Barton George

I think you can get 15" models from Dell under their "Project Sputnik" program too, well worth following Barton's blog for news on that: http://bartongeorge.io/

For those out there looking for a developer edition/or to run linux, rumors are these refreshed/new units are no longer carrying the troublesome Broadcom components that were causing kernel panics. These units were designated as "9343/XPS 13 Early 2015". If your considering picking up a used XPS13 9343 on the cheap and plan to install Linux - be forewarned, we are waiting on BIOS A06 to fix the keyboard jumping issue. A great source of insight on the Dell XPS13 / Linux program is available at Barton Georges blog - http://bartongeorge.net - he is the founder/lead of Project Sputnik (Dell's internal effort to create the ultimate Linux/Ubuntu developer laptop).

Oh interesting, this is the M3800 which is Dell's beefy 15" Linux laptop. Glad to see it getting some light. If you're looking for something more portable, the New XPS 13 is in development and is supposed to launch soon. I follow the project lead's blog here: http://bartongeorge.net/ My hats off to the Dell team; they're very open about what they're doing, making better drivers etc. before launching the product. For now I'm trying out a 2015 Chromebook Pixel with Debian GNU/Linux install..ing. Still working on it. It has a lot of the same problems mentioned here: - Suuuper glossy screen (basically a mirror with a dark background) - Limited keyboard: no pageup/pagedown.. even more limited than the Dell, it doesn't have a DEL key, just Power in its place... much key remapping will be required to make this usable. - No physical trackpad buttons, and that's a huuuge problem, because even Google's touchpad driver fails some basic tests of operation as compared to a Mac (e.g. cursor stutters its motion if you click while moving the cursor). The lack of touchpad buttons across most laptops now is shocking. - Keys are a bit shallow

Most probably - see Project Sputnik blog here: https://bartongeorge.io/

They do indeed still have the Sputnik program running. Barton George (from Dell) still updates his blog[0] with status info[1]. [0] - https://bartongeorge.io/ [1] - https://bartongeorge.io/2016/10/04/the-new-xps-13-developer-edition-la…

You can find it on this page: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd The most straightforward way is to select "Ubuntu" as the "Operating System" filter at the top of the models list. Outside the US you should follow the links in this article: https://bartongeorge.io/2016/10/04/the-new-xps-13-developer-edition-la…

Hi, Dell will be enabling online purchases for European countries in the next couple of weeks. There's a blog post from them here: http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-developer-… Short version is that the following countries will be added: France, Germany, UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland You'll be able to buy through a sales person for these countries: Israel, Luxembourg, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, UAE

Counter-anecdote (I admit that I'm ignorant about aesthetics, so I'm not addressing those points). I got a personal 2016 XPS 13 (9350) because of Project Sputnik (https://bartongeorge.io/tag/project-sputnik/), which brought official desktop-Linux support to it. I also work at Google where we have a very solid desktop distribution, providing me a working example of almost every tweak I might want to make. Owning the hardware has been a great experience since two changes. First, I swapped out the Killer wifi card and replaced it with an Intel card. Unfortunately this is table stakes for any machine with that card. Second, I thought the spring on the keyboard's keys was much stronger than another XPS 13 that I'd test-driven, so I rolled the dice on eBay and bought a replacement for something like $20. I swapped it in, and it indeed restored the light touch that I liked about the other one. I wouldn't expect many people to do this. As for software, I've settled successfully on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, running the same Cinnamon desktop environment we use at work. A key part of my success has been committing to Ansible for configuration management. When I make a settings change I want to keep, I figure out where it's persisted, and then upstream it into my Ansible repo. This has the three-part benefit of teaching me a little about the system (mostly dconf), creating a worklog of changes I've made to the machine, and giving me the psychological comfort that if things get really bad, I…

> Gentoo was circa 2005 and Ubuntu was circa 2012. I spent months trying to make it work, but it was too much. Software ran slower, installing package updates was like playing Minesweeper and worst of all, I had to use Wine. A friend of mine tried it as recently as 2014, then gave up as expected. Ah cool! The reason I asked is that a lot has changed in the last four years or so. Dell's Sputnik (http://www.dell.com/developers) program is the one that specifically comes to my mind. But it is possible to buy a variety of Dell workstation models with Linux pre-installed with support. And according to the recent new product blog (https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precis… the Sputnik project only released the first 13" DE a little less than 4 years ago. So I was asking since I thought it might be neat to know about some of the changes in the landscape (provided you haven't attempted in a while :) ...) Edit: Forgot to mention, that Dell's efforts generally improve the Linux driver ecosystem as well since they upstream their drivers to the kernel: > as many drivers developed for the laptop are "upstreamed" to the Linux kernel [1] [1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/3046115/linux/love-linux-dude-youre-g…

My next linux laptop will probably be a Dell XPS from the Sputnik project: http://bartongeorge.net/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputnik-develop… I think it's interesting because of the notion of having some sort of Chef or other configuration management on Github, and then being able to fork that for particular development purposes or preferences and switch between them. I gather from some of the other interviews that the sputnik project is aiming for something like that. As far as hardware goes, I like Lenovo ThninkPads best, and the Dell E65xx series that kind of copy them are also pretty good. I expect to screw around googling driver settings and etc on any new hardware I buy, so I'm not to worried about "just working". Someone else's definition of everything "just working" probably isn't good enough for me anyway. Running clones of specific production environments in a VM is a good idea, using it as your main everyday interface is not, IMHO.

Dell has supported Linux officially on the XPS 13 variants since 2012. https://bartongeorge.io/2020/01/01/introducing-the-2020-xps-13-develop…

The ars technica writeup does not mention the most significant upgrade of all in my opinion: 32GB RAM in February. See https://bartongeorge.io/2020/01/01/introducing-the-2020-xps-13-develop…

Yay, another Linux post! Anybody check out Project Sputnik? I think Dell (forked?) Ubuntu in order to make it work on XPS/Precision laptops and Dell hardware. https://bartongeorge.io/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputnik-develop…

Note that 32GB is available if you move up to 15": https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precis…

maybe its not available in US? Its available in some eu countries. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3161861/linux/the-new-dell-xps-13-devel… http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_nav=OS_BRAN… select OS option above. Here is the original blog from dell engineer himself. https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precis…

According to the project lead†, "Europe [is] being readied for launch as we speak, stay tuned for more details." †: http://bartongeorge.net/2016/03/10/xps-13-developer-edition-launches-i…

Except they certify systems with lots of problems. Dell had to stop selling their XPS 13 with Ubuntu for a while due to the number of issues. http://bartongeorge.net/2015/07/20/xps-13-developer-edition-on-pause/

If he's running Linux, it might be that it tooks 5 months after the release of the Developer Edition (the one w/ Ubuntu preinstalled) to fix the most basic/egregious issues: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/08/28/recent-fixes-for-xps-13-developer-e… Also, that even now, they still ship w/ Broadcom, not Intel wifi. (drivers not in the kernel) I'm curious about the new Skylake XPS models, but you'd have to either be foolish or a masochist to guinea pig their new models...

Announcement here: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/04/09/4th-gen-dell-xps-13-developer-editi…

Ubuntu's announcment: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/04/09/designed-for-developers-dell-la… Developers Blog: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/04/09/4th-gen-dell-xps-13-developer-editi…

They are still working out some bugs with the latest XPS 13 and Ubuntu. Check out http://bartongeorge.net/tag/project-sputnik/

Yup, I'm super keen for the new 2015 Dell XPS 13. It should start shipping with Ubuntu shortly: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/02/23/update-2-dell-xps-13-laptop-develop…

You can check Dell's Project Sputnik community: https://plus.google.com/communities/114528776750711434800 Based on the latest update from Project Sputnik lead Barton George, it sounds like the release is drawing near: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/02/23/update-2-dell-xps-13-laptop-develop…

What you describe sounds like what Dell's "Project Sputnik" is aiming to do. http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/06/project-sputnik-profile-tool-update… Looks like they plan to launch something soon. Hope it turns out well.

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-… Brings 1080p (after much clamour and feedback) ... February 2013 2: http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here-xps-13-developer-… Brings Haswell ... November 2013 http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing-sputnik-3-and-its-unoff… 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 ...