
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review - smacktoward
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/
======
UnoriginalGuy
I'm impressed that Dell have created a laptop aimed at developers, but I've
stopped buying Dells completely as I've had an endless string of issues going
back ten years with their power supplies.

And it isn't just me either, everyone I know has had similar issues with the
power supplies splitting (and eventually failing) right at the bend as it
enters the laptop... Then the replacements are $100.

I'm buying laptops to last. Dells simply do not. Even their "high end"
Latitudes and XPS laptops are cheaply made.

I won't buy another Dell until I see an improvement in the quality of the
power supplies and ideally a single universal power supply across their entire
range (why does one range have two new incompatible PSUs a year?).

Apple and Thinkpad/Lenovo both have much higher quality power blocks and both
have universal power supplies within the same range. I buy two Thinkpad Txxx
or Macbook Pros I can interchange the power supplies!

~~~
hmottestad
Every macbook power supply (cable) will split and fray within two-three years
(depending on use). However, here in Norway they have a 5 year (goverment
mandated) warranty, so no problems just bringing it in and going back out with
a brand new adapter.

~~~
Zirro
You can't use "every" and "depending on use" in the same sentence, as that
could be said of anything. I have a four year old cable of said type which,
except for a little dust, is looking as good as new.

Were you to say that it occurs during average usage however, I agree that it
would be an issue.

~~~
Keyneston
I read "depending on use" as a modifier to 2-3 years not on every. That is to
say the cable will break sometime between 2-3 years with heavy use being
sooner rather than later.

~~~
hmottestad
That's what I meant yes. Although I guess if you are really careful it would
probably last longer. However the heat from the adapter (and the magsafe plug)
will slowly degrade the rubber and glue.

~~~
mentat
The one I'm currently using is 6 years old. My boss had to replace his within
a couple years and they showed him how to properly wrap the cable. He taught
us and it's been fine.

------
MatthewPhillips
> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment on the overall
> viability of Linux as a consumer-facing operating system for normal people.
> I don't think anyone is arguing that Linux hasn't earned its place in the
> data center—it most certainly has—but there's no way I'd feel comfy
> installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers. The
> XPS 13 DE shows the level of functionality and polish possible with extra
> effort, and that effort and polish together means this kind of Linux
> integration is something we won't see very often outside of boutique OEMs.

This is not extra effort, though. The same effort is required to make their
Windows computers work. What you are experiencing is the realization that for
most computers, there is _no_ effort made to have them run linux well

Linux's biggest problem is one of perception. Because people are used to their
Windows and Mac computers "just working", they think that is the steady-state
of OSes, and that Linux is somehow failing to achieve normalcy.

~~~
tterrace
I think the extra effort he means is that Dell had to hack in additional fixes
for the trackpad, wifi, bluetooth and monitor brightness:
[https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-
team/+archive/sputnik-k...](https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-
team/+archive/sputnik-kernel) . They were all merged upstream, but if Dell had
not done it, it would have been the customer spending hours on google or
reading through threads on the ubuntu forums (I can speak from experience).

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Dell also has to make sure its drivers work on Windows.

~~~
tterrace
I thought Dell submitted most of those patches to fix bugs in the kernel, not
its own drivers.

------
memset
I have one of these for work (but I have the first iteration, with the lower
resolution.)

I agree with just about everything in this article. When I first got my
machine, it would literally hard-freeze several times a day. I tried playing
with kernel PPAs, upgrading my BIOS, etc. Eventually I contacted their
support, and the next day a technician came and replaced my motherboard. It
works almost perfectly now (still hard-freezes maybe once a month, but what
can you do.)

I have not used any of the neato-sounding "developer tools" this computer
comes with (the cloud thinger, the profile tool thinger, etc.) Perhaps I
would, but then again, chef/puppet/vagrant are the de-facto standards for
setting up dev environments, and they translate better to how I'd deploy
something on prod.

EDIT: okay I just looked at juju. seems absurdly cool and useful. has anyone
else used this?

------
jfim
> The trackpad does two-finger scrolling (with inertia!) without having to add
> some random crazy guy's PPA and install extra packages. It picked up my Wi-
> Fi network and joined it without requiring me to do anything other than
> supply the passkey.

> Is it bad if I say that I was impressed that sound worked right out of the
> box?

> The XPS 13 easily handled repeatedly being put to sleep and awakened without
> throwing a kernel panic or otherwise exploding.

Is this the usual experience installing Linux on a laptop?

(Not trolling, I've only ever used Linux on desktops/servers)

~~~
to3m
Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

I used to have a little Asus EEE PC, for which I downloaded a community-
generated EEE-specific Linux. EEE Ubuntu, I think it was. All your EEE-
specific drivers pre-loaded, no extraneous junk, no funny business! So I had
high hopes for this one, on account of the very limited number (3!) of
different hardware configurations the distribution had to support. Surely
nothing could go wrong!

Once I'd installed it, I found trackpad touch-to-tap didn't work. At all.
Well, OK, the trackpad has buttons, so I suppose I'll have to live with that.

It wouldn't detect my wi-fi network, and in fact as far as I could tell wi-fi
simply didn't work in the slightest. Fortunately, I have a long network cable,
and I mainly used it fairly near the router anyway.

When I tried to suspend to disk, it claimed it was out of swap space, and
proceeded to just shut down normally. Hmm, never mind, I can just close the
lid and leave it plugged in, it's no big deal.

When I closed the lid, it crashed.

~~~
bluedino
> Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

Linux doesn't do 'random, low-priced consumer laptops' very well. It does
regular business laptops very well. I've been installing Linux on Thinkpads
from the T20 days all the way to the current T430 and I've been incredibly
impressed with how well everything runs.

Even cheap laptops run pretty well these days, at most you'll wrestle with the
wifi drivers. The problem is the low-end market for laptops is so varied you
don't get a lot of developers who get hands-on time to get the drivers working
well.

Popular laptops will usually have great support unless they've got some
hardware where the vendor doesn't want to play ball. But any cheap machine
that's sold a lot of units will have a forum where users explain everything
they've figured out.

In the old days you could buy two network cards, keep one and send one to a
developer as a gift, and you'd end up getting a working driver out of the
deal. Some people did that with entire laptops.

~~~
scarmig
That's much too sanguine.

Have been running Arch and Ubuntu on Thinkpads for over 4 years now, which are
known for being Linux friendly. And, to be fair, it works, but it doesn't just
work. Power management issues abound: out of the box, Ubuntu on my Carbon X1
was regularly using over 10W, and it was only with substantial tweaking that I
could get it to 5.5W-6W consistently. Anytime I need to restart, I need to go
through the Powertop suggestions again. Certainly could write a script for
that, but it doesn't just work. Suspend doesn't work all the time: I've had
days where I've charged the computer overnight, thrown it in my bag, and by
the end of the day it was entirely dead, complete with some minor but
obnoxious filesystem corruption. Using the hardware mute button fucks up
PulseAudio.

I'll point out that the Carbon X1 is hardly some "random, low-priced consumer
laptop." Probably a bit less Linux friendly than more traditional ThinkPad
offerings, but if you go any more higher end with Sony or whatever, I would be
very pessimistic about it working, just or otherwise.

Now, for my purposes, other alternatives just don't work. I don't know an easy
way to have a Windows or OSX system to throw up a private virtual cloud over
LXC on your notebook so you can work from a networkless Koh Rong beach. Linux
(and Ubuntu in particular) makes this trivial. Everyone else has shitty window
managers, while dwm is heaven.

In that respect, Linux works. And nothing else mainstream does. But universal
mediocrity isn't an excuse for mediocrity.

~~~
w0utert
>> Now, for my purposes, other alternatives just don't work. I don't know an
easy way to have a Windows or OSX system to throw up a private virtual cloud
over LXC on your notebook so you can work from a networkless Koh Rong beach.

Run it in a Linux VM?

~~~
scarmig
I've been thinking about doing that, actually, so not knowing of any easy way
was a bit of a fib. Very tempting, to say the least, but free software and
all.

------
ch0wn
I had my boss order one for me and it should arrive next week. I'm really
looking forward to it after reading this article. It feels good to not pay for
a Windows license that will never be used and instead support a company that
appears to see the benefits of FLOSS.

~~~
gvb
Got a link to the Dell site? I cannot find it. I did a search for "XPS
developer edition" and it shows up, but the link is a 404. :-/

~~~
corin_
US: <http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd.aspx> UK:
<http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd>

------
capisce
"Developer" ultrabook but still with an uncomfortable left slanted keyboard
layout. When will we see a programmer friendly laptop with a symmetric
keyboard layout like the TypeMatrix or TECK?

There is no redeeming quality to the left slanted keyboard layout unless you
are making typewriters in the 19th century: <http://loup-
vaillant.fr/articles/better-keyboards>

~~~
acabal
I've mentioned this in other threads but my gripe is that they got rid of the
pgup/pgdown/home/end/etc. column. I have no idea why, and it even looks like
there's plenty of space on the laptop for it. I use those keys all day, every
day, and the sad trend of laptops aping Apple's keyboard layout saddens me
greatly.

------
kailuowang
I really hope Google can make a chrome pixel like Linux laptop. I think it
will be hugely popular among her own engineers. MacBookPro used to be
perfectly fine for software development for years but after upgrading mine to
one with retina display half a year ago, I no longer believe that's case. It's
2D rendering performance is sluggish, crashes couple of times every week
(probably caused by some glitches during switching between integrated and
discreet display). I don't mean to blame Apple, they no longer focus on PC and
software development workstation laptops was never their business goal.

~~~
rst
It is, in fact, possible to run Linux on the Chrome Pixel bare metal; Linus
himself has one and likes it (and has posted about it quite a bit on Google+),
mainly because of the screen. The main problem is that the SSD is sized to be
a local cache for cloud data. The 32 GB SSD you get with the base model could
wind up very cramped, these days; you do get a 64 GB SSD with the LTE model,
but that's even pricier, and still a bit skimpy.

~~~
evilduck
The 64GB Pixel is priced nearly the same as the 13 rMBP and other than the
unique aspects of a touch screen and LTE, is almost half the performance of
the Mac. And if something happens to your laptop, who do you really want to
call for support, Apple or Google?

I'd love to see some serious competition to Apple, but it's not there yet.

~~~
drivebyacct2
"Half the performance" what the what?

~~~
evilduck
Compare the specs between the two, half the RAM and a much lesser CPU. GPUs
are the same, but the storage is halved too. No Thunderbolt or USB3 even.
Battery life is significantly better for the MacBook. All for basically
equivalent prices. It's a nice looking machine, an I'd actually prefer the
Pixel screen ratio to the Mac's, but the performance to dollar ratio lies
clearly in Apple's favor, and if you have any hardware hiccups, the value of
Apple's support vs Google's notoriously absent support cannot be ignored
either.

------
jebblue
>> I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating
environment both at work and at home.

More or less than Windows?
[http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not-
recogniz...](http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not-recognizing-
camera-nor-iphone-as-camera)

>> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment...

Huh?

>> Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever
be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time
without any assistance. >> but there's no way I'd feel comfy installing even
newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers.

My wife is as non-techie as you can get, we bought an Dell Laptop which came
with Ubuntu for her sometime back, she has no trouble, logging in, browsing,
using Open Office for simple documents and spreadsheets, Skype, Google Voice,
email. Hmm, when I read stuff indicating that modern Linux especially Ubuntu
is hard for ordinary users it honestly makes me question the true motivation
of the author when the author is a blogger who pretends to have a clue.

~~~
lee_ars
To be fair, I'm a pretty _new_ blogger, so maybe my cluefulness is still
developing. That being said, what do you think my motivation is?

------
andrewparker
I have a dell xps 13 and the trackpad responsiveness is a disaster. I have
tried endless combination of drivers (both Dell and third-party) and sunk 20
hours into debugging. I strongly recommend you do not purchase an XPS 13 if
you do not plan to use it primarily with an external mouse.

~~~
jebblue
Speaking as a developer I keep my own mouse in my laptop bag because using
trackpads is irritating, Windows or Linux.

------
brc
I have an xps 13 and a MacBook air.

The MBA died 2 months out of warranty, and had to have the logic board
replaced. Apple comped this, thankfully. Lately it's been getting flaky and
requiring forced-restrts.

The xps 13 is still under warranty and had a hdd failure requiring a new unit
from dell. I also find the trackpad extremely annoying with cursor jumping
from thumb bumps, so much that I cart an extra keyboard around for it.

In the end I favor the MBA for better build quality and finish but I'm not
super excited about either.

And no, I'm not a laptop killer. I still have a 15 year old compaq working,
though with no battery life and the DVD is dead. I've just had a rotten run of
luck with these two.

------
bluedino
A few questions:

Ruby 1.8 - I thought we were dinosaurs for still using it

How is the hi-res display handled on the 13" screen? Does Ubuntu have display
scaling or something built-in? I have it on a machine at home but never
noticed any settings related to that.

Glossy display - is it as glossy as the classic MacBook Pro, or more like the
Retina, which is still pretty glossy and will make you hate being stuck by the
window at Starbucks.

I want one of these, but Dell isn't doing the one thing that makes people buy
their hardware - offer it a BIG discount compared to other in the market (Air,
Carbon X1, etc)

~~~
noahl
I don't know about 12.04, but display scaling was part of the Ubuntu Touch
announcement. Their plan is to stop defining everything in terms of pixels and
start working in "grid units", which they will rescale in response to pixel
density and the type of device you're on.

------
HSO
_> The screen is glossy, which I like, a choice that will no doubt illicit
[sic] an immediate "I HATE THIS AND WANT TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW" response
for a lot of people._

This just exasperates me! The article is not bad but I reflexively lose
confidence in the author when I notice spelling mistakes like that. Maybe
because they're not typos but actual mistakes. I know it's arrogant and overly
dismissive but I can't get over myself on this point. Sorry, you lost me at
"illicit"…

------
robotjosh
The common wisdom that "linux will never be viable on the desktop" is
frustrating. How user friendly and problem-free does ubuntu have to get before
people stop claiming this? All drivers working by default isn't good enough?
To install software on windows you have to buy it or download shady .exe
files, how is this better or more user-friendly than graphical software
repository?

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Linux has come a long way in the context of driver support. It has not come
very far at all in terms of ease of use.

When something goes wrong on Ubuntu for example, the advice is 99% of the time
to open a terminal window and start running commands. This is
impractical/unworkable for the majority of users.

Ubuntu might be the most forward thinking Linux distribution in terms of ease
of use, but for every step forward they take two steps back.

With Unity for example doing relatively "simple" things like configuring the
firewall have seemingly disappeared (as well as much other settings). They
seem to have just deleted the majority of the UI and said "we'll just use
search for everything!" Without thinking through discoverability.

I think Linux is great as a server operating system. But the people behind it
just aren't capable of thinking like "normal" users and thus are completely
unable to produce something for those users to use.

Right now the most likely contender for a Linux desktop is some kind of
Android fork that extends what Google has managed to accomplish to a larger
hardware set (or just take Chromium and expand that).

~~~
Glyptodon
Usually that advice isn't badly intentioned but just because people are used
to doing things that way. Just as an example, if you download a package or
something even if you _could_ use GDebi Package installer to install it with
the gui, every tutorial you ever see will probably tell you do `sudo dpkg -i`
or something. Nearly every Linux problem a 'regular' user is likely to have
falls into this category - there's _probably_ a semi-sane way to do it with
the GUI, but everyone who uses Linux will think it's 10x easier to just give
someone a command instead of clicking through some lengthy graphical process.

------
HunOL
Glossy screen...

~~~
yareally
That would be my biggest turnoff. I would say more developers dislike that
anyone else, so I'm baffled by the fact it has one.

~~~
johnchristopher
More baffling is the fact the author likes it.

Even more baffling is the mention in the article that the trackpad is
unsuitable to grab window's frames and yet this fact isn't mentionned in the
pro/cons section.

I wish the author had given a word or two about fan noise under different
loads.

------
rayiner
How do you do a laptop review without discussing battery life?

~~~
CrazedGeek
Second page:

"Because the XPS 13 is mature hardware, I didn't do any complex benchmarking.
Battery life for a constant simulated load average of about 1.3 was almost
exactly three hours, which isn't awful, but it isn't particularly great. The
Ultrabook fared better under a real-life workload of light Web browsing,
e-mailing, and writing, yielding about five-and-a-half hours of time spread
across a day of work. This included a few transitions from home office to
Panera Bread (or as we Ars editors like to call it, "the other office")."

------
d23
I'm not a designer, so this may be terribly ignorant, but looking at some of
the packaging materials in those photos made me wonder: did Microsoft's push
for "flat UI" design start a trend? Or did someone else do it before them? I
feel like I've been seeing it everywhere now.

~~~
rsynnott
Unity pre-dates Windows Phone 7 (the first appearance of the UI concept
formerly known as Metro) by some months, but the idea was around before; Adobe
was quite keen on it for a while.

------
kolev
I actually had to return two of those and got my money back at the end. The
screen can never be truly black which is a "no go" if you spend half of your
workday in the terminal. Other than this, it's not so bad. Oh, some of the
keys are unevenly illuminated. Anyway, it's definitely a bit cheaper than
MacBook Air, but for a good reason, I think. Unfortunately, only Apple pays
tons of attention to every little detail. The only great (but heavily
underspec'd) laptop I've found was Aspire S7. The new Kira laptop from Toshiba
looks decently, but we gotta see and touch it to tell.

~~~
bluedino
> The screen can never be truly black

Is it blue or brown or just gray?

~~~
kolev
Here's another from the same thread here: <https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr>

------
xando
Something went terribly wrong. It has the Windows key on the keyboard!

~~~
brokenparser
And "PrtScr" instead of "SysRq". Fail.

~~~
vilgax
May be "PrtScr" is more relevant because Ubuntu uses it as shortcut key to
take full and window screenshots. Also according to wikipedia "SysRq" has no
standard use.

~~~
brokenparser
But it does have one on Linux, which is what ships with this model. If you're
developing or even just tinkering and things go haywire, SysRq is much more
useful than the power button. But Dell clearly copy-pasted the design from
existing models. Had they consulted with a developer, it would've had Meta and
Line Feed on it as well. Perhaps even a compose key, før tḣöse fūññy
chàráctèrs. (Because dead keys are annoying when you have to write more than
one string literal in a day.)

------
marban
Did they really have to use the Spiderman logo font for the keyboard?

~~~
mmphosis
and, did they really have to use the Windows logo on the system key of a Linux
laptop?

A nice touch would have been to make it a penguin key. Or, even a spiderman
key to match the font.

 _I was especially happy to see that the palm rests were not gunked up with
the typical annoying explosion of multicolored stickers—with the exception of
a white-on-black Intel Core i7 sticker (which actually looks quite nice!)—so
there's nothing to visually distract you from working._

Another nice touch would have been to put the Intel Core i7 sticker beneath
the XPS badge on the bottom of the Ultrabook with the service tag, serial
number, and the neat little Ubuntu sticker.

~~~
vilgax
Those Intel (or may be Windows) sticker are there because it subsidize cost
for manufacturer. They are paid to stick it in front of user.

------
davidw
Looks pretty good, but I basically stare at my computer all day long, and
sometimes well into the night. I'm not sure 13" is enough screen. Opinions?

~~~
MichaelGG
I have a ThinkPad X201 convertible with the 12" 1280x800 touchscreen. (The
screen's nothing amazing; rather dull.) But it's a great device, apart from
the repeated fan weardown (replaced 3 times already) which makes it get a bit
hot. If Lenovo made a decent upgrade, I'd buy it in a minute.

Anyways, I've noticed no problems working on the 12", other than the lack of
pixels for virtual size (like IDEs and stuff). A 1080p resolution fixes that.

~~~
davidw
1080px is a downgrade for me - I have a 15" screen with 1920x1200. However, a
similar resolution on a smaller screen might be a bit more than I want to
subject my eyes to. But I don't want to give up screen real estate, either.

------
d23
Insert obligatory "year of the linux desktop" wisecrack.

------
Glyptodon
It's great that it works and all, but it still seems like a shameless attempt
to sell what ought to be a $900 laptop for $600 more because it's for
'developers.' Maybe give them the benefit of the doubt for needlessly using an
i7, but even then the mark up is still $500ish...

------
CR45H
I'm very happy with my XPS 13 so far. I'm running 13.04 and I've encountered a
few issues... however, Dell has been very responsive to my bug reports. Also,
on 13.04, there is no need for the PPA. Dell's changes have been incorporated
into the standard kernel.

~~~
joshnerius
Out of curiosity, have you had any trouble with backlight bleed?

This is the screen on the first XPS 13 I received:
<https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr>

Since then, it's been replaced twice, each subsequent system having similar
issues in different areas of the screen. I'm working with someone at Dell
corporate now to provide details for their engineering team...I have to
imagine all three systems were from the same manufacturing run.

------
miahi
"the laptop's bottom surface is coated in soft checkerboard patterned plastic"

Looks like carbon fiber to me.

~~~
unwind
Many things that look like carbon fiber are not, in fact, carbon fiber. In the
case of computer enclosures, it's even more so since "whoa, it's carbon
fiber!" is a desirable response when doing the design.

Note that actual carbon fiber is a very hard and brittle substance
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_%28fiber%29>), and you're quoting text
that says it's "soft" ...

------
microwise
I think this article shows that Ubuntu is suitable for the desktop world if
manufacturers support it. Am pretty impressed that someone who seems to have
had problems with Ubuntu before actually likes it.

------
digisign
Can't wait for the third rev with (hopefully) higher res display, more ram and
battery life, newer ubuntu.

------
return0
Does it have a docking connector?

~~~
bluedino
No, only the Latitude line has that.

------
weakwire
battery life fail.. i'd go for Macbook Air .. (disclaimer proud Dell latitude
owner)

