> There is, of course, the Dell XPS Developer Edition models that come preloaded with Ubuntu 16.04 (or just in the past few days, Ubuntu 18.04). Though for my purposes I went with the Dell XPS 13 preloaded with Windows 10 due to running some benchmarks there prior to wiping the disk, faster shipping time going from B&H Photo Video over Dell.com, and running Fedora Workstation as my preferred main OS rather than Ubuntu.<p>Unfortunately, from what I've been told by one of the guys in Dell's Sputnik program, they gauge interest on the Linux Dell laptops <i>strictly</i> by the number of people who buy Developer Edition laptops. So the author is not helping the cause by buying a Windows 10 laptop and loading Linux onto it.<p>Believe me, I get it. The Windows ones go on sale, while the Developer Editions pretty much never do. I'm guilty of buying a Win10 one myself before this was explained to me. Just passing that info on. If you want to support the future of Linux on Dell laptops, I strongly urge you to buy the ones with Linux pre-loaded, from Dell.
About a year ago I was looking to upgrade from my Thinkpad x220 and I ended up with an XPS 13 9360, a year later am comfortable saying it's the best laptop I've ever owned by a long shot. For my personal DD I like to use Arch and I've discovered basically no "linux-y" issues unique to the laptop hardware. Battery life is impressive, usually lasting 8+ hours of web browsing/casual usage with no tweaks (imo usually linux sees a much larger drop off). I'm definitely glad I went with the 1080p version, the PPI is already very high with such a small screen and I think the touchscreen/4K would have been overkill. Build quality is great and the laptop has a super premium feel. I know others have complained about build issues, I guess to them I would just repeat the old adage that you only hear about the people with issues, never from the satisfied users.<p>I would also say that the newer ones with multi-core are probably not worth the premium, if you can get last year's model for a good price then go for it. I got mine for $850 brand new, a few months before the multi-cores were announced. I don't think I really missed anything.
I used Linux for 10 years (mainly on Lenovos and some early Dell XPS back in the days), then I switched to MacOS about 3-4 years ago and over the last couple weeks I have been trying to go back to Linux because I am sick having to use MacOS everyday. It is a great OS for an everyday user, but not for a developer.<p>Here is what I tried so far:<p>1) Dell XPS 9370 Developer edition: This comes preloaded with Ubuntu and it is actually amazing that everything works out of the box. It was too small for me though, and the fan made a rattling noise so I decided to return it. The 4K screen is probably overkill on such a small display. Based on the review people recommend taking the normal screen, it saves a lot of battery and there is not that much difference.<p>2) Lenovo X1: I didn't like the feel of the Keyboard, and the screen was not that good. Installing Linux (Arch) was easy, but decided to return it.<p>3) Dell XPS 9570: I have this one for the last two weeks and so far I love it on the hardware level. I would even put it as somehow superior to my MacBook Pro. The downside is that Linux is not well supported at all. I have installed Arch so far and spent all my evenings trying to fix all the drivers. So far: The Nvidia drivers are barely working, ACPI needs a lot of tweaks (but it seems I got it working and got my 7 hours of battery). I still need to work on the Touchpad, and couple other things.<p>So far, the Dell XPS 9570 is a good challenger to the MBP, but installing Linux is still going to be a small challenge
If you want to use NixOs: <a href="https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683ddd848f485bf00/raw/94331b994bc7d73a762d177d1605115443d7a786/configuration.nix" rel="nofollow">https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683...</a><p>-- with the latest kernel, even the webcam is working now (the only thing that didn't).
I have been using Linux on servers since 1993. I have been dual booting SUSE with Windows 2000 on my desktop between 2000-2004. Ubuntu and then Arch has been my daily driver 2004-2017. I am not exactly a Linux newbie. But, based on these long, long years, I swear Linux desktop advocates have Stockholm syndrome. Some experiences: Samsung stopped making drivers for their MFCs so I needed to toss a perfectly working laser MFC because it stopped working with Linux, just like that. Later, a HP MFC caused endless pain, seemingly every other Arch update broke one of Bluetooth / printer of MFC / scanner of MFC. Plain Wifi eventually worked more or less (but see the endless string of bugs with 5GHz) but enterprise wifi always has been a pain. The strange F5 VPN our company used was not particularly Linux friendly -- I could only get it to work by running Firefox as root (yuck!). The only reference to the entire shebang was our IT asking around on various forums how to get it work under Linux and noone answering. And then Firefox stopped supporting extensions and I needed to tether my phone to get on the VPN. We now have a different VPN, no idea about the Linux support.<p>I am now using Windows 10 with the Linux Subsystem. O&O shutup takes care of the privacy concerns. I have a Lenovo Graphics Dock and docking and undocking is a nonevent. Do you want to be the one who gets an nVidia GPU hotplugging working on Linux -- and keeps it working through all the improvements the Linux desktop goes through? Worse, get IOMMU passthrough working with this setup because most of the games are still Windows only? I don't, that's for sure. I am 43 years old today and there is not enough time left to use a tamagotchi OS. The Linux Subsystem could have a better I/O performance but I will live. It's a surprisingly frustration free life. Some useful configuration tips <a href="https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Windows-10-(coming-from-Linux)" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi...</a><p>Before you inevitably downvote this, please comment where I am wrong. If you feel all the above are trivial, give me an offer for maintaing my Linux, I would actually love to get back there but for the time being I do not feel I can. I yearned for someone to take over desktop sysadmin from me for many years but I absolutely couldn't find anyone so eventually I just gave up.
I have a Dell XPS 13 and it's fantastic. I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on it. I've run into typical issues with UEFI vs BIOS and problems with Secure boot, but that's typical of nearly every new laptop nowadays. Had problems with Manjaro running KDE dropping bluetooth connections, but Ubuntu 18.04 runs great.
I have a thinkpad T470(Fedora 28) and T470p(QubesOS) that runs Linux just fine. Without any driver issues. The battery life is excellent once you install the tlp packages.
The performance seems great in comparison. But this laptop seems a bit thin for my taste. There would be room to almost double the battery if the thickness was increased. There would also be room for USB-A and a LAN port. Two things I would really like to see.<p>Also I read a lot of bad experiences here on HN with the XPS line every time it comes up. Personally I know at least two people who had a bad experience with it and ended up replacing the machine with something else. Is Dell improving on that part or has it stabilized?<p>On paper the machine looks really good but right now I just can't justify pulling the trigger to replace a Retina-MBP.
I have the previous model, the 9360, and my only real complaint is the touch pad. Palm rejection is just terrible, so much so that I've considered just turning off the touch pad and using a mouse.<p>One nice feature of the touch pad is that the scrolling direction for the mouse is independent of that for the touch pad. This means I can set the mouse to work like mice always have, before Apple invented "natural" scrolling, but have the touch pad use "natural" mode. For some reason, this actually feels right to me. I wish my Macbook Pro could do this.
I use middle click to paste all time and it's one of the reasons I bought only laptops with 3 hardware buttons on the touchpad so far. How does middle click work with the kind of touchpad on the XPS?
Nobody sell my ideal laptop.<p>It must have 15 inch Builtin 4K display, Ethernet, display port, multiple USB ports and No Nvidia GPU.<p>I usually don't move my laptop so I prefer 15 inch over 13 inch. But I like my primary computer ready to be carried anywhere so I don't want desktop.<p>I don't play video game or graphics on my primary computer so I don't need a dedicated GPU. Also Fuck you Nvidia.<p>There are 13 inch laptop which satisfy everything else or 15 inch with Nvidia GPU. I guess there is not much demand for my ideal.
One problem I have with my XPS 13 is the keyboard. It's too small for me to type without making lots of errors (I'm used to the size of keyboards on 14 inch laptops and full size pcs). Also the feel of the keys has no click and feels stiff. I often don't push the left shift properly due to the stiffness.
two of several appeals of Linux to me are the fact that it is free and modest on resources.<p>from that angle it seems slightly ironic that all those great Linux laptops leave the 1000 usd mark way behind them.<p>thing is, I'm actually intending to buy a laptop and have Mint run on it.<p>any suggestions for a laptop cheaper than 1k?<p>I'm eyeing Dell latitude 5480.