Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/

by smacktoward • 13 years ago

124 140 13 years ago

weakwire• 13 years ago

battery life fail.. i'd go for Macbook Air .. (disclaimer proud Dell latitude owner)

kailuowang3• 13 years ago

I really hope Google can make a chrome pixel like Linux laptop. I think it will be hugely popular among her own engineers. MacBookPro used to be perfectly fine for software development for years but after upgrading mine to one with retina display half a year ago, I no longer believe that's case. It's 2D rendering performance is sluggish, crashes couple of times every week (probably caused by some glitches during switching between integrated and discreet display). I don't mean to blame Apple, they no longer focus on PC and software development workstation laptops was never their business goal.

kevinherron• 13 years ago

I've been using a rMBP full time for work and haven't run into any of these issues. However... I am hooked up to an external display via DisplayPort about 95% of the time.

kailuowang3• 13 years ago

I also hooked it up with a Dell 30" display 90% of time using Apple's $100 dual-link DVI adapter. The adapter fails 3-4 times a day - display loses signal for a couple of second and then back to normal. It happens to another normal MBP with another Dell 30" display in our office as well. So the problem probably resides in the adapter not the display nor the laptop. That's probably the worst 100 dollars I was forced to pay in a couple of years.

rst• 13 years ago

It is, in fact, possible to run Linux on the Chrome Pixel bare metal; Linus himself has one and likes it (and has posted about it quite a bit on Google+), mainly because of the screen. The main problem is that the SSD is sized to be a local cache for cloud data. The 32 GB SSD you get with the base model could wind up very cramped, these days; you do get a 64 GB SSD with the LTE model, but that's even pricier, and still a bit skimpy.

evilduck2• 13 years ago

The 64GB Pixel is priced nearly the same as the 13 rMBP and other than the unique aspects of a touch screen and LTE, is almost half the performance of the Mac. And if something happens to your laptop, who do you really want to call for support, Apple or Google?

I'd love to see some serious competition to Apple, but it's not there yet.

fooqux• 13 years ago

He's also stated a few times that the only thing he likes about it is the screen. Everything else is merely meh. Of course, he then went on to say the screen was so awesome that it easily made up for everything else.

Still, I'd kinda call that a glowing review by Linus, since he has a bit of a habit of hating stuff for the smallest of reasons. Even being "meh" without drawing his wrath is kinda an accomplishment.

HunOL• 13 years ago

Glossy screen...

yareally• 13 years ago

That would be my biggest turnoff. I would say more developers dislike that anyone else, so I'm baffled by the fact it has one.

johnchristopher• 13 years ago

More baffling is the fact the author likes it.

Even more baffling is the mention in the article that the trackpad is unsuitable to grab window's frames and yet this fact isn't mentionned in the pro/cons section.

I wish the author had given a word or two about fan noise under different loads.

memset• 13 years ago

I have one of these for work (but I have the first iteration, with the lower resolution.)

I agree with just about everything in this article. When I first got my machine, it would literally hard-freeze several times a day. I tried playing with kernel PPAs, upgrading my BIOS, etc. Eventually I contacted their support, and the next day a technician came and replaced my motherboard. It works almost perfectly now (still hard-freezes maybe once a month, but what can you do.)

I have not used any of the neato-sounding "developer tools" this computer comes with (the cloud thinger, the profile tool thinger, etc.) Perhaps I would, but then again, chef/puppet/vagrant are the de-facto standards for setting up dev environments, and they translate better to how I'd deploy something on prod.

EDIT: okay I just looked at juju. seems absurdly cool and useful. has anyone else used this?

jfim• 13 years ago

> The trackpad does two-finger scrolling (with inertia!) without having to add some random crazy guy's PPA and install extra packages. It picked up my Wi-Fi network and joined it without requiring me to do anything other than supply the passkey.

> Is it bad if I say that I was impressed that sound worked right out of the box?

> The XPS 13 easily handled repeatedly being put to sleep and awakened without throwing a kernel panic or otherwise exploding.

Is this the usual experience installing Linux on a laptop?

(Not trolling, I've only ever used Linux on desktops/servers)

moystard2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately it is not, especially concerning the trackpad behaviour, it is usually a bit dodgy, unreliable..

veesahni• 13 years ago

Linux is a low priority for hardware manufacturers that target desktops, which sometimes leaves drivers lacking or non existent for such hardware. Many drivers are maintained by the community instead of the manufacture.

A few years ago, I had purchased a "new" laptop with an audio chip that wasn't detected by the latest kernel. I emailed the manufacturer of the chip, who assigned a developer to create a patch that was later submitted to the community driver maintainer. In this case, rather than ensuring driver support prior to release, they waited until a consumer complaint came in!

karka91• 13 years ago

Never had any trackpad problems. On rare occasions sound problems occur when using x64 distros. Only Ubuntu 10.something was able to put one of my laptops to sleep/hibernate successfully. I have never managed to do the same with other distros and laptops.

to3m2• 13 years ago

Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

I used to have a little Asus EEE PC, for which I downloaded a community-generated EEE-specific Linux. EEE Ubuntu, I think it was. All your EEE-specific drivers pre-loaded, no extraneous junk, no funny business! So I had high hopes for this one, on account of the very limited number (3!) of different hardware configurations the distribution had to support. Surely nothing could go wrong!

Once I'd installed it, I found trackpad touch-to-tap didn't work. At all. Well, OK, the trackpad has buttons, so I suppose I'll have to live with that.

It wouldn't detect my wi-fi network, and in fact as far as I could tell wi-fi simply didn't work in the slightest. Fortunately, I have a long network cable, and I mainly used it fairly near the router anyway.

When I tried to suspend to disk, it claimed it was out of swap space, and proceeded to just shut down normally. Hmm, never mind, I can just close the lid and leave it plugged in, it's no big deal.

When I closed the lid, it crashed.

wiredfool2• 13 years ago

10.04 works pretty seamlessly on my eee901.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

> Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

Linux doesn't do 'random, low-priced consumer laptops' very well. It does regular business laptops very well. I've been installing Linux on Thinkpads from the T20 days all the way to the current T430 and I've been incredibly impressed with how well everything runs.

Even cheap laptops run pretty well these days, at most you'll wrestle with the wifi drivers. The problem is the low-end market for laptops is so varied you don't get a lot of developers who get hands-on time to get the drivers working well.

Popular laptops will usually have great support unless they've got some hardware where the vendor doesn't want to play ball. But any cheap machine that's sold a lot of units will have a forum where users explain everything they've figured out.

In the old days you could buy two network cards, keep one and send one to a developer as a gift, and you'd end up getting a working driver out of the deal. Some people did that with entire laptops.

DanBC• 13 years ago

I had an EEE pc 407.

I installed a bunch of different distributions and most of them worked well.

To say that "Linux doesn't work on laptops very well" because you had a terrible experience with a single distribution is odd. Especially when many of those distros have pretty good user communities and wikis that tell you what does or doesn't work, and how to fix stuff that's not working.

But the wider point - there are a gazzillion different distributions and sometimes there's no way of knowing if they'll work on your hardware apart from just installing it. Which does suck.

jebblue5• 13 years ago

>> Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

Actually it has done very well on several of mine from different manufacturers since 2000, odd huh?

aw3c2• 13 years ago

Not really, unless you picked bad hardware Linux works like a charm on notebooks.

HelloMcFly• 13 years ago

What is "bad hardware"? I tried putting Linux on a Toshiba laptop and I experienced the trackpad and sleep/wake problems, and persistent problems with wifi.

gvb2• 13 years ago

I don't have any experience with multitouch touchpads, but everything works out of the box on my Latitutde E6500 as well as on my coworker's various other Dell laptops. This laptop has the nVidia display (I historically have avoid nVidia, but the company is opening up and the non-proprietary drivers are getting better), bluetooth, WiFi, SD card, etc. all Just Working. I am running 12.04.2 with the 3.5.0-26-generic kernel - I installed the linux-lts-quantal package to pick up the updated kernel and xorg drivers (better nVidia support).

Thinkpads historically have been very compatible with linux (our family machine is a T61 I bought off of eBay very reasonably). Also nVidia display (very nice resolution LCD).

I also have a [edit] XPS M1210 vintage 2006 that also works very well, has since I bought it. I initially dual-booted, but then never used the WinXP boot and ultimately booted it off the island.

The only niggling problem I am having at this point is getting the bluetooth mouse running after a suspend/resume. Something is not coordinating in xorg - the work-around is to flip to a different virtual console and then back to the primary X11 console (<CTL><ALT><F1> <CTL><ALT><F7>). There is also something wrong with the bluetooth mouse battery display in the applet which can crash the machine(!) on resume on my XPS13. I'm not seeing that on my other laptops. The work-around is to not turn on the mouse until the machine has fully resumed. This problem came in with the linux-lts-quantal software upgrade and I expect it to be fixed Real Soon Now.

The key is to get a fairly generic laptop. I don't buy Sonys, for instance, because they have a long history of using oddball proprietary peripheral chips/configurations that don't work well with linux.

pfg• 13 years ago

It depends on the manufacturer. For example, I haven't had any issues running Linux on ThinkPads (currently T420).

Also, in my experience, there's a higher chance of Linux compatibility if you stick to the business lines.

sn0v2• 13 years ago

Regarding the trackpad, I had a regression going from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 a couple of years back where the trackpad would freeze without fail during the first few minutes after booting. It took a couple of weeks for an update to fix it. The general support level seems to be improving now though.

gavinh• 13 years ago

Recent versions of Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint have worked completely out-of-the-box on my Lenovo Carbon X1 and an old HP DV7. The only trouble I have had is with a Samsung QX410 because it has both discrete NVIDIA and integrated graphics with Optimus for switching.

Glyptodon3• 13 years ago

I have a rather old Acer Aspire One and Linux has always worked perfectly with it. RE those who say Linux isn't good with cheap hardware.

Oddly enough it's not thin, but has been quite durable and weighs very little (~2 lbs?) and still gets somewhat meaningful battery life even all these years later.

That said, the most recent laptop I tried Ubuntu on was perfect except for the track pad, which needed touch regions to differentiate between right and left click, but instead treated everything as left click. Needless to say I decided not to install Ubuntu on it.

swatkat• 13 years ago

I've Linux Mint on my Dell Inspiron 1525 and everything works flawlessly.

majormajor• 13 years ago

It was three-to-four years ago when I tried running a ThinkPad X61 with Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora) as my primary machine.

The sleep/hibernate and wifi issues never stopped, and I gave up and bought a MacBook.

I might go back for another whirl with an X1 Carbon soon, though. But honestly, I'll probably run Windows as the primary OS and just have Linux VMs.

jebblue5• 13 years ago

I contract from time to time, I'm very familiar with Windows 7, used it heavily alongside Ubuntu on a variety of hardware. I find various sleep, suspend and hibernation issues on all versions of Windows from 7 back. Apparently I'm not alone, Google this phrase: "windows sleep problem".

parbo• 13 years ago

I installed Ubuntu 13.04 on an old LG F1 Express Dual. Everything works, including repeated sleep. Sleep did not work on it with 12.10. It also has two finger scroll with inertia, even on this old craptop.

acabal2• 13 years ago

Until a year or two ago, yes. I've been using Ubuntu on only two different laptops since 8.04 and the staggering amount of fundamental problems and regressions that occurred and continue to occur is shocking. It's gotten a whole lot better in the past year or so but before then it was Russian roulette to install a new version of Ubuntu on the same laptop hardware.

Today the bugs/regressions usually aren't of the "sound on longer works" type or "my video card worked fine in 9.04 but was mysteriously blacklisted in 9.10" type, but of the UX type. I think a lot of that is due to Gnome 3 and the CADT development model they have, and to Canonical and their clownish Unity engineering history.

drivebyacct25• 13 years ago

No, the only trolling I'd accuse anyone of is the author. I really bore of hearing these tropes. Most of these things haven't been issues in years, certainly on PC hardware. Even on my MBA2012-> make ubuntu usb stick -> insert usb stick -> click "next" a few times, type your name, and a half hour after you started your project you have a Macbook Air, running Raring, fan, brightness, wifi, key backlights, good battery life, suspend/hibernation, etc, etc, all perfect.

andrewparker• 13 years ago

I have a dell xps 13 and the trackpad responsiveness is a disaster. I have tried endless combination of drivers (both Dell and third-party) and sunk 20 hours into debugging. I strongly recommend you do not purchase an XPS 13 if you do not plan to use it primarily with an external mouse.

jebblue5• 13 years ago

Speaking as a developer I keep my own mouse in my laptop bag because using trackpads is irritating, Windows or Linux.

drivebyacct25• 13 years ago

Can you note if this was under linux? Your description makes it sound like you were using Windows...

marban• 13 years ago

Did they really have to use the Spiderman logo font for the keyboard?

mmphosis• 13 years ago

and, did they really have to use the Windows logo on the system key of a Linux laptop?

A nice touch would have been to make it a penguin key. Or, even a spiderman key to match the font.

I was especially happy to see that the palm rests were not gunked up with the typical annoying explosion of multicolored stickers—with the exception of a white-on-black Intel Core i7 sticker (which actually looks quite nice!)—so there's nothing to visually distract you from working.

Another nice touch would have been to put the Intel Core i7 sticker beneath the XPS badge on the bottom of the Ultrabook with the service tag, serial number, and the neat little Ubuntu sticker.

vilgax2• 13 years ago

Those Intel (or may be Windows) sticker are there because it subsidize cost for manufacturer. They are paid to stick it in front of user.

97-109-107• 13 years ago

I agree, it's hands down the ugliest typeface on a laptop keyboard I've seen. I wonder if they actually put any attention to it or it so just happened.

ch0wn• 13 years ago

I had my boss order one for me and it should arrive next week. I'm really looking forward to it after reading this article. It feels good to not pay for a Windows license that will never be used and instead support a company that appears to see the benefits of FLOSS.

gvb2• 13 years ago

Got a link to the Dell site? I cannot find it. I did a search for "XPS developer edition" and it shows up, but the link is a 404. :-/

corin_• 13 years ago

US: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd.aspx UK: http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

ersii2• 13 years ago

Searching for "Sputnik" on the Dell, US, site works for me.

UnoriginalGuy4• 13 years ago

I'm impressed that Dell have created a laptop aimed at developers, but I've stopped buying Dells completely as I've had an endless string of issues going back ten years with their power supplies.

And it isn't just me either, everyone I know has had similar issues with the power supplies splitting (and eventually failing) right at the bend as it enters the laptop... Then the replacements are $100.

I'm buying laptops to last. Dells simply do not. Even their "high end" Latitudes and XPS laptops are cheaply made.

I won't buy another Dell until I see an improvement in the quality of the power supplies and ideally a single universal power supply across their entire range (why does one range have two new incompatible PSUs a year?).

Apple and Thinkpad/Lenovo both have much higher quality power blocks and both have universal power supplies within the same range. I buy two Thinkpad Txxx or Macbook Pros I can interchange the power supplies!

hmottestad6• 13 years ago

Every macbook power supply (cable) will split and fray within two-three years (depending on use). However, here in Norway they have a 5 year (goverment mandated) warranty, so no problems just bringing it in and going back out with a brand new adapter.

sn0v2• 13 years ago

Damn you Norwegians have it good! :D

UnoriginalGuy4• 13 years ago

If that is true, that is pretty disappointing.

I will say though that even if that is the case, at least I can buy a Macbook power supply "anywhere." I can drive down to BestBuy and buy one today.

With Dell's PSUs you can essentially only buy them from Dell's online store. I mean there are some HK sellers but they don't get certified as safe by any reputable agency. So either way, you'll be laptop-less for a week or more.

Universality is within itself a massive perk. It means the power blocks are more common, easier to obtain, and sometimes cheaper. It also means that if I buy two laptops from the same manufacturer I have a backup power brick for "free."

Zirro• 13 years ago

You can't use "every" and "depending on use" in the same sentence, as that could be said of anything. I have a four year old cable of said type which, except for a little dust, is looking as good as new.

Were you to say that it occurs during average usage however, I agree that it would be an issue.

quinndupont• 13 years ago

Me too. I've owned several and without exception the cords turn brownish, get soft, and then ultimately fray. I've tried all sorts of ways to gently wind/pack them, all sorts of preventative tapes/heatshrink tubing, but eventually (2 years, tops) they all fail. I like the (relatively) light weight and decent design, but they simply don't last.

city412• 13 years ago

I've owned Mac laptops now for over a decade and have never had a problem. My 7 year old MacBook's power supply still works good as new.

rsynnott2• 13 years ago

> Every macbook power supply (cable) will split and fray within two-three years (depending on use)

While there was at least one iteration where this seemed to be the case, it was less of an issue after the first couple of generations.

pimeys• 13 years ago

My old Macbook unibody from 2008 had this issue with the power supply. My wive has a 2010 Macbook Pro and its power supply died just like mine did.

Something I really like with this Asus laptop is a thing called strain relief in the power cord.

hmottestad6• 13 years ago

There was the class action suit: https://www.adaptersettlement.com/default.aspx

There is an instructable for how to fix your cable: http://www.instructables.com/id/MacBook-Mag-Safe-Charger-Bud...

Google images for "magsafe adapter" 10/56 images are of frayed cables.

still• 13 years ago

For me this has been the case for the power supplies.

First one (came with the original intel macbook pro) actually caught fire due to a short caused by a break in the wires at the base of the brick.

A power supply bought last year is starting to split near the magsafe connector.

fakeer• 13 years ago

>>here in Norway they have a 5 year (goverment mandated) warranty

By any chance, are you talking about the same warranty that I get for 1 year in USA or in India when I buy an Apple product or any product at all?

The vanilla warranty that comes in the box without purchasing any extra warranty/care/support product?

moystard2• 13 years ago

If you don't buy a brand because of previous flaws, then you don't buy products of any brand out there. Remember the power supply of Macbook Pro taking fire? Guess that's even worse.

UnoriginalGuy4• 13 years ago

I remember Apple recalling all of them and apologising.

When people moaned at Dell on their community voting page (Dell IdeaStorm) Dell basically said "we aren't changing, this is a business decision."

And it is. Dell releasing several new incompatible PSUs every year and over-charging for them is very much a "business decision" therefore I choose to take my business elsewhere.

Point of fact: There are several companies I refuse to do business with because I don't like how they operate. Dell is one of them.

Ologn2• 13 years ago

I ordered a Dell desktop online in 1999 to be shipped to my apartment. I filled out everything including an evening phone #, but not a daytime #. A week later no shipment so I call Dell and they say they need a daytime #, so I give them my company #. Another week goes by and no desktop. At this point I am needing to use the desktop. I call Dell and they say the company I worked for (the daytime # they demanded) was a little behind on payments so they decided to take my money in recompense and not ship me a computer. I had to go to the CTO of my company and have my company repay me. Incidentally, the Dell's we used as servers with Red Hat would freeze up all the time.

So yes, I have avoided Dell since then. I have been relatively happy with their competitors, so why go back? My only personal experience with them was a bad one. Other sysadmins I have worked with would go to the trouble of migrating from a Dell server environment to an HP one, when new machines were needed, because they felt HP servers were superior to Dell, and it certainly seemed that way. I don't know what their desktops are like as I was never shipped one. There is a reason their stock has sunk and they are going private. Yes the market has shifted, but they did not shift with it - Apple and other companies have.

I have a System76 Ubuntu laptop. As I have a tablet and desktop, I don't need to use it much. The one problem I have had is battery life. I have been too busy to really look into it, I don't know if that's normal or if I can tune something.

glesica• 13 years ago

The difference is that the problems are much, much worse with some brands. For instance, I have ordered three Dell computers for myself and I have never taken delivery of a single one. In every case Dell screwed up the order and I ended up canceling before the computer actually arrived.

At the same time, I used to buy Dell machines for my employer. We were a large customer, so we got relatively good service and I never experienced any significant problems.

So the moral of the story, to me, is that Dell is fine for corporate purchases, but I'll stick with Lenovo for my personal purchases until Lenovo screws me over and I go looking for a new vendor.

tspascoal• 13 years ago

Never had issues with their power supplies.

I still use the power supply from my previous line on my current laptop.

Use the old one at home, and the new one while on the road.

When i get home, i just have to plug it in.

No complains there, every issue i had with their laptops (one per each model i had) were solved on next business day, no questions asked.

This is mainly why I chose Dell, next business day support is flawless.

gtani• 13 years ago

I've had a few non-Thinkpads, non-MBPs: Dell, HP, Toshiba, that i purchased from Costco. And i had problems with power supplies and hard drives, but I always got replacement parts within 2 business days by FedEx at $0.00 cost (prepaid shipping labels for defective drives).

Since i always carry an external keyboard (Matias or Apple, usually) and prop the screen up ata decent height, I can't speak to the ergonomic horrors that many laptops are, but the Dells (Latitutdes, if i remember correctly) weren't bad and didn't have any Ubuntu dual boot show-stoppers (like the recent HP's with the wireless card that's a linux compatibility horror)

So for pre-UEFI dual boots, the Toshibas and Dells were adequate. I won't be buying any more HPs, and I'll probably go to centOS or straight Debian.

onlyup• 13 years ago

My Dell Vostro 1500 is going strong 6 years later. I have replaced the charger once (50e in a local shop) but to be fair I spent 4 years cramming the charger into a bag so it isn't surprising it broke.

Ecio78• 13 years ago

My experience: I have had a Dell XPS 13 since 2007. I had to replace the power supply last year (so after 5 years) because the connector had been broken (probably putting a foot over or pushing it with a chair). The way the connector broke made a shortcircuit in the motherboard and the laptop died but fortunately I still had an extended NBD warranty cover so they changed the mobo for free. I had used this warranty also in the past to change the display when it had some problem a couple of years before. The warranty didnt cover the powersupply (nor the various batteries I had to change in these 6 years, i think one every couple of years, the last one was a chinese compatible that was even bad and lasted probably 6 months).

In my previous company we had I think 5-6 XPS and 10 Latitude laptops and We had (i think) 1 motherboard problem, 1 or 2 power supply problems and dozens of batteries changed. We had also 70 or more desktops, very few failures.

I generally think Dell machines are good, but something has to be done for batteries (not only Dell ones...)

digisign2• 13 years ago

Kahlon.com sells replacement parts at a fraction of the cost of manufacturers.

CR45H• 13 years ago

I'm very happy with my XPS 13 so far. I'm running 13.04 and I've encountered a few issues... however, Dell has been very responsive to my bug reports. Also, on 13.04, there is no need for the PPA. Dell's changes have been incorporated into the standard kernel.

joshnerius2• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, have you had any trouble with backlight bleed?

This is the screen on the first XPS 13 I received: https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr

Since then, it's been replaced twice, each subsequent system having similar issues in different areas of the screen. I'm working with someone at Dell corporate now to provide details for their engineering team...I have to imagine all three systems were from the same manufacturing run.

return0• 13 years ago

Does it have a docking connector?

bluedino4• 13 years ago

No, only the Latitude line has that.

MatthewPhillips2• 13 years ago

> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment on the overall viability of Linux as a consumer-facing operating system for normal people. I don't think anyone is arguing that Linux hasn't earned its place in the data center—it most certainly has—but there's no way I'd feel comfy installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers. The XPS 13 DE shows the level of functionality and polish possible with extra effort, and that effort and polish together means this kind of Linux integration is something we won't see very often outside of boutique OEMs.

This is not extra effort, though. The same effort is required to make their Windows computers work. What you are experiencing is the realization that for most computers, there is no effort made to have them run linux well

Linux's biggest problem is one of perception. Because people are used to their Windows and Mac computers "just working", they think that is the steady-state of OSes, and that Linux is somehow failing to achieve normalcy.

tterrace2• 13 years ago

I think the extra effort he means is that Dell had to hack in additional fixes for the trackpad, wifi, bluetooth and monitor brightness: https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k... . They were all merged upstream, but if Dell had not done it, it would have been the customer spending hours on google or reading through threads on the ubuntu forums (I can speak from experience).

TazeTSchnitzel• 13 years ago

But only because the vendors for that hardware made no linux drivers in the first place.

MatthewPhillips2• 13 years ago

Dell also has to make sure its drivers work on Windows.

wiredfool2• 13 years ago

Well, I did. A few years ago, my mom was having a bunch of trouble with xp on her netbook, especially connecting to my house wifi. Did a dual boot install of Ubuntu 10.04 on it, and once I installed the flash/mp3 packages, had absolutely no issues with it. She's been using it since, updating when it tells her to, with no major issues. Now granted, this was a travel machine, so it was mostly limited to internety stuff, and the odd game of soduku, but its been a perfectly reasonable choice for her for a few years now.

andor• 13 years ago

Completely true. I recently installed Windows 7 on a new Lenovo T430 and it certainly didn't "just work".

Windows Update (or whatever the repository is called) couldn't find drivers for the Intel Ethernet controller, Intel Wifi adapter, Ivy Bridge chipset (!) and the Broadcom bluetooth adapter. I had to visit Lenovo's web site and manually download the drivers (the Bluetooth driver was more than 100MB!) This is a top of the line Windows laptop and none of the components are obscure.

xando• 13 years ago

Something went terribly wrong. It has the Windows key on the keyboard!

brokenparser2• 13 years ago

And "PrtScr" instead of "SysRq". Fail.

vilgax2• 13 years ago

May be "PrtScr" is more relevant because Ubuntu uses it as shortcut key to take full and window screenshots. Also according to wikipedia "SysRq" has no standard use.

microwise• 13 years ago

I think this article shows that Ubuntu is suitable for the desktop world if manufacturers support it. Am pretty impressed that someone who seems to have had problems with Ubuntu before actually likes it.

d232• 13 years ago

Insert obligatory "year of the linux desktop" wisecrack.

kolev3• 13 years ago

I actually had to return two of those and got my money back at the end. The screen can never be truly black which is a "no go" if you spend half of your workday in the terminal. Other than this, it's not so bad. Oh, some of the keys are unevenly illuminated. Anyway, it's definitely a bit cheaper than MacBook Air, but for a good reason, I think. Unfortunately, only Apple pays tons of attention to every little detail. The only great (but heavily underspec'd) laptop I've found was Aspire S7. The new Kira laptop from Toshiba looks decently, but we gotta see and touch it to tell.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

> The screen can never be truly black

Is it blue or brown or just gray?

kolev3• 13 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/oovbnwI.jpg - is this a black screen? No!

kolev3• 13 years ago

Here's another from the same thread here: https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr

joshnerius2• 13 years ago

I've had a similar experience, and I'm currently on the 3rd system. Here's an example: http://i.imgur.com/oovbnwI.jpg

I was hoping I was just unlucky and keep getting units from a bad batch of hardware, but it sounds like I'm not alone.

d232• 13 years ago

I'm not a designer, so this may be terribly ignorant, but looking at some of the packaging materials in those photos made me wonder: did Microsoft's push for "flat UI" design start a trend? Or did someone else do it before them? I feel like I've been seeing it everywhere now.

rsynnott2• 13 years ago

Unity pre-dates Windows Phone 7 (the first appearance of the UI concept formerly known as Metro) by some months, but the idea was around before; Adobe was quite keen on it for a while.

robotjosh• 13 years ago

The common wisdom that "linux will never be viable on the desktop" is frustrating. How user friendly and problem-free does ubuntu have to get before people stop claiming this? All drivers working by default isn't good enough? To install software on windows you have to buy it or download shady .exe files, how is this better or more user-friendly than graphical software repository?

UnoriginalGuy4• 13 years ago

Linux has come a long way in the context of driver support. It has not come very far at all in terms of ease of use.

When something goes wrong on Ubuntu for example, the advice is 99% of the time to open a terminal window and start running commands. This is impractical/unworkable for the majority of users.

Ubuntu might be the most forward thinking Linux distribution in terms of ease of use, but for every step forward they take two steps back.

With Unity for example doing relatively "simple" things like configuring the firewall have seemingly disappeared (as well as much other settings). They seem to have just deleted the majority of the UI and said "we'll just use search for everything!" Without thinking through discoverability.

I think Linux is great as a server operating system. But the people behind it just aren't capable of thinking like "normal" users and thus are completely unable to produce something for those users to use.

Right now the most likely contender for a Linux desktop is some kind of Android fork that extends what Google has managed to accomplish to a larger hardware set (or just take Chromium and expand that).

Glyptodon3• 13 years ago

Usually that advice isn't badly intentioned but just because people are used to doing things that way. Just as an example, if you download a package or something even if you could use GDebi Package installer to install it with the gui, every tutorial you ever see will probably tell you do `sudo dpkg -i` or something. Nearly every Linux problem a 'regular' user is likely to have falls into this category - there's probably a semi-sane way to do it with the GUI, but everyone who uses Linux will think it's 10x easier to just give someone a command instead of clicking through some lengthy graphical process.

drivebyacct25• 13 years ago

Dude, other things exist in the world beside Unity. Also, Unity, and the Gnome settings as part of the GNOME DE are pretty unrelated, not sure what you're on about with the Proxy talk.

c-bayprogrammer• 13 years ago

The article states:

> Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance.

By this definition, Windows and Mac OS X are both not ready for the desktop. I have had "average people" come to me and rely on me for assistance with both (especially Windows) many times.

rayiner• 13 years ago

How do you do a laptop review without discussing battery life?

CrazedGeek• 13 years ago

Second page:

"Because the XPS 13 is mature hardware, I didn't do any complex benchmarking. Battery life for a constant simulated load average of about 1.3 was almost exactly three hours, which isn't awful, but it isn't particularly great. The Ultrabook fared better under a real-life workload of light Web browsing, e-mailing, and writing, yielding about five-and-a-half hours of time spread across a day of work. This included a few transitions from home office to Panera Bread (or as we Ars editors like to call it, "the other office")."

bluedino4• 13 years ago

A few questions:

Ruby 1.8 - I thought we were dinosaurs for still using it

How is the hi-res display handled on the 13" screen? Does Ubuntu have display scaling or something built-in? I have it on a machine at home but never noticed any settings related to that.

Glossy display - is it as glossy as the classic MacBook Pro, or more like the Retina, which is still pretty glossy and will make you hate being stuck by the window at Starbucks.

I want one of these, but Dell isn't doing the one thing that makes people buy their hardware - offer it a BIG discount compared to other in the market (Air, Carbon X1, etc)

noahl• 13 years ago

I don't know about 12.04, but display scaling was part of the Ubuntu Touch announcement. Their plan is to stop defining everything in terms of pixels and start working in "grid units", which they will rescale in response to pixel density and the type of device you're on.

HSO• 13 years ago

> The screen is glossy, which I like, a choice that will no doubt illicit [sic] an immediate "I HATE THIS AND WANT TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW" response for a lot of people.

This just exasperates me! The article is not bad but I reflexively lose confidence in the author when I notice spelling mistakes like that. Maybe because they're not typos but actual mistakes. I know it's arrogant and overly dismissive but I can't get over myself on this point. Sorry, you lost me at "illicit"…

Glyptodon3• 13 years ago

It's great that it works and all, but it still seems like a shameless attempt to sell what ought to be a $900 laptop for $600 more because it's for 'developers.' Maybe give them the benefit of the doubt for needlessly using an i7, but even then the mark up is still $500ish...

capisce• 13 years ago

"Developer" ultrabook but still with an uncomfortable left slanted keyboard layout. When will we see a programmer friendly laptop with a symmetric keyboard layout like the TypeMatrix or TECK?

There is no redeeming quality to the left slanted keyboard layout unless you are making typewriters in the 19th century: http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/better-keyboards

spion• 13 years ago

And they were so close to perfection with this one. A decent, programmer friendly keyboard with concave key surfaces and a pointing stick - and I would've bought it straight away.

Unfortunately those two are a deal-breaker for me so I'll stick to my T420 and suffer the bad screen.

acabal2• 13 years ago

I've mentioned this in other threads but my gripe is that they got rid of the pgup/pgdown/home/end/etc. column. I have no idea why, and it even looks like there's plenty of space on the laptop for it. I use those keys all day, every day, and the sad trend of laptops aping Apple's keyboard layout saddens me greatly.

jebblue5• 13 years ago

>> I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating environment both at work and at home.

More or less than Windows? http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not-recogniz...

>> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment...

Huh?

>> Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance. >> but there's no way I'd feel comfy installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers.

My wife is as non-techie as you can get, we bought an Dell Laptop which came with Ubuntu for her sometime back, she has no trouble, logging in, browsing, using Open Office for simple documents and spreadsheets, Skype, Google Voice, email. Hmm, when I read stuff indicating that modern Linux especially Ubuntu is hard for ordinary users it honestly makes me question the true motivation of the author when the author is a blogger who pretends to have a clue.

lee_ars• 13 years ago

To be fair, I'm a pretty new blogger, so maybe my cluefulness is still developing. That being said, what do you think my motivation is?

brc• 13 years ago

I have an xps 13 and a MacBook air.

The MBA died 2 months out of warranty, and had to have the logic board replaced. Apple comped this, thankfully. Lately it's been getting flaky and requiring forced-restrts.

The xps 13 is still under warranty and had a hdd failure requiring a new unit from dell. I also find the trackpad extremely annoying with cursor jumping from thumb bumps, so much that I cart an extra keyboard around for it.

In the end I favor the MBA for better build quality and finish but I'm not super excited about either.

And no, I'm not a laptop killer. I still have a 15 year old compaq working, though with no battery life and the DVD is dead. I've just had a rotten run of luck with these two.

miahi• 13 years ago

"the laptop's bottom surface is coated in soft checkerboard patterned plastic"

Looks like carbon fiber to me.

unwind• 13 years ago

Many things that look like carbon fiber are not, in fact, carbon fiber. In the case of computer enclosures, it's even more so since "whoa, it's carbon fiber!" is a desirable response when doing the design.

Note that actual carbon fiber is a very hard and brittle substance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_%28fiber%29), and you're quoting text that says it's "soft" ...

davidw2• 13 years ago

Looks pretty good, but I basically stare at my computer all day long, and sometimes well into the night. I'm not sure 13" is enough screen. Opinions?

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

I have a ThinkPad X201 convertible with the 12" 1280x800 touchscreen. (The screen's nothing amazing; rather dull.) But it's a great device, apart from the repeated fan weardown (replaced 3 times already) which makes it get a bit hot. If Lenovo made a decent upgrade, I'd buy it in a minute.

Anyways, I've noticed no problems working on the 12", other than the lack of pixels for virtual size (like IDEs and stuff). A 1080p resolution fixes that.

davidw2• 13 years ago

1080px is a downgrade for me - I have a 15" screen with 1920x1200. However, a similar resolution on a smaller screen might be a bit more than I want to subject my eyes to. But I don't want to give up screen real estate, either.

ersii2• 13 years ago

I have absolutely no problems coding and reading on a 13.3" monitor all day long.

Though, I do have a lot of problems with my crappy resolution (1366x768) on this monitor (Asus UL30VT).

digisign2• 13 years ago

Can't wait for the third rev with (hopefully) higher res display, more ram and battery life, newer ubuntu.

Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review

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