Dell Offers Computers Preinstalled with Ubuntu | Hacker News Reader

Dell Offers Computers Preinstalled with Ubuntu

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150 pointswatchdogtimer122 comments

I just recently purchased a "GPD Pocket", which is in my opinion the best Linux machine I've ever owned. Its a unibody-like case (just like MacBook) with a touchscreen, in a very small package:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-lapto...

I've been a Linux user since day one of its release, and an "Apple laptop user" since the day of the tiBook release - and these two aspects of my professional life have always been a little incongruous to me personally.. the MacBook is in my toolbox because it is, simply, a great laptop in terms of physical comfort level, even if I'm not a huge fan of MacOS - the physicality of the thing matters. And Linux, of course, is just plain powerful.

So the moment I realised someone produce a laptop that wasn't from Apple, yet had very similar physical attributes (albeit smaller), which would also give me a way to escape MacOS and run Linux as a first-class OS, I jumped on board.

The point is, I hope manufacturers continue this trend - to build a better laptop than Apple, but make it really worthwhile for the user to install Linux on it.

I've had a lot of systems, but my GPD Pocket is really one of my favourite devices - the best of the hardware world combined with the best software you can find, and when I open it up and start using it, I really don't have any desire to buy another Apple machine.

Could this be the start of the exodus? Time will tell - the GPD Pocket has many aspects that are not so great - but if they follow it up with an improvement over its existing design, I will definitely become an ex-Apple customer.

The physicality is important, and it seems its no longer an Apple-exclusive desire to build such wonderful machines.

(Note: this means I don't find any of these Dells' particularly attractive for the same reason .. but maybe someone has compared them in reality and knows where I'm coming from here?)

> So the moment I realised someone produce a laptop that wasn't from Apple, yet had very similar physical attributes (albeit smaller), which would also give me a way to escape MacOS and run Linux as a first-class OS, I jumped on board.

Samsung Series 9 (and later incarnations) are great non-Apple notebooks for us ex-Apple converts. They are basically MacBooks with Linux supported out of the box.

Too bad they are not sold in Europe anymore.

Yes, I think this is really about wide-spread availability - there have been other Macbook-killers, but none as readily available as the GPD Pocket so far, imho ..

I used once a 10" Asus Chromebook Flip. For $300, you get a reasonably fast laptop with Linux and good keyboard. Great for vim, typing documents, and even occasional netflix.

The real issue in these laptops for developers is the Atom CPU. I found most packages or libraries I used do not support Atom or ARM CPUs. There are hacks and other user-compiled packages but there are compromises. In the end, you just want to get work done and not be bugged with limitations.

I'd pay good money for a similar laptop with an i5 or equivalent processor though.

I've got a C100P and can't say I had a big problem with libraries. The only annoying thing was that there are few really good text editors that work on ARM, so the C100P was actually the reason I picked up Vim and Emacs.

My biggest problem was the Chromebook part. Getting your own linux distro on the device is a hassle, the devmode boot screen is abysmal (I once accidentally killed my system by touching the space bar), and in Croagh, Xorg would stop working every few weeks, forcing me to set the whole thing up from scratch again.

It's a really cool little device, and I still use it to play videos while I'm washing the dishes, but the (vanilla) Linux options didn't convince me.

Edit: Actually, I've been thinking about buying the GDP Pocket for a while now. Can anyone attest to how good the keyboard is? The layout seemed like the biggest drawback to me...

The layout is awful at first but after a week or two of use, I got into it and now I hardly even notice. Keep in mind though, the whole thing is quite pocketable ..

That doesn't sound too bad. Thanks for the response!

I haven't run into any such problem with the Atom CPU in the GPD Pocket .. of course I did go through a lot of hell with Arm netbooks and so on in the past (and am still an avid porter of producers to the OpenPandora universe) .. but I'm actually quite relieved to be working on an x86 with similar characteristics to Arm. Hopefully the next GPD is going to e a bit beefier, though ..

GDP is a really interesting company.

Their Win10/Android handhelds/game consoles seem to be under the radar in the West, but judging from Chinese sites seem to be killing it there.

I think I'd find 7" too small - I had a 10" Netbook for a while, and it wasn't awesome. I did like my 7" Nexus tablet though, so maybe?

Personally, I'd love to see official Linux support for the Xiaomi Mi Laptops, which seem perfect to me.

I've got the Xiaomi Mi 12 laptop that is fanless. I've been using it everyday for a few months now, with Linux Mint 18.2 installed on it. I've not found anything that doesn't work. The biggest suprise is how well sleep works by closing the lid and how quickly it starts up after opening the lid. I find it quicker for waking up than my (work supplied) 2015 MacBook Pro. The touchpad isn't as good as the Macbook, but it is better than any other machine that I've tried

Is there anything you would like me to try out on it for you?

Just remembered something that might be an issue with it. I couldn't get right click to register properly. As I don't normally click on trackpads, but instead I tap - I set tap to be a left click and a `click` to be a right click.

Does yours have the switchable video cards? Does that work?

There were reports of issues with the WiFi. Is that good now?

I don't think it has switchable video cards and I'm not sure how I would find out. I've never taken it apart.

I've never had an issue with WiFi.

I've followed GPD since the days of the GP2X and GP32 game consoles (also an awesome example of hardware disruption done in a way that the mainstream players can't compete) .. and I do look forward to the next product from GPD. Hopefully they'll build on the Pocket concept and make improvements - if they do, I'll be replacing my MacBook subscription with a GPD signup ... ;)

How do you like the keyboard of the GPD pocket?

It did take some getting used to - its not exactly a perfect layout - but actually after a week I don't even think about it any more and type on it comfortably.

Its a sort of similar experience to the jarring discord that would happen back in the day when one moved from, say, a Hazeltine terminal to a Burroughs, lol ..

I'm mostly using this machine to develop Lua apps - but I think if I was using a curly-brace language, I'd probably be cursing like a demon for a few days until the muscle memory circuits reconfigure themselves.

How does it compare with a Psion keyboard of the old days? How comfortable is it for typing for extended periods of time?

I'm at the point where I don't even notice any more, and can use the keyboard all day. But for the first 3 weeks I was seriously cursing and bringing down the house of hades on the designers for making such curious decisions as to the placement of ; and {} and so on .. however, with practice, I've become very used to the keyboard and no longer even really care. I do have to state, however, that I've been at the computer game longer than a lot of people (4 decades, almost 5), and I've had this keyboard-adjustment-period factor many times in my life, so its not a deal-breaker when things get churlish.

Interesting computer but the Intel Atom CPU makes it less interesting. An i5 would make it far more exciting.

I've found it more than sufficient for my needs - yes, an i5 would be more interesting, but the fact is that in this form factor probably would be a little more difficult to use, heat-wise.

I'm holding out that GPD will produce a followup after the clear success of the Pocket so far .. maybe in a few months we'll see a "GPD Book" that pushes things a bit more ..

In the meantime though, I'm finding the Atom perfectly cromulant. It handles everything I throw at it, compiling big projects is just a little less performant than I'm used to, but for a majority of the time I hardly even notice. Most important is the amount of RAM - 8 gigs - I think this makes a big difference at this scale.

An i5 would overheat in no time in such a small format.

Thanks for the link! It seems GDP is a nice machine especially given 8GB of RAM so one can use it for non-trivial development on the go. And compared with MacBook or Dell XPS, the display opens almost flat, which should help with using it in various situations.

8Gb of RAM really makes the difference between production and frustration. I've had 'all the machines', but this is the first time I've been totally satisfied to the point where I can easily recommend it to my other developer peers as a reference ..

I also find the GPD pocket hugely desirable (as someone who grew up on the greatness of Psion organisers, Nokia communicators, N900 etc..), but I'm surprised you'd use it as a laptop replacement - surely too small?

My preference for a work machine would be a Thinkpad X270. Running linux of course.

You might also be interested in the Gemini project[1]

[1]https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gemini-pda-android-linux-...

> Could this be the start of the exodus? Time will tell

Not really. Assuming the definition:

> the GPD Pocket has many aspects that are not so great

almost all the laptops around fit that bill when it comes to Linux, each in its own way, so the GPD is nothing special in the broad view.

Every laptop has aspects that aren't so great, including Macs.

Yes, and that's the point why a new machine, revolution-wise, is just a drip in the lake, unless it has some exceptional aspect.

Well, the touchscreen factor should not be underestimated. I've gotten rid of an iPad, a netbook, and a desktop workstation by having the GPD Pocket serve the same basic functions as each .. where I would comfortably use the iPad for reading, I now use the GPD. Where I would normally have a workstation PC for development, same GPD. Where I would absolutely have had a netbook to pack in a bag alongside the snacks for trips up the mountain, same GPD.

If the next GPD is a little larger, with a moderately improved keyboard and expansion options - its going to replace my MacBook subscription, no doubt about it.

When I looked at this last I could only buy one with Windoze installed. Is it better now?

The big deal, IMHO, is not so much that it comes with Ubuntu preinstalled, but that it (I naively assume) contains only hardware supported by Linux.

I have been ridiculously lucky when buying hardware, but I am told it is not that difficult, even today, to run into machines with hardware that is not well-supported by Linux.

So I think I would actually prefer if vendors sold machines that have been tested to work well with Linux, kind of like the "Designed for Windows"-stickers on PCs and notebooks.

If a machine is made of hardware that Linux supports well, I do not care what OS is preinstalled, since I will probably wipe it and install one myself anyway. But having a guarantee from the vendor that I can do so without trouble or fear of bricking my machine would be helpful.

My monitor, a Dell UP2715K, is one of the most unsupported pieces of hardware I've ever dealt with on Linux. It has been a nightmare. Nvidia graphics card support has caused me weeks of grief as well. So why have I kept it? Because when I finally got everything to work, I have become addicted to the quality of the text! I honestly can't work with other monitors now due to the low DPI looking like absolute crap. Apple has ruined me. Too bad no one else has stepped into the 5K monitor market.

I was confused about how a monitor would cause problems until I understood that it is a very-high-res display.

I am happy that my dual-display setup at home works the way I want it to. Before getting my current desktop PC, I had not used GNU/Linux on a system with more than one display, and I had heard horror stories of how that did not work out very well. Fortunately, for me it just worked(tm).

Speaking of monitors, Eizo makes a monitor with a 1:1 aspect ratio, i.e. the display is a square, 1920 by 1920. I would so LOVE to have one of those, but of course it is prohibitively expensive (at least for my monitor budget).

I agree, but it would be a nice bonus not to have to pay for Windows at all. This also gives a clear signal to Dell.

Dell charges you 100 euros more for Ubuntu than for Windows.

http://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/notebooks-und-ultrabooks/xps-...

On the Precision machines, which you can configure manually, switching from Windows to Ubuntu makes the machine cost about 100 USD less. The price difference is probably other hardware.

You never really pay for Windows. Most OEM vendors make up for the price of the license by installing tons of additional crap on every Windows they ship out, so practically Windows does not make your laptop more expensive.

If Windows were free what are the odds the market would force OEMs to do that anyway to shave a percentage point off their prices/profit margins? I'm betting near 100% and only premium machines wouldn't have crapware.

Yeah I think they would do it anyway, regardless of Windows cost. What's interesting is that so far, they don't when it comes to Linux installations. Not that there is that much crapware they can actually install for Linux, but they could potentially bundle Chrome and stuff like that if they really wanted.

To this day, my Lenovo will not go into hibernation when battery is critically low, even though I have it configured in the power settings. Not that big of a deal, I simply need to be aware of the battery meter all the time, but I wish it would just work.

My Thinkpad X220 gives 3 beeps when it's at 5% battery. Probably OS independent, though I've only run Linux on this thing. Enough time for me to grab the charger or put it in hibernate.

Does yours not have that option in the BIOS?

Haven't checked the BIOS, I'll have a look, thanks.

If hibernate only fails when the battery is low, this doesn't necessarily sound like a hardware issue.

My best Linux experience laptop continues to be the venerable ThinkPad X200 (circa 2008). It has perfect Linux support - every single piece of hardware works with drivers in the upstream kernel. It has good battery life, it's lightweight, and it's very durable - it's almost 10 years old and both of mine look brand new. The keyboard, RAM, disk, etc is all user-upgradable and each screw is labelled so you know what to remove to get into which components. The keyboard is the best I've ever seen in a laptop - and it's user replacable. The laptop has WiFi, ethernet, bluetooth, a fingerprint reader, and a webcam, all of which work perfectly with open source drivers. The hardware is so well understood that I've also had most of it work correctly on NetBSD, Minix, Haiku, and 9front. 9front! It's also supported by coreboot.

It's not an 8-core powerhouse, but I don't expect that from my laptop. It compiles the Linux kernel in about 10 minutes on one (of two) cores. It runs KVM just fine. If I need to do something really heavy I'll SSH into some remote box that can handle it better, but I've done that pretty rarely. It copes very well with almost any workload I've given it.

You can pick one up on eBay for anywhere from $40-$150. No other laptop even comes close for me. Is it glamorous? No. Does it play games? No. But it's the best damn laptop you will ever use.

A few years back, I decided I wanted to try out Linux after finally getting tired of Windows (which I'd used all through school). I bought a Thinkpad X200 for $65 on eBay. I had Linux up and running on it in an hour, and used it happily until I bought my 2013 11-inch Macbook Air (which for my money is the perfect machine in terms of form factor, I'll use it until it dies). Thinkpads are impressive machines.

Bought a 7520 and am keeping it on 16.04. could not be happier.

Highlights:

32 GiB of RAM

15" 1920x1080 FHD matte screen with no mic or webcam

1TB storage

Xeon processor (equivalent to top end Mac processor)

So... Many... Ports

Battery life with screen I picked is amazing

Ability to fully customize the beast

Painless Linux experience (truly).

Down sides:

Heavier than a MBP

A teeny bit of coil whine

Charger is 180W....and big too

Cost -- as much as a rMBP, but for the dollars the hardware is dramatically better in the areas I care about. Go spec it out if serious and make own decision though :)

I love this computer. I know some people may consider the 1920x1080 15" screen not as nice as Retina (you can get a Retina density display on the 7520 if you want), but I find 144ppi perfect for 15". Better than anything of yesteryear. Also I was able to get /exactly/ what I wanted at each option for a reasonable price and no compromises. Anyhow I can finally tell people this is a good idea if you are comfortable on Linux.

I just got the same... notice that besides the 1TB SSD you can put inside an additional 4TB HDD.

the only problem is that turboboost does not seem to work out of the box, is it working for yours?

You know..... I haven't checked.

I only kicked the tires on the discrete GPU.

I have been looking at this now. It seems, according to `turbostat` that one core reaches 3000mhz (indicating turbo is not kicking in), but... see below:

I have https://ark.intel.com/products/97463/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3... so Turbo should hit 4ghz

I tried this:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/871308/enabling-disabling-tu...

and put a 1 in /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo and it dropped the cpu frequency from ~2700 to 2200 according to the `turbostate` command. However, when I run i7z it reports a frequency of 3000 (maximum frequency without turbo), which is correct, and a frequency of ~3600 mhz (freq multiplier of 36x, which is one of a possible 40x, 38x, 37x, and 36x turbo multipliers) so I /think/ it is doing the right thing. I am going to assume turbostate is not correctly reporting the frequency using the correct multiplier, but that may not be true.

It is definitely scaling the CPU speed. And, anecdotally, it compiles things very quickly :)

What sort of investigations have you performed?

I purchased my Precision 7510 almost 2 years ago and it has been a great experience with almost every Linux distribution I tried. Battery life (with a few tricks) is almost 9 hours and performance are astonishing. The only downsides are the weight and the keyboard... for those reasons I recently tried and bought a Thinkpad T470 but I am now really missing the P7510 power and speed

Keyboard in the 7520 seems pretty solid. An improvement over current generation Apple keyboards and... solid feeling.

I wonder how different 7510 is over the others. This one is not my beloved mechanical keyboards, but it does not fatigue my hands at all, and has a full numpad :)

I was so tired of being forced to buy overpriced hardware from Apple that I'm not even happy with just because I work with OS X.

I then bought a new Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition and was surprised that a) the scaling does not even work with Dells own "tweaked" Ubuntu (even the installer looked horrible) and b) "coil whine" is a thing at this price point. I was so unhappy with it that I sold it and replaced it with an HP spectre x360. Except for thunderbolt everything worked fine so for me there was no real advantage over the "preinstalled" Ubuntu on the Dell.

If all you care about are CPU clock speed & RAM then Apple computers are overpriced. I grew up salivating over another few hundred Mhz but honestly computers are fast enough that I really didn't notice a difference the last time I upgraded to a new computer.

Computers have evolved well beyond those basic specs and I buy apple products because I care about the whole package. So until other manufacturers figure out how to build computers that are sturdier, last longer, have better screens, sync wifi hotspots across devices, etc... I expect apple to continue charging more for a superior all around product.

I have a precision 5520, and if I'm using integrated graphics I get 8+ hours even with the 4k screen. The build seems quite sturdy but I've only had it for around 6 months so far so can't say too much about that yet.

What really changed laptop buying for me was the cloud.

No laptop is going to have 8x discrete GPUs, but all of them can manage to SSH using my cellphone as a hotspot.

So I started buying laptops that were easy to carry, nice to type on, etc.

The battery and of course the trackpad...

I have an Acer Travelmate p645. Bought it as a refurb for $750. Everything works flawlessly with Ubuntu. I would take if over my $1500 MBP any day. MBP has good battery life, better screen, and better trackpad (when it works) but OSX is a total drag. Everything in OSX is slow and clunky compared to Ubuntu and even the simplest tasks require googling to find some obscure keyboard shortcut that does what you want.

I met a person once who explained to me why Macs are so much better than PCs - because they just have the apple logo and none of the other "weird stuff" (BIOS boot sequence) when they startup. That pretty much summarizes all the "advantages" of OSX.

Still can't figure out why people who develop software for Ubuntu servers work on OSX instead of Ubuntu. What a waste.

>Still can't figure out why people who develop software for Ubuntu servers work on OSX instead of Ubuntu. What a waste.

It wasnt an option. I think, especially in larger organizations, that IT departments dont want to support yet another OS. My previous employer didnt even offer macs.

I also just bought a Dell XPS 13 to replace my MacBook 13. I returned it after a day. I can confirm that a) the scaling doesn't work well at all yet, and b) absolutely awful "coil whine".

It baffles me that they are not able to fix the "coil whine" problem. The support thread I was active has like 20+ pages, and they are still claiming that the new revision of the motherboard fixed the problem.

They even replaced mine two times, and even the technician that had to replace it on site told me it will make no difference at all. He then gave me a link to a YouTube video where someone was wrapping different parts inside the computer with electrical tape. That's when I knew that a) I need a new notebook and b) never buy a Dell product ever again.

Indeed. And the Dell XPS 13 is not a cheap computer. I will think twice before buying a Dell.

What exactly is the coil whine? Mine “chatters” when I move the mouse or there is animation, is that the same thing?

It's a very high frequency constant note that comes from some component somewhere inside.

Ok, so different than what I have.

I can also confirm XPS 13 coil whine which Dell considers a "non issue" / "working as intended". The quality of Dell products declined so fast last couple of years that I'm glad this thread is full of useful laptop advice as I'm seriously considering dropping Dell altogether. (actually coil whine is the least of problems with this laptop)

I have XPS 13 9343 and I haven't noticed the coil whine. Which model do you have? Do I not notice it because it's not there or because of ambient noise/poor hearing?

9350 with i7. Just keep your ear near the keyboard. With a bad combination of video drivers the whine is super loud. People in video conferences were asking about the sound (thought it's HDD but I've got SSD). If you don't hear anything then congratulations! Maybe previous models did not have this issue? Do you have Thunderbolt port? If so I'd check 9343...

What OS are you running? My "coil whine" was significantly quieter when running Windows. Running the preinstalled Ubuntu the whine was like 200% louder.

I don't know if that's a question for me but I've seen noise in Windows too. Additionally with a "bad" set of video drivers the noise was super-loud.

Does sound work in Ubuntu on the x360? I bought one when it first came out, but there was an issue with the BIOS (from my recollection, Windows turned off the sounds but Ubuntu couldn't turn it back on) and had to return it.

Very nice build, although the battery made it back heavy.

I don't know, to be honest. The first thing I did was to remove Windows and install Ubuntu. Sound worked fine. Due to the thunderbolt issues I now use a MacBook again so I can't comment on the current state of it.

The headline was altered in a confusing way, this article is about the Dell Precision line.

FWIW, I have a Dell XPS 13 9350 laptop with Linux on it (Ubuntu 17.10) and it runs marvellously.

I have the same machine with Ubuntu 16.04 (pre-installed). I had a MacBook Pro 2014 before and am very happy with the switch.

Pros:

- small and light yet a large screen

- awesome battery life

- $500+ cheaper than a comparable MBP

- OS X's shell isn't bad, Ubuntu's is even nicer

- I can customise Ubuntu to my heart's content

- no stupid apps I don't want or need bothering me (iTunes, Garage Band, ...)

Cons:

- screen less crisp than MBP

- speaker quality worse

- Ubuntu is not very clever about remembering the sound settings for my headphones, have to re-plug and re-apply settings often (may be fixable/fixed in 17.04)

- web cam placement is in the lower left corner of the screen so the people you chat with look up your nostrils.

My productivity is probably the same but the XPS feels much more like it's "mine" and I'm not being force-fed stuff by Apple I don't need.

Yes, ubuntu runs very well on DELL computers since many years. As a customer, I am looking to computers preinstalled with ubuntu for two reasons: - I want to stop giving money to Microsoft when I do not use it. Microsoft may use this money against me. - I want the best installation of drivers for my hardware without loosing time.

Yes, “Dell Precision Machines Available With Ubuntu Pre-Installed” is the article title – likewise I have a Dell XPS 13", this one an L322X though. What version of Ubuntu it came with pre-installed I could not tell you, can't remember for the life of me which one.

Dell has been offering these for a long time. I bought a 1525n (laptop) with Ubuntu pre-installed in 2008, it was my primary machine for years. I don't use it often now, but it runs xubuntu 14.04 fantastically well.

Same here. I bought a Dell Inspiron back in 2009 with Ubuntu pre-installed. I still use it to this day though it is pretty much on its last leg. I think the title is a little confusing. It should be that Dell is expanding the number of computers they offer with Ubuntu. This title makes it sound like they haven't been offering it for years now.

Have they fixed the Windows key? I remember from my XPS Developer Edition it came pre-installed with Ubuntu but the windows key was not replaced with a would-be-awesome Ubuntu key. A tiny detail, but still...

I would pay a non-trivial amount of money to remove the windows branded key from mine. But the precision I bought this year did indeed have a windows branded meta key.

I remember at open sopurce conferences, people used to give out stickers with Tux or an Ubuntu or Debian logo to stick on top of the Windows key. Not quite the same of course.

Still not a single one in Australia? :(

Honestly, it cannot be that hard...I'm this close to writing off future dell purchases on principal...

That's as someone who loves his XPS 13 and had to put ubuntu on there himself...

I have been asking about their plans to bring these to Australia for at least a year now with my recent message to them on Twitter not getting a reply and their sales chat saying they aren't available. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any laptop available in Australia that comes preinstalled with any for of Linux, and the XPS does have good support, so to me it still seems to be best option for now.

I bought a Dell Precision 5520 earlier this year. I have to say that the Ubuntu it shipped with was not /quite/ there. But it did not suffer the custom kernel woes of earlier XPS models which shipped with linux. It was mostly stock Ubuntu.

After throwing arch Linux on the thing it was more akin to "old thinkpad" levels of compatibility. I'm really impressed and not sorry that I gave Dell my money. It's a rock solid machine.

Yeah I got one too, when the meta key didn't work at first my new computer euphoria took a vacation until I did the fix they posted online. There were also a few other changes I remember vaguely having to do before really feeling like it was a personalized machine.

I love it though. Will say it can heat up a little fast, especially when the GPU is enabled.

No they don't. http://www.dell.com/en-ca/ (to which I am redirected from every link in the OP) has nothing other than Win10 or Win7pro. I don't know exactly who they are selling these Ubuntu laptops, but it isn't to me.

http://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-laptops-netbooks-and-tab...

I'd jump at the chance to buy a Ubuntu laptop. Not for me, but for those family members who want laptops but cannot stand windows. I already am going to spend this chirstmas installing Linux on my parent's new machine, bought at Costco with win10. I would have ordered them a dell Ubuntu laptop, but I guess Canada is just too small a market. Victory to Costco and another "sale" for Microsoft.

That list is not really complete --- just 2 weeks ago, we needed 2 "small form factor" desktops for a project, so I emailed our Dell sales guy, mentioning "we're going to install Linux on these anyway, don't care about the windows license". 3 days later, we had 2 x OptiPlex 3050's, with a fully functional Ubunutu image right from Dell.

I'm not sure the Linux option was available for that via their web site, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they support Linux on more systems than their site indicates.

The pain-point for me with Ubuntu (I personally installed) on laptop is the power management. Are these pre-installed models any better w.r.t power management?

I'm very happy with the battery life of my XPS 9360 running Ubuntu (17.10 currently). I get a full working day out of it.

So far (about six months) I've received some number of firmware updates (3-6?) through fwupd. These are integrated well into Ubuntu and the Linux ecosystem generally. The updates happen through UEFI and no other OS is required in order to receive them. I believe Dell prepare the updates for this pipeline themselves.

Disclosure: I work for Canonical and use the laptop for work. But my choice of laptop, and money to buy it, is my own (it isn't a business expense; my contract merely requires me to have and maintain my own laptop).

> Are these pre-installed models any better w.r.t power management?

I would add another question: will they remain better wrt power management in future upgrades?

I don't like Ubuntu, but I'd buy one. The real meaning of this is that they've validated the hardware to work against modern Linux.

I thought they have done this for a long time, at least since they sold that poor woman a laptop with Ubuntu, causing her to drop out of college.

Shame the laptops are all — I think — 15" and above. And shame that page doesn't provide any information apart from a photo and the model number: at least list the screen size, maybe processor etc. so I'm not completely in the dark having to dip in and out of each one.

I've got the XPS 13, which is 13" and comes preinstalled with Ubuntu as well. These are merely _new_ models with Ubuntu.

Thanks for the info — the XPS is definitely one of a very small number of candidates to replace my Macbook Pro 13". Is ubuntu totally seamless? What would you say is the biggest downside to that laptop?

I use XPS 13 (9350 model from 2016) with Fedora and it is mostly seamless. The only thing that does not work neither under original Ubuntu nor with Fedora was a "docking station", the extra that Dell provided that connects to USB-3 port and provided more ports, monitor connection and power. I just could not get it to work with an external monitor without being too blurry.

Hardware-wise the biggest disappointment was screen. QHD+ resolution is nice in theory, but the screen is just way too reflective. Using screen protector helped somewhat to mitigate the problem, but it is still far from what you get with proper mate screens. The screen can be a lesser issue if it could be opened to a wider angle, but the max angle is just not enough to avoid the reflections from surrounding lamps.

Another thing is the touchpad. It works OK but I do not understand why nobody in PC world can match Apple. Even touchpad on MacBook Air from 2013 is better than what Dell provides. And the issue is not the Linux drivers, as I run Fedora on that MacBook Air as well.

On the positive side the cooling fan is very quiet, way better than MacBook Air. Even under heavy load the noise is not distracting.

I'm pretty happy with it so far. I can't really name any downsides that are specifically bothering me (of course, cheaper would always have been better, but I don't think that's specific to this laptop). People have been complaining about the webcam being located below the screen since the bezel is so small on the other sides, but I don't video chat that often so people looking at me from below is not that much of a problem. Another thing is coil whine, which I guess has been present in mine as well, but I'm usually listening to music or am not in a silent environment, so that hasn't bothered me either.

It's a fine laptop, and Ubuntu runs well. The biggest downside for me is the position of the camera. It's underneath the screen.

It's a great piece of laptop.

It copied the MacBook for all important points.

The touchpad is the only downside to me.

The OS and matte screen are huge pluses.

The 15" XPS 15/5520 is really in a 14" body. The difference between my XPS 15 and my Clevo 15.6" is night and day in weight, form factor, and battery life but I only sacrifice 32GB of RAM compared to my old laptop (old laptop was 64GB vs 32GB).

Does this mean you can buy a dell without paying for the Windows license?

Yes, and you've actually been able to for quite a few years - these are just the newest models continuing that tradition.

Yes.

When you select to configure your Dell, you can see how much you save when choosing Ubuntu.

In Germany you actually pay extra for the XPS 13 models with Ubuntu.

http://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/notebooks-und-ultrabooks/xps-...

Windows 10 Home, 1 298.99 €

Ubuntu, 1 329.00 €

Is this a special section of the site or something? I’ve heard this for years but when I’ve looked around in the past I never did seem to find it. Especially configurations that show you how much you saved!!

Huge thing keeping me from buying a PC is paying for Windows. I’d prefer no part of my purchase go to the Windows license. Hard for me to stomach paying for Windows just to buy a computer.

It used to be marketed as "Project Sputnik" and was harder to find (I sort of remember you had to start the configuration from a specific page and what a pain it was to hunt around to find it).

I just bought another Precision 5xxx in September and the option was right where you'd expect it to be in their configurator though.

in India, most laptop vendors sell a version with Ubuntu. Which is why India is kind of turning as the real market for desktop linux over the west - where it is affordable for most people to buy a macbook.

This is a very large market that Fedora is potentially ignoring. I have much better experience installing and running fedora on bleeding edge hardware (NVME, etc) than any other OS. Currently I run a XPS 9350 non-developer edition with Fedora 27 and everything works out of the box.

Good news but I prefer Fedora nowadays... Of course it is an easy switch and being tested with Ubuntu means that all hardware should be linux compatible.

Dell XPS 13 battery bloated, warped keyboard and track pad, and Dell refused to accept responsibility for the dangerous defective product.

Do you remember when people (well linux people) used to say that Microsoft pressured companies into not providing linux? Was that true?

If only they'd put discrete PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys instead of making people use Fn+arrows.

That is for the US. What about Europe?

Dell Precision laptop has nVidia GPU. No thanks.

I want a laptop with 4k built-in display and no nVidia GPU.

With an egregious EULA. I wouldn't touch a dell Ubuntu image with a ten foot pole.

s/5/5 more/

True, I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop in 2013 and it was with Ubuntu pre-installed.

I got myself an "n Series" Vostro in 2012 that came with Linux. Served me well for several years.

I encourage all Linux users to buy Dell as often as possible. We need more companies that actively support open source software. Next step will be open hardware.

They look kind of expensive (1000 plus dollars) compared to the refurbished Lenovo x220 and up (200 to 500 dollars). How do they compare ?

You're asking how a brand new computer compares to a laptop from 5 years ago with a 1366x768 screen.

And those Dell laptops still come with 16:9 1080p screens. Meh.

I've spent so many hours trying to get HiDPI working with Linux and have returned two machines to Dell (thankfully their 30 day no quibble return saved me twice). I do a fair bit of image editing and the GIMP is unusable and lots of older X classics that are unlikely to be updated. Until HiDPI issues are resolved I can't use Linux on the desktop on a daily basis.

> and lots of older X classics that are unlikely to be updated.

https://github.com/kaueraal/run_scaled

So it's mostly the screen ?

As usual not on the German store.

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