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.

  • tuhriel
    2·
    1 year ago

    Yeah and there is a big issue. I would place myself as quite tech savvy, but last time i looked for a distrobI got overwhelmed… Good thing: there are questionnaires that lead you to a good enough suggestion… Back then it proposed mint

    But then the next question: which desktopp environment?

    I installed on my huawei matebook and it worked okay-ish, but it had one dealbreaker: even with a lot of tinkering there was no way I got standby or hibernation to work. Which is a must for me…

    So I removed mint and installed kubuntu… Now standby and even hibernate work (kind of) But it totally craps up when I try to use my external monitor together with the internal screen… Even a lot of terminal tinkering later I don’t have it working… Oh and the speakers still crap now

    There is a lit of information around how to maybe get stuff working, but a lot of it requires a lot of upfront knowledge:

    • a lot of questions are answered with “yeah, enter that in your terminal” without any explanation what exactly it does (which is bad in two ways in my opinion)
    • a lot of official documentation doesn’t explain very well what the configs do and what syntax etc. is expected
    • there is often a lot of elitism around that really pushes away newcomers

    EmI do love tinkering, but sometimes it’s really frustrating even for me. No way I could my GF to try that out…