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I've got a 2014 Dell XPS Dev. Edition, and for me the TouchPad sensitivity is fine and the Wifi range is good (even using 5Ghz networks).

I can get about 7 hours out of the battery so long as I'm only browsing the web or editing text - probably still not as good as a MacBook Air, but I'm never more than a few hours from a socket.

Ubuntu still isn't great at HDIP displays, although things are getting better.

Balance seems fine for me, but I can't compare to a mba.

I'm very happy with the XPS 13 (2014), and the 2015 version seems like a big upgrade, however I'd still recommend the 1080p display for Linux.

If you're using display scaling it might make sense to go with FHD anyway; from what I understand the scaling gives you effectively the screen space of a 1600x900 display, 1080p might not be as rich but it can give you a bit more workspace.

> Darwin isn't a "true" *nix, but it's close enough for me.

Yosemite is a registered UNIX 03 product.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Darwin to me is pretty much the poster child for "unix-like" operating systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29

Hell, OSX has been UNIX03-registered since Leopard/Intel: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3555.htm

I very much doubt that any pc laptop married with any given Linux distro will ever be a better macbook experience than a macbook running OS X. I understand that a lot of people like working in a Mac -- but unless you point out what don't like on the Mac it's hard to see why you'd switch.

Personally I love bare xsession+monad+apt-get of Debian, along with a sprinkle of schroot for running testing and sid in parallel, all with my home-dir available and on accessing the same X11 display. So OS X isn't really interesting. Apart from drivers married closely to the hardware, and maybe a nice collection of fonts (and font rendering) -- I won't feel very much at home in OS X.

I am curios: why would you want to move off of OS X?

At some point, OSX will jump the shark. It just doesn't fully take part in the nix ecosystem. Different projects like homebrew address some of these issues, but still, Darwin feels more like a nephew, rather than a son of nix. I don't think OSX has done anything really stupid yet.

On the other had, the nix ecosystem has really flubbed a lot of key opportunities for progress. You mentioned liking X11. Personally, I hate it. It's incredibly outdated. Rather than unifying behind a next generation display api, we have efforts divided between Weyland and Mir, ensuring that the display landscape for nix remains fragmented for the foreseeable future. This really is bonkers.

So, to answer your question, I want to move off OSX for the typical philosophical reasons, but I'm not willing to do it at the expense of basic ergonomics and fit and finish.

> So, to answer your question, I want to move off OSX for the typical philosophical reasons, but I'm not willing to do it at the expense of basic ergonomics and fit and finish.

It's good that we have diversity; I wouldn't move to OS X at the expense of basic ergonomics either (even though I do admire the finish :-).

I'm a bit curious about the frustration with X11. Sure, it's a cludge and has issues and so on -- but does it matter so much that people can't wait for the alternative? I really only see two cases were it matters: If you're writing an X11 server, or if you're writing an X11 screensaver. As we have both of those, and they work fine -- I don't really feel the pain.

I'll admit that I don't do a lot of programming for X11, but both qt and gtk seem fairly pleasant to work with as far as I can tell. It might be papering over cracks -- but those cracks have already been papered over?

Did you consider running chrome OS (maybe with a full GNU/Linux chroot)?

My frustrations with X11 are more specific to my line of work. I do a lot of front end work. X11 is just a mess. It's tough to call out dealbreakers with X11, since there's always some obscure workaround. It's tough to find careful explanations of X11 shortcomings without the discussion devolving into ranting.

Wikipedia probably gives the best overview of problems:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

Keep in mind X11 came out in the late 80s, and many of the current criticisms were expressed in the early 90s. We're full on 25 years beyond that now, with no de facto replacement.

> I very much doubt that any pc laptop married with any given Linux distro will ever be a better macbook experience than a macbook

And thank god for that. If Linux was reduced to a Mac-like experience, I would probably move on to something else, and quickly.

I need something for a power-user, something configurable, something which puts me in control. I need something which I can adapt to my needs, to flow with my work-flow. Something I can mold as I see fit. That is the promise of Linux.

What I don't need is ooh shiney rounded & patented buttons at the cost of everything else, with the late Steve Jobs having made all the decisions for me, with everything cast in stone. Oh sorry. Ceramics. My bad.

If you like it that way, good for you, feel free to stay on the Mac. A Linux laptop is supposed to be different. If you consider that to be at odds with a Macbook OSX experience, you're entitled to your opinion and you're probably right.

But that doesn't make the Linux experience bad. It just means it's not for you.

WiFi range is one of the only problems I have with my Ivy Bridge XPS 13 (2013) running Ubuntu. Mine is not the developer edition. It has an Intel 6235. I forget if Dell shipped the developer editions of this generation with different cards or not.

I'm hoping with newer chipsets and hopefully better support, that things are better with the 2015 models.

Okay. Those are the technical differences.

Now, what are the price differences? Also, the XPS 13" dev edition is 1080p, does the equivalent MBA?

The Dell can come with Ubuntu pre-installed and certified, and while they are both Unix there is the fact that Ubuntu is more-or-less FOSS whereas MacOSX is proprietary to some (most?) extents.

What I'm trying to say is that in listing the differences, you didn't list all the differences.

1) The touchpad sensitivity can be tweaked, and the config saved.

2) I have no data on the wifi range differences.

3) Agreed

4) Is this true? I think Linux does do HiDPI?

5) Really?

The "new" low end xps 13 looks like it starts around $800. Macbook Air is roughly in the same ballpark. For my purposes, the raw tech/price specs were not enough to matter.

My old xps 13 dev had a higher resolution screen, but it ended up being more of a problem than a bonus, mainly due to the inability of most of the ubuntu ecosystem to scale gui elements well. I could go on in more detail on this, but the fact is that Apple chose an even multiple for pixel scaling in retina displays (so non-retina apps can simply be displayed at effectively at twice normal size). In FullHD, some manner of fractional scaling must be employed on a 13" screen, and it needs to be done across the OS gui elements, as well as the rest of the app ecosystem in order for it to look right. I don't believe Ubuntu has this completely covered yet. In Ubuntu's defense, I haven't seen a fractional pixel scaling done "right" in a desktop environment (e.g. Windows 8).

As far as the opening/closing issue goes (as well as the other small fit and finish nits), this Forbes article mentions these details as well on the latest xps 13: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/01/26/dell-x...

OSX has been certified Unix since Snow Leopard I believe?