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Dell's New Sputnik 3 Mates Touchscreen With Ubuntu
ClaraBow writes "I find it interesting that Dell has started selling a thin and light touchscreen laptop called the XPS 13 Developer Edition, which will have Ubuntu Linux OS and Intel's fourth-generation Core processors, code-named Haswell. The laptop, code-named Sputnik, has a 13.3-inch touchscreen and will run on Ubuntu 12.04 OS. It is priced starting at $1,250 and is available in the U.S." One thing I wish was addressed in the blog post announcing this newest entry in the Sputnik line, or its listed specs (bad news beats not knowing, in this case), is battery life.
It's from a major OEM, it runs Linux which hopefully means it has Linux-friendly hardware and good Linux drivers. That's enough to be newsworthy on slashdot, which still hopes Linux will overtake the market share of such gems as Windows Vista and Windows 8 ;)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The cost of the machine is $110 less than an otherwise identical XPS 13 with Windows 8.
Within no time I'll have a nice KDE desktop installed.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
"For example, chances are that it's graphics chipset is "supported" but very, very slim that it enjoys full acceleration unless we're talking about an Intel chipset or a binary driver somewhere."
It has an Intel chipset, which has full 2D and 3D acceleration.
I have the second-gen XPS 13 developer edition. Every function on the system works. It does not include any binary drivers. Yes, only the supplied Ubuntu install is 'supported', but then, if you buy a Windows 7 laptop and then self-install Windows 8 on it (for instance), your manufacturer isn't going to support that either. I run Fedora 19 on my second-gen XPS 13 and all its functions work fully and correctly.
"try setting up your Linux partitions to mirror those of a Zip-disk on even boot/install USB disks"
What? That fragment does not even make syntactical sense, so far as I can work out.
"having to manually load soundfonts with a script to make soundcards work"
Along with the reference to 'Zip-disks' - 1996 called and it wants its problems back.
"or having to compile for some mini-ITX boards that can barely support the 486 instruction set to get an idea of the sorts of things that can crop up with old / embedded / poorly supported hardware"
So, buying CPUs that 'can barely support the 486 instruction set' is a bad idea in 2013, huh? Thanks for the tip, I never would've guessed.