Also, IMHO, weather dell is doing exactly what you want or not, they are continuing to support freedom of choice, freedom of software, and the hacker community in general. I commend them for the effort, and would love to see other vendors follow suit.
I hear people swoon over a particular Lenovo/Thinkpad model, but have no idea which one it is.
- Durable. I carried it with me on trips and it still works. Its build quality is much better than other laptops.
- Good keyboard. Very important for me as it is my main machine for coding. I like the keyboard better than many full sized ones.
- 4:3 aspect ratio, 1400x1050 non-glare screen (can fit more vertical code).
- Trackpoint device (the "nipple" as some call it). I never liked trackpads (but it has that too, I just disabled it).
Recently my kid tore out some keys off of the keyboard, I started to ran out of disk space on its old 60GB hard drive, and my fan got kind of loud. I considered buying another machine. Looked around. But the more I looked, the more I realized that I just wanted this machine. So I got a 500GB hybrid Seagate Momentus drive, a new fan and a new keyboard. Spent an evening upgrading it and now I am hoping to get more years out of it.
Opening it, it just confirmed the build quality. The components inside, the materials used just seems better than in equivalent HP and Dell laptops I had to take apart.
The W5*0 series is also a solid choice.
IIR I had some acpi driver issue--in fact, had to manually white list my model in it--and power management is mediocre, even with powertop. But it gets the job done decently enough.
[0] YMMV: http://askubuntu.com/questions/98972/does-jupiter-really-imp...
It would be nice if Lenovo or Dell would check how well their laptops (or even some model) worked with linux and tried to get this kind of stuff as default on major distros.
[1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/125367/enabling-mic-mute-butt... [2] http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/11954
What worked before no longer works. The card is permanently hardblocked. Supposedly the fix is to install Windows, flip the switch a few times, and then install Linux. I don't want it that badly. I will just figure out ndiswrapper.....
When people say that Lenovo laptops work well with linux they mostly mean Thinkpad series and even then there are some exceptions. Best out-of-box experience will be with one that has intel cpu+intel wireless+intel gpu and was released a year ago. It's about as safe bet for a high quality fully working linux laptop as you can get.
This can be fixed with vga switcheroo, but it's really not an optimal solution. Net, avoid hybrid graphics laptops, usually they don't work well with Linux.
I'd say, if you have the money to spend buy an OEM laptop.
Everything on the V131 works flawlessly.
I run Bumblebee + BBSwitch for NVidia Optimus and it is blazing fast. Sleep works fine and I feel the battery life is much better than running Win7.
I don't remember having any problems.
For some reason Canonical decided to sacrifice stability and focus on something most users don't think they need (Unity).
Second, while I share somewhat common opinions on Unity, this particular example is a kernel bug. Most likely, ubuntu will backport those changes to 12.04 or has already provided a ppa for a newer kernel.
Yes, this is a kernel issue, already fixed in 3.3.x. But Canonical has no intention of backporting it to 12.04 (3.2 kernel). And we are talking here about "just working", not installing an unsupported kernel manually from a dev repository.
They probably don't mean the laptop "can't dual-boot Windows," but that it requires extra steps in deleting Linux, installing Windows, then installing Linux.
I don't know how long it's been since you've bought a Dell Win PC, but they aren't 'loaded' with crapware, not like it used to be. I just got an XPS 8300 from the Outlet, and all I had to do was remove McAffee and the Dell Support Suite. I went into Add/Remove Programs, uninstalled each, and shortly thereafter, it might as well have been a fresh install of Windows.
Well, the first thing I want is for it to just work. Sleep/Wake should just work. The trackpad should just work. Etc. Oh, and it should all work well.
After that I would love to be able to install some other version of linux and have it just work, but having a Dell version that just works is a big improvement over things not just working.
And that's just the way I like it, because in the end (for me), its the only OS I can configure to such a degree that it lets me "just work".
You are right, this is my perspective, but for Dell it's also a matter of numbers. Which direction, if they can't do both now, will sell more laptops, cause fewer returns, etc.
https://www.system76.com/laptops/
Or Ohava:
Ohava is new to me though - thanks!
What they could do and which would be bad is use some sort of component which requires a non-free driver that's not supported well/anymore (so you're stuck with Ubuntu 12.x) or non-redistributable (ie. only available as part of Dell's iso). Let's say they ship a 100% proprietary and non-redistributable driver for NVIDIA's Optimus. But that seems very unlikely (if somewhat hilarous). And other than that I can't imagine any reason why you'd have any issue installing any other Linux distribution.
One thing that always bothered me is that its has always been hard to get a decent laptop without Windows. I hate paying for Windows which I had no use of, and got that removed as soon as I bought laptops. Even if I may not use Dell's install of Ubuntu and replace it with my own choice of distribution, I wouldn't mind them shipping Ubuntu, as overall I'm hopeful this would push hardware vendors to get more serious about Linux drivers overall.
I've had 3 Dell laptops running Linux and I've never had a problem. Recently I've been using Mint, but before that I used Debian and before that Slackware. The biggest problem I ever had is that some of the wireless drivers had to be installed via module-assistant, which is annoying. Also, I couldn't get accelerated OpenGL on one of them, but that was due to an ancient video card that was unsupported even on Windows at that point.
I will admit they were second hand laptops, so maybe the bugs were worked out in the time between their being released and my buying them.
I simply installed stock Ubuntu immediately after receiving it due to the same fear of crapware. But still, having it come with Ubuntu preinstalled means I knew all the hardware would work, as it has so far. Also it means I voted with my dollars for wider adoption of Linux by vendors.
If the OS and hardware are not from the same vendor, this is always bound to happen.
They look nice, maybe you should get one.
Just make sure your ultrabook is Ubuntu-certified or something and let people install the official version.
What I'd like (and I suspect many other developers would too) is a nice laptop that I can install Linux on, and have it Just Work.
What it looks like Dell is providing is a nice laptop, but with a custom build of Ubuntu installed. If Dell's Windows installs are any indication, that means it's going to be loaded with crapware or custom non-OSS drivers. This is just speculation, but the fact that you can't dual-boot Windows on it is a big hint. Who knows what crapware they're going to load up on it, and then you'll be tied to their special brand of Ubuntu if you want upgrades or support.
What Dell should do instead is work with hardware manufacturers to iron out Linux driver bugs for just one nice laptop. Then sell that laptop with a stock Ubuntu build and let developers go to town. I'd pay a lot of money for something like that. Instead, today I have to buy a cheap Dell laptop, install Ubuntu, and deal with the driver headaches that exist to this day. (And don't tell me Linux is a magical fairy land because it Works For You, because it doesn't Just Work for me. It hasn't for years and it still doesn't today.)