Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
I remember buying it was really difficult, it wasn't listed on the UK website and in the end I had to phone their sales number and was passed through several people who'd never heard of Ubuntu.
A few days later I received an email with a link to an unlisted store item that had the same photos as the equivalent Windows model, but it was about £30 cheaper.
Snook is an apt word for my experience, hope it's improved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI
This probably seems like a weird one-off, but this story went pretty viral, of course it went viral on the internet for other reasons, but I'm sure the blame being placed squarely on DELL probably did lead to them being a bit spooked about consumer confusion.
The fact that nobody at DELL or elsewhere could just tell her that she can in fact, pretty easily install Windows on the machine is... well, a little frustrating to say the least. The college's IT department was aware enough of Linux to be able to say they can handle it, but not enough to say "Y'know, just for what it's worth... You can just buy and install Windows."
I can't say if this happened, but the whole story sounds like a dark PR campaign to spread fear about Dell's choice and try to take some steam out of their rollout. Microsoft obviously had a lot of money on the line if Dell found success with Ubuntu.
Someone who dropped out of college because they bought a Mac and couldn't run their Black Friday copy Office would just get mocked.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-dev...
It's a nice laptop otherwise.
Granted, I’ve still had some random issues with mine, even on the stock version. (The wifi card is glitchy and I have to systemctl restart NetworkManager sometimes, apparently this is a known hardware/firmware issue).
But I try to avoid buying any machines that require drivers that have not been mainlined or are a bit unstable. In 2011, I got burnt by the infamous b43 Broadcom card / driver which, while supported, had disastrous performance. So never again.
Aside, with NixOS, you can lock a particular kernel ABI or rollback if your update breaks. Aside, mainstream distros usually provide LTS kernels.
My Asus netbook was also sold with Linux (remember those days?), and if I want to have stable hardware video acceleration and OpenGL 4.1 support, I would have to keep using the original Ubuntu version that came with it in 2009.
Because the AMD open source drivers downgraded the GL suppport to OpenGL 3.3, and hardware video acceleration is yet to work as smoothly as it used to.
Which OS allows you to upgrade a major version and never break drivers? I guess Darwin does okay if you stay on the narrow happy path of first party hardware, but even then it's not exactly a feat of software engineering.
[ 39.112819] Freezing user space processes
[ 43.053644] usb 1-5: Found UVC 1.00 device Integrated_Webcam_HD (0bda:5682)
[ 48.173464] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 2 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1).
[ 53.293290] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 3 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1).
[ 58.413471] usb 1-5: Failed to query (GET_INFO) UVC control 6 on unit 2: -110 (exp. 1).
[ 59.114437] Freezing user space processes failed after 20.001 seconds (1 tasks refusing to freeze, wq_busy=0):It's one of the reasons I'm not buying the Inspiron 16 plus in this moment.
I've owned several Inspirons and have no issues but then I use Arch (actually). Have a look into what kernels are on offer and consider a different one. However you may have another issue because I seem to recall that cams are now all basically standards based.
Try grabbing a couple of live "CDs" of other distros and boot them. See if your camera works. Try something like OpenSuSE "tumbleweed".
There are no drivers for the webcam.
But right now there's just some hacky out of kernel drivers for the no-longer-even-recent Intel IPU6 camera controller, which is on a lot of laptops.
Intel's been slowly working on this. Here's an update from May: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IPU6-Progressing . Fedora has this out of kernel tree in driver. But it's been like this for a long time. Here's a well known kernel maintainer warning people off last August: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop
Honestly I'm shocked Intel has been this dodgy for this long. I feel like overall Intel today huegly gets it. They have enormous dedication to getting drivers out there & making systems work well, in a way very few companies compare against. But they are hit or miss across different divisions. I'm not sure what the IPU6 folks see as their path to getting upstreamed, or whether they intend to keep just floating along out of kernel for a bit.
It does look like there is support for pretty modern kernels out-of-tree, & there is a repo with binary firmware, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear that XPS13s and most IPU6 systems work pretty ok.
It’s also sad that this is basically the only Linux-preinstalled and supported hardware from a mainstream company. When I have a choice it’s between one of these or MacBook Air and I’d choose the Mac at this point and forgo Linux
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
They do however support Linux, and have the best upstreaming support that I've seen getting fingerprint readers, webcams, etc all with working kernel drivers.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/how-to-i...
The XPS's I've tried in the past have always ended up with unsupported hardware after a while, so I've written them off.
In practice, not so much, especially if you like to sleep and wake up from sleep everytime without a crash + a reasonable power consumption, both during use and during sleep.
IMHO consumption during sleep far more important: if I didn't plug the computer, I expect it to wake up immediately (no S4/suspend to disk) and with less than 0.5% of battery lost per hour (so for 10h of sleep and 80% battery before sleep, at least 75% battery left), if I put it in a bag, I expect it to stay asleep and not be a fire hazard: dells run hot when closed and in a bag, to the point of battery exhaustion or thermal shutdown)
I prefer Lenovo for everything, especially the keyboard but also ECC ram, OLED displays ... things almost impossible to find anywhere else!
I've been moving to a eink tablet but I purchased a Lenovo wireless keyboard: every key being in the exact same position on all my hardware has sizeable benefits in comfort.
Also, I want PageUp and PageDown around the Up key, something impossible to find outside of Lenovo.
Hardware on the other hand, these things are like caring for an anorexic bubble baby with severe bone density issues. The hardware is a piece of shit, but also extremely easy to repair. Burned through at least 3 keyboards on the 2015, at least 4 pairs of speakers (new set sitting in a parcel in the room right now), 1 motherboard (mechanical stress snapped the heatsink), 2 power plugs, replacement top case because of screen latch stress snapping some tiny piece of plastic, probably more I've forgotten. Separately, the mic seems to be installed literally inside the fans, they made the screen bezel so thin on the 2022 model that they couldn't even include a web cam competitive with the 1998 Game Boy camera, it's embarrassing to videoconf from it
I disagree: technically, it can be made to work, at least with some effort.
On my Lenovo X1 fold, I do get 0.5%/h of sleep, cf the slope of the sleepstudy curve on Windows https://csdvrx.github.io/X1_Fold_(20RL_20RK)_Optimization/pa... ; the root cause of most of my problems were the Intel drivers, more details on https://csdvrx.github.io/
Just turning off wireless with a powershell script before sleep helps a lot, on Linux of course you have more leeway with systemd-suspend hooks.
> my Precision 5550, it got so hot I was afraid the battery will explode
We've got very similar experiences with Dell
Agreed: in the current lineup, don't buy anything that's not from the X series.
At least with lenovo you can buy second laptop, and swap SSD before shipping it away. Repairman will not go through your selfies ;)
You'll be relegated to using Linux in a VM for wireless, or downgrading to old hardware.
Same, with other Dells. There was one where I analyzed the BIOS ACPI tables and concluded it was impossible to wake from sleep on any OS, due to bugs I've found: I can't find my old post, but https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/kolf5f/patching_the_d... is a good summary.
Error on Dell ACPI tables are usual: for the 5510, see https://gist.github.com/jamal-fuma/17d2d605280a52376326384c4...
I also remember someone doing deeping ACPI table modifications to limit the power draw on the Xeon Laptops. I can't find the link right now, but IIRC it was related to the PCH powergating.
These issues plague the whole line. For another analysis (and confirmation), this time on how deep C states (very important for temperature and for sleep) can only be reached one after boot, see https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/precision-mo...
That's my fetish! Which one did you go for?
I was asked about my setup a few days ago. I'm preparing a tutorial to help with rooting, removing unwanted apps etc.
Not a good ol' ThinkPad T-series?
I gravitate towards a AMD Ryzen ThinkPad, either a X13 or a T14s. X1C are only offered with Intel CPUs, which seem a bit inferior in terms of performance and heat / energy usage.
Macs with Asahi are an interesting option, but it is still missing support for fundamental items, e.g. sound.
Will probably get XPS 15 and put Ubuntu on myself. Annoying to fork money over to Microsoft for nothing.
- first salesperson said: "We are anticipating the Newer XPS 15 laptops to be launched by Dec last week or by Mid Jan that comes with 14th Gen Processors and preinstalled Ubuntu OS on them".
- Second salesperson said they don't have an ETA yet.
- Third salesperson said "The product development is working on these 2 models, we are soon expecting them to launch in next 3 to 4 weeks [Nov 13-20] but the exact date of launch has not be shared with us ... the Precision models will have these options [Ubuntu] ... the XPS 15 will not have the Ubuntu options".
- Fourth salesperson said "by early 2025".
- Fifth salesperson said "we don't have a date"
- Sixth salesperson said "we dont have eccurate date, you may see it XPS laptop with 14th gen chip in the end of December ... and it may not come with unibuntu option ... You will see Precision laptops with Ubuntu option"
Oh and they do have a Precision from 2023 pre-installed with Ubuntu[1], somehow wasn't visible before.
Dell sales and support is pretty, so have to ask multiple times.
[1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/precision-3581-...
I have no idea if there are bits on the 2023 Windows edition that aren't supported. It might all be fine.
I was thinking to go for the XPS 15 since it's rated as the best overall Linux laptop in 2023 by Zdnet[1] and xda-developers[2].
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-linux-laptop/ [2] https://www.xda-developers.com/best-laptops-linux/
I went back to Lenovo and their fingerprint reader worked fine, including being mainlined by Lenovo.
If you don't care about that, then go for it.
At least, in my experience with the 3 brand new computers I got (T460s in 2016, T14s in 2021, Custom Desktop (Ryzen 5, ATI 7900 XT)), everything worked out of the box.
It's been ages since I had a real issue (like the dreaded Broadcom wifi cards back in the days).
I own both and I'm happy I switched back to ThinkPads.
I guess the T495 is worse. Those first gen Zen chips are just terrible.
On the last 4 companies I worked straight, they were either the only option, or an option between ThinkPad or Mac.
Yeah but he was talking about modern Lenovos, not 8 year old ones.
So what quality issues affect them now specifically? I will be in the market for another laptop in a year or so, and my default would always be a ThinkPad.
6 year old T series that the kids adopted is also taking abuse well.
Makes me feel like they aren't that popular outside of IT departments.
All laptops are either Lenovo or Macbooks.
Like you said, maybe in your part of the world Dell is more popular for some reason.
Edit: It looks like just a Canadian thing. 1899 for windows home and 1984 for Ubuntu.
https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-...
With a little subsidy, Dell's pricing you report doesn't seem too far off.
I'll assume some retail magic, Microsoft subsidy, and the life-in-Canada tax.
i had 2022 dell xps with 17 4k touch screen. i thought, okey, will plug encrypted nvme system disk. i was doubt it will boot at all, not speaking about sound, wifi and touch.
but magically, after reboot, some firmwares installed. it all worked perfectly. sound, voice, touch, sleep, keyboard, camera.
> It's a nice laptop otherwise.
These have always reminded me of:
Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise,
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien,
Pourtant, il faut, il faut que l’on vous dise,
On déplore un tout petit rien:
Un incident, une bêtise,
La mort de votre jument grise,
Mais, à part ça, Madame la Marquise,
Tout va très bien, tout va très bien!
Everything is going very well, everything is going very well,
However, it must be said,
We regret a tiny little thing:
An incident, a foolishness,
The death of your gray mare,
But, apart from that, Madam Marquise,
Everything is going very well, everything is going very well!
Otherwise a fine device.
I have had a couple of minor Linux specific (I assume) issues, but nothing too hard to resolve.
Edit: this was one of the minor issues: https://paperstack.com/fixing_the_freeze/
Is it for everyone? No. Even with explicit support by Dell on their hardware, it is not seamless, as my two anecdotes above illustrate. The time you waste on tinkering isn't going to make up for the extra money you pay to Apple or Microsoft.
But I just couldn't take any more telemetry and ads, and I think it is only going to get worse from here on out.
Honestly, my biggest concern is that I only reboot it about once a month to do updates, so, I do worry that, like an old server that has been kept on for 10+ years, it will be one of those reboots that finally kills it.
At least there are some gaming laptops available now.
https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/sr/laptops/ub...
But, it's better than it was! I had a highish-end XPS 13 from '18 that refused to ever sleep with the lid shut, despite my best efforts.
If Dell wants to get serious about this stuff, they need to test and fix all of these issues before they release a laptop.
Unless I was truly a FOSS zealot I don't get why I would select Dell over Apple here.
The features I actually interact with the most are going to be very different even if the lower level stuff is the same.