I'm writing this on the first Dell I've owned since... 1999: a new "Developer Edition" XPS-13 2015 (FHD i5 variant for max power savings, which are pretty incredible).
This is close the best linux laptop I've used, including various my various thinkpads and macbooks.
A couple years ago I met an enthusiastic Barton George showing off the first gen XPS 13 at the ubuntu dev conference. It was sexy but flawed. I wasn't interested in the machine, but I thought Barton was a guy to watch. His project Sputnik group is the only reason I have kept Dell on my radar at all.
They could be doing a lot in a better way: the customer outreach, ordering process, out of box experience: all include some (at times very) rough edges.
Linux on the desktop is happening and, as I've said for a long time, it's happening where it needs to: with developers first. I'm not super excited with their Ubuntu centric strategy, but it's minimal effort to get Arch up and running on the Dell dev units. If anyone is going this route I'm maintaining a kernel for the XPS 13 (2015) here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-xps13-alt/
I have an XPS 13 2015 version but it came with Windows 8. I want to try out ubuntu on it to see if it'll run better. Is yours touch screen? If so, how is it working?
Also is there a difference between the windows xps 13 and the developers edition? I heard the developers edition is cheaper, but with less powerful hardware?
I just purchased the same laptop. It's really excellent. But I am a little nervous about occasional panics when entering/exiting standby (15.04 vivid, 3.19.0-18).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I know this is a Dell thread but for those interested in running Linux on a sweet ultrabook, check out the Asus UX305. I've been running Ubuntu 15.04 on it and it works beautifully, no special instructions required. Also only $800 - probably one of the best deals going in linux laptops these days.
Since you started the "not-a-dell" thread, I'll chime in. I picked up a Toshiba Dynabook KIRA V63, which is very similar to the Dell XPS 13 in specs. I'm quite happy with it. It doesn't seem to have the problems described for the XPS and I haven't needed a custom kernel. When it first came out the track pad was virtually unusable, but a kernel update a month or so ago seems to have fixed it.
Anyway, this is a Japanese model, so I'm not sure if/when it will be available in other places in the world. More generally, the Broadwell 5500 i5 is an amazing processor. It is very low power and is surprisingly fast. I thought I would be making tradeoffs for power/battery life, but not so. I have been using this as my main dev box since March (granted, I'm doing web development, so my compile chain is rather forgiving ;-) ).
I don't get anywhere near the rated battery life, but I can easily hit 6-7 hours of real work time (including wifi) without having to plug in. Since I am often working in strange places this is huge for me.
Anyway, the company I'm working for at the moment has a Dell contract and I've been encouraging them to look at the XPS 13 for remote people.
Not an endorsement of Dell or Ubuntu, but Dell appears to offer 8 (mostly lower-end) laptop models with Ubuntu pre-installed: https://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops
Still waiting for Dell to fully support Ubuntu in their 2015 XPS 13 model. I made the switch from a Thinkpad after Lenovo burned me too many times. While the keyboard isn't quite as excellent it's still top notch and it's one of the best laptops I've ever owned.
That being said getting everything working in Ubuntu has been a bit of a fiasco [1]. Luckily after some firmware upgrades and the new kernel in 15.04, a lot of issues have been fixed, but the laptop still does strange things waking up from sleep. The worst issue though is that audio still seems to not work in a dual boot configuration. The laptop can't produce sound from the speakers or headphone jack in both Windows and Ubuntu when booting between the two OS's. It seems the hardware gets put in a strange state by either OS and it takes two full reboots after switching from Windows<->Ubuntu to get the audio device to be recognized.
Also HDPI support in Ubuntu is still a little lacking so the beautiful higher-than-retina display sometimes makes things absurdly small. I've seen a lot of progress on this front though.
I really love this device but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the excellent out of the box hardware support for Thinkpads in Ubuntu.
You need to reboot twice due to change in operating mode for touchpad (I2C vs PS2) and audio (I2S and HDA). In Windows 8 (_OSI=Windows 2013), it is running as I2C/I2S devices, in Linux and Windows 7 (_OSI=Windows 2009) in PS2/HDA mode. This is not Dell specific.
How did Lenovo burn you? Even minimal distros such as Arch with various DEs/WMs work great out of the box on my T450s, because all of the hardware is supported in the kernel. Reading the 2015 XPS 13 Ubuntu guide made it seem like a painful process that involved downloading drivers, etc.
I just installed 14.04 on an 3-4 year old Inspiron. Haven't really pushed it, but it seems to have no issues, and I didn't have to do anything for everything to work; the vanilla install seemed fine.
I've been running Ubuntu on an Inspiron 17R SE since 2012. With the exception of the multi-touch touchpad pretty much everything worked fine out of the box.
How official are publications in Dell's "Knowledge Base"? This one looks like it was written by a non-native English speaker, and doesn't seem to provide much Dell-specific information.
As far as I know they are directly coming from Dell. That's the "breaking" part of this manual, that a retailer as big as them are trying to explain how to get rid of Windows and just install a Linux distro.
Since they are providing installation instructions on their website, does this mean they will also do phone / email support for Linux related installation issues?
"Note: If you install an operating system other than the one that shipped with your system, then you do so at your own risk. Dell can't certify that the hardware will be compatible and we may not be able to support the system in that configuration."
Kudo's to Dell for acknowledging that the world is more than just Windows. I'm the proud owner of a 1st Gen XPS 13 Developer Edition. It's a truly beautiful product and a joy to use (apart from some Wifi issues)
There's lots of love for XPS 13 on this thread. I'm considering a switch from Thinkpad+Asus to something different. Is the "XPS 15" just as good? (Although it looks pricey).
What's the best way to get an Ubuntu/Debian-compatible linux distro on my Mac laptop without destroying my data? The slowness of Yosemite seriously amps my cortisol.
Both of them can boot from removable media (USB, CD, floppies)...
You could just boot forever from a USB, using the same USB as temporary storage until the day when you're ready to partition your drive and install the free OS to your hard drive.
You can set up dual boot with an EFI boot manager such as efibootmgr, refit or refind. First shrink your mac partition with disk utility in Mac OS X or gparted, then use the free space to install Linux. The cleanest way to share data would be to move it to a separate partition which both OSes can mount, although you can mount non-journaled HFS from Linux if you want to avoid doing that.
Do you have a separate partition for your data? If so, then just install the distro normally. If not, then I don't see a way you can do it without losing your data since they're two completely different operating systems.
The year of the Linux desktop was brought about by Android, at a growth rate and scale far beyond what Linux any enthusiast dreamed about 15+ years ago. And it came at Microsoft's expense, which means prophecy has been fulfilled and the world righted.
[+] [-] Adaptive|10 years ago|reply
This is close the best linux laptop I've used, including various my various thinkpads and macbooks.
A couple years ago I met an enthusiastic Barton George showing off the first gen XPS 13 at the ubuntu dev conference. It was sexy but flawed. I wasn't interested in the machine, but I thought Barton was a guy to watch. His project Sputnik group is the only reason I have kept Dell on my radar at all.
They could be doing a lot in a better way: the customer outreach, ordering process, out of box experience: all include some (at times very) rough edges.
Linux on the desktop is happening and, as I've said for a long time, it's happening where it needs to: with developers first. I'm not super excited with their Ubuntu centric strategy, but it's minimal effort to get Arch up and running on the Dell dev units. If anyone is going this route I'm maintaining a kernel for the XPS 13 (2015) here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-xps13-alt/
[+] [-] djhworld|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yongelee|10 years ago|reply
Also is there a difference between the windows xps 13 and the developers edition? I heard the developers edition is cheaper, but with less powerful hardware?
[+] [-] wyldfire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfuhrman|10 years ago|reply
What makes you think so?
[+] [-] theyCallMeSwift|10 years ago|reply
Check it out: https://sputnik.github.io/
[+] [-] otar|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chisleu|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lol768|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] na85|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aedocw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikekchar|10 years ago|reply
Anyway, this is a Japanese model, so I'm not sure if/when it will be available in other places in the world. More generally, the Broadwell 5500 i5 is an amazing processor. It is very low power and is surprisingly fast. I thought I would be making tradeoffs for power/battery life, but not so. I have been using this as my main dev box since March (granted, I'm doing web development, so my compile chain is rather forgiving ;-) ).
I don't get anywhere near the rated battery life, but I can easily hit 6-7 hours of real work time (including wifi) without having to plug in. Since I am often working in strange places this is huge for me.
Anyway, the company I'm working for at the moment has a Dell contract and I've been encouraging them to look at the XPS 13 for remote people.
[+] [-] justcommenting|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Difwif|10 years ago|reply
That being said getting everything working in Ubuntu has been a bit of a fiasco [1]. Luckily after some firmware upgrades and the new kernel in 15.04, a lot of issues have been fixed, but the laptop still does strange things waking up from sleep. The worst issue though is that audio still seems to not work in a dual boot configuration. The laptop can't produce sound from the speakers or headphone jack in both Windows and Ubuntu when booting between the two OS's. It seems the hardware gets put in a strange state by either OS and it takes two full reboots after switching from Windows<->Ubuntu to get the audio device to be recognized.
Also HDPI support in Ubuntu is still a little lacking so the beautiful higher-than-retina display sometimes makes things absurdly small. I've seen a lot of progress on this front though.
I really love this device but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the excellent out of the box hardware support for Thinkpads in Ubuntu.
[1] - https://major.io/2015/02/03/linux-support-dell-xps-13-9343-2...
[+] [-] vetinari|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinay427|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwldrbst|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirsar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agonzalezro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BorisMelnik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SG-|10 years ago|reply
"Note: If you install an operating system other than the one that shipped with your system, then you do so at your own risk. Dell can't certify that the hardware will be compatible and we may not be able to support the system in that configuration."
[+] [-] advancingu|10 years ago|reply
It should contain descriptions and some workaround for the most obvious issues that currently exist for running Linux on these machines.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leommoore|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chdir|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gargarplex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordigh|10 years ago|reply
You could just boot forever from a USB, using the same USB as temporary storage until the day when you're ready to partition your drive and install the free OS to your hard drive.
[+] [-] strictfp|10 years ago|reply
See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro
Edit: Corrected outdated info
[+] [-] edent|10 years ago|reply
It's fairly straightforward and works well.
[+] [-] reddotX|10 years ago|reply
https://ubuntu-mate.org/
[+] [-] nwrk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hagmonk|10 years ago|reply
As for Linux it looks like you're stuck with something that fiddles with/replaces EFI. Take a look at http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/index.html.
[+] [-] r3bl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reddotX|10 years ago|reply
yeah.. i'll see myself out
[+] [-] staunch|10 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents#Documents_I...