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Ars Reviewer is Happily Bored With Dell's Linux Ultrabook
Ars Technica reviewer Lee Hutchinson says that Dell's Ubuntu-loaded 13" Ultrabook (the product of "Project Sputnik") is "functional," "polished," and (for a Linux laptop) remarkably unremarkable. "It just works," he says. Hutchinson points out that this is a sadly low bar, but nonetheless gives Dell great credit for surpassing it. He finds the Ultrabook's keyboard to be spongy, but has praise for most elements of the hardware itself, right down to (not everyone's favorite) the glossy screen.
"It feels like there is a tiny bit of input lag on the trackpad, which made grabbing Unity's razor-thin window edges an exercise in screaming frustration"
This does not equate with "Just Works".
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is why I will (sadly) never buy one of these.
Salut,
Jacques
Nearly 1600 before tax and no user upgradable components? You'd think it was a macbook
for the first time from XP.
It was a bit of an anti-climax and a slight disappointment at first. Nothing happened. No pop-ups appeared. No first-time guide. No helpful hints. No gnashing hard-drive activity. Just silence and waiting for my command.
Since then I've come to appreciate this as the #1 reason for using linux - when you actually want to get something done, it just seems to get out the way. It's a shame that more recent distro versions seem to be moving away from this though.
D
"It works" and "it's not riddled with crappy 'trial' ware you can't easily get rid of" has become something worth mentioning when reviewing laptops.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
spongy keyboard?
fuck that shit. the quality of the keyboard is the most important aspect to me.
WTF?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, my new Lenovo Twist Thinkpad Ultrabook running Fedora 18 also "just works" (including the touch screen) and didn't require any special "project" to accomplish.
We have heard this line from Dell before. I trust them about as far as I could throw them. Most potential Linux customers don't need a preinstalled Linux laptop from these companies or even a special support division. ESPECIALLY if they plan to charge *MORE* than for their MS-Windows model. For one, many customers won't want Dell's choice of Linux nor the way it was installed.
What we need is commitment from the vendor that the hardware is not Linux hostile and they won't try to avoid their warranty obligation using Linux as an excuse. Even better, how about a nice support page describing the hardware in detail and the names of the Linux drivers and in what kernel for each component and some install tips. None of that is expensive or complex.
There is one thing all Ultrabooks, notebooks and netbooks don't have and that is a good keyboard. I have yet to hear of a *book with a mechanical keyboard.
when 3.1 was prevalent most popular games were still dos based.
http://interserver.net/
The current generation MBP has user replaceable RAM and storage. You're confusing the current generation MBP with Macbook Airs and Retina Macbook Pro. Apple even has a support document on the site "MacBook Pro: How to remove or install memory" that covers the current generation MBP introduced in June 2012 (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1270).
is that the matte wins in the long run. Shiny new object turn matte, and aging people's eyes can't tell the difference, and Ra's shine is for all practical purposes eternal.
Long live the matte screen!
It is hard to imagine what you'd call "mechanical". If the key moves when depressed, it is mechanical. Basically all keyboards have some stupid foil switches with mechanical contacts. One of the best keyboards I ever had belonged to a "Nascom II" and it was contactless: the keys were heavy, springloaded (no jumping spring like with the PS2 keyboards), had a hard metal stop, and instead of a contact there was some coil and pin construction working via inductivity change. Quite indestructabile apart from the spacebar equalizing mechanism (you could hit the full-length bar equally well anywhere without it getting stuck) which occasionally unhinged (but not self-destructed) under "Space Invaders" and similar workloads from my kid brother.
Next best keyboard was the standard PS2, but I would not have routinely used it for arcade games. But nice for typing. With more moving parts than today's keyboards, but nothing that would get it labelled "mechanical" more so than the existing bad keyboards.
Several electric typewriters (including the older IBM Selectric Typewriters) have mechanical keys which cause mechanical action triggered by the initial press. Those are indeed "mechanical" to a larger degree. But I doubt that was what you have been thinking of.
Why don't you just build your own computer and install linux on it
Let me know who sells a decent kit for building an Ultrabook laptop and I'll tell you.
Windows 3.1 was DOS based...
98 was the first version of windows that was an actual OS, not a graphical DOS shell
Dell makes some sweet laptops for Ubuntu and this new model seems to continue that tradition. I use the small form factor Latitude E6320 for work and play (with Ubuntu's 13.04 beta) and I'm happier than a pig in mud. If you're looking to move to a fully functional GNU/Linux distribution on a laptop or desktop, I must say that Canonical seems to have their act together. Just remember to run "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping". Nasty stuff.
Last week I was looking for a Linux ultrabook after my 8 year old one died (wasn't called that back then but I digress). I spent 2 evenings shopping on various sites and I was sure there were some at Dell because we buy Linux laptops from them at work. After failing to find them on their site, I called them up. The answer: no, we don't make Linux laptops. Well, fuck your lousy customer service, you just lost a sale.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
DOS is by definition an OS. Look up the acronym for the two. DOS even had its own kernel. The windows kernel ran OK top if the DOS kernel in all versions of the original windows, which went up to ME.
NT, which was (is) a whole other operating system built from the ground up, new kernel and all. The kernel that windows uses today is derived from the original NT kernel, and thus has no DOS ancestry.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Dell's UK site for the laptop says "Windows 7 or Windows 8 – Choose the operating system that suits you".
If a potential user can't manage to install the Linux of their choice onto pretty much any laptop,
they're going to be pretty disappointed trying to actually *run* Linux, even if it's preinstalled.
I've had no problems running Fedora on my Samsung UB.
I have one of these and really like it.
The OS really does "just work". Originally I intended to reinstall the OS, but took the factory install for a test drive first. A couple months later and I'm still running the factory install because I haven't found a reason not to. About the only thing I'd do differently is install on top of LVM2.
Hardware wise it works well. I like matt screens, but haven't had any issues with the glossy screen. I type in the 85-90wpm range and don't notice the keyboard feeling "spongy". There's actually very little to no flex in the keyboard.
My one wish is that the wifi reception was better. I find it has connectivity issues at the edge of wireless networks, where my phone or other laptop is still able to connect.
I find it interesting that they went to all the trouble of making it 'just work', and promoting it as a Linux laptop, yet it still has a Microsoft Windows logo on the keyboard. Fail.
Probably one of the more interesting parts of the chassis as a whole is described as plastic, rather than factory made carbon fiber parts. This piece adds a lot of rigidity, strength and shock absorption (if/when dropped on the corner) without adding much weight, and yet he glosses right over it. Resin infused woven carbon fiber is a wonderful piece of modern material science and it's completely ignored. Dell should be praised for pushing materials like this in to consumer products that cost less than $2000.
moox. for a new generation.
I haven't kept up, on laptops. Is a 47 Watt-Hour non-replaceable battery considered relatively "normal" these days?
When I see that, my first throught is "47 WHr? Why does it have a Core i7 instead of a Core i3 or Pentium or Atom? Can I at least underclock or downgrade it so that it doesn't totally suck to the point of uselessness?" My second thought is, "wait, did you say non-replacable?" Non-replaceable batteries? Why would I ever buy anything with a non-replaceable battery? Not a single one of my portable gizmos has something like that, and you're suggesting my highest-end $1500 one should? That's silly. OTOH, for all I know, it's normal now. Is it?
I am no techie, not a geek, and I must object when technical writers claim that Linux is not 'ready for the desktop.'
I think it depends what you mean by "not yet ready for the desktop."
Not yet ready for the average user to install, maintain, tweak to get everything working, etc.? Surely not, though I wonder if Windows is all that much easier in that regard, except for the important distinction that Windows requires less effort to get everything working... usually the hardware works out of the box.
Not yet ready for the average user to use? As I've posted elsewhere, lots of average users are running a Linux box set up by a friend or relative, probably not even knowing or caring that it's Linux, and doing web browsing, email, Facebook, etc., to their heart's content.
To me, "ready for the desktop" in the usage sense means the average user clicks on an icon and the expected result happens: a web browser starts up or what-have-you. Linux easily delivers this today.
But if your definition of "ready for the desktop" means the average user can singlehandedly install the system, install software, do updates, troubleshoot, etc., Linux is not ready for the desktop. But Windows, by that definition at least, isn't a whole lot more ready.
It ran on top of DOS yes, but there were still Windows apps/games that ran in only windows, but the popular games were all still dos.
http://interserver.net/
Of course it's sort of boring. Having broken drivers, now that's exciting! You'd really hope that Dell would ship a machine where that doesn't happen.
And most people in the market for a Linux laptop have been running Linux long enough that they expect the operating system to let them do real work.
Bill Stewart
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1) dos is not a programming language, you dont base something on DOS, DOS is an OS, you run programs with it
2) no 98 was sitting ontop of a dos command kernel
I had a 2012 XPS 15 (l502x, the giant brick one), and I installed Kubuntu 12.04 LTS, and all my hardware worked with default install. With Win7, after a format, I had to download a thousand of drivers from Dell support website. The only additional movement I did was active Bumblebee PPA, to get the onboard video card working as default (to save battery and call the dedicated card only when I need it).
Reading comprehension, you fail it.
is a good old 16:10 screen at classic 15" size.
Don't need no retinas, give me my 1440x900 or 1680x1050. Bonus points for IPS.
Doesn't have to be razer thin or feather light, just around 2kg. I don't need 8 gigs or 8 cores either. I'd rather have the integrated GPU too. I don't crave an SSD. Don't need no fingerprint reader, 1080p webcam or logo-laden speakers. Keep the internals cheap I just want to pay for a decent screen.
why is this niche impossible to fill ?
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Obviously they were talking about the contrast and sharpness of the reflection!
Your statement is complete garbage.
nVidia and AMD could simply release open source drivers that do NOT support DRM.
It's called a Macbook Air.
If you don't like OSX, Linux installs just fine.
"Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be--at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance. I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating environment both at work and at home. I did it for years at work, but it was never quite as easy as I wanted it to be."
I disagree, it's no more complicated than installing Windows, how many people have to install an OS on their brand new computer?
I've been Windows free for three years and going, and I've not noticed the loss !
AccountKiller
nVidia and AMD could simply release open source drivers that do NOT support DRM.
The third paragraph of the GP post explains why they cannot.
98 ran on top of DOS too, doh.
So did ME, although they saddled it with a really ugly cludge to keep you out of the primary shell.
XP was the first consumer oriented windows version that was NOT a DOS shell.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
AFAIK this helped DR's lawsuit against MS. In contrast, as mentioned in my blog post, OS/2 never depended on DOS at all.
Not yet ready for the average user to install, maintain, tweak to get everything working, etc.? Surely not, though I wonder if Windows is all that much easier in that regard, except for the important distinction that Windows requires less effort to get everything working... usually the hardware works out of the box.
Usually it doesn't, i have rarely gotten windows to work out of the box on anything except hardware which predates the version of windows by a year or more. Anything newer and you will have to locate and install third party drivers, a process which can be extremely frustrating. And even if it does work out of the box, it's usually far from optimal and using generic drivers for many bits of hardware, which will result in mediocre to dire performance.
Linux generally works better, partly because its updated more frequently and thus more likely to have current drivers, and partly because it actually provides useful ways to see what hardware you have while windows just displays something generic like "vga card" until you have the proper drivers installed. In some cases you aren't even aware of what vendor your hardware is from, so good luck finding drivers.
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