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•11 months 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•11 months 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