
New Ubuntu-based Precision line-up - dacm
https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precision-line-up-mobile-workstations-plus-a-new-all-in-one
======
ChuckMcM
Ok, I didn't see that coming. Dell building a better Macbook Pro than Apple
:-). I wonder how their high DPI support will compare with other Linux
distros.

If the durability is up there with the Thinkpad series of old I could see
replacing my current machine with one of these.

~~~
chao-
> _I wonder how their high DPI support will compare with other Linux distros._

To the best of my knowledge and experience [0] the scaling isn't any different
across any of the major GTK-centric DEs (GNOME, Unity, Cinnamon, Pantheon):
You get integer scaling factors for the entire UI, and a separate text scaling
setting, both which work as expected, with a possible exception of a few
multiple-versions-old Qt applications that might respect neither setting. They
are rare in my experience.

I find that on a 13-14" laptop at 1440p this is insufficient. No scaling (1x)
is too small for my poor eyesight, but 2x scaling is too large and wastes
screen space. I forget where and how long ago I encountered a Linux
environment with 1.5x scaling. Maybe I dreamt it, but 1.5x was just about
perfect.

My current strategy (14" Thinkpad, 1440p) is to keep UI scaling at 1x, font
scaling at 1.5x. This works for most applications except for web browsers
(where the font rendering size is not dependent on the system font settings).
In browsers, I will use a plugin that sets the default zoom to 1.5x, basically
bringing everything up to the same experience.

I can imagine that a 15" laptop with thin-bezeled 4K screen might have the
same challenges as 14" at 1440p (i.e. a 1.5x scaling would be ideal, but does
not exist). However, this is only a guess, based on my trying a full 2x
scaling on a 13" 4K display. It was actually nice, at 15" 4K it might be sit
in the awkward zone of 13" 1440p: too small at 1x, too large at 2x, with no
single setting for a 1.5x sweet spot.

[0] I install new versions of GNOME, Unity and MATE at least once a year to
see if one has surpassed the experience of my current preference (Cinnamon).

~~~
pedrocr
I forget the details of how it's implemented but Ubuntu 16.04 gives me a
choice of 1.0,1.12,1.25,1.38,1.5 (plus many others outside that range). For my
1440 T460s' 14" screen the 1.5 setting is about right for me and I've been
using it for a few months with no issues.

~~~
abrowne
I believe that setting adjusts the same two scale factors mentioned above —
integers for GTK+ and decimal font scaling — plus fractional scaling for the
Compiz window decorations and the new QML Ubuntu toolkit apps.

~~~
pedrocr
Widgets do seem to get scaled as well at 1.5 not just font sizes. If I recall
correctly it changes the dpi as well.

~~~
abrowne
I should try it again. I mostly use (Ubuntu) MATE, and GNOME 3 before that,
but the scaling settings was my favorite feature in Unity.

------
dijit
Interesting to see this here, I was actually looking at the Dell website for
the last few months considering a Precision 5510 to replace my macbook pro
(2011) and my now bricked Thinkpad X201s (coreboot fail).. when recently I saw
the 5520 appear, sadly no option to buy direct. (I'm calling in favours with
friends to get me a price)

I hope they continue the tradition of building insanely good hardware (look at
the insides of a 7510[0].. holy crap) and allowing expandable batteries as an
option.

The 5510 for instance can be specced without a SATA drive and that space can
be used for a 6 cell (rather than a 3cell) battery.

The fact that these machines can be shipped with Linux is really the icing on
the cake for me, even if there was no price drop I would purchase them because
I have some confidence that the hardware will be supported.

[0] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO-
Mob...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO-Mobile-
Workstation-Review.167586.0.html)

~~~
jamiesonbecker
I absolutely love my Dell Rugged Extreme 12.. it's insanely expensive but
literally bomb-proof (designed to handle the pressures from an exploding
bomb.. even if my frail human form won't). It runs Linux almost perfectly --
better than Windows. Windows 10 had issues coming back from suspend (the
screen would stay black.. dead), and losing all mouse tracking at random
times. Linux only has issues coming back from suspend and they're not even as
bad (sometimes you can't get a network connection).

And the hardware is fantastic. No sharp edges for your wrists. I used to be a
thinkpad fan, but this thing is insanely great. (However, I do miss the old-
style thinkpad keyboards and the modular batteries.. but battery life on this
thing is great anyway.)

It's also good to chock the wheels with if you have to change a tire or
heaving at someone who insults your laptop. I do like multi-purpose devices.

------
VSpike
My boss seems unusually sensitive to high-frequency noise, and said if I got a
Dell laptop for work he'd refuse to sit next to me (which would be a bad thing
because I like him!)

I'd not heard of the "coil whine" or "CPU whine" thing before but Google
seemed to show a lot of anecdotal evidence and discussion, especially for the
XPS 13 but also for other models.

Does anyone know why Dell seems so prone to this, and if the problem has been
solved in newer models?

Otherwise if I want to ditch the work Macbook for a Linux system (which I'd
love to do ... I have not grown to enjoy OSX) then my only real choice would
be Lenovo.

~~~
ekidd
> Otherwise if I want to ditch the work Macbook for a Linux system

Year-old MacBook Pros typically make fairly nice Ubuntu machines. The hardware
is standard enough that you can find step-by-step installation instructions:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro)
The biggest limitations in recent years have been (1) no webcam, and (2)
somewhat flaky (but still usable) wifi.

It's not as nice as a supported Ubuntu preload directly from your hardware
vendor, but you get the nice physical build quality of Apple's hardware.

~~~
VSpike
I may not be able to go with a Linux system at all since company policy is Mac
only, but if I ever do manage to do it, I know that they will want me to use
(1) not a Mac and (2) not old hardware. Kind of a shame since my research
suggested the same: that year or two old Mac was a good hardware platform for
Linux. The same to an extent applies to Lenovo hardware and everything else
designed primarily for Windows. If it were for personal use, I'd go for an old
Thinkpad or old Macbook.

~~~
NTripleOne
I'm confused, if your company is Mac only, how would you end up sitting next
to your boss with a Dell anyway?

------
BHSPitMonkey
Since Thunderbolt 3 is prominently advertised in this announcement, can I
safely assume that Thunderbolt 3 support has stabilized in Ubuntu at this
point? And if so, are we able to use external GPUs over this interface in
Linux now?

~~~
jon-wood
Thunderbolt 3 somewhat works for me, although I'm not sure if that's down to
the OS or the adapter I'm using. Using the latest Ubuntu its fine once its
working, but it will take me two or three attempts plugging the adapter in for
the HDMI output to actually work, between which the machine will crash hard
with a garbled internal display.

------
virtualwhys
That Precision 5520 looks pretty tasty, will be a nice upgrade from current
M4700, which, while solid and performant, is a bit of a tank and power hungry
to boot (180W power adapter rarely works on planes; combine that with the 2
hour max battery life...).

Shed some weight (4lbs vs 7lbs), high res screen, 32GB, 2 X SSD, and get a
probably modest performance boost for cpu intensive tasks (like compiling
Scala projects) -- think I'll pull the trigger when it launches.

------
bitwize
The Precision 7xxx series are recommended if weight is no object and you need
a beast of a laptop to crunch through video editing, signal processing, or
Crysis. The fact that it comes with Ubuntu is a boon to top-end mobile
Linuxing. A vast improvement over the M3800, which is a capable machine in a
frustrating enclosure that doesn't even come with the basics like Ethernet,
and doesn't supply a docking port.

~~~
pbz
For gaming too? From what I read Quadro cards are pretty weak when it comes to
games. I wish Dell would offer GeForce as an option; not everyone interested
in a workstation wants Quadro.

------
api
Dell should buy Ubuntu. That might be interesting.

~~~
tajen
Interesting suggestion. I dream of the same things. It's pretty obvious the
fate of Dell is currently _capped_ by the features of Linux. Their effort on
the hardware is currently enough to convince, but the OS is still what makes
people afraid of switching away from Mac.

I'll suggest something crazily ambitious: Dell should acquire and staff
creativity/professional suites for Linux. If the _de facto_ stack for
photographers or architects were a stunning Ubuntu + Affinity + AffinityCAD
(inventing a stack here), it would be the year of Linux. Plus Linux-based
stacks are much more powerful than Apple/Windows.

~~~
NovaS1X
As a photographer and videographer I can't wait for the day I can switch to
Linux fully. Until then it's OSX for me, but I'm patiently waiting.

Now if only they'd offer 16:10 screens I'd almost immediately switch.

------
2bluesc
Last wish is for Linux driver support for the Quadro card to render to the
integrated GPU (or whatever is necessary to display on the LCD) with KVM PCI
pass through from Windows. Then I'd be able to run the few remaining Windows
apps (Altium, Solidworks, etc) from Linux at near native speed.

------
Sephr
Dell.com says the new Precision 5520 has "NVIDIA Quadro M1200"[1], which may
be a typo of P1200.

Is the NVIDIA Quadro M1200 included in the Precision 5520 based on GP107-400
(GTX 1050 Ti) or GP107-300 (GTX 1050)?

[1]:
[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-15-5520-laptop/p...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-15-5520-laptop/pd)

~~~
djdmngz
No, it's Maxwell. There's not a mobile Pascal Quadro that'd work at that form
factor and thermal capacity at this time. The Kaby Lake Dell XPS 15 (Precision
5520's sibling) uses a Pascal GTX, though.

~~~
Sephr
Maxwell Quadro mobile parts end in "M" (in addition to starting with "M"),
which leads me to believe that this is just a typo'd Pascal part.

~~~
djdmngz
I work on Linux at Dell. I'm the guy in the hammock in that blog post by
Barton. It's a Maxwell Quadro for the reasons I stated.

------
crench
I've used my Project Sputnik machine for years and loved it.

------
wmf
32GB ECC in a thin and light laptop.

~~~
2bluesc
> ECC

Only explicitly called out on the 3520, wonder if it's in the others?

Does anyone know the power consumption hit of ECC in mobile devices? The power
hit of DDR self-refresh of 32GB compared to 8GB was about 1.5W on my Dell
Precision 5510.

Interestingly enough, thew new product page from the Precision 5520[0] shows
the Xeon E3 as the same E3-1505M in my 5510, I guess I'd be shocked to see ECC
added as it wasn't present in the 5510.

[0]
[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-15-5520-laptop/p...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-15-5520-laptop/pd)

~~~
sliken
The E3-1505M does support ECC, not particularly hard to believe that it's a
supported feature now.

I believe ECC overhead is around 12.5% (9 bits instead of 8) for the memory
system. However I don't know what percent of power the memory system usually
takes.

Seems like about half the power is required for a 3200x1800 display +
touchscreen. The XPS 13 goes from 22 hours to 12 hours when you switch from
3200x1800 touch to 1080 non-touch. Of course 1080P screens are lower power,
but not zero. Of the rest the CPU takes a fair amount. As a guess I'd say a
15% increase in memory power might decrease the runtime by 20 minutes.

~~~
dijit
>I don't know what percent of power the memory system usually takes.

usually about 1.5w for each SODIMM on DDR4.

------
mattparlane
VGA port? In 2017?

~~~
Rangi42
There may still be conference rooms and auditoriums with VGA-only projectors
in 2027.

~~~
zem
I've run into problems with my ultrabook in rooms with vga-only projectors.
they're definitely still a thing.

~~~
benley
mini-displayport to VGA adapters are also still a thing :-P

~~~
test1235
No office which uses VGA is going to have an adapter handy which isn't already
lost in a random drawer somewhere with dead batteries and random keys.

I've worked for shit tons of media and design companies who couldn't even keep
track of the regular cables to charge their mobile devices (used for testing).

People would "borrow them, just for a minute", then leave it on their desk,
where someone else would take it, then not know where it came from and sweep
it into a pile of other bits and bobs somewhere.

You have to be a proper strict to keep this sort of thing in check - it makes
you unpopular in the office, badgering after people.

------
forgottenacc57
This is a message to Microsoft protesting the Surface.

~~~
flukus
Don't know why you're getting down voted. A lot of hardware manufacturers
would be very nervous about MS extending the production of their own hardware.

------
SkyMarshal
Last time I tried a Dell over a year ago I could only install its approved
Linux's on it - Ubuntu (and maybe Red Hat or CentOS, don't recall exactly).
Likely due to the custom motherboard, but it felt very locked down. Whereas if
I spec and build my own workstation or laptop from XoticPC or similar, any
distro will work with it. Anyone else familiar with this issue? Is it still a
thing?

~~~
h4waii
This isn't a thing. You'll need to provide more information than you have.

While Dell does sell "certified" hardware, they have never (AFAIK) locked down
a system to only allow Ubuntu installs. I don't even see how this is possible,
provided Canonical doesn't supply Dell with Secure Boot keys locked in the
BIOS/UEFI -- what you're describing has never been a thing, and was most
likely an issue with storage controller or lacking support for a chipset
generation.

------
pdog
Why is Apple the only company able to ship a 5K display (5120x2880 native
resolution) at a reasonable price? Who wants to develop on the equivalent of a
1080p resolution?

~~~
djdmngz
Apple doesn't ship a 5k display. They ship a 5k panel in an all-in-one. Apple
doesn't sell any monitors anymore.

