Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

Sorry, I'm gonna have to flame Dell out here.

I own a Dell XPS 13 9365, a 2-in-1 laptop. Dell have decided, arbitrarily, not to support Linux on this machine, but you can still actually make it run by disabling Secure Boot and setting the SATA mode to AHCI. Even then, Ubuntu doesn't seem to detect when you've rotated the screen for tablet mode or stuff like that -- but that's probably Ubuntu's driver support. The machine also can't wake up from suspend mode, which I suspect is a driver thing.

Problem is, if you then apply a typical, recommended firmware upgrade from your Ubuntu Software Manager, it bricks the laptop. The problem being, "applying" the firmware upgrade in Ubuntu just primes it to run when you restart the computer. When you restart the computer, the BIOS detects a present firmware upgrade and applies it, without apparently double-checking that, you know, this isn't gonna brick the computer. I now have to wait for a technician to arrive today and replace my motherboard, then figure out how to change those BIOS settings again so that I can boot back into Linux.

Maybe Ubuntu could have stopped this by detecting compatibility issues between the firmware package and the hardware. Dell's BIOS definitely should have stopped this by detecting the compatibility issue between its own settings and the firmware package. Alternately, if the issue is that, for instance, the BIOS won't check these packages because I've disabled Secure Boot, the BIOS needs to bloody well differentiate between Secure Boot for operating systems (which we want off, because we own our laptops, thank you very much) and for BIOS/firmware packages (which we want on, because why brick a good machine?).

Overall, great machine, but bad Dell, no cookie.

Regarding gaming - Linux went backwards now that new gadgets like VR headsets and high refresh synced monitors are required for serious gaming. Feels like 2002 all over again without any games.

> Any capable of DirectX 12, but only gets OpenGL 4.3 drivers or similar on GNU/Linux.

What GPU is this? I don't know of a DX12 device which lacks OpenGL 4.5 support in a stable release of Mesa (or the blob, in the case of NVIDIA, since they are uncooperative with regard to firmware).

> Regarding OpenGL on macOS, I don't care, that is what rendering engines are for, and all relevant ones already support Metal 2.

Sure, if you're running only games, and those that were made before 2012, and after 2017, then that works fine. For an example of something that does not currently use Metal (2 or no 2): any web browser (to my knowledge, including Apple's own, except as a backend for the WebGPU prototype), professional graphics application, or visualization utility. The shader compiler is still subpar, even in Metal.

> Or my AMD Brazos one on a Linux netbook, DirectX 11 class, which only gets OpenGL 3.3 drivers.

IIRC Brazos in that range would be... Radeon HD 6330M, and you're right, that should support GL 4.4. If you're running Mesa from 2016 or later, it should have 4.1 (and most extensions, except compute shaders, up to 4.4), if you run AMD's blob you can probably get 4.4 on it today. Work on drivers for pre-southern-islands devices is slow these days, but anything after SI has full certified OpenGL 4.5 on Mesa along with every extension in in 4.6 except for SPIR-V loading (coming soon), and the performance is better in basically all cases than it is on Windows, or with the proprietary drivers on Linux (though for now you'll need the proprietary drivers for some features like FreeSync, which is unfortunate but oh well).

I meant these: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...

I find that to be irrelevant for development (except games, of course).

In fact, my graphics card (the cheapest to support Vista) is the only thing I haven't upgraded in the past 5+ years. And it was from eBay, used.