One thing I don’t understand is why they tie the high end configurations to the touch screen. I guess most developers don’t need a touch screen but would benefit from a better CPU and more disk space.
Usually you can configure the CPU/RAM/hdd/etc. in Dell laptops, but this XPS 13 line seems to be “as is”. When I click Customize & Buy on any of the 4 models on their site, it doesn’t give me options that can be changed for any of them.
Agreed. To me, though, the major difference between this and some of the efforts we saw from Dell and others five or ten years back (plus the “Linux on netbooks” debacle) is that the hardware support is being added to the kernel. Being pretty hopeful about this laptop, I was heartened to see that the fixes were all kernel commits, not weird binary blobs or some custom distro I end up locked into.
Ooph, indeed. I was hoping they’d have ironed out all the major issues before releasing the Linux edition. I really liked the previous Linux model, though, and will definitely get the new one, but I’d rather wait a month or two instead of spending the nights patching my kernel.
Yeah, I have the previous version: it’s very nice with great support. This looks even better. I think after a few months most of the big things should be ironed out, and I need to save some money right now anyway.
Anyone know how the large screen support is in Linux right now? I’m really happy to finally see some more pixels after a few years of that stalling out or even declining.
I’m sure they will get the fixes in and this laptop will be running Linux great out-of-box.
Are they likely to do that? As you say it would be great if I could just format with a 2016 Linux distro and everything just worked. I’m not a Linux compiling sort though, so I won’t be buying one at the moment.
They seem to be upstreaming all their patches into the kernel. So I’d say it’s very likely to do exactly that. Once the patches are merged and the distros ship with a recent-enough kernel, there shouldn’t be any blockers.
Same. A 14.x" would be doable, but for me a 13" is a bit to small.
I have a 15" macbook pro – 2009 model with a 1440 x 900 matte screen, and that screen/font size combination is what ends up working best for me. Have not upgraded to newer hardware because I find the high gloss displays tend to cause increased eye strain for me quite a bit. :/
Been hoping that as time goes on the glare on the screens becomes less – and it seems that has been the case. Might be worth trying a new system out one of these days, as I would love to get a bump in battery life and performance.
Being able to run OpenBSD or FreeBSD on a decent laptop, with all the things working, would be awesome.
We recommend for Debian 8.0 users to run the kernel command line option:
acpi_osi=”!Windows 2013”
This will put the touchpad in PS2 mode and sound in HDA mode.
Yeah another caveat… if you try to install OpenBSD (or anything else that requires a full wipe of the disk) watch out… I’m unable to even get into the bios setup screen after wiping my internal disk. Possible that it requires a dos mbr, but I haven’t had a chance to try that yet. Only way for me to get the machine working again is to pull out the MSATA ssd. This is with the 3rd gen, but I’ve had no indication that this issue is fixed, or even acknowledged from Dell.
The current theory on this is that OpenBSD doesn’t erase the GPT fully, and the bios continues trying to read it, then crashes. This should be fixed in 5.7 and current snaps.
This one, the 4th gen that just came out in 2015. I bought mine before the developer edition came out (obviously) but it’s the same hardware (although it appears they are shipping the developer edition with an Intel wireless card and mine came with something else - I just swapped in an Intel card).
I’m honestly curious what the issue people have with chiclet keyboards is. I own a Lenovo x220 with “traditional” style keyboard, and having tried the newer Lenovo chiclet style keyboards (on the x240), the chiclet keys don’t feel worse and I type just as well (or poorly, depending on your perspective :-) ) on them. Of course, the newer Lenovo keyboards have problems (layout, removed useful keys), but in my experience the chiclet keys aren’t to blame.
(There are of course, bad chiclet-style keyboards, like the Apple ones that have virtually no travel)
The perpendicular key edge means I make typos far more frequently when I hit a key slightly off-center. I find them basically unusable for extended typing.
To be clear, I don’t care that chiclet keyboards exist—I just won’t buy laptops that have them. I am pretty upset that every new laptop has a chiclet keyboard, though.
Early chiclet keyboards that I used had a distinct wobble that makes typing feel very precarious and make it difficult to type fast. I think Apple laptops used to feel like this, but there desktop keyboard feels very solid.
Seems to be fairly uncommon for ultrabooks to support 16gb, though it would be nice: this XPS 13, the Macbook Air, and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon all top out at 8gb. The only good option I know of is the Macbook Pro 13", which you can upgrade to 16gb (comes out to $1500).
One thing I don’t understand is why they tie the high end configurations to the touch screen. I guess most developers don’t need a touch screen but would benefit from a better CPU and more disk space.
One of the reasons I recently bought an X1 carbon is that the hires IPS screen was finally available not touch.
I was thinking the same thing. Can the non-touch model be configured with the higher-end CPU, memory, and storage?
Usually you can configure the CPU/RAM/hdd/etc. in Dell laptops, but this XPS 13 line seems to be “as is”. When I click Customize & Buy on any of the 4 models on their site, it doesn’t give me options that can be changed for any of them.
Informative, but wow, that’s a lot of caveats for a “Linux” laptop.
Agreed. To me, though, the major difference between this and some of the efforts we saw from Dell and others five or ten years back (plus the “Linux on netbooks” debacle) is that the hardware support is being added to the kernel. Being pretty hopeful about this laptop, I was heartened to see that the fixes were all kernel commits, not weird binary blobs or some custom distro I end up locked into.
Ooph, indeed. I was hoping they’d have ironed out all the major issues before releasing the Linux edition. I really liked the previous Linux model, though, and will definitely get the new one, but I’d rather wait a month or two instead of spending the nights patching my kernel.
Yeah, I have the previous version: it’s very nice with great support. This looks even better. I think after a few months most of the big things should be ironed out, and I need to save some money right now anyway.
Anyone know how the large screen support is in Linux right now? I’m really happy to finally see some more pixels after a few years of that stalling out or even declining.
Kind of all the same caveat: the touchpad is simply too awesome for older kernels to handle it. :)
I’m using the last version, and I love it. There were a few issues early on, but they got patched. Wouldn’t trade it back for my old MacBook.
I’m sure they will get the fixes in and this laptop will be running Linux great out-of-box.
Are they likely to do that? As you say it would be great if I could just format with a 2016 Linux distro and everything just worked. I’m not a Linux compiling sort though, so I won’t be buying one at the moment.
They seem to be upstreaming all their patches into the kernel. So I’d say it’s very likely to do exactly that. Once the patches are merged and the distros ship with a recent-enough kernel, there shouldn’t be any blockers.
This is pretty awesome. I’d love to see a 15" developer edition! I really struggle with 13" for real work.
Same. A 14.x" would be doable, but for me a 13" is a bit to small.
I have a 15" macbook pro – 2009 model with a 1440 x 900 matte screen, and that screen/font size combination is what ends up working best for me. Have not upgraded to newer hardware because I find the high gloss displays tend to cause increased eye strain for me quite a bit. :/ Been hoping that as time goes on the glare on the screens becomes less – and it seems that has been the case. Might be worth trying a new system out one of these days, as I would love to get a bump in battery life and performance.
Being able to run OpenBSD or FreeBSD on a decent laptop, with all the things working, would be awesome.
Nice :P
Yeah another caveat… if you try to install OpenBSD (or anything else that requires a full wipe of the disk) watch out… I’m unable to even get into the bios setup screen after wiping my internal disk. Possible that it requires a dos mbr, but I haven’t had a chance to try that yet. Only way for me to get the machine working again is to pull out the MSATA ssd. This is with the 3rd gen, but I’ve had no indication that this issue is fixed, or even acknowledged from Dell.
The current theory on this is that OpenBSD doesn’t erase the GPT fully, and the bios continues trying to read it, then crashes. This should be fixed in 5.7 and current snaps.
Weird, OpenBSD worked fine for me on this XPS 13. Softraid crypto but otherwise just a single partition MBR drive.
3rd gen or 4th gen? When I hear “won’t even boot to bios” I assume it’s “the” broken bios bug.
This one, the 4th gen that just came out in 2015. I bought mine before the developer edition came out (obviously) but it’s the same hardware (although it appears they are shipping the developer edition with an Intel wireless card and mine came with something else - I just swapped in an Intel card).
Ah, gabe said 3rd gen. The bug only seems to affect the bioses of a certain era, and has now been fixed in newer ones.
Cool, I’ll give it a shot on a recent snap this weekend and report to misc@ if all goes well.
No interest because chiclet keyboard. =( I am endlessly disappointed that Apple managed to infect the entire laptop market with this nonsense.
I’m honestly curious what the issue people have with chiclet keyboards is. I own a Lenovo x220 with “traditional” style keyboard, and having tried the newer Lenovo chiclet style keyboards (on the x240), the chiclet keys don’t feel worse and I type just as well (or poorly, depending on your perspective :-) ) on them. Of course, the newer Lenovo keyboards have problems (layout, removed useful keys), but in my experience the chiclet keys aren’t to blame.
(There are of course, bad chiclet-style keyboards, like the Apple ones that have virtually no travel)
The perpendicular key edge means I make typos far more frequently when I hit a key slightly off-center. I find them basically unusable for extended typing.
To be clear, I don’t care that chiclet keyboards exist—I just won’t buy laptops that have them. I am pretty upset that every new laptop has a chiclet keyboard, though.
Early chiclet keyboards that I used had a distinct wobble that makes typing feel very precarious and make it difficult to type fast. I think Apple laptops used to feel like this, but there desktop keyboard feels very solid.
The new thinkpad keyboard shouldn’t be counted as chiclet imo.
Looks great! I’ve been searching for my next laptop. Only problem wit this is you can only get 8GB of RAM and it’s soldered to the motherboard..
Same here, I really need 16GB to support various VMs and such.
Seems to be fairly uncommon for ultrabooks to support 16gb, though it would be nice: this XPS 13, the Macbook Air, and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon all top out at 8gb. The only good option I know of is the Macbook Pro 13", which you can upgrade to 16gb (comes out to $1500).