8 ms·

Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review

141 points by sheff 13y ago

davidw 13y ago
I have one of these and think it's pretty good. I am really happy to have been able to give my money to someone selling me something with Linux on it.
- deno 13y ago
  I think the standard for friendly hardware should be open firmware support (Coreboot), rather than what’s preinstalled on HDD.
  - pedrocr 13y ago
    Knowing that you're not also paying for a windows license and inflating the Windows market share numbers is also nice.
- igravious 13y ago
  Hi David, I have one of these too! But which one, that is the rub. As far as I can tell there are now three versions of project Sputnik. I too am so happy to throw my € in Dell's direction. I have the second because I bought mine just before the recent Haswell refresh, gah :( Please correct me if I am wrong. Original version ... November 2012 1: http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed-introducing-the-dell-xps-13-laptop-developer-edition/ http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed-introd... Brings 1080p (after much clamour and feedback) ... February 2013 2: http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-developer-edition-goes-1080p-and-launches-in-emea/ http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-... Brings Haswell ... November 2013 http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing-sputnik-3-and-its-unofficial-big-brother/ http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing-sputnik-3-and... Not sure which version the original poster is reviewing, I always meant to review mine and haven't done so yet. I upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04LTS to 13.10 and had to futz about a bit with backlight keys. Wifi drivers kept glitching out until recently. I had to add TRIM support myself (I had thought it was there, it wasn't!) Might be an idea to set up a Sputnik User's site unless one exists :) as opposed to a Dell forum or employee's blog. tip o' the hat ...
  - macco 13y ago
    Want to start one?
    - igravious 13y ago
      Want to help?
  - robgough 13y ago
    The reviewer mentions they're reviewing the November 2013 Haswell Refresh. My work laptop is the Feb 2013 1080p version, and as an Apple fan I must say I'm very impressed with the quality of this machine... and the 1080p screen is really fantastic.
  - Erwin 13y ago
    How did you resolve your WiFi issues? Quite often I've found the laptop unable to connect to random hotel WiFi (with no useful indication of why in logs/dmesg) and I have to connect via my S3 and share the connection via USB.
    - lvillani 13y ago
      For a while I had terrible (in the 800msec - 4000msec range) RTT pinging an AP right next to me, running: sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off did the trick for me (issued after every boot or through an UDev rule such as https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible-playbooks/9dc40c75cf8579665c80fe73cc0faf30fd98e93c/roles/power-save/files/udev/powersave.rules https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible-playbooks/9dc40c75cf...)
    - igravious 13y ago
      I didn't actively do anything to fix WiFi. I just upgraded to the latest release of Ubuntu and enabled backports in the repository settings to stay current (but not in bleeding-edge dev mode, no thanks I gotta work). The driver seemed to crash on coming out of suspend/hibernate/whatever sleep state it was in. This kept generating automatic error reports that were phoned home. A few weeks ago this stopped happening so either Ubuntu or kernel Wifi devs or somebody somewhere has gotten a fix in. Let's hope it stays that way. I really didn't dig into it.
jskonhovd 13y ago
Great laptop. I got mine over Christmas and I have no complaints. I hope Dell continues to support Linux.
stiff 13y ago
Notebookcheck has a test of this laptop: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook-Late-2012.87006.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook-La... I love their review because they go into very much detail and some of the information is hard to found elsewhere, like real measurements of screen contrast and brightness, the one parameter that already eliminates 95% of laptops every time I look for one, and of loudness.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Thats a review of the 2012 version though, the 2013 haswell version should be much improved.
- jre 13y ago
  This is not the haswell/HD screen version though. I'm currently looking for a laptop and it will be either the XPS 13 or a rMBP 13 inches. I'm currently favoring the rMPB a little bit because it seems it get less hot than the XPS. It kinds of scare me when the review says the laptop gets somewhat warm while surfing and I've had really bad experiences with overheating Dell laptops. What's your experience XPS 13 owners ?
  - jfb 13y ago
    I use and love Apple hardware, but if you're not going to use OS X, does it make sense to pay the price in driver potential wonkiness?
  - davidw 13y ago
    Never noticed heat in mine, or for that matter, the fan running, except when I compile stuff.
kayoone 13y ago
does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ? Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though. Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display attached etc.
- ch4s3 13y ago
  Yeah, for $1500 after tax, I'll stick with the 11 hours a MBPr gets and install a VM if I want to use Linux.
- wazoox 13y ago
  No DPI scaling, but it's OK for me. I always loved small fonts in term windows anyway :) 6 hours is a minimum for quite a heavy use; I myself found that mine easily does 8-9 hours when programming (Flash is a terrible battery and CPU hog).
  - ch4s3 13y ago
    how does it do with video playback?
    - wazoox 13y ago
      Video playback is fine. And Ubuntu manages perfectly hot-plugging external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc.
- computer 13y ago
  Many desktop environments can do scaling well enough, in my experience. Not sure about Unity, the Ubuntu default. Edit: for non-retina screens (i.e. it's fine on my 14" 1920x1080 laptop.) For retina (not this laptop), it might not be ideal yet. I took a screenshot (XFCE4) with very high DPI, and you can see some GUI elements don't scale: http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png
haswell 13y ago
I owned one of the early 2013 1080p versions for about a month, but had serious issues with backlight bleed. After having it replaced twice it became clear that the issue was inherent to the hardware. Aside from this, it seemed like a fantastic machine, but beware of the potential backlight issues if you spend a significant amount of time with dark or black windows / backgrounds. For me, this was 90% of the time between terminal windows and Sublime Text.
mkhattab 13y ago
I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really do want a decent Linux laptop. I will keep an eye on the XPS13 in case I make the switch.
- davexunit 13y ago
  Thinkpads make rock solid GNU/Linux machines. I highly recommend the X220. It has some issues such as not being Coreboot compatible and needing nonfree firmware to drive the wireless chip. The former has no fix, but the latter can be fixed with a little hack and an Atheros chip.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    As an X220 it's a very nice machine but it's no in the same realm as the XPS or the Air/rMBP. It has a great keyboard and underlying hardware. But it's also stuck with a low-resolution screen with terrible viewing angles, and is also as thick as a brick. The touchpad also leaves a lot to be desired but it does have the TrackPoint which is great. The X240 will supposedly have a 1080p IPS screen but I'm not sure what the holdup is.
    - derekp7 13y ago
      Does the x240 have the same screen dimensions as the x230? If so I wonder if you can use it to upgrade the 230 panel.
      - bluedino 13y ago
        Chassis is quite a bit different, so probably not.
    - derekp7 13y ago
wazoox 13y ago
I had one of these for some months and I'd say the only culprit is that there are only 1 mini DP and 2 USB ports and nothing else: no SD card slot, no Thunderbold or Firewire. Even a third USB port would have been nice. There isn't any kensington lock port, either. The screen is glossy but for some reason, it's not actually catching too many random reflections (so it's much better than my MacBook which can hardly be used when sitting back to the window). The touchpad feel isn't as good as a MacBook but it's large and much better than those from most other PCs I've tried. Overall a nice machine.
- smackfu 13y ago
  Hasn't the PC world moved on to USB3, ignoring Thunderbolt? And even Apple has dropped Firewire at this point.
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    Thunderbolt is seeing some take-up on the high end; it solves a different set of problems to USB3.
    - Touche 13y ago
      Where is it seeing take-up outside of the Apple ecosystem?
    - smackfu 13y ago
      I don't disagree... on a Mac. On a PC, I'm not sure what else there is to plug in to a Thunderbolt port other than storage.
      - supergauntlet 13y ago
        The thing is, Thunderbolt manages to be this amalgamation of miniDP and PCIe x4. It is actually entirely possible to run PCIe devices on a thunderbolt connection, which means things like external graphics cards are now again viable (since almost no consumer computers have expresscard slots now).
surge 13y ago
I own this laptop, had it for almost a year. I love it except after a while I noticed random hard freezes, basically the display freezes in place and the system doesn't respond. I would have to hold down the power button to force an unexpected reboot (in the words of Moss). It would happen after a day, or a week of use. Turns out it's a problem with the kernel in 12.04 and the Intel 4400 chipset. The only solid fix is to simply update to a non-LTS release. Since updating to 13.04 I've been okay. I shouldn't have to wait much longer for 14.04 so I should have an LTS release soon with the updated kernel. The only other problem I've had is some updates deleting my firmware for the wireless, I've had to re-download it. But I did not have this problem when upgrading Ubuntu. Despite these issues, otherwise it's been a very solid laptop.
- bpeebles 13y ago
  You can use https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack to get a newer X server and kernel while otherwise staying on 12.04 LTS.
davb 13y ago
> If the laptop is turned off (or sleeping) and the battery is charging, there's no way for you to tell whether the batter is full or not based on the color of the LED. It stays white. This isn't entirely true. While the color of the charger LED doesn't change, the LED at the middle of the bottom/front edge (below the trackpad) goes from orange to white when charged. My biggest gripe with this (very nice, portable) laptop is that the wireless card is a bit flaky with 802.11n under (x)Ubuntu 13.04 - 13.10. I find that in some rooms of my (relatively small) flat I can't connect without disabling 11n (sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1). I get a very high "Tx excessive retries" value in iwconfig otherwise and the network connection is unusable. It's not a failing of the laptop, but rather the bundled Intel wireless card and the drivers that ship with Linux 3.11.0-15. My Lenovo T430s has the same issue (it has a Centrino Advanced-N 6205). I've seen numerous bug reports and kernel patches but haven't had much success in resolving the issue.
rayiner 13y ago
6 hours isn't great, it's shitty for a 13" laptop with Haswell.
- surge 13y ago
  Yeah, but not one that thin (small battery).
  - rayiner 13y ago
    It's not particularly thin. It's about the same thickness at its thickest point at the MBA. In terms of size and weight, it's about in the middle for an ultrabook. It's battery is a little smaller than the MBA's, but not that much smaller (47 watt-hours versus 54 watt-hours). Dell's own XPS 12, which has a very marginally larger battery (50 watt-hours), gets almost 9 hours of Wi-Fi surfing at about 50% brightness.
    - surge 13y ago
      I've never seen a laptop actually get 9 hours. Even a Netbook or Air won't last much past 6. I think people tend to exaggerate. If you say 9 hours, I'd believe 4.5 hours. I mean if I left it to idle for 9 hours yeah it would last at full charge, actually using it....nah. I don't think I've ever seen a laptop work at it's advertised battery life. It's thickest point is where the fans are, its about a thin as an air where the battery is. In either case, a Macbook Pro doesn't get any better, I've not seen any laptops that get anything past 6 hours without having a low power Atom or ARM based chip in it.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        > I think people tend to exaggerate. If you say 9 hours, I'd believe 4.5 hours. I'm describing tested battery life, not anecdotal estimations. E.g. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Dell-XPS-12-9Q33-Convertible.100626.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Dell-XPS-12-9Q33-.... Battery life obviously depends on your usage scenario, but the one described in the article is very light. Moreover, he's using a very low brightness setting, and seems to be using wi-fi intermittently. These points are important to note because on most workloads, the display and the wireless adapter are the major sources of power draw. The usage described in the article is: > I get about 6 hours of usage from a full charge (or more if I leave my desk for breaks and the screen shuts off after 5 minutes, which saves battery). As I mentioned earlier, that's usually on the lowest (or second to lowest) screen brightness setting, with the keyboard backlight enabled for about 50-75% of the time, and having Firefox open with 5-10 tabs, sometimes YouTube running in the background for some music, some Terminal windows open, Steam open in the background, Skype running in the background and a few text editor windows open. Since idle background apps should take up very little battery, this seems even lighter than Anand's "Light Workload" scripted test, on which the MBA gets 11 hours (close to its rated 12). See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-13inch/6 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-revi.... Anand's test is at 200 nits (80% screen brightness). The author of this article says he's running at the lowest or second-lowest screen brightness, so maybe 10-20% or 30-60 nits. Even with the heavy workload test, which involves constant Wi-Fi activity and 1080p video playback, the MBA gets 5.5 hours. If you mimic the usage in this article, with some apps open in the background, the brightness turned down, and typing into some terminal windows, the MBA would probably get 15+ hours: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/18/#battery-benchmarks http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/18/#battery-b....
plg 13y ago
how does it compare to a macbook air with linux installed?
- giovannibajo1 13y ago
  Hardware-wise, the main differences are a better display (that is, more dense), and a slower SSD (non PCIe) and slower graphic card (HD4200 vs HD5000). Trackpad is probably worse as well, but I would suppose you can't see much of a difference under Linux where the experience is suboptimal even with the Apple one. You also don't have Thunderbolt connectors, though I doubt is a problem for most people.
johnchristopher 13y ago
No matte screen though :(
- surge 13y ago
  You don't need one, it's got gorilla glass, it's basically the same screen you'd get on a high end tablet.
Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago
A laptop targeted to developers should have a TrackPoint to move the cursor without taking the hands off the keyboard, a non-shortscreen monitor to see more lines of code, a matte screen to read the code better, and a numpad to, well, type numbers. OK, I guess I'm asking too much for today's standards, even if all these things were common ten years ago (sigh...), but when I saw "developer edition" I thought I would see at least two of these four features, and I see none. This is just a standard high-end laptop. Disappointing.
- nezza-_- 13y ago
  I don't think a numpad is necessary, developers normally don't type that many numbers (except maybe 0 and 1).
  - Thrall 13y ago
    I agree that a numpad isn't really necessary. The keys I miss on a laptop keyboard are: - Home, end, pgup, pgdown - Delete - Function keys that are just F-keys, not volume/brightness controls that act as F-keys when you press a 'function' modifier key.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      My work provided Lenovo w530 has all these. The F-keys do have volume and brightness controls on them, but you have to hit the Fn key to do that, pressing just F4 gives you 'F4'. It's not as stylish as a MacBook Pro though.
  - astrodust 13y ago
    If you do spreadsheet work based on numbers, a number pad comes in handy. Some developers have to do estimates or accounting where this applies. I only have a full-sized keyboard to get the arrow keys. Being able to smack "Enter" in the corner is a nice bonus.
- davidw 13y ago
  Agreed about the screen - it's annoying. But pretty much everything has those stupid HD style screens these days. I thought the glossy screen would bother me. It doesn't. Numpad? Never used one. Trackpoint? Not my style - I mostly navigate with the keyboard and the trackpad just launches the pointer into the window I need active, and then focus follows it!
nfoz 13y ago
> First boot: Ubuntu animation, Dell User Agreement, then the standard Ubuntu installer. Seriously?
- Silhouette 13y ago
  FWIW, I picked up on that, too. Why would a new piece of hardware running a FOSS operating system need proprietary legalese from Dell? Not saying there aren't reasons for it, but anyone who's interested in buying a Linux laptop in the first place might want to know what they are.
grigio 13y ago
I think it should be cheaper compared to a MBA with Linux.. anyway the competition is good
- skyebook 13y ago
  I just did some comparisons, it is indeed cheaper than a MBA in similar configuration. In terms of price, the 13" retina MBP is a way better deal than both the Dell and the Air.
just_bytecode 13y ago
I bought a refurbished ASUS Vivobook X202E and put Linux Mint on it. I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (touchscreen, multitouch trackpad, wifi, etc). It's still important to have manufacturers standing behind Linux on their PCs, but hardware support on Linux is always getting better.
lowry 13y ago
Warning: Ubuntu on this laptop does not support video output on USB 3.0 docking stations.
- lvillani 13y ago
  AFAIK, video over USB3 ain't pretty. I wanted to buy an USB 3.0 docking station but these things seem to be Windows-only and, even there, people experience issues.
- jskonhovd 13y ago
  I am guessing you are referring to the USB 3.0 DisplayLink Docking Station. Yes, DisplayLink has issues with supporting Linux. We can only hope that Dell and other PC manufacturers will put pressure on them to support Linux.
curtis 13y ago
The first thing I noticed from the picture is that the keyboard looks exactly like the keyboard on my MacBook Pro. I haven't really looked at Windows laptops in a long time, so maybe this is a common layout now. It just seemed notable to me.
news_to_me 13y ago
I was debating getting this laptop or a Thinkpad T440s and a Chromebook Pixel. For me the Pixel just doesn't have the storage capacity I want, and the T440s isn't quite as portable. I've made a deal with myself to get this once I've paid my loans off. C'mon, baby, just two months..
- reirob 13y ago
  Then maybe the new Thinkpad X1 Carbon is for you: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca... I would seriously love to buy it but the new keyboard changes put me off (see comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535). It's a shame, because otherwise it is really a nice machine - will as well go with T440s.
  - news_to_me 13y ago
    Oh god, it has Haswell now!! Damn the loans.
coreymgilmore 13y ago
could use a 15" brother with a bigger screen -> lets you see more lines of code and run side-by-side editors more efficiently.
fotcorn 13y ago
I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga a month ago and installed the alpha of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it. The only thing that didn't work out of the box was the lock button and scrolling in Firefox using the touch screen (install the Grab and Drag Addon). Features: matte screen, TrackPoint, Pen Input.
- just_bytecode 13y ago
  Thanks for turning me on Grab and Drag. Firefox is one of the few things I want to touch scroll on Linux.
  - taeric 13y ago
    Seconded! Only used it for about 30 seconds and this is already one of my favorite add ons. :) I kind of wish it was only enabled for the touch or pen cursors, anyone know if that is possible?
gum_ina_package 13y ago
The real issue here is battery life. Only 6 hours? The new X1 carbon from Lenovo can get 9, the T440s can get up to 17 (with extended battery), and the MBA can get 12 right out of the box.
- ivan_ah 13y ago
  The Lenovo X1 carbon has a 1600 x 900 screen though... I needz my linez of code ;)
  - gum_ina_package 13y ago
    Not the new one! It's up to 2048xsomething-or-another.
robertfw 13y ago
I've been using one of these with the HD screen since the spring, here are some thoughts: Nice: - Good battery life. With screen on full, wifi on I can get between 3-5 hours depending on CPU utilization. With screen brightness turned down, wifi off, low utilization, ~6 hours - Keyboard and mouse pad are great - No issues with unsupported bits and pieces from ubuntu, with exception of video output via usb - the battery strength indicator on the side is handy for quickly checking if i need to grab my power cable without having to turn the machine on as well - Display quality (minus the glossy finish) is great, wide viewing angle, vivid colours Naughty: - Glossy screen is a pain in the ass. Forget about using in sunlight, I also need to adjust mine to avoid getting the overheads in our office. - Temperature management is pretty poor - the air vents on the bottom don't have much clearance even on a flat surface, and don't seem to move enough air. I worry about the long term lifespan of this machine because it regularly operates > 70c. When I can, I sit the machine on a laptop platform with a fan. - (minor) the function keybind for adjusting the volume requires 2 hands - the fn key is on the lower left, while the volume up/down are on f11/f12. - only 2 usb ports and no SD card reader. Overall I've been happy with it.
- micampe 13y ago
  3-5 hours is good battery life in 2014?
  - alexchamberlain 13y ago
    It's the one thing that hasn't improved over the years.
    - micampe 13y ago
      My laptop goes easily to 7-8 without changing my usage significantly, 9 if I'm only doing email. I hardly carry the power brick outside the house anymore.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    I go crazy under 6 ... That's why i'm spending more and more time behind my chromebook; it has all day battery life. My laptops hardly make 3 hours and it makes me not want to use them for much of anything anymore.
platz 13y ago
I'm not sure I trust anything from Dell anymore after the DER SPIEGEL releases.
bch 13y ago
Sort of funny, but it looks like their Linux developer laptop keyboard has a Windows key. Licensing issue, or just an unfinished project?
lvillani 13y ago
I have one of the first-gen (non Sputnik) systems. I simultaneously love it and hate it so much that after one year I had to put my (mixed) feelings in writing here: http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell-xps-13-l321x-the-review-one-year-in-the-making/ http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell-xps-13-l321x-the-r... (this is little more than a pondered rant, unlike OP's thorough review). However, I think this year I'm probably going to bite the bullet and buy a 13" Retina MacBook Pro.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
Nice, I'd consider getting one. Wish it was a bit bigger though... I have an XPS 16 which isn't very heavy and don't want a smaller screen. When I use the wife's Mac I'm always fumbling around the keyboard shortcuts. However, the screen is amazing. If this Dell had a bit more DPI I'd be sold.
codeape 13y ago
How is the multi-monitor support on the XPS 13 running Ubuntu? I googled, but could not find much useful information. How many external monitors can be connected? I found some information here: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm , but it looks as if most of the info applies to Windows.
- lvillani 13y ago
  I have the first-gen XPS 13 with 1366x768 internal display. No problems at all in a multi monitor setup. I have a Dell S2409W, 1920x1080 at home and a NEC 1920x1200 at work.
  - codeape 13y ago
    Do you use both the internal display and external monitor? Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor?
    - lvillani 13y ago
      > Do you use both the internal display and external monitor? Yes > Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor? Never tried. This laptop has only one mini DisplayPort output. I heard that there are splitter cables/adapters which should allow for that but I haven't found an affordable one yet. An alternative would be a display that supports daisy chaining (the only one which I am aware of is Apple's Thunderbolt display which doesn't even turn on for me).
tuneit 13y ago
About the low battery time I am pretty sure it is a linux problem and not so much a hardware. Battery is really one of linux weaker spots. However I read that the optimization ubuntu is doing for phones will help the overall battery situation. I guess we can just cross our fingers that its true.
elchief 13y ago
Does the WIFI LED flash a different colour when it uploads directly to the NSA? What am I going to do with 8GB of RAM? My mom has 8GB of RAM.
shirro 13y ago
Two wishes. They supported 16GB RAM. Dell Australia would sell them.
atmosx 13y ago
Good might me next laptop series... Hm.
auggierose 13y ago
Not sure why anyone would get one of these. The new MacbookPro 13 inch is the sweetest laptop deal out there right now (if you can do with 13 inch and only 2 cores).
- ternaryoperator 13y ago
  Because they want an Ubuntu laptop?
parhelium 13y ago
Right now I have Lenovo w520 and I approached 3 times to configure ubuntu with external screen, no luck. Does Dell XPS 3 DE work fine with external monitor on ubuntu ?

141 points by sheff 13y ago

I have one of these and think it's pretty good. I am really happy to have been able to give my money to someone selling me something with Linux on it.

deno 13y ago
I think the standard for friendly hardware should be open firmware support (Coreboot), rather than what’s preinstalled on HDD.
- pedrocr 13y ago
  Knowing that you're not also paying for a windows license and inflating the Windows market share numbers is also nice.
igravious 13y ago
Hi David, I have one of these too! But which one, that is the rub. As far as I can tell there are now three versions of project Sputnik. I too am so happy to throw my € in Dell's direction. I have the second because I bought mine just before the recent Haswell refresh, gah :( Please correct me if I am wrong. Original version ... November 2012 1: http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed-introducing-the-dell-xps-13-laptop-developer-edition/ http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed-introd... Brings 1080p (after much clamour and feedback) ... February 2013 2: http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-developer-edition-goes-1080p-and-launches-in-emea/ http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-... Brings Haswell ... November 2013 http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing-sputnik-3-and-its-unofficial-big-brother/ http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing-sputnik-3-and... Not sure which version the original poster is reviewing, I always meant to review mine and haven't done so yet. I upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04LTS to 13.10 and had to futz about a bit with backlight keys. Wifi drivers kept glitching out until recently. I had to add TRIM support myself (I had thought it was there, it wasn't!) Might be an idea to set up a Sputnik User's site unless one exists :) as opposed to a Dell forum or employee's blog. tip o' the hat ...
- macco 13y ago
  Want to start one?
  - igravious 13y ago
    Want to help?
- robgough 13y ago
  The reviewer mentions they're reviewing the November 2013 Haswell Refresh. My work laptop is the Feb 2013 1080p version, and as an Apple fan I must say I'm very impressed with the quality of this machine... and the 1080p screen is really fantastic.
- Erwin 13y ago
  How did you resolve your WiFi issues? Quite often I've found the laptop unable to connect to random hotel WiFi (with no useful indication of why in logs/dmesg) and I have to connect via my S3 and share the connection via USB.
  - lvillani 13y ago
    For a while I had terrible (in the 800msec - 4000msec range) RTT pinging an AP right next to me, running: sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off did the trick for me (issued after every boot or through an UDev rule such as https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible-playbooks/9dc40c75cf8579665c80fe73cc0faf30fd98e93c/roles/power-save/files/udev/powersave.rules https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible-playbooks/9dc40c75cf...)
  - igravious 13y ago
    I didn't actively do anything to fix WiFi. I just upgraded to the latest release of Ubuntu and enabled backports in the repository settings to stay current (but not in bleeding-edge dev mode, no thanks I gotta work). The driver seemed to crash on coming out of suspend/hibernate/whatever sleep state it was in. This kept generating automatic error reports that were phoned home. A few weeks ago this stopped happening so either Ubuntu or kernel Wifi devs or somebody somewhere has gotten a fix in. Let's hope it stays that way. I really didn't dig into it.

jskonhovd 13y ago

Great laptop. I got mine over Christmas and I have no complaints. I hope Dell continues to support Linux.

stiff 13y ago

Notebookcheck has a test of this laptop: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook-Late-2012.87006.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook-La... I love their review because they go into very much detail and some of the information is hard to found elsewhere, like real measurements of screen contrast and brightness, the one parameter that already eliminates 95% of laptops every time I look for one, and of loudness.

kayoone 13y ago
Thats a review of the 2012 version though, the 2013 haswell version should be much improved.
jre 13y ago
This is not the haswell/HD screen version though. I'm currently looking for a laptop and it will be either the XPS 13 or a rMBP 13 inches. I'm currently favoring the rMPB a little bit because it seems it get less hot than the XPS. It kinds of scare me when the review says the laptop gets somewhat warm while surfing and I've had really bad experiences with overheating Dell laptops. What's your experience XPS 13 owners ?
- jfb 13y ago
  I use and love Apple hardware, but if you're not going to use OS X, does it make sense to pay the price in driver potential wonkiness?
- davidw 13y ago
  Never noticed heat in mine, or for that matter, the fan running, except when I compile stuff.

kayoone 13y ago

does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ? Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though. Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display attached etc.

ch4s3 13y ago
Yeah, for $1500 after tax, I'll stick with the 11 hours a MBPr gets and install a VM if I want to use Linux.
wazoox 13y ago
No DPI scaling, but it's OK for me. I always loved small fonts in term windows anyway :) 6 hours is a minimum for quite a heavy use; I myself found that mine easily does 8-9 hours when programming (Flash is a terrible battery and CPU hog).
- ch4s3 13y ago
  how does it do with video playback?
  - wazoox 13y ago
    Video playback is fine. And Ubuntu manages perfectly hot-plugging external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc.
computer 13y ago
Many desktop environments can do scaling well enough, in my experience. Not sure about Unity, the Ubuntu default. Edit: for non-retina screens (i.e. it's fine on my 14" 1920x1080 laptop.) For retina (not this laptop), it might not be ideal yet. I took a screenshot (XFCE4) with very high DPI, and you can see some GUI elements don't scale: http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png

haswell 13y ago

I owned one of the early 2013 1080p versions for about a month, but had serious issues with backlight bleed. After having it replaced twice it became clear that the issue was inherent to the hardware. Aside from this, it seemed like a fantastic machine, but beware of the potential backlight issues if you spend a significant amount of time with dark or black windows / backgrounds. For me, this was 90% of the time between terminal windows and Sublime Text.

mkhattab 13y ago

I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really do want a decent Linux laptop. I will keep an eye on the XPS13 in case I make the switch.

davexunit 13y ago
Thinkpads make rock solid GNU/Linux machines. I highly recommend the X220. It has some issues such as not being Coreboot compatible and needing nonfree firmware to drive the wireless chip. The former has no fix, but the latter can be fixed with a little hack and an Atheros chip.
- bluedino 13y ago
  As an X220 it's a very nice machine but it's no in the same realm as the XPS or the Air/rMBP. It has a great keyboard and underlying hardware. But it's also stuck with a low-resolution screen with terrible viewing angles, and is also as thick as a brick. The touchpad also leaves a lot to be desired but it does have the TrackPoint which is great. The X240 will supposedly have a 1080p IPS screen but I'm not sure what the holdup is.
  - derekp7 13y ago
    Does the x240 have the same screen dimensions as the x230? If so I wonder if you can use it to upgrade the 230 panel.
    - bluedino 13y ago
      Chassis is quite a bit different, so probably not.
  - derekp7 13y ago

wazoox 13y ago

I had one of these for some months and I'd say the only culprit is that there are only 1 mini DP and 2 USB ports and nothing else: no SD card slot, no Thunderbold or Firewire. Even a third USB port would have been nice. There isn't any kensington lock port, either. The screen is glossy but for some reason, it's not actually catching too many random reflections (so it's much better than my MacBook which can hardly be used when sitting back to the window). The touchpad feel isn't as good as a MacBook but it's large and much better than those from most other PCs I've tried. Overall a nice machine.

smackfu 13y ago
Hasn't the PC world moved on to USB3, ignoring Thunderbolt? And even Apple has dropped Firewire at this point.
- rsynnott 13y ago
  Thunderbolt is seeing some take-up on the high end; it solves a different set of problems to USB3.
  - Touche 13y ago
    Where is it seeing take-up outside of the Apple ecosystem?
  - smackfu 13y ago
    I don't disagree... on a Mac. On a PC, I'm not sure what else there is to plug in to a Thunderbolt port other than storage.
    - supergauntlet 13y ago
      The thing is, Thunderbolt manages to be this amalgamation of miniDP and PCIe x4. It is actually entirely possible to run PCIe devices on a thunderbolt connection, which means things like external graphics cards are now again viable (since almost no consumer computers have expresscard slots now).

surge 13y ago

I own this laptop, had it for almost a year. I love it except after a while I noticed random hard freezes, basically the display freezes in place and the system doesn't respond. I would have to hold down the power button to force an unexpected reboot (in the words of Moss). It would happen after a day, or a week of use. Turns out it's a problem with the kernel in 12.04 and the Intel 4400 chipset. The only solid fix is to simply update to a non-LTS release. Since updating to 13.04 I've been okay. I shouldn't have to wait much longer for 14.04 so I should have an LTS release soon with the updated kernel. The only other problem I've had is some updates deleting my firmware for the wireless, I've had to re-download it. But I did not have this problem when upgrading Ubuntu. Despite these issues, otherwise it's been a very solid laptop.

bpeebles 13y ago
You can use https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack to get a newer X server and kernel while otherwise staying on 12.04 LTS.

davb 13y ago

> If the laptop is turned off (or sleeping) and the battery is charging, there's no way for you to tell whether the batter is full or not based on the color of the LED. It stays white. This isn't entirely true. While the color of the charger LED doesn't change, the LED at the middle of the bottom/front edge (below the trackpad) goes from orange to white when charged. My biggest gripe with this (very nice, portable) laptop is that the wireless card is a bit flaky with 802.11n under (x)Ubuntu 13.04 - 13.10. I find that in some rooms of my (relatively small) flat I can't connect without disabling 11n (sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1). I get a very high "Tx excessive retries" value in iwconfig otherwise and the network connection is unusable. It's not a failing of the laptop, but rather the bundled Intel wireless card and the drivers that ship with Linux 3.11.0-15. My Lenovo T430s has the same issue (it has a Centrino Advanced-N 6205). I've seen numerous bug reports and kernel patches but haven't had much success in resolving the issue.

rayiner 13y ago

6 hours isn't great, it's shitty for a 13" laptop with Haswell.

surge 13y ago
Yeah, but not one that thin (small battery).
- rayiner 13y ago
  It's not particularly thin. It's about the same thickness at its thickest point at the MBA. In terms of size and weight, it's about in the middle for an ultrabook. It's battery is a little smaller than the MBA's, but not that much smaller (47 watt-hours versus 54 watt-hours). Dell's own XPS 12, which has a very marginally larger battery (50 watt-hours), gets almost 9 hours of Wi-Fi surfing at about 50% brightness.
  - surge 13y ago
    I've never seen a laptop actually get 9 hours. Even a Netbook or Air won't last much past 6. I think people tend to exaggerate. If you say 9 hours, I'd believe 4.5 hours. I mean if I left it to idle for 9 hours yeah it would last at full charge, actually using it....nah. I don't think I've ever seen a laptop work at it's advertised battery life. It's thickest point is where the fans are, its about a thin as an air where the battery is. In either case, a Macbook Pro doesn't get any better, I've not seen any laptops that get anything past 6 hours without having a low power Atom or ARM based chip in it.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      > I think people tend to exaggerate. If you say 9 hours, I'd believe 4.5 hours. I'm describing tested battery life, not anecdotal estimations. E.g. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Dell-XPS-12-9Q33-Convertible.100626.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Dell-XPS-12-9Q33-.... Battery life obviously depends on your usage scenario, but the one described in the article is very light. Moreover, he's using a very low brightness setting, and seems to be using wi-fi intermittently. These points are important to note because on most workloads, the display and the wireless adapter are the major sources of power draw. The usage described in the article is: > I get about 6 hours of usage from a full charge (or more if I leave my desk for breaks and the screen shuts off after 5 minutes, which saves battery). As I mentioned earlier, that's usually on the lowest (or second to lowest) screen brightness setting, with the keyboard backlight enabled for about 50-75% of the time, and having Firefox open with 5-10 tabs, sometimes YouTube running in the background for some music, some Terminal windows open, Steam open in the background, Skype running in the background and a few text editor windows open. Since idle background apps should take up very little battery, this seems even lighter than Anand's "Light Workload" scripted test, on which the MBA gets 11 hours (close to its rated 12). See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-13inch/6 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-revi.... Anand's test is at 200 nits (80% screen brightness). The author of this article says he's running at the lowest or second-lowest screen brightness, so maybe 10-20% or 30-60 nits. Even with the heavy workload test, which involves constant Wi-Fi activity and 1080p video playback, the MBA gets 5.5 hours. If you mimic the usage in this article, with some apps open in the background, the brightness turned down, and typing into some terminal windows, the MBA would probably get 15+ hours: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/18/#battery-benchmarks http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/18/#battery-b....

plg 13y ago

how does it compare to a macbook air with linux installed?

giovannibajo1 13y ago
Hardware-wise, the main differences are a better display (that is, more dense), and a slower SSD (non PCIe) and slower graphic card (HD4200 vs HD5000). Trackpad is probably worse as well, but I would suppose you can't see much of a difference under Linux where the experience is suboptimal even with the Apple one. You also don't have Thunderbolt connectors, though I doubt is a problem for most people.

johnchristopher 13y ago

No matte screen though :(

surge 13y ago
You don't need one, it's got gorilla glass, it's basically the same screen you'd get on a high end tablet.

Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago

A laptop targeted to developers should have a TrackPoint to move the cursor without taking the hands off the keyboard, a non-shortscreen monitor to see more lines of code, a matte screen to read the code better, and a numpad to, well, type numbers. OK, I guess I'm asking too much for today's standards, even if all these things were common ten years ago (sigh...), but when I saw "developer edition" I thought I would see at least two of these four features, and I see none. This is just a standard high-end laptop. Disappointing.

nezza-_- 13y ago
I don't think a numpad is necessary, developers normally don't type that many numbers (except maybe 0 and 1).
- Thrall 13y ago
  I agree that a numpad isn't really necessary. The keys I miss on a laptop keyboard are: - Home, end, pgup, pgdown - Delete - Function keys that are just F-keys, not volume/brightness controls that act as F-keys when you press a 'function' modifier key.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    My work provided Lenovo w530 has all these. The F-keys do have volume and brightness controls on them, but you have to hit the Fn key to do that, pressing just F4 gives you 'F4'. It's not as stylish as a MacBook Pro though.
- astrodust 13y ago
  If you do spreadsheet work based on numbers, a number pad comes in handy. Some developers have to do estimates or accounting where this applies. I only have a full-sized keyboard to get the arrow keys. Being able to smack "Enter" in the corner is a nice bonus.
davidw 13y ago
Agreed about the screen - it's annoying. But pretty much everything has those stupid HD style screens these days. I thought the glossy screen would bother me. It doesn't. Numpad? Never used one. Trackpoint? Not my style - I mostly navigate with the keyboard and the trackpad just launches the pointer into the window I need active, and then focus follows it!

nfoz 13y ago

> First boot: Ubuntu animation, Dell User Agreement, then the standard Ubuntu installer. Seriously?

Silhouette 13y ago
FWIW, I picked up on that, too. Why would a new piece of hardware running a FOSS operating system need proprietary legalese from Dell? Not saying there aren't reasons for it, but anyone who's interested in buying a Linux laptop in the first place might want to know what they are.

grigio 13y ago

I think it should be cheaper compared to a MBA with Linux.. anyway the competition is good

skyebook 13y ago
I just did some comparisons, it is indeed cheaper than a MBA in similar configuration. In terms of price, the 13" retina MBP is a way better deal than both the Dell and the Air.

just_bytecode 13y ago

I bought a refurbished ASUS Vivobook X202E and put Linux Mint on it. I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (touchscreen, multitouch trackpad, wifi, etc). It's still important to have manufacturers standing behind Linux on their PCs, but hardware support on Linux is always getting better.

lowry 13y ago

Warning: Ubuntu on this laptop does not support video output on USB 3.0 docking stations.

lvillani 13y ago
AFAIK, video over USB3 ain't pretty. I wanted to buy an USB 3.0 docking station but these things seem to be Windows-only and, even there, people experience issues.
jskonhovd 13y ago
I am guessing you are referring to the USB 3.0 DisplayLink Docking Station. Yes, DisplayLink has issues with supporting Linux. We can only hope that Dell and other PC manufacturers will put pressure on them to support Linux.

curtis 13y ago

The first thing I noticed from the picture is that the keyboard looks exactly like the keyboard on my MacBook Pro. I haven't really looked at Windows laptops in a long time, so maybe this is a common layout now. It just seemed notable to me.

news_to_me 13y ago

I was debating getting this laptop or a Thinkpad T440s and a Chromebook Pixel. For me the Pixel just doesn't have the storage capacity I want, and the T440s isn't quite as portable. I've made a deal with myself to get this once I've paid my loans off. C'mon, baby, just two months..

reirob 13y ago
Then maybe the new Thinkpad X1 Carbon is for you: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca... I would seriously love to buy it but the new keyboard changes put me off (see comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535). It's a shame, because otherwise it is really a nice machine - will as well go with T440s.
- news_to_me 13y ago
  Oh god, it has Haswell now!! Damn the loans.

coreymgilmore 13y ago

could use a 15" brother with a bigger screen -> lets you see more lines of code and run side-by-side editors more efficiently.

fotcorn 13y ago

I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga a month ago and installed the alpha of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it. The only thing that didn't work out of the box was the lock button and scrolling in Firefox using the touch screen (install the Grab and Drag Addon). Features: matte screen, TrackPoint, Pen Input.

just_bytecode 13y ago
Thanks for turning me on Grab and Drag. Firefox is one of the few things I want to touch scroll on Linux.
- taeric 13y ago
  Seconded! Only used it for about 30 seconds and this is already one of my favorite add ons. :) I kind of wish it was only enabled for the touch or pen cursors, anyone know if that is possible?

gum_ina_package 13y ago

The real issue here is battery life. Only 6 hours? The new X1 carbon from Lenovo can get 9, the T440s can get up to 17 (with extended battery), and the MBA can get 12 right out of the box.

ivan_ah 13y ago
The Lenovo X1 carbon has a 1600 x 900 screen though... I needz my linez of code ;)
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  Not the new one! It's up to 2048xsomething-or-another.

robertfw 13y ago

I've been using one of these with the HD screen since the spring, here are some thoughts: Nice: - Good battery life. With screen on full, wifi on I can get between 3-5 hours depending on CPU utilization. With screen brightness turned down, wifi off, low utilization, ~6 hours - Keyboard and mouse pad are great - No issues with unsupported bits and pieces from ubuntu, with exception of video output via usb - the battery strength indicator on the side is handy for quickly checking if i need to grab my power cable without having to turn the machine on as well - Display quality (minus the glossy finish) is great, wide viewing angle, vivid colours Naughty: - Glossy screen is a pain in the ass. Forget about using in sunlight, I also need to adjust mine to avoid getting the overheads in our office. - Temperature management is pretty poor - the air vents on the bottom don't have much clearance even on a flat surface, and don't seem to move enough air. I worry about the long term lifespan of this machine because it regularly operates > 70c. When I can, I sit the machine on a laptop platform with a fan. - (minor) the function keybind for adjusting the volume requires 2 hands - the fn key is on the lower left, while the volume up/down are on f11/f12. - only 2 usb ports and no SD card reader. Overall I've been happy with it.

micampe 13y ago
3-5 hours is good battery life in 2014?
- alexchamberlain 13y ago
  It's the one thing that hasn't improved over the years.
  - micampe 13y ago
    My laptop goes easily to 7-8 without changing my usage significantly, 9 if I'm only doing email. I hardly carry the power brick outside the house anymore.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  I go crazy under 6 ... That's why i'm spending more and more time behind my chromebook; it has all day battery life. My laptops hardly make 3 hours and it makes me not want to use them for much of anything anymore.

platz 13y ago

I'm not sure I trust anything from Dell anymore after the DER SPIEGEL releases.

bch 13y ago

Sort of funny, but it looks like their Linux developer laptop keyboard has a Windows key. Licensing issue, or just an unfinished project?

lvillani 13y ago

I have one of the first-gen (non Sputnik) systems. I simultaneously love it and hate it so much that after one year I had to put my (mixed) feelings in writing here: http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell-xps-13-l321x-the-review-one-year-in-the-making/ http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell-xps-13-l321x-the-r... (this is little more than a pondered rant, unlike OP's thorough review). However, I think this year I'm probably going to bite the bullet and buy a 13" Retina MacBook Pro.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

Nice, I'd consider getting one. Wish it was a bit bigger though... I have an XPS 16 which isn't very heavy and don't want a smaller screen. When I use the wife's Mac I'm always fumbling around the keyboard shortcuts. However, the screen is amazing. If this Dell had a bit more DPI I'd be sold.

codeape 13y ago

How is the multi-monitor support on the XPS 13 running Ubuntu? I googled, but could not find much useful information. How many external monitors can be connected? I found some information here: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm , but it looks as if most of the info applies to Windows.

lvillani 13y ago
I have the first-gen XPS 13 with 1366x768 internal display. No problems at all in a multi monitor setup. I have a Dell S2409W, 1920x1080 at home and a NEC 1920x1200 at work.
- codeape 13y ago
  Do you use both the internal display and external monitor? Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor?
  - lvillani 13y ago
    > Do you use both the internal display and external monitor? Yes > Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor? Never tried. This laptop has only one mini DisplayPort output. I heard that there are splitter cables/adapters which should allow for that but I haven't found an affordable one yet. An alternative would be a display that supports daisy chaining (the only one which I am aware of is Apple's Thunderbolt display which doesn't even turn on for me).

tuneit 13y ago

About the low battery time I am pretty sure it is a linux problem and not so much a hardware. Battery is really one of linux weaker spots. However I read that the optimization ubuntu is doing for phones will help the overall battery situation. I guess we can just cross our fingers that its true.

elchief 13y ago

Does the WIFI LED flash a different colour when it uploads directly to the NSA? What am I going to do with 8GB of RAM? My mom has 8GB of RAM.

shirro 13y ago

Two wishes. They supported 16GB RAM. Dell Australia would sell them.

atmosx 13y ago

Good might me next laptop series... Hm.

auggierose 13y ago

Not sure why anyone would get one of these. The new MacbookPro 13 inch is the sweetest laptop deal out there right now (if you can do with 13 inch and only 2 cores).

ternaryoperator 13y ago
Because they want an Ubuntu laptop?

parhelium 13y ago

Right now I have Lenovo w520 and I approached 3 times to configure ubuntu with external screen, no luck. Does Dell XPS 3 DE work fine with external monitor on ubuntu ?