almost click the button. Sometimes it registers button clicks when I'm hovering my palm or finger over the touchpad. It has been a nightmare. I was trying to move away from Mac OS X because I'm so tired of their lack of uniformity to keyboard commands. Each application decides if ctrl+arrow is going to be line home, page home, or previous word... I'm a system architect and that stuff is important to me. However it just isn't worth the struggle and I'm going to return this laptop tomorrow and order a Macbook Pro. I need 4 cores and 16GB of RAM. My Macbook air's 2 cores isn't enough for me to run the number of virtual machines I need to be able to use together.

zxcvcxz 11y ago
I refuse to believe that what you described was a default experience. I've used the same model my self and never seen the issues you described. I've looked for reviews and all the ones I find only mention poor high DPI scaling, which has gotten better. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subnet/review-dells-ubuntu-powered-m3800-mobile-workstation-is-a-desktop-destroyer.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subne... If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website. The parent comment mentioned a Thunderbolt monitor. That's a more likely explanation for glitching issues. Linux users generally don't install random software from random websites.

lol768 11y ago

I ended up buying the XPS 13 developer edition (with the i7 CPU) and promptly returning it after the touchpad drivers didn't work correctly, causing glitching of the cursor and the X server seemingly frequently crashing (I'd get kicked back to the login screen in the middle of a session). Additionally I had issues with the keyboard repeating characters multiple times. This was whilst running the latest version of the BIOS (A03), using the OS which shipped with the laptop with minimal changes (some users have stated that 15.04 fixes the touchpad issue - then why does the laptop ship with 14.04?) and after trying to apply kernel parameter workarounds to no avail. I also tried adjusting the keyboard settings with no luck. Dell stated that the touchpad issues wouldn't impact any laptop built in 2015 and also stated that the keyboard debounce issue had been fixed. I experienced the issues above a few weeks back and got my money back yesterday after requesting a return (on a side-note, customer service was pretty good for returns). I did experience some issues with the high-DPI scaling, but I was able to work around most of these and I don't think this was an issue with the laptop itself anyway/ I was really disappointed given the positive reviews I'd read and the previous good experiences I've had with Dell, but it was as if the unit hadn't been tested and I wasn't happy given the amount I'd had to pay.