Comment by vogon_laureate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vogon_laureate | Hacker News Reader

I own both a 15" Macbook Pro 2017 model with touch bar and a Dell XPS 15" 2017 model. Both have their pluses and minuses. Both needed major repairs. Dell needed logic board and screen replaced. Mac needed logic board and keyboard.

I mainly use the Mac. It's much quieter, has an amazingly vivid and bright retina display, extremely good battery life, best track pad in the industry and the best speakers on any laptop I've ever had. I like the keyboard, I even game on it. I don't get the whole dongle issue but I'm not a heavy user of peripherals. I have two USB-C port extender dongles should I ever need anything from ethernet to firewire 800. I've used them like twice in the last two years.

The Dell is fine, but I'm just not a big Windows fan. The keyboard is kinda meh, the bluetooth is poor, the screen isn't as bright or vivid and has some light bleed and the build has that cheap plastic feel about it. If it was any more reliable than the Macbook, I think I would be persuaded by the argument about the hardware, but both have had problems, both required lengthy repairs, etc. I have extended warranty on Dell and Applecare for the Mac and I needed them for both.

Laptops fail. My PC motherboard with ultra durable components also failed after two years. Heat and dust and micro-imperfections in silicon will do their thing. Sure, Apple made some questionable design choices. It's still a great machine.

Dell XPS laptops are some of the best Linux laptops out there. No need for Windows. I've been using the same model as you with Linux for a while now and an very happy with it.

Agreed, the Linux support for the Dell XPS machines is excellent.

For real? I have Dell XPS at work an had tons of problems installing linux on it. I ended up finding a respined Ubuntu ISO in github that has plenty of patches pre-applied that mostly works, but still have some issues now and then with random freezes and with a thunderbolt dock. Admittedly, I was not a desktop linux user and didn't have much experience tinkering with it, but a coworker of mine who has been using linux for many years and who I would consider a fairly advanced user (heavily configured distro using his own modified tiled desktop environment, etc) had the same issues and couldn't even figured out how to install Debian on it without having the fans spin up randomly and with everything working (I think the webcam didn't work).

Try updating the firmware of the laptop and possibly the dock. Then do a clean install of Ubuntu. I just upgraded my stock 18.04 with stock 19.04, everything works great.

Now that I think of it, you can boot with the LiveCD to see if it will help before trying this.

If the random freezes continue you may have bad ram or other components need to be replaced.

A few years ago I bought an XPS 15 9530 (2013) and I hate that thing.

A few months after I got it the touch screen failed. Dell put some effort into repairing it (about an hour of remote support for updating the BIOS and afterward a technician visited me twice to replace the display (the first time he didn't have the correct replacement screen at hand)).

However, a while later the screen started to flicker sometimes. At first, I took it for a software issue and since I didn't use the laptop that often I didn't really care. When I realized that it was, in fact, a hardware defect (again), the warranty had expired.

So good Linux support is one (very valuable) thing, but if the build quality is that bad (I mean, even my 300€ first gen Eeepc still runs with fewer problems), I am not willing to pay the XPS premium again.

I've tried to go full Linux desktop. I hated it. On the servers I manage, I run terminal only and mostly BSD systems. Linux desktop just boils my piss. Plus I need Adobe apps, and a few other bits and pieces of software. I need my machine to facilitate my work, not get in my way. I appreciate that Linux works like that for some, but for me, not at all.

Just using a Linux desktop vanilla out of the box is setting yourself up for failure. If you plan to be in Linux full-time, you'll have to meet it half-way, and do a lot of customization work. I've got scripts checked into github that setup the machine how I like, which includes XMonad as a window manager, tmux + a heavily customized neovim for terminal and coding, and Brave+Vimium as my browser. I almost never have to touch the mouse and it's fast as hell. Sharp learning curve but one you are over it it's much more efficient and out of your way than windows or os x. If you are going to be using computers professionally for more than a year, as most of us probably are, it's almost certainly worth a few months of effort to have a low level hotrod as your environment.

I've also switched to an XPS15 as a linux machine - the largest benefit Dell has over Apple is that IF something breaks (or I break it accidentally) someone will be at my home or at work within 24 hours with replacement parts and will fix it, no questions asked. I can't afford having to go to the apple store and wait days for a replacement when it's my main work machine. The build quality is quite decent and if you look inside it's clearly designed to be repairable on-site, while fixing Apple notebooks often requires replacing entire sections at once and the use of specialized tools.

Can confirm. 10 years ago I burned motherboard and processor trying to overclock my Dell PC. Within 24h a Dell support guy was at my home with all parts of the PC and replaced it without questions asked.

After the quick replacement I even told him it was probably my fault but he replied saying it doesn't matter because on average customers don't abuse and I was just a number to them.

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