Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

http://devopsangle.com/2012/05/07/dell-announces-a-linux-laptop-designed-for-developers/

by alexwilliams • 14 years ago

267 193 14 years ago

devopsangle.com

brunoqc3• 14 years ago

It is only softwares for the XPS13?

klint3• 14 years ago

So far, yes.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

The most obvious thing about Dell's ignorance-promoting product page for the XPS13 (the differences are only defined in marketspeak) is that there is still no SSD available:

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-l321x/pd

However, I'll keep the low-end version in mind the next time I'm shopping for "America's Best Protection." Oh wait, they all come with that. Hrm.

Are they really hoping to get a piece of the Macbook Air pie with this?

ben1040• 14 years ago

The most obvious thing about Dell's ignorance-promoting product page for the XPS13 (the differences are only defined in marketspeak) is that there is still no SSD available:

Says right there on the page you linked that the $999 base model comes with a 128GB SSD. So does the final summary if you went through their configuration tool (which is admittedly laughable because all it allows you to configure is what level of Windows/MS Office licenses you want bundled, warranty coverage, and accessories like a monitor/printer).

rhizome3• 14 years ago

I'm not seeing any mention of an SSD on the page I'm looking at:

http://imgur.com/JjneQ

brunoqc3• 14 years ago

I don't get the SSDs thing. I see somes with the three models on the linked page.

sgarrity• 14 years ago

A nice move. Too bad the XPS13 has a (reportedly) terrible display: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/6/2848346/dell-xps-13-review#...

ntkachov• 14 years ago

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys?

Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen.

That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

jmsduran• 14 years ago

What you are describing sounds like my 5 year-old HP DV9000. The keyboard & track-pad were surprisingly of very high quality, very close to that of Apple's IMO.

Too bad though the hardware & chasis design of the product line was extremely shoddy & defective; if the notebook didn't fry itself so often it probably would've been noticed more.

commandar3• 14 years ago

The DV9000s also had a terrible hinge design which was highly prone to breaking. The hinge itself would snap because it was made out of cheap pot metal and the 17" display put a lot of leverage on it. To make matters worse, the hinge secured directly to the bezel and top cover; when the hinge broke, it'd generally break both those parts as well. Even if you were to DIY the repair, you were looking at $150-200 in parts from HP.

gbog2• 14 years ago

Everybody is praising Apple keyboards here. Strange thing is at my work place many have a "real" keyboard beside their MBA or MB.

krakensden2• 14 years ago

Speaking of frying itself, when mine got hot the keyboard stopped working reliably, and it got hot easily and often.

simonsarris• 14 years ago

I agree that all your points are far more important than whatever image is pre-loaded.

At the very least a laptop designed for developers ought to keep the Insert/Home/PageUp + Delete/End/PageDown cluster in the normal formation, like Thinkpads do.

We are typists before we are programmers, and software is something we do have control over. Dell should be fretting over the things we don't have the ability to change on a lark.

protomyth2• 14 years ago

At least they centered the touchpad and set the keyboard so I can touch type from a center position (no numeric keypad).

tammer• 14 years ago

Like thinkpads did... the ivy bridge models soon to be announced use a new layout. While the chicklet keyboards are largely an improvement (I've tried an E420 for a few moments and love the wider spacing), losing that row will take some getting used to.

DennisP• 14 years ago

That may be a requirement for developers who don't use Vim. I can't remember the last time I used any of those keys.

sophacles• 14 years ago

On top of that, I will never consider switching away from my Macbook until the following things are true:

* battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old)

* very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, or at least my own install of a distro, so it needs to be supported or at least compilable for every kernel).

thrill• 14 years ago

I'm using Ubunutu 12.04 (and learning to love the bomb, err, Unity) on a Samsung 15-inch Series 9, and those things you mention work fine. Small irritants include a screen of less quality than I expected (vertical viewing angle is minimal), a keyboard that is more noisy than I wish, and a touchpad that I can't get to disable during typing. But it's fast, quiet, large-screened and has more than enough horsepower for development (using it for Google App Engine work right now).

kamechan6• 14 years ago

Thinkpad already has both problems solved. Getting 12-14 hours on my thinkpad T420 with a 9 cell and a power script written to make all the items found "bad" by powertop2 turn to "good". Switched from x220 (which was getting roughly the same battery life) because its 1366x768 screen wasn't quite enough for on-the-go work.

As for the lid opening and closing doing what it's supposed to, it does. Coincidentally, the ACPI also works flawlessly on my wife's 5 year old Japanese Toshiba laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Edit: here's a link to a thread in which I described the steps I took to get great battery life out of my thinkpad T420. May need tweaking for different thinkpad models, but I used it on my x220 as well with only minimal changes:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3562267

lloeki2• 14 years ago

> (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old)

My MacBook Pro, mid-2009, original battery:

    Temperature = 2982
    CycleCount = 591
    DesignCycleCount9C = 1000
    DesignCapacity = 5450
    MaxCapacity = 4814
    WearRatio = 88%
    CurrentCapacity = 1514
    ChargeRatio = 31%
    Voltage = 11077
    Amperage = -694
    InstantAmperage = -661
    InstantTimeToEmpty = 2:17
    TimeRemaining = 2:11
    AvgTimeToEmpty = 2:11
    FullToEmptyTime = 6:56

(this is from a python script of mine [0])

Close to three years of daily, heavy use. The thing just doesn't want to die (crossing fingers).

[0] https://gist.github.com/2630561

Zak5• 14 years ago

How about taller and higher-resolution screens while we're at it? 16:9 "HD" is fine for movies, but not exactly optimal for development. Right now the portable computer with the highest screen resolution is the iPad. I'm using a Thinkpad T61 because it's the only laptop I know of with a 4:3 screen that can take 8gb of memory.

arunoda• 14 years ago

es you are correct. We need 4:3 laptops. I hate these HD screens.

encoderer3• 14 years ago

I went shopping a couple weeks ago for a MacBook Air to replace my 15" MBP as my primary development machine. (The endorsement a couple weeks before from Linus about the simplicity and silence of the Air sold me)

I picked it up at BestBuy and when I was there I glanced at their Ultrabooks display. They had 3. The Asus and Toshiba seemed complete crap. Flimsy. Trash.

The only one that seemed a plausible purchase was the Samsung. I wasn't a persuadable customer: I'm not going to switch my platform choice because of one credible alternative. But for those customers that are, I think it's fantastic that they at least have 1 credible windows 7 alternative to an Air.

(Not that it matters, but if you're interested, this MBP is a work-supplied machine and it's the first Mac I've ever used. My other PC is a sony vaio core 2 duo circa 2008 or so running Windows 7. I was very impressed with Windows 7 when it came out. But as an engineer it's only a credible option because I was running a Ubuntu VM. When I took my current job and had my choice of machine I finally took the plunge and I've loved it ever since. I still use Ubuntu VM's for sharing dev environments but having a fantastic terminal app and a clean experience is something I have no interest in giving up. Thus, i'm not a persuadable.)

nodata• 14 years ago

Two questions:

1. Are you happy with the Air versus the MBP?

2. Seems a strange time to buy. Why not buy in six months time?

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

A Linux laptop should be a good laptop. But we should be aware that having Linux pre-installed does make a difference.

A) You'll either pay the Microsoft tax or have Linux pre-installed, possibly both depending how how deep MS' hooks are.

B) Having all the drivers work is important, especially modern laptops will often switch their peripheral chips without changing even model # so there.

fractallyte• 14 years ago

Sigh. I wish more end users would consider option C:

Ask nicely for a laptop with no OS. When the reply is 'No', return/wipe the Microsoft default, carefully documenting your refusal of the End User License Agreement, and ask for your money back on the OS. (They'll still say 'No'.) Be firm, be persistent, and even go as far as issuing a Small Claim.

They will ultimately accede, because the law is on your side.

No one need pay the Microsoft tax.

rdtsc• 14 years ago

Thinkpad (T60) has a great keyboard, good feedback. I don't use the mousepad, I like the little red pointer thingy it has and has 1400x1050 resolution display. It also a mate display (not the glare type).

It is bulkier than other laptops and by now its processor is behind the latest i7 and i5's.

Also as soon as I got I installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu lets me re-map caps lock to a control for my emacs usage.

And most of all this machine has worked great for many years . It has traveled with me, has been banged up, dropped, had hot liquids spilled on it and it still works.

bfrs• 14 years ago

Don't you get too much strain on your left pinky if you remap CapsLock to Ctrl?

I shifted to:

CapsLock -> Enter

Keys next to spacebar -> Ctrl

This feels a whole lot better. As Xah Lee [1] points out, the original symbolics keyboard that Stallman developed emacs on, had Ctrl keys next to the space bar.

[1] http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

mbrubeck• 14 years ago

What I really miss from the T60-era laptops is the 4:3 (non-widescreen) display. Widescreen is fine for watching movies, but a taller display can be really nice for reading, writing, and coding.

angusgr• 14 years ago

Couldn't agree more. I use a Thinkpad X60 for much the same reasons (X-series because I carry it around a lot, still "bulky" compared to a Macbook Air but not to the point that it ever actually bothers me.) I really don't look forward to having to upgrade it some day.

Aside from the screen feeling a bit outmoded to me (although I like matte, LCD tech has come a long way in 5 years) it's an absolute pleasure to use.

So I was disappointed when Dell's announcement was about Linux shovelware instead of just saying "easy modular upgrades, quality keyboard, portable and light but solidly built." :/

Zak5• 14 years ago

The UXGA IPS panels on some of the T60s are one of the nicest screens to spend all day looking at. New screens are often brighter, but the color and viewing angle found on those is far superior to what's available today. Oh, and they're 1200px tall - the 17" MBP is, I think the only major-brand laptop that tall today.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

I have a T60 that I use as my primary laptop. They don't make laptops like this anymore.

I keep a spare T60 just in case this one breaks. They are pretty cheap on eBay, especially if supplies without HDD off-lease.

-sent from my T60

mbell• 14 years ago

> Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen.

Agreed, although I don't consider the processor all that important. I run out of ram way before I can exhaust the CPU capabilities in the current generation of "ultrabooks". I want a 13" macbook air or something of similar build quality with a higher res screen and 8-16GB of ram.

yungchin• 14 years ago

It looks like Dell has set up a "storm session" where they'll take our feedback/suggestions, here: http://www.ideastorm.com/Idea2SessionIdea?v=1336432210237...

tseabrooks• 14 years ago

Hands down the most important part of this comment is the touch pad. It's a real struggle to find a decent touch pad aside from you know who.

Zak5• 14 years ago

I still like the Thinkpad's trackpoint, and have the pad set to scroll-only.I can comfortably mouse and scroll without moving my hands from my typing position.

pmr_• 14 years ago

I own a XPS15z but I was never able to put what is wrong with it so succinctly.

I absolutely don't get what's with the pre-installed software thing, I can do that myself. What I need is full-driver support and some basic information of what is known to work. I don't expect them to maintain a full Linux compatibility list, but just a simple list that says: With this specific kernel and this mainstream distro, those things don't work out of the box. You need one intern for about two days to do that. Throw in exact specs and I can figure out a lot of things for myself.

BadassFractal3• 14 years ago

You hit the nail on the head there. My ideal hacker laptop would have something like:

Realforce 87U keyboard

2x (yeah they do exist I think) 1920x1200 screens, perhaps with really high PPI like the new ones Apple is releasing soon.

No touchpad (I'm quite happy with plugging in a mouse), I'd rather use a nipple.

Light, lots of battery, no need for a fancy graphics card. Decent CPU, doesn't have to be extreme.

Tons of memory, 16gb at least, the more the better.

No software at all. I'll install my own distro.

goatslacker2• 14 years ago

I will trade in most of that for just a matte screen. I read code all day and I like my terminal black. Most laptops nowadays function as mirrors instead of laptops.

revorad• 14 years ago

I'm trying to bring this to market, first in the form of Thinkpads, but possibly other models too (including our own in the future). If anyone's interested, please sign up here - http://giniji.com

seclorum• 14 years ago

Hmmm .. "devops" angle .. "developer profiles" .. these things don't seem necessary.

jf7814• 14 years ago

DevOps is hot area right now.. applications are driving the infrastructure and it's changing what cloud is..developers are in charge

eterps• 14 years ago

If its vertical resolution is lower than 900 pixels I can't take it seriously as a laptop designed for developers.

seanp2k22• 14 years ago

Amen; I'm also a member of "Team 16:10"

Not getting rid of my Latitude D830 (14.1" 1920x1200) until I can get something with /more/ pixel density and vrez

jakeonthemove4• 14 years ago

Well, then you're s@@t out of luck :-)... though the 1920x1080 17.3 inch laptops aren't that bad - the resolution is good enough (well, it's the best vertical resolution you can get) and unlike Full HD 15.6 inchers, the text is big enough not to make your eyes hurt like you're welding without a mask...

Zak5• 14 years ago

16:10? Let's bring back 16:12. There's something deeply wrong when the iPad is the portable computer with the highest resolution. I stare at a screen all day most days and would happily pay extra to stare at a nice one.

pkmays• 14 years ago

I'm surprised they think developers would be interested in this. Having worked with Dell in IT, you couldn't pay me to use anything they put their name on. Dell have a bad reputation in both hardware and peopleware, and it's well deserved.

astrodust5• 14 years ago

This comment would be meaningful if it even contained a hint of an anecdote. "Well deserved" how, exactly?

gouranga3• 14 years ago

I'll chip in for him. They're made of cheese, unreliable, have shitty bios implementations, crap battery life and horrid screens and keyboards.

amackera2• 14 years ago

I've owned 3 Dell laptops in the past 2 years.

First one's screen broke. Second one's graphics card was faulty. Third one's sound was messed up, sent the PC in for repairs. Dell technicians dropped it on the ground, blamed me for doing it, then refused to further support it.

I don't care one way or the other if anyone else buys Dell; but there's no chance in hell that I will ever again.

huggyface2• 14 years ago

Dell servers are excellent. They are beautifully engineered, sacrifice nothing, and are extremely well supported.

Such "Dell sucks" anecdotes are generally of the "my company bought 400 of the cheapest desktops that Dell manufacturers, of which a couple presented troubles. Therefore Dell sucks." variety.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Very true, you tend to often hear the same sort of thing from recent Mac converts too.

People who will argue that all PCs suck because their old $300 netbook compares unfavorably with their new $1000 Macbook Air.

oemera• 14 years ago

I own nothing from Dell beside my 23" Ultra Sharp monitor and I will tell you that I will never ever buy anything from Dell again.

The monitor is really awesome at its price point and I don't want to miss it but the service Dell is doing is the worst I have ever seen.

Let me tell you why. When I bought the monitor I was really happy to get a 3 year ultra warranty service from Dell for free. So the monitor gets shipped and I plug into my MacBook Air. The monitor works but the colors are really bad like a 16 bit color scheme. I call the Dell "ultra service" and tell them just what happened. After changing three different employees the guy on the other hand asks me what happens and tell him that the screen looks broken when I plug it into my MacBook and his answer is "oh we don't Mac's cause Apple doesn't conform standard graphical ports. I really don't know about Mac's so I can't help you. Don't you have a "normal PC" to plug it in?". At this point it was clear to me that I would never buy something again from Dell!

It turned out that the monitor was broken and my next monitor worked just fine with my MacBook. the monitor was not replaced by Dell but by the shop I bought from cause they swear that the fault was my Mac.

Next time I will pay the extra money and buy something from Apple again. They don't do shit like that...

blhack2• 14 years ago

uhh...peopleware?

Every single interaction save for one I've had with dell has been an absolute joy. Our rep remembers me by voice, and even when I've had servers with expired support, I've had techs following up with me to make sure issues have been resolved.

I don't know who you've been dealing with, but Dell has been a complete dream to deal with for me; more companies should be like them.

Kuiper• 14 years ago

I worked in a university's IT department for most of my undergraduate career and have nothing but good things to report about their business class laptops. Their low-end consumer grade laptops are, well, low-end. Most of the tales of disappointment I've heard from Dell are people who decided to scrape the bottom of the bargain bin and were disappointed when they got what they paid for.

astrodust5• 14 years ago

I like the pop-under ad for gambling when you visit this site. Classy.

klint3• 14 years ago

On devopsangle.com or somewhere else? We don't do any sort of banner advertising, popunder or otherwise so unless our site has been hacked (I'll look into it) then it sounds like you've got malware on your computer.

astrodust5• 14 years ago

Well, I visited this link twice to be sure and Safari pitched up a pop-under ad both times.

I assure you, I do not have malware.

It happens when the justin.tv widget in the side-bar loads. It attempts to load something that redirects to http://rts.pgmediaserve.com/03d458/

jf7814• 14 years ago

thanks for pointing that out we are not doing that on our end so wanted to let you know that..it might be coming from another source...i'm investigating

john (founder of the site)

timtadh• 14 years ago

I know there is a lot more to a nice laptop than proper software integration. However, proper software integration goes a long way. I bought an XPS m1330 "N" with Linux pre-installed 4 years ago. I have had zero funky hardware/software dances with it through the many re-installs I have done. I don't relish the idea of replacing it.

So this is good news to me. I looked into recent Dell's and found that there is almost always something slightly "wrong" with them when you run Linux on them. Either weirdness in power management or the touchpad or some other random thing. Just being able to buy a computer and not have to worry if it is going to work with my OS is very nice. I have too much to do and don't want to spend a week futzing with drivers and other nonsense (I have done enough of that for a life time).

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

On every single Dell I've used I've hated the keyboard within 10 key presses at most, and I've tried a good 2 dozen over the past 15 years.

And there in lies the problem, every other spec is fucking useless compared to 'does this keyboard suck'. If it sucks you can have 32GB of RAM, a draw that spits out toast and Knuth built into it and I still won't buy it.

zandorg• 14 years ago

Running SUSE 9.1 on a Dell Precision M70. Huge screen works fine in Suse, and as I use an external PS2 keyboard, no chance of accidentally tapping the mouse pad. Wifi works fine on M70's internal wifi card. Great cheap Linux laptop.

libria• 14 years ago

I fully expect it to be $140 cheaper than a comparable machine running Windows 7 Pro.

technomancy3• 14 years ago

Can't tell whether this is sarcastic or not, but if you think Dell pays full price for Windows licenses you are in for a surprise.

pm903• 14 years ago

I don't know the backstory on this....does Dell pay much less than the full price? How much less?

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I think dell gets subsidies from installing all that crapware, so I would expect it to be offset by that.

xaa• 14 years ago

People can develop on 13" screens?

mistercow• 14 years ago

I have been doing so for about 6 years. In my experience, gaining screen real estate is amazing at first, and losing it really hurts at first, but in the long run, it doesn't make much difference.

there• 14 years ago

I develop on an 11" screen.

joneil• 14 years ago

My laptop is in for repair and is taking a disturbingly long time, but my friend lent me his out-of-use EeePC with a 10" inch screen.

I'm amazed at how much work I have actually managed to get done. When I'm in the office I dock it to a keyboard/mouse/monitor, but even on the road I've found myself able to use it, once I adjusted to the keyboard.

If you run light-weight ubuntu (lubuntu for me), have your browser/editor/terminal in fullscreen, and you can get back to work. The slow processor does struggle with our companies rails app though...

jamesbritt3• 14 years ago

My dream machine was a 12" Toshiba Portege with an extra battery, 1920x1200 rez and a trackpoint.

Great form-factor, especially on planes.

It eventually started falling apart, and I never found quite the same thing again.

dsirijus2• 14 years ago

I do it on 12". Absolutely no need for any more for development, not even one bit.

Now, design work obviously needs a lot more, but that's offset by the fact that my HP 2730p is also a tablet with stylus, which made me extremely productive in dishing out graphics.

pirateking• 14 years ago

My 13" Macbook Air serves me well as my primary development and design workstation. For purely development, I would love to use an 11" Air, but Photoshop is a bit too cramped on it.

My 27" display gets used for watching movies mostly these days. I do go through phases though, and will probably try using the large screen for work again eventually. For now, I find the smaller screen less distracting.

ecspike• 14 years ago

Yep. I've had 13in and 15in MBPs but I prefer my 13in MBA. Work gives me the option to get a 24 in monitor for my desk but I haven't bothered to request one.

icebraining• 14 years ago

I develop on a 12". Well, 12" multiplied by 20 workspaces.

tsm• 14 years ago

"Configuration as code". In other words, "configuration as plain text files". Another innovation that's actually been in *nix since forever.

As a result of this, I can turn any computer into a me-friendly machine in about an hour. Install my favorite Openbox-based distro (Crunchbang), copy over dotfiles I've already customized, and install every package from a list that's been exported from my main laptop.

fierarul• 14 years ago

>Project Sputnik, a product of Dell’s new internal incubation fund, features not just full hardware support for Ubuntu on the XPS13, but a notion of “profiles” for developers

They could have stopped at "full hardware support for Ubuntu". Nobody cares about their crapware.

Just two weeks ago I bought an HP ProBook for a colleague for the sole reason of being Linux certified. It came with a Suse license but he's using it with Ubuntu.

The one Dell laptop I could have bought came with an Ubuntu version from 2010.

seanp2k22• 14 years ago

Agreed that I don't want/need their crapware. It'd be great if companies that make hardware had a clue what people wanted, but that's why Apple is going to be the biggest company in the world while IBM lays off seventy-some percent of their workforce, HP has 100 models of notebook that all do the same thing, and Lenovo forgets what made their older laptops so nice.

bretpiatt• 14 years ago

IBM and Apple compete about as often as GM and Boeing do. One builds servers, systems, and writes business software wrapping it all with services and the other sells end user devices, media, and minimal software wrapping it all in a brand LVMH is jealous of.

pdelgallego• 14 years ago

One of them developed Siri and the other Watson.

Drbble2• 14 years ago

Lenovo's good laptops were IBM. IBM sold out the Thinkpad brand and it died.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Not sure if I'd classify it as crapware.. they're going to be legitimate and useful tools, not "CLICK HERE TO INSTALL OFFICE 2012!!"

dman• 14 years ago

I think this thread is a great example of why developers are notoriously tough customers (myself included)

pm903• 14 years ago

Actually, the things that we are asking for are not that difficult for a hardware vendor to implement. Besides, we usually tend to buy the higher end models rather than the entry level ones, so the profit margins are higher for each developer

alasdair_young• 14 years ago

The worst part for me is that the XPS13 only allows a MAXIMUM of 4GB of RAM. This is ridiculous for a dev box, especially when I want to run a VM or two.

jakeonthemove4• 14 years ago

They all say that - I'm 99% sure you can install at least 6 GB, if not more...

dlwh• 14 years ago

Aren't the ram chips usually soldered to the mobo on ultrabooks? Crucial indicates they can't upgrade ram on the XPS13. And a little googling says soldered RAM... Nothing on the Dell website suggests they can upgrade past 4.

encoderer3• 14 years ago

The 4GB is (obv) the limit of the Macbook Air as well.

I agree, running a VM leaves you at the redline. Running 2? Good luck.

I do run with a single Ubutnu VM nearly 100% of the time, but I skimp on it and only allocate 384MB usually. Sometimes I'll bump it up depending on what I'm doing in it.

All that said, I do wish that I could have 8 GB in my Air. But, with the extremely fast SSD, it's not essential. I use this machine as my daily driver (for mostly web-based Python, PHP and Go development) and love it. It's honestly my favorite development machine ever. I've never enjoyed developing on-the-go more, and at home plugged into a Cinema display it's a real joy to use.

davidw2• 14 years ago

In the spirit of... well... "thinking differently" we might call it, I'll actually say I'm pretty happy with the Dells I've had. They're solid workhorses with relatively good value for the money I spent on them. Certainly, they are not glamorous or beautiful, but they work well, have good support, and have generally run Ubuntu pretty well.

That said, if someone came along and really did good Linux support, I'd probably switch.

jamesbritt3• 14 years ago

I've been pretty happy with my Dell laptops, running Ubuntu.

But they lost me when they dropped WUXGA. That extra 200-pixel row may not matter to folks using their machine to watch movies, but it's missing developer real estate to me.

davidw2• 14 years ago

Ouch, they have? That does stink, I have one of those, and love it. Sigh...

corin_• 14 years ago

Ditto - and it's not just a developer thing, it's an "anything except video watching" thing.

I hate the shift towards widescreen in laptops for pretty much any activity, and it's only bearable in desktop monitors because there's no real size limit on them, so it can be adding width rather than just reducing height.

mindcrime• 14 years ago

Great, now offer Fedora on it and you might have a shot at selling me one. I'm in the market for a new laptop Real Soon Now, and I will definitely be looking for something to run Fedora on.

brandon• 14 years ago

The biggest possible upside to this project will be if Shuttleworth & Company get on board to support the XPS13 as a first class Ubuntu platform because of Sputnik.

And when I say first class, I don't mean "give it the Supported Platform stamp." I mean "respond to user reports of touchpad bugs" and "fix them."

pm903• 14 years ago

This is actually a pretty great Idea. I wouldn't mind paying a support fee instead of the ridiculous Windows License fee that I have to pay every time I buy a laptop (only to erase and install Ubuntu the moment it arrives). If only Dell had the courage to stand up to Microsoft...

agumonkey• 14 years ago

What would you think about a contemporary GRiD Compass?

Emphasis on durability and ergonomy before slim-ness, providing :

  - Stronger structural material for laptop frame
  - Shock and torque absorbing bits around corners, and hinges
  - Stronger hinges that you can manipulate carelessly
  - Better ergonomics by balancing weight
  - More space for internal addition (PCIe, USB3) for modders
  - Ease of access to internal, repairability.
  - Easier heat dissipation aiming for 35-50C min-max range with minimal fan speed.

Beside, add:

  A true 8bit IPS LCD.
  A thinkpad class keyboard.

A nice vintage black box that handle 25 years of hackery without a glitch.

krakensden2• 14 years ago

It would be nice if you could get them to ship it preinstalled.

glogla• 14 years ago

This is kind of sad. XPS 13 is not exactly good -- the display resolution is terrible, there's no ethernet port, and for ultrabook it is not very thin, feels real cheap in hands, and the keyboard is not very good. It's almost like someone tool everything bad from the ultrabook trend and nothing good from it.

And when people won't care because the hardware is not worth it (especially when it's not that much cheaper than MBA), it will be interpreted as "no one wants linux".

diminish• 14 years ago

i agree, a developer ultrabook must be more modular, and more equipped.

jf7814• 14 years ago

Big time developers have always said that OS X is a better Unix development environment than Linux. Dell is smart to come out with a power Linux development station. My friends have been replacing their unix workstations with Macintoshes. Mac OS X is basically plain Unix -BSD flavor. Now Dell is going there. Smart by Dell

@furrier

warmfuzzykitten• 14 years ago

So I immediately went to the Dell website to check the XPS13. The only OS choices were Windows or Windows. Apparently they didn't announce Linux internally.

xxiao• 14 years ago

what's new here, because xps13 is a fancy ultrabook? i installed ubuntu on my laptops and they always worked fine, why is this big news. i might be missing something...

xando• 14 years ago

This is kind of interesting for me. I'm trying to find for myself a proper Linux machine. Right now on Dell e6410, a bit regret that I bought it. In my opinion nearest to the ideal developer machine on Linux is Lenovo X1 or X220.

Screen 13": is enough, even 12" is enough. If you are kind of developer who moves his behind from meeting to meeting or spends some time on plains or conferences. 13" (max) is your choice. You can buy really cheap big monitors and plug you machine, in every place where you work.

Processor and Memory: this is out of discussion i7 and 8GB ram. Memory is so cheep those days that giving developers less than 8GB is a sin.

HDD: SSD 128. This works for me. I have external drives, as a developer I don't keep movies, games, photos on my computer.

Graphic Card. I had a rule that if I'm using Linux I'm using Nvidia cards. This probably not true any more. I've heard from people that Intel Cards work well. But still, switching screens is done decently in NVIDIA drives.

Screen: for me Glare.

Battery: should follow at least MacBook Pro 13". which is 3-4h.

Price if this will be more than 1400 $ people will buy MacBookPro.

Ubuntu: I'm using Xubuntu. Unity still keeps me angry, and as smallest as possible number of installed programs. Because I'm developer it doesn't mean that I'm using Eclipse.

zerostar07• 14 years ago

X220 is really nice, as long as you use an external screen. Apart from being small, the screen (although bright) has a big aftereffect problem .

replax• 14 years ago

I am actually surprised that the battery only lasts 3-4h on a mbp on linux. on the x220 i get around 6h with the 6cell battery, obviously depending on use.

magnetikonline• 14 years ago

+1 to the NVIDIA requirement with Linux - when looking for a new Linux dev laptop, this was a must since I use an external monitor most of the time when docked - you can trust this will work 110% with NVIDIA - Intel GPU's have been a bit shaky with this in the past. But this might be better with newer Linux kernels/Xorg shipping with distros like Ubuntu 12.04.

In the end, I went for a speced up Thinkpad T420 with i7/NVIDIA/8GB - works really, really well.

secure• 14 years ago

Uh, I can’t really second this. I’ve been using Intel graphics for the last 3+ years, and never had a single multi-monitor problem. Intels FOSS drivers (nVidia doesn’t publish FOSS drivers or even specs) support xrandr (the linux standard for multi-monitor configuration) like a charm. nVidia only offers xrandr support in the latest beta of their driver, forcing people to use their weird twinview utilities for years.

jakeonthemove4• 14 years ago

I don't know, I think matching hardware to software is a stupid idea. Just focus on building the hardware as a platform, don't lock it down with custom BS solutions and let the software developers handle the software.

What kind of developer doesn't have their own workflow and customize their own workstation to their needs? You just can't mass produce a one-model-fits-all laptop for developers...

Of all Dell laptops, the Precision line is the only one I'd buy - the M6600 looks especially good now that HP abandoned the near-perfect design of the Elitebook 8740/8540w (just for the sake of a new design it seems)...

jebblue• 14 years ago

With Linux slowly growing in popularity among developers this is good news to me. Now if IT shops at large companies will start supporting Linux for developers more that would be cooler.

akmiller• 14 years ago

I'd like the ability to have 16GB of RAM in a machine that's the size of an Air or Ultrabook. It seems at the moment, that is impossible to find.

bookwormAT• 14 years ago

the negative and aggressive attitude in this thread is depressing.

:-(

trafficlight• 14 years ago

Maybe Dell should have consulted their target market first.

rch• 14 years ago

The XPS13 doesn't really seem equipped to appeal to professional developers, but Dell might be specifically targeting the entry-level and enthusiast markets. I would have enjoyed having something along these lines in high school, for instance.

rickmb• 14 years ago

So their target audience is developers that are incapable of installing their own tools and that are cool with the cheap look and flimsy build quality of Dell laptops.

Unfortunately, that market actually exists, and nine out of ten times that lack of caring for quality is reflected in their work.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

Official driver support matters.

You won't run the risk of buying a notebook, install Linux, find that driver xyz doesn't work, then find the store won't take it back because reinstalling the os voids warranty. And waste money. This is a big risk when shopping for Linux laptops. Specially for cheaper brands that you can't easily find online reports about whether it works or not.

Official support makes shopping much easier.

kijin• 14 years ago

> reinstalling the os voids warranty

That's why you should make a disk image before you wipe Windows. Plug in a Linux Live USB, use dd + gzip to create a bit-for-bit copy of your hard drive (it should compress well because there's no data on the machine), keep the copy in an external hard drive, and then wipe the internal hard drive. Nobody at Best Buy will know what you did.

za• 14 years ago

They can start by unfucking the internal/external display mode key. http://www.osnews.com/story/23202/The_win_p_Mess_Will_Micros...

auggierose• 14 years ago

Just get a Macbook Pro 17 inch. Best machine ever. The only serious laptop for developers ;-)

Bought it last week, and did almost go for a Macbook Air after the Linus endorsement. I am so happy I didnt!

dsirijus2• 14 years ago

Standard size function keys. No media keys, only volume/mute control.

Trackpoint is a must. I can even live without a track/touch pad.

va_coder• 14 years ago

Someone must be able to make a viable business model out of selling Ubuntu on Ultrabooks.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

If I'm allowed to design my dream laptop, I'd make it have

- a 13 inch 1080x1920 screen

- two video outputs (for when its docked)

- an SSD for the OS and my tools

- an average hard disk for my data

- a good keyboard

- enough memory

- a camera and audio

- 3G data (or better)

- Bluetooth for the keyboard and trackpad when it's docked.

And the rest of it would be a humongous battery. And power it with an Atom-class processor so that the battery lasts a day. Leave the software alone.

Make it pretty.

badragon• 14 years ago

I would buy a Ubuntu laptop. I feel like a fool that I spent money on a MacBook Pro. I was too lazy to get a Linux laptop working.

gaius• 14 years ago

Why would a laptop running Ubuntu be for "developers"? Not to get into a distro flamewar, but (for example) many large organizations use RHEL on their servers, and developers on the back-end would want to develop there so it will run on their customer's systems. They should be clearer that it's for "web developers".

dsrguru2• 14 years ago

Linux developers by and large don't care what distro or software comes preloaded. They intend to replace it with their favorite setup the moment they take the machine out of the box. What they want is a keyboard designed for productivity and hardware that is fully compatible with the Linux kernel. Some will only use free (libre) drivers. Some want a large touchpad, others just want a pointing stick, and others don't use a pointing device at all. Many want easy access to the inside of their computer. Then there are always the regular consumer issues like how pretty the machine is, does it have bluetooth, an optical drive, etc. All laptops have a tradeoff among portability (size and battery), performance (CPU, GPU, RAM, and display), and price (low is good). Most great laptops only excel in two of those categories. Different developers choose a different two.

maebert• 14 years ago

And there I am, wishing the headline was "Dell Announces a Linux Laptop Developed for Designers" instead.

reirob• 14 years ago

A developers laptop without a trackpoint, crappy keyboard and a screen that does not provide much vertical space? Other than this, I welcome Laptops designed for developers with Linux.

Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

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