Dell's Next Rev for Project Sputnik: Ubuntu 14.04 On XPS 13 Developer Edition (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Also known as "Project Sputnik," Dell came up with the idea of offering developers a variant of their XPS 13 notebook running Linux and launched its first models over three years ago. Now in its 5th generation, Project Sputnik is still going strong today with the latest models combining Ubuntu 14.04 with Intel's Skylake processors. To kick off its newest generation of Developer Edition laptops, Dell is offering three Core i7 XPS 13 configurations, including two that feature 16GB of RAM. Dell said it also plans to add a Core i5 option to the Developer Edition lineup sometime down the line. Dell is seeing increased interest from customers and in addition to the XPS Developer Edition, Dell offers Ubuntu on its Precision 5510, 3510, 7510, and 7710 mobile workstations, as well as its Precision M3800. Cost of entry into Developer Edition territory runs $1,550. What that gets you is a 13.3-inch QHD+ (3200x1800) InfinityEdge touch display powered by an Intel Core i5-6560U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 1866 RAM, and Intel Iris Graphics 540.

Comments

Re:Why not 16.04?

[Guillermito]

Because 14.04 is the latest LTS (Long Term Support) version released https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

Dekdtop? Try an antique store, or govt office

[raymorris]

Desktops? Try an antique store, or a government office.

Re:Dekdtop? Try an antique store, or govt office

[Dutch Gun]

Desktops? Try an antique store, or a government office.

Or a development shop, or a music studio, or a digital artist's workshop, or a gamer's den, or anyone else that needs a machine with some significant horsepower that also doesn't need to be mobile. Try hooking up a VR headset to a laptop, and the hardware will openly mock you. Yes, desktops are still a thing, believe it or not, even if you personally can't imagine how you'd use one.

Re:Dekdtop? Try an antique store, or govt office

[Billly Gates]

Yeah I was thinking these laptops are underpowered for all but a web developer ... actually still because if you use Adobe Dreamweaver you need a VM of WIndows.

No developer worth his salt doesn't use many VM's requiring 16 to 32 gigs of ram today. You have different linux distros, freebsd, WIndows, and Mac. Not to mention crappy tools like MS Office and Adobe Dreamweaver or Visual Studio for your win32 port and you are taking 5 or 6 2 - 8 gig VM's.

A developer today should only settle for 32 gigs of ram and maybe 16 and an i7 if you compile code. Not to mention some link to databases so you need several cores for your Oracle on CentOS not to mention run and debug on all Linux flavors, Windows, etc.

A desktop is nice because you can add these things and customize. A nice raid 0 SSD and gobs of ram (NOT SOLDERED IN) mean you can customize quite the powerhouse for your app environment.

Re:Dekdtop? Try an antique store, or govt office

[Dutch Gun]

Sure, modern higher-end laptops are ridiculously overpowered for about 95% of what people generally need to do with a PC. Hell, top-end smartphones are overpowered for what most people need to do with a PC, which is why (among other reasons), the overall PC market share is stagnating or declining. They're just not necessary for run of the mill, daily computing needs for most people. Non-gaming applications which actually require a desktop's power are the exception among the already rare, but they're most certain out there. And of course, games historically require a lot of GPU horsepower, which most laptops don't have in large quantities.

There are also small form-factor desktop PCs which are useful for lightweight office or home tasks, but for which the portability of a laptop is either completely unnecessary or even a liability.

So yeah, I totally agree - I was just pointing out the ignorance of mocking desktop PCs as 'last century'. Probably the same sort of hipsteritis that causes people to snicker at someone with (gasp) a three-year-old smartphone. It gets tiresome to have to repeatedly explain to people that the modern desktop PC is sort of like a full-sized work truck. It's completely overkill for most people's driving needs, but it's invaluable to professionals with specific requirements.

Re:Why not 16.04?

[jareth-0205]

16.04 is about to be released. Why not using it instead of 14.04?

Because it is not, in actual fact, released.

Re:Why not 16.04?

[mrvan]

I have a xps13 for about a year now with ubuntu installed. It was somewhat painful at first because of driver issues (the developer edition wasn't released yet for the new xps13), so required a kernel recompile and some fidgeting. A couple months ago I replaced the broadcom chip with an intel (a very quick operation once you get hold of a tiny torque screwdriver) and installed ubuntu 15.10 which worked perfect out of the box.

The resolution is incredibly nice when everything behaves. I run emacs / terminal with font 14 or 16 and it is just so much clearer and nicer to the eyes. What is annoying if you switch between the built in 13" hidpi and a 27" lodpi external monitor, I've not found a way to make it behave sane, and not all programs obey the system settings. Maybe I'll just get a hidpi external monitor :)

Re:for people with good eyesight

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't used Linux as a desktop in a half decade now but Xorg seriously can't do font scaling and independent bitmap icons yet? WTF.

You misunderstand. It of course can. Furthermore, you can scale everything so you don't tend to get the weird problems of menus not matching apps or needing to have a specific multiple of something that you get on "other" operating systems.

Generally the Sputnik screen is excellent, as is the rest of the system. Strongly recommend it to everybody. You never ever ever feel your Mac or Windows friends are looking down at you and it's very rare that you even feel they have something close. I took it with the absolute full corporate support. Again Dell support has been excellent, however since Sputnik is rare where I live and there are very similar windows models you have to be careful that they don't needlessly swap your mother board and give you one with firmware that isn't fully Linux supporting. It happened to a guy I know. Dell guy came back after two days with the right board though, so no problem.

Re:for people with good eyesight

[serviscope_minor]

96 dpi has been considered basically 'standard' desktop monitor DPI for a long time, even though the minimum we accept on printers is 300.

Yeah, but those 96 DPI give you 16777216 colours per dot, as opposed to the 300dpi printer which gives usually 1. The exception is things like dye sub printers and they look amazing.