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Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

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Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#291

Post by vetinari »

rlpb wrote: post #257
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ubuntu (like other distributions) doesn't have anything to do with distribution and release management of the the firmware blobs themselves; that's done entirely by Dell I believe. Indeed, and yet here y'all are, saying that if I didn't want a brick, I shouldn't have run Linux. Ubuntu didn't do anything to the hardware, it just queued up a Dell-distributed, Dell-released firmware update to run upon BIOS POST. Since…

> Bull. They QA their own BIOS and firmware. The whole point of firmware-BIOS-OS separation is that the operating system never even speaks to the BIOS directly. BIOS runs the bootloader, bootloader loads the OS, OS proceeds according to a standard for how PCs are run. The complexity here is that the firmware updates shipped for Linux may well take a different QA path to the firmware updates shipped for Windows, as th…

> The complexity here is that the firmware updates shipped for Linux may well take a different QA path to the firmware updates shipped for Windows, as the distribution channels are different.

No, the update content in different OSes is identical. The firmware is being updated by UEFI capsule; the only differing part is what puts the capsule content into it's space. There's actually a third way how to do an update: straight from UEFI.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#292

Post by humblebee »

loeg wrote: post #272
humblebee wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can actually confirm this, through a third party. I use to work for EMC, and left in early 2017, but still have a lot of friends still working there. Going forward employees were no longer going to be able to connect to the VPN with anything other than the Dell official Windows img. This mostly just meant that any work laptop must run Windows. Developer workstations could still run Linux, at least in the office I w…

EMC acquisition — Isilon by any chance? :-)

Hello :-) 00

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#293

Post by bproven »

lmm wrote: post #173
swalsh wrote: post #135

I recently bought an XPS 13 developers edition from the website after my macbook's screen randomly died (it was old, and ready for an upgrade anyways) looking at new macbooks, I was unhappy with the lack of a USB slot, thought the fancy bar on the top was unnecessary, and generally you just seemed to get less for the same money. I NEEDED the laptop right away. The website said it would take 4 days or so. So I waited,…

> While I'm typing, every once in a while the cursor will skip around. It is infuriating. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue. I've seen this happen when my palm was hitting the touchpad and I didn't have the right drivers for it - the default touchpad driver "works" but is missing the palm detection functionality in the "proper" touchpad drivers for that hardware. It might be worth looking up the specifi…

Same here - I had to end up using touchpad-indicator to fix this (disables the touchpad while typing). Its a shame it doesn't work out of the box and requires this hack.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#294

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #211
rbanffy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, the hardware manufacturers could write drivers for their stuff.

They might do, if Linux wasn't so hostile to the concept of proprietary drivers and had a stable driver ABI. Not that I necessarily disagree with their position on the matter, but you can't escape the consequences.

I'm not sure "Linux" (by this I believe you mean Linux kernel and distros & open-source software) is hostile to the concept of proprietary drivers. There is only a small subset of users who are hostile to proprietary drivers. And I have no idea why you are suggesting Linux doesn't have a stable ABI.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#295

Post by pcurve »

mschuster91 wrote: post #24
NiklasMort wrote: post #4

meanwhile in Thinkpad land... honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS. X/T model user since 7 generations. I did look at the XPS but there are so many disadvantages with those modern one-body-all-closed-no-mods laptops. Before you down vote me, I still applaud Dells decision to get Ubuntu Laptops out there. But I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled w…

> honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS Touchpad. No Windows laptop I know even comes close to both size and functionality of the touchpad of a Macbook - although I have to admit I won't get a recent Macbook, because the keyboard is crap, the touchpad is too big for my opinion and no USB-A = no Macbook for me.

I use thinkpad and macbook for work and imho thinkpad's red tracking nub trumps macbook touchpad. No need to do ballerina dance with your 3-4 fingers. 1 finger... 1 thumb... and track to infinity.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#296

Post by sigi45 »

psy-q wrote: post #267
sigi45 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of experience with linux on laptops and windows. Yes it is very nice to have 1, 2 or even 5 Laptops which work with linux. Windows still runs on more devices, better. I had never the issue, that i had to sit it out that a specific bug came into the release cycle of a windows update but i had this 4 times in 3 years with arch linux. And i also have a strange experience with linux: One ssd does work flawl…

> under linux it creates minilags Samsung 840 series? Well-known bug in their firmware. Update your firmware.

Nope; Early intel SSD from 2009 when they were released.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#297

Post by maccard »

reacweb wrote: post #11
maccard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve a dual boot set up on one of my machines with Ubuntu 17.04. I’m consistently having Ethernet issues related to having two network cards, and the multi monitor support is lacking. I can’t use my triple monitor setup, and if I forget to disconnect my third monitor I have to reboot with only one monitor attached to get it work. Meanwhile, on the same machine, windows handles it in its stride. There’s still some imp…

ethernet ? It is the most stable part of Linux since 25 years. Do you have a link to the bug report ?

I don’t, because I haven’t even investigated the issue myself. I get times where I can’t see the device, and have no connectivity. My solution: use windows.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#298

Post by maccard »

iam-TJ wrote: post #72
maccard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve a dual boot set up on one of my machines with Ubuntu 17.04. I’m consistently having Ethernet issues related to having two network cards, and the multi monitor support is lacking. I can’t use my triple monitor setup, and if I forget to disconnect my third monitor I have to reboot with only one monitor attached to get it work. Meanwhile, on the same machine, windows handles it in its stride. There’s still some imp…

I do a lot of support on IRC Freenode #linux and #ubuntu and we get a lot of this kind of report. We see a 90% success rate with a simple-to-apply workaround. This is so common I wrote an article and fix [0] for it containing 4 shell commands that we refer users to whenever we get these 'works OK in Windows but not in Linux' type of reports. By far the biggest cause of these hardware issues relating to power (suspend…

I might look into this but it’s not worth spending the time at right now. Unfortunately, and I mean no disrespect, but _its not my problem_. I have existing hardware that works well, it doesn’t matter if it’s the motherboard manufacturer, a kernel bug, a driver issue, it should work (which it does, on windows), and until it does, users won’t use it.

As an aside, that’s awful, and kudos to you for spending so much time looking into the issue and for a clear description of it along with a fix. It reminds me of the useragent nonsense - https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#299

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #100
oliwarner wrote: post #98

I wanted to throw my money at Dell last year. I wanted the top of the line XPS laptop with Linux. But I needed it quick. At that point, at least, Dell were building them to order in China. Two weeks plus shipping for the UK market. I'm not sure if this is the same for their other models but I bet there's a big pile of Windows machines sitting in an EU warehouse. To add insult to injury, I asked if they could improve…

No, same with Win10 machines. Bought an XPS13 maxed out from Dell. Website deceivably back then said 2 days shipping, but I didn't realize it meant 2 days to deliver it to the carrier and the 3 weeks to Germany from China. Website made it look like it was in Europe when I ordered. BIOS gives smoke detection loudness (!) level alarms at night when some hardware part fails and laptop reboots. Beside that, hardware is c…

Well Dell clearly doesn't have their shipping logistics down. I'm sure if you bought a Dell via Amazon Prime, it would arrive next day.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#300

Post by erikbye »

mcgrath_sh wrote: post #277
erikbye wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it break in an unrecoverable way, or was it just an inconvenience? Arch is a rolling release that many choose to update daily, or on a fixed schedule, like once a week. That updates sometimes can break a thing or two, out of hundreds of updates, is to be expected. If that sounds scary to you, Arch is certainly not for you. That said, it has rarely happened to me, and any breakage is usually minor and easily fixed…

I originally went Slackware when diving into Linux. Manual dependency resolution was just a step too far. Installing Calibre became a nightmare. I turned to Arch and have been very happy. I simply don’t have the time to properly maintain a Slackware box. I do really like it though.

I hear you regarding time... If I didn't regularly try out new software it could still be a viable choice, but now I enjoy the ease of Arch's ecosystem. I guess a lot of people who still use Slack does a full install and have few needs beyond those packages.
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