Not this time with the Kaby Lake XPS 13 — they were available immediately.
I think it helped that the hardware is exactly the same, since all versions have a Killer (Qualcomm) wifi card rather than "Dell" (= Broadcom) for Windows and Intel for Ubuntu.
About a month ago I contacted Dell's chat session thing to ask about Linux support on the XPS13 ...the Dell representative gave a hand wavey reply and terminated the session. I got the impression he'd not heard of either Sputnik or the Developer Edition.
Nice, I don't need a fire breathing gtx 1080 and the noise and terrible battery life. However the GTX 1050 might well justified. Very curious how long the battery lasts.
Correct, but if you get the 2015 you can get the Iris 540 which is a pretty decent GPU (at least compared to anything else intel ships). Beats some of the low/medium range chipsets.
Sadly dell makes makes you pick on the XPS13:
Lousy CPU
No iris graphics
8GB ram
small disk
Great battery
nice matte display
And:
Nice CPU
Iris 540 graphics
16GB ram
3200x1800 shiny/reflective display (that halves your battery life)
Sadly I was looking for the Iris 540, 1080P display, and 16GB ram. A very rare combination. Hopefully the new dell makes the 1080P option independ of the rest of the laptop.
Sadly the kaby lake + iris graphics won't be out for a few more months. So the 2015 XPS13 is WAY faster at graphics than the 2016 kaby lake.
The highest end i7 xps13 actually has surprisingly good graphics performance despite the intel integrated gpu (been using one the moment the 2016 version became available).
It might be good, but it doesn't even remotely compare to the Nvidia GTX 1060 in the VR capable 13R3. Although battery life suffers immensely because of it.
The problem with the Alienware 13R3 is that it's a great professional machine with the most incredibly stupid looking adornments.
I absolutely hate how the best machines are Gaming machines, which means you're stuck with all sorts of LED bling-crap.
The 13R3 looks like an absolutely killer machine for everyday work. OLED touch, quad core CPU (HQ series), fast GPU, physical touchpad buttons, ports out the wazoo, user serviceable RAM (up to 32!) and storage, etc.
Try the Razer Blade or the Razer Blade Pro. Except for the green logo on the top nothing makes it look like a gaming machine. And the Pro even has mechanical switches.
I do agree with the support. I have a cheap Dell Inspiron with 1 year complete warranty which I extended to 3 years (very cheap package) and their service is so great that they came the next day I called them to ask about a keyboard replacement and fixed it on the spot in my home.
Check again. A refresh was launched recently and it even has Matte screen, upto 2TB of mSATA RAID0, 32GB of RAM, desktop GPU, i7-6x series (2.6Gto 3.5G Turbo).
The slimmer dell laptops have been lacking the RJ45 port for a while now. I have a precision m3300 (very happy with that) which doesn't have one. Had to get a cheap adapter for USB but that one feels more like a plug that sits at the end of the network cable than a dongle.
The thing I think with those of us that do have their computers connected to cable network a lot ("all the time") is that it's usually in the same place (our desk) so it's not that big a problem to adapt the end of the network cable there.
In fact I'd prefer to use a usb-c brick with all connections (video, keyboard, mouse, lan) over the current one where I insert the network cable into one usb, then the monitor into the hdmi, and the monitor usb which has the mouse/keyboard in it's hub into a second usb. Of all the "docking flaws" with my current laptop I find the lack of RJ45 to be the least annoying actually.
I was excited to buy a Kaby Lake Mac Book Pro. Especially when the Dell XPS13 is showing off >10 hours of 4k video playback on battery [1]. I can get about 12-14 hours on my 2014/2015 MBP (coding with a dark background, low brightness) I really enjoy the added flexibility longer battery life gives me.
If anything, dark background will use more power as the pixels need to be fully powered to block out the backlight. Not sure if this is still the case, but it used to be afaik. CRT's were the opposite in that black meant the beam was off or somesuch and therefore white used more power. But that's not been true for a long time.
I sure as hell hope so. Typing this on a 2015 XPS 15 as we speak, and the incessant "chirp chirp chirp" any time it's in a non-horizontal position (such as when docked) drives me insane.
Finally convinced support to take it in for warranty (expires in a few weeks), which means I'll be without it for a while, but hopefully they at least can swap out the mobo with a non-chirpy version...
They did not fix that either. You might be lucky to receive a device that doesn't exhibit it, or you may not notice it, or you may not even bother about it.
Dell doesn't really care - they still sell loads, and as long as the online reviewers don't complain loudly enough so that their sales are affected it is just not worth the cost.
One of my co-workers has the current gen (9550) and Ubuntu 16.04 runs great on it. I think he's got an intel wifi card, I'd just check Linux compatibility with the Killer wifi card before going that route. It's easy enough to change a WiFi card out aftermarket if there is issues though, an Intel 8260 card will run you $30.
Does that include good working power management and a fully functioning touchpad? I went down the XPS13 Sputnik path and had endless disappointment with constant fixes.
I think that Skylake Power Management got better in the Kernel after the original XPS13 Sputnik launch, but yes the XPS13 touchpad was a pain in the ass. The XPS15 touchpad on Linux is better than the XPS13.
My biggest complaint about the XPS15 I had a little over a year ago was the spacebar. There was a manufacturing defect in mine where the touchpad ribbon cable pressed up against the spacebar and was causing unregistered keystrokes. I read internet forums where multiple people had this issue. Maybe Dell has fixed the manufacturing issue by now, but it was bad enough that I returned the XPS15.
I am also on 9550 with Ubuntu 16.04. I upgraded RAM to 32GB. I mostly do Android development (gradle and Android Studio eat a huge amount of memory). I've run into a few weird issues with different version of Linux kernel. Some kernel version caused no sound at all. This is such a common topics among Ubuntu users and there are so many solutions about that. I've tried most of them (solutions around alsamixer and pulseaudio) only using certain version of kernel works for me.
I am curious which linux kernel version people (and your co-worker) are using though.
Not P but just ab example: Sublime Text won't even show menus in unity without some extension hackery. Who thought this titlebar would be a good idea? People with an 11 inch laptop? Is that the target audience now?
sorry, that's simply wrong. OSX has menus fixed in the menu bar, not in the window titles, these are separate. And so far I find menus at the top still offer the best UX - no need to target the pointer vertically, the menu always anchored where you find it, a root representation of running apps other than their windows. Unity does almost everything the other way round - hidden menus, revealed wherever the top of your window is if you happen to figure out the right key combo or gesture. Discoverability? Who needs that, people can't operate something more complex than an iPhone app anyways...
For me that always came across as a sane choice for single user developer/power user machines.
Also IIRC it is only the very first user that has this privilege by default. For extra users I think you'll have to explicitly enable it when you create the account (or at a later stage.)
i barely trust my own programs to have access to the root account, why should any old script be able to access the entire machine in 6 letters?
"you should never run anything as root" yet on ubuntu everything as good as runs as root by default.
even windows ussually has a seperate password to create user accounts, but with ubuntu make the mistake of leaving your machine unlocked and unattended and any little script kiddy can own your machine in fractions of a second. worse even than windows, because they get remote access by default.
I understand why they did it. but if they are making those kind of changes I dont have the energy to track down what other things they "broke" to favor some (what i consider to be) misguided idea of useability over security.
No operating system can protect your machine if it is left unlocked - even allowing physical access makes you vulnerable. A worthy concern, but not in itself an "Ubuntu problem".
most you can get to on a normal unlocked linux machine in normal use is the see browsing history.
you cant even copy files to a usb stick because mounting it requires a password.
that is very different to making the machine yours via remote access.
and very very different than letting browser plugins create user accounts that can be accessed remotely (that have root access by default).
then theres the fact that
selinux seems to be a right state on ubuntu
plus what everybody else said. basically put there are several nicer and more secure distributions of linux i would choose before ubuntu.
yet the link i posted is ubuntu users asking how to make it do exactly that, because by default something added no password to their sudo configuration.
which is also my experience.
having plenty of experience getting red hat fedora and centos set up just the way i like, i decided very quickly even getting ubuntu "safe" was more learning curve than reward.
Not the parent either...I'm not a fan of Ubuntu proper, even variants like Xubuntu (and I adore Xfce). I do, however, really enjoy Elementary OS which is Ubuntu based but has an amazing UI and all sorts of helpful little features baked in. I get the same feeling of "whoa, I didn't know an OS would do that and I don't know how I got by without it!" as I did 12 years ago when I started using OS X for the first time.
Some examples: The terminal is smart enough to know when you want to paste a command, and allows you to Ctrl-V without the Shift modifier if you have a terminal command in the clipboard. The terminal will intelligently auto-correct a tab completion when you use the wrong case (e.g. type "docu" and hit tab, and it will complete to "Documents" if there is no file/folder starting with "docu", instead of failing on the mixed case). Start a process in the terminal and minimize or send that window to the background, and you'll get a system notification when the task completes. That's awesome for when I start to compile something big, then load up Netflix or Vimeo to pass the time while it runs; I don't end up binging away my night on videos and forgetting about that build. There are a few more niceties in the terminal but this paragraph is already huge.
In the file manager, dealing with networked drives is much more seamless than even macOS. It has built in support for sftp, afp, nfs, smb/cifs. I can put in the ssh credentials for one of my VPS instances, and I can then browse that instance as if it's a local drive. Ironically, browsing a Windows share from Elementary is easier than from another Windows box, thanks to regressions in Windows 10's file sharing settings.
There's a bunch of functionality I won't go into as this is turning into an advertisement, but in my experience it is by far the best desktop Linux experience I've had, and the only one that comes close to the cohesiveness of macOS.
From what I've read the coil whine is related to having the keyboard backlight on. Is that important enough to trade-off for the noise? I always turn off backlights when using a computer on battery anyway (it's not like I'll be looking at the keyboard much...).
I'd happily turn off the backlight, I'll try that. I've turned off the c6 processor states as apparently the switching there causes some of it. I can hear the changes as things visually change on screen, so scrolling and videos are quite bad.
Ah no dice. I think it's inherent in all of these laptops but some are worse than others. This is a refurb, so I wonder if it was returned due to this... I'll talk to the support.
Sure does, the 9550 has the nostril cam and this appears to be the same form factor. Definitely one of the worst parts of the XPS 13/15 line, otherwise they're solid choices.
FYI the LG UF 5K doesn't come with Displayport 1.3 support either, it uses 2 DP 1.2 streams side by side (which sometimes can have screen tearing in the middle) hence it's a tiled display just like early 60hz 4K monitors.
To work with the 5K monitor you either have to connect 2 DP1.2 cables or a single Thunderbolt 3 cable.
In both cases you'll see 2 monitors connected on your machine which can cause some issues in some cases (e.g. full screen exclusive mode).
P.S.
What Apple device actually supports DP1.3? The new Mac's don't for sure, neither is the old Mac Pro unless you can hack some upgraded GPU into it...
Thunderbolt™ 3 multi-use port allows you to charge your laptop, connect to multiple devices (including support for up to two 4K displays)
and
Featuring a single-cable connection for power, Ethernet, audio and video. Add the optional Dell Thunderbolt™ Dock for faster data transfers and support for up to three Full HD displays or two 4k displays.
...which is a little confusing. Does that mean two external 4K displays without a dock, and one with the thunderbolt dock? Do the display counts include the laptop display?
Speaking of laptops, what would you recommend to someone running Ubuntu? My 2013 MacBook Air is feeling it, with its non-upgradable 4 GB RAM. A discrete graphics card so I could play DotA2 once in a while would be nice, even if it's at medium graphics quality.
I ve switched from air running Ubuntu to XPS 13 dev edition with Ubuntu. Not everything beautiful but a decent switch, great power, autonomy and screen.
Not OP, but got the same laptop. "Jumpy trackpad" [1] and "stuck key" [2] problems are the ones I feel most.
They should have been fixed by the latest firmware (apparently still in 2015) but I can still experience them sometimes. I believe I have the latest fw (I'm surely >= 06A), but can't check ATM, so chances are I'm not on the latest.
Then again, I admit I can work with it almost seamlessly (dev-work from CLI mainly).
One issue would be the webcam placement, it's below the screen.
If you get the XPS 13 don't make the same mistake I've made, don't waste your money on this POS http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk...
Linux support is very bad, it uses a proprietary technology. Get a USB-C to HDMI adapter instead.
I just switched to the XPS 13 as well and picked up the WD15 which is the same price on Amazon. The WD15 officially supports linux and from what I read is better than the 3100 as long as you're on a more recent kernel. Hopefully I won't have to return it.
Presumably Dota is easier on the GPU than Dota2. The kaby lake with iris graphics isn't out yet, should be Feb or March or so. The 2015 XPS 13 has the Iris 540. Sadly the 2016 XPS13 doesn't, yet.
Sorry, oops, I meant DotA2. I assume anything can run the original DotA (but I also don't know if anyone still plays that). Iris 540 is integrated and still has that performance? That's pretty nice, thanks.
I've been using different models from the X-Series with Ubuntu since 08.04 and am currently looking at the T450s (14", but still an Ultrabook and light enough for me).
The X1 Carbon (latest.. 4th? gen) is my daily laptop since release and I can't wait to get rid of it. In anything other than low light/perfect lighting the screen is unbearably dull, speakers are appalling (though in ubuntu you can override to > 100% volume). Keyboard is pretty unsatisfying to use also.
I got it because i wanted a 14" laptop and it was the only one on the market. Screen size is perfect (15" is a bit big for travelling & carry on luggage)
I was surprised how light the T-Series models have become, hadn't looked at them in years and only remembered the heavy clunky units that made me go for the X-Series.
The current model T460s is also interesting, quite a bit more performance than its predecessor, albeit in a different price bracket.
I'm mostly going for the 450 because there's tons of decent refurb available and I'm frugal that way ;-)
Just be sure that you're comfortable with the trackpoint on the 450... They swapped the buttons for a touch sensitive area at the top of the trackpad. The physical buttons have made a welcome return on the T460 range, but if that doesn't bother you, enjoy a great machine.
Same here, except I have a different experience. Maybe it's because I upgraded from a 2010 Macbook Air, but I like the screen a lot. The speakers suck, I agree, but I rarely use external speakers when I'm in laptop mode. I really like that it runs Ubuntu almost perfectly, and that it has 16GB or RAM. I do wish the video card was more powerful, but it drives a 4k monitor (as well as its own display) quite well. It's stupid lightweight, too. Makes my 2010 Air feel like cast iron.
I always recommend the thinkpad T series. The 14s has almost the same profile as a macbook air. I've ran Linux on thinkpads for a while now, never disappointed.
I use two ThinkPads and one thing that I dislike about both of them is the Lenovo software. It's buggy and uses a lot of memory. I've gone through and uninstalled as much of it as I can and both machines have been much more stable. If I were buying a new machine today, I would probably reformat and reinstall Windows.
I want a laptop with Iris Pro 580/p580 and NO dedicated GPU. The 580 has a bit over a TFLOP of compute (plenty for games like DoTA) and more importantly, the drivers don't suck on Linux. The issue is that any laptop that ships with that processor also ships with a crappy dedicated GPU.
When I have a 45w processor, I want to pay a few hundred extra for a 55w Nvidia M2000m that has 10% more compute power (granted, more efficient at GPGPU) and horrible drivers.
What I want:
15.6", i7-6770HQ, 32gb DDR4, M.2 SSD, high-res IPS screen, Thinkpad-grade keyboard, good webcam, decent ports (At least 2x thunderbolt, 3x usb3, SD, 3.5mm, and ethernet), a little thicker for a battery that lasts a couple days, durable build quality, large trackpad with builtin wacom, NO dedicated graphics.
Speaking of which, seems like the 580/P580 never really delivered on the promised performance compared to the much lower power Iris 540/550 (used in the macbook pro).
The next gen looks promising though. Intel's already mentioned the kaby lake + iris for the NUC in Feb/March. I'm hoping that intel tunes the performance, power use, and price so it makes it into more devices. Iris graphics on laptops is pretty rare so far.
I think there is a bit of a meme that Linux Intel graphics don't suck. They have broken desktops repeatedly and still have a lot of glitches on newer hardware, whereas everyone calls AMD bad but I haven't had a bad experience on their Mesa stack in over 5 years. Its generally that Intel is buggy / edge case broken and AMD is rock solid if not patching Windows drivers in performance.
Albeit, I am biased, in that I intentionally avoid bleeding edge GPU hardware in general anywhere I can, but its hard to avoid Intel's latest because each year all the NUCs / notebooks / desktop platform switch to their latest CPUs. With AMD, since they have basically no market presence anywhere, I can get away with buying a 290 a year after it comes out for $240 and then having a great out of the box experience with it, whereas my 740SU notebook 4 years ago was only 6 months new when I got one and had massive Haswell GPU bugs on latest Mesa for about 6 months after buying it.
But even then, Intel and AMD are pretty much par for support times and when you should expect good stability in my experiences, but everyone memes AMD as being trash while Intel is the savior of consumer Linux.
I bought a NUC with the Iris 540, ran ubuntu 16.04 on it and I'm quite pleased with it. Minecraft, full screen youtube, full screen netflix, random web games like slither.io, random "rich" websites, webGL particle/water demos, etc all "just work".
I've had way less problems with intel than I did with my radeons. Not sure I'd say better than nvidia (who has a pretty good binary blob driver), but similar.
Even weird edge cases like rotating a display into portrait mode while logged in worked fine.
It's not a GTX 1070 killer, but it's quite a nice upgrade from other Intel GPUs. It runs a fair variety of 2d/3d stuff at 1080P quite comfortably.
For what it's worth: I've been doing gaming on my 2012 MBA using Steam's in-home streaming from my Desktop. It works really well for gaming casually on the couch, though it only works on my home LAN.
My Asus Zenbook UX305CA ran Fedora 25 out of the box with basically every peripheral including the touchscreen working perfectly. However it uses integrated (Intel i915) graphics.
Same with the XPS 13 2017, it doesn't have the power saving nvme mode yet which would I presume give it parity with Windows battery life, and Wayland was janky but X was fine.
anyone else here thinking dell designs are kinda boring?
I bought macbook to run win10 because it had great design. I am thinking of buying surface book next.
Out of curiosity, what makes a design interesting for you?
To me a laptop is two rectangular bits, with a screen on one and a keyboard on another. My macbook has silver rectangular bits, that Dell has black rectangular bits. I don't really see any other significant difference between the two..
I personally think my coworkers XPS 13 is far, far cooler looking and thoughtfully designed than my MBPr. It has soft spots where you'd carry it. I think they're gorgeous. The only thing tying me to OSX at this point is 1passwords chrome plugin (doesn't work without hackery in Linux) but now that that's going web based I may be able to switch next year.
Also the crazy resolutions aren't really a selling point to me at all. I can barely read the text when those things are cranked up.
> I can barely read the text when those things are cranked up.
They are not supposed to be "cranked up". You're supposed to use hi-dpi to smooth everything, not to get more screen estate. Apple has been doing it correctly for almost 5 years now, one would hope Windows and Linux had caught up by now.
338 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadI think it helped that the hardware is exactly the same, since all versions have a Killer (Qualcomm) wifi card rather than "Dell" (= Broadcom) for Windows and Intel for Ubuntu.
About a month ago I contacted Dell's chat session thing to ask about Linux support on the XPS13 ...the Dell representative gave a hand wavey reply and terminated the session. I got the impression he'd not heard of either Sputnik or the Developer Edition.
Supports up to 32GB of memory
Killer™ Wireless: The Killer 1535 Wireless-AC
Sadly dell makes makes you pick on the XPS13: Lousy CPU No iris graphics 8GB ram small disk Great battery nice matte display
And: Nice CPU Iris 540 graphics 16GB ram 3200x1800 shiny/reflective display (that halves your battery life)
Sadly I was looking for the Iris 540, 1080P display, and 16GB ram. A very rare combination. Hopefully the new dell makes the 1080P option independ of the rest of the laptop.
Sadly the kaby lake + iris graphics won't be out for a few more months. So the 2015 XPS13 is WAY faster at graphics than the 2016 kaby lake.
I want 32 and a quad-core, in an 13-inch form-factor. Both of which the Alienware 13 offers, but thats a gaming machine.
I absolutely hate how the best machines are Gaming machines, which means you're stuck with all sorts of LED bling-crap.
The 13R3 looks like an absolutely killer machine for everyday work. OLED touch, quad core CPU (HQ series), fast GPU, physical touchpad buttons, ports out the wazoo, user serviceable RAM (up to 32!) and storage, etc.
With brands like Apple, Dell, HP and Lenovo, I know I'll get at least OK support.
Because Razer is more of a niche brand without a mature support infrastructure like the aforementioned companies, I do have some concerns.
The only configuration options for me are the size of the SSD and if I want the 4k Touch Screen or the matte 1080p screen.
I think you are referring to the 17 inch Razer Blade Pro. Which is nowhere near 13 or 14 inches.
The thing I think with those of us that do have their computers connected to cable network a lot ("all the time") is that it's usually in the same place (our desk) so it's not that big a problem to adapt the end of the network cable there.
In fact I'd prefer to use a usb-c brick with all connections (video, keyboard, mouse, lan) over the current one where I insert the network cable into one usb, then the monitor into the hdmi, and the monitor usb which has the mouse/keyboard in it's hub into a second usb. Of all the "docking flaws" with my current laptop I find the lack of RJ45 to be the least annoying actually.
Gbit ethernet isn't that much faster than 802.11ac, so I'm really having a hard time thinking of a realistic use case here.
EDIT: wrote this before I realised that the wifi card this laptop ships with is particularly bad.
A 15" version has been available most of 2016.
I was excited to buy a Kaby Lake Mac Book Pro. Especially when the Dell XPS13 is showing off >10 hours of 4k video playback on battery [1]. I can get about 12-14 hours on my 2014/2015 MBP (coding with a dark background, low brightness) I really enjoy the added flexibility longer battery life gives me.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/3127250/hardware/intel-kaby-l...
Finally convinced support to take it in for warranty (expires in a few weeks), which means I'll be without it for a while, but hopefully they at least can swap out the mobo with a non-chirpy version...
Dell doesn't really care - they still sell loads, and as long as the online reviewers don't complain loudly enough so that their sales are affected it is just not worth the cost.
At least, I think so...
And, well, I'm not too picky...
My biggest complaint about the XPS15 I had a little over a year ago was the spacebar. There was a manufacturing defect in mine where the touchpad ribbon cable pressed up against the spacebar and was causing unregistered keystrokes. I read internet forums where multiple people had this issue. Maybe Dell has fixed the manufacturing issue by now, but it was bad enough that I returned the XPS15.
I am curious which linux kernel version people (and your co-worker) are using though.
e.g.
http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-9350-laptop-ubuntu/...
Just curious what makes you say that?
They aren't that expensive as a pro tool when you factor in a typical lifetime of 3+ years.
Also IIRC it is only the very first user that has this privilege by default. For extra users I think you'll have to explicitly enable it when you create the account (or at a later stage.)
"you should never run anything as root" yet on ubuntu everything as good as runs as root by default.
even windows ussually has a seperate password to create user accounts, but with ubuntu make the mistake of leaving your machine unlocked and unattended and any little script kiddy can own your machine in fractions of a second. worse even than windows, because they get remote access by default.
I understand why they did it. but if they are making those kind of changes I dont have the energy to track down what other things they "broke" to favor some (what i consider to be) misguided idea of useability over security.
you know, stuff like this
http://askubuntu.com/questions/153933/no-password-prompt-at-...
you cant even copy files to a usb stick because mounting it requires a password.
that is very different to making the machine yours via remote access.
and very very different than letting browser plugins create user accounts that can be accessed remotely (that have root access by default). then theres the fact that selinux seems to be a right state on ubuntu
plus what everybody else said. basically put there are several nicer and more secure distributions of linux i would choose before ubuntu.
Wrong, I'd say. Only if you or the IT department specifically set it up that way.
Also, again IIRC but I think you have to type password the first time you use sudo un a session on desktop Ubuntu (or after 15 minutes).
which is also my experience.
having plenty of experience getting red hat fedora and centos set up just the way i like, i decided very quickly even getting ubuntu "safe" was more learning curve than reward.
Some examples: The terminal is smart enough to know when you want to paste a command, and allows you to Ctrl-V without the Shift modifier if you have a terminal command in the clipboard. The terminal will intelligently auto-correct a tab completion when you use the wrong case (e.g. type "docu" and hit tab, and it will complete to "Documents" if there is no file/folder starting with "docu", instead of failing on the mixed case). Start a process in the terminal and minimize or send that window to the background, and you'll get a system notification when the task completes. That's awesome for when I start to compile something big, then load up Netflix or Vimeo to pass the time while it runs; I don't end up binging away my night on videos and forgetting about that build. There are a few more niceties in the terminal but this paragraph is already huge.
In the file manager, dealing with networked drives is much more seamless than even macOS. It has built in support for sftp, afp, nfs, smb/cifs. I can put in the ssh credentials for one of my VPS instances, and I can then browse that instance as if it's a local drive. Ironically, browsing a Windows share from Elementary is easier than from another Windows box, thanks to regressions in Windows 10's file sharing settings.
There's a bunch of functionality I won't go into as this is turning into an advertisement, but in my experience it is by far the best desktop Linux experience I've had, and the only one that comes close to the cohesiveness of macOS.
Actually I'd be so happy with a laptop like that. An XPS 13 without webcam and mic.
FYI the LG UF 5K doesn't come with Displayport 1.3 support either, it uses 2 DP 1.2 streams side by side (which sometimes can have screen tearing in the middle) hence it's a tiled display just like early 60hz 4K monitors.
To work with the 5K monitor you either have to connect 2 DP1.2 cables or a single Thunderbolt 3 cable.
In both cases you'll see 2 monitors connected on your machine which can cause some issues in some cases (e.g. full screen exclusive mode).
P.S.
What Apple device actually supports DP1.3? The new Mac's don't for sure, neither is the old Mac Pro unless you can hack some upgraded GPU into it...
It seems the entire purpose of Windows laptops would be to test out touch-screen capabilities for your Windows apps.
If you want to get a laptop without a touch screen, a Mac Book Pro would be the way to go. Especially with the great trackpad.
But otherwise it looks great. It just needs that touch-screen for developing touch-enabled apps.
Edit: Found that the touch-screen is an upgrade option.
Are you willing to halve your battery life and see your face reflected in a fingerprint ridden screen... just to touch it?
I have a 2016 Windows laptop and it performs brilliantly at half the price of an equivalent Mac.
That's the only feature for which I still need a desktop computer and I would loooove to do without one.
and
Featuring a single-cable connection for power, Ethernet, audio and video. Add the optional Dell Thunderbolt™ Dock for faster data transfers and support for up to three Full HD displays or two 4k displays.
...which is a little confusing. Does that mean two external 4K displays without a dock, and one with the thunderbolt dock? Do the display counts include the laptop display?
Someone else noted there's no discrete Nvidia GPU: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/help-me-choose/hmc-nvidia...
I did not see the New XPS 12 that second link references.
The XPS13 2016 does not have IRIS available, yet. Intel should have them available feb/march or so.
Looking for a laptop is pretty frustrating, there are a ton of models and each has a ton of versions, it's really hard to know what to get :(
They should have been fixed by the latest firmware (apparently still in 2015) but I can still experience them sometimes. I believe I have the latest fw (I'm surely >= 06A), but can't check ATM, so chances are I'm not on the latest. Then again, I admit I can work with it almost seamlessly (dev-work from CLI mainly).
[1] http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46... [2] en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/t/19637021
Dota 2 Reborn 2015
low 1280x72059.8 85 ~ 72 fps + Compare med. 1366x76846.9 68.5 ~ 58 fps + Compare high 1920x108029.2 39.5 ~ 34 fps + Compare ultra 1920x108034.6 fps + Compare
Presumably Dota is easier on the GPU than Dota2. The kaby lake with iris graphics isn't out yet, should be Feb or March or so. The 2015 XPS 13 has the Iris 540. Sadly the 2016 XPS13 doesn't, yet.
I've been using different models from the X-Series with Ubuntu since 08.04 and am currently looking at the T450s (14", but still an Ultrabook and light enough for me).
The X1 Carbon looks damn sweet as well.
I got it because i wanted a 14" laptop and it was the only one on the market. Screen size is perfect (15" is a bit big for travelling & carry on luggage)
This looks like the laptop i've been waiting for
The current model T460s is also interesting, quite a bit more performance than its predecessor, albeit in a different price bracket.
I'm mostly going for the 450 because there's tons of decent refurb available and I'm frugal that way ;-)
I want a laptop with Iris Pro 580/p580 and NO dedicated GPU. The 580 has a bit over a TFLOP of compute (plenty for games like DoTA) and more importantly, the drivers don't suck on Linux. The issue is that any laptop that ships with that processor also ships with a crappy dedicated GPU.
When I have a 45w processor, I want to pay a few hundred extra for a 55w Nvidia M2000m that has 10% more compute power (granted, more efficient at GPGPU) and horrible drivers.
What I want:
15.6", i7-6770HQ, 32gb DDR4, M.2 SSD, high-res IPS screen, Thinkpad-grade keyboard, good webcam, decent ports (At least 2x thunderbolt, 3x usb3, SD, 3.5mm, and ethernet), a little thicker for a battery that lasts a couple days, durable build quality, large trackpad with builtin wacom, NO dedicated graphics.
I guess that's too much to ask.
Hopefully they drop the price enough to make it more popular. As you mention it's a particularly attractive option for linux.
The next gen looks promising though. Intel's already mentioned the kaby lake + iris for the NUC in Feb/March. I'm hoping that intel tunes the performance, power use, and price so it makes it into more devices. Iris graphics on laptops is pretty rare so far.
Albeit, I am biased, in that I intentionally avoid bleeding edge GPU hardware in general anywhere I can, but its hard to avoid Intel's latest because each year all the NUCs / notebooks / desktop platform switch to their latest CPUs. With AMD, since they have basically no market presence anywhere, I can get away with buying a 290 a year after it comes out for $240 and then having a great out of the box experience with it, whereas my 740SU notebook 4 years ago was only 6 months new when I got one and had massive Haswell GPU bugs on latest Mesa for about 6 months after buying it.
But even then, Intel and AMD are pretty much par for support times and when you should expect good stability in my experiences, but everyone memes AMD as being trash while Intel is the savior of consumer Linux.
I've had way less problems with intel than I did with my radeons. Not sure I'd say better than nvidia (who has a pretty good binary blob driver), but similar.
Even weird edge cases like rotating a display into portrait mode while logged in worked fine.
It's not a GTX 1070 killer, but it's quite a nice upgrade from other Intel GPUs. It runs a fair variety of 2d/3d stuff at 1080P quite comfortably.
Has M.2 and all the other things you mentioned.
Why can't Dell focus on a creative design?
To me a laptop is two rectangular bits, with a screen on one and a keyboard on another. My macbook has silver rectangular bits, that Dell has black rectangular bits. I don't really see any other significant difference between the two..
(im getting downvoted soon, but i can take it :) )
Also the crazy resolutions aren't really a selling point to me at all. I can barely read the text when those things are cranked up.
They are not supposed to be "cranked up". You're supposed to use hi-dpi to smooth everything, not to get more screen estate. Apple has been doing it correctly for almost 5 years now, one would hope Windows and Linux had caught up by now.
But there's some confusion here, Razer Blade Stealth is actually the model with integrated GPU (Intel HD 620)