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Comment by yongelee | Hacker News Reader

I have an XPS 13 2015 version but it came with Windows 8. I want to try out ubuntu on it to see if it'll run better. Is yours touch screen? If so, how is it working?

Also is there a difference between the windows xps 13 and the developers edition? I heard the developers edition is cheaper, but with less powerful hardware?

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I didn't get the touchscreen version intentionally. That's not to say that it's better with/without touchscreen. I just didn't want it, and wanted a lower resolution FHD screen for power savings. I know that gnome has basic support for touchscreens and just switched away from using a Surface Pro 3 with Gnome. It was just ok. I'd say you'll be fine since you've got a keyboard and trackpad as solid backup for the touchscreen.

There is no hardware difference to the windows/linux machines... the hardware on the dev units isn't any less or more powerful. You will, however, want to make sure your BIOS is upgraded to the current rev (A04 as of this posting). http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDet...

XPS13 windows 8 with the QHD/ultra high res screen here -- it has issues scaling windows apps -- Adobe Photoshop CC included. The apps imho are the weak link as not all have been designed for the higher resolution display.

Sure, this will change in time for both OS but its quite annoying on a productivity machine.

Edit: With that said, the XPS13 with 256gb ssd, touch screen and 8gigs of ram is a very smooth running machine. Very happy with my purchase.

I have one generation prior (model 9333). Bought it as a refurb on ebay, immediately removed Windows 8 and installed Ubuntu 14.04. Had some issues with the touchpad and installed 14.10 - now it works like a charm! It's a great notebook and it's awesome to see an Apple alternative that isn't Windows (though I felt bad that some money went to MS since I bought a refurb).

I'm using a different model dell with a touch screen and I'm running OpenSUSE 13.2 with GNOME 3 and the touch screen works pretty good. Linux doesn't have a metro style desktop so it's not exactly "tailored" for touch, but it works.

For a really smooth experience I suggest using GTK3 apps. Not sure how qt compares but GTK3 apps are wonderful.

Ubuntu's Unity is designed to be usable by both touch and mouse.

This being said, the latest incarnation (15.04) is proving to be horrible unstable. About 1 in 5 times I un-sleep the box, there's text corruption in all the open windows, along with a few other problems. Everyone I know using 15.04 on the desktop is having weird problems of some sort.

That's more of a general linux issue, sleep has never work correctly on linux :)

I've only run a couple of linux laptops before, but they've not had issues with sleep. 15.04 has problems other than sleep, though, enough to make me switch back to debian. I see ubuntu as 'debian-with-convenience', so if the convenience evaporates... :)

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