The Dell XPS 13 is the best-known developer-focused, high-end Linux laptop. Here's how it got there.

Today, the Dell XPS-13 with Ubuntu Linux is easily the most well-known Linux laptop. Many users, especially developers – including Linus Torvalds – love it. As Torvalds recently said, “Normally, I wouldn’t name names, but I’m making an exception for the XPS 13 just because I liked it so much that I also ended up buying one for my daughter when she went off to college.”

So, how did Dell – best known for good-quality, mass-produced PCs – end up building top-of-the-line Ubuntu Linux laptops? Well, Barton George, Dell Technologies’ Developer Community manager, shared the “Project Sputnik” story this week in a presentation at the popular Linux and open-source community show, All Things Open.

        • @[email protected]
          0•1 year ago

          Bought an old second hand p50 recently, and it still far outperforms most modern laptops by a mile, battery lasts 4 or 5 hours on integrated graphics (probably quite a bit less on discrete but haven’t really tested that yet)

          Plus I can buy a second battery and just swap them out when one runs out

            • @[email protected]
              2•1 year ago

              My old Lenovo yoga cost more than the p50 and couldn’t hold a candle

              Came with 32gb memory, 4k display, discrete gpu and an nvme which all help considerably, the CPU generally sits around 1-8% during normal usage (on Linux that is)

              Can quite happily code on this thing, my previous laptop could barely run an ide

              Obviously there are more powerful laptops but considering I got it for ~£500 and even second hand modern laptops go for ~1000 with less memory and no GPU I think it competes very nicely

      • @Zeth0s
        2•1 year ago

        Light ThinkPads are not cheap either

        • @[email protected]
          5•1 year ago

          Todays ThinPads are not superior. Some things are:

          • Lenovo caught with spyware on Thinkpads
          • Hardware support for Linux is lacking
          • Lenovo caught using slave labor
      • Midnight WolfEnglish
        13•1 year ago

        I recommended my father get one after his current laptop’s speakers blew out. He didn’t want to wait for Q4, so we went with my 2nd recommendation, a ThinkPad.

        The first two were defective (the whole model line is - overheating to scalding temps, not going to sleep when the lid is closed, not sleeping/infinite loop when manually told to sleep or by the OS idle time), the third (different model) arrived without a fucking w11pro product key. Are you actually fucking shitting me. Their solution for that was either a new machine (custom machine, almost 4 weeks lead time) or a new mobo. I figured they would put the key in the board, and we didn’t want another 4 week wait, so I went with the board swap. Guess who didn’t enter a key into the bios? The tech didn’t have one, was just told to swap boards.

        We are expecting a framework in Q1 now.