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]English
    16•1 year ago

    Ubuntu sucks for many reasons, but new user experience is on the better side. I don’t want to use Ubuntu over Debian myself but I feel like it’s the mandatory corporate evil that can make Linux more appealing to more than just techies while also making Linux desktop more appealing to corpos in Microsoft’s ecosystem. Intune already has some rudimentary support for managed Linux Desktop, with Ubuntu currently supported.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I don’t know the last time you used Ubuntu but its user experience is not on the “better side”. They are pushing snap so hard that they are blind

      • Elven_MithrilEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        hi, can you please elaborate why that is wrong? I am fairly new to Linux and have been using Ubuntu for the past month and so far I am satisfied with it…

        • silly goose meekah
          3•1 year ago

          Snap is a package manager like apt but I’m not sure why that other user is so upset about Ubuntu using/pushing it

          • @RupeThereItIs
            7•1 year ago

            Because it’s shit.

            If I apt install an app, I expect it NOT to be a snap. I want it to use shared libraries, not bring its own along. They hide from you that they are installing the snap not deb package.

            Then you run into all sorts of permissions issues accessing the filesystem from the snap app… Because snap is rather broken in this regard.

            Functionally snap is a worse solution then deb, but I guess it’s easier on the developer/maintainer as you don’t get lost in shared dependincy hell.

            I feel snaps should be an option if you need cutting edge version of a software that can’t use your shared libs, but never the default install method.

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          The problem is that when you install a app via apt it sometimes will install the snap version. This may not seem like a problem until you want to just have native packages or flatpaks.