It just works: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review

Dell's substantial investment in making a functional Linux Ultrabook pays off.

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[PhilipStorry]

Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance.

By that standard, Windows isn't ready for the desktop either. Neither is Mac OS X, or Apple wouldn't be lauded for their Genius Bar.

Linux ain't perfect. But I've used it as my main desktop - on a PC and netbook - for several years now. It's never given me any worse trouble than Windows did, and overall it's given me less trouble.

And my mother's netbook got Windows XP removed and Ubuntu installed - no hassles ever since. At all.

I think, by your own standard, Linux is ready for the desktop. Or at least as ready as anything else is...

 

[PhilipStorry]

koolraap[/url]":1xtbwi5z]Can it dual boot to Windows? Games.

For some games.

Steam coming to Linux changed this for me. I used to dual-boot, referring to Windows as "the 100 buck bit of software that turns my 1000 buck PC into a 300 buck console..."

That Windows partition is probably about three months out of date on patches now. I've not felt the need to boot into Windows at all - I have 33 games installed in my Steam library, and that keeps me busy enough. Sure, I'll probably miss some AAA titles - but I never played most of those anyway. My current gaming time is taken up by Hat Fortress 2, FTL and a little Solar 2.

If you want AAA titles, I'd agree we're not there yet. If you just want to play games, then come on in - the water's fine!

 

[PhilipStorry]

steelgrass[/url]":10xoli0r]Lee Hutchinson seems surprised that Linux just worked. I am not sure why. Linux will work on most pieces of hardware over a certain age - that age being the amount of time it takes to reverse engineer all the device drivers for the new hardware and get the resulting drivers into the distro you are using.

So yes, this was different in one way - Linux just worked on a brand new piece of hardware. But even that should not be so surprising. The reason it worked is the same reason why Windows just works on new hardware. Someone (Dell in this case), took the time to write the device drivers for it before the hardware was released, and included them in the box. So no, you didn't have to go to some PPA repository to find the driver - it was right in the box. Just like it would be for Windows.

That pretty much hits the nail on the head for hardware support. It's not necessarily the OS, it's the manufacturer/vendor.

My desktop is one of the second gen Sandy Bridge boxes - I had to wait an extra month for a fixed version of the chipset! On arrival, I decided I didn't like the pre-installed Windows image, so wiped the disk and installed Windows and Ubuntu side by side.

Windows version would have been 7, Ubuntu version would have been 10.04.

Let's get it out of the way - how bad was Ubuntu's hardware support?
Actually, pretty good. Ubuntu found the sound card, bluetooth, gave me a decent screen resolution. It didn't actually find the network card or recognise the nVidia graphics card, so I had to install those manually. Not a huge problem.
After installing the nVidia drivers, I then had to run the configuration under sudo (using gksudo) to get dual screens working. And then I was done.

So how was Windows 7's hardware support?
Pathetic. Nothing was spotted. And I mean nothing. No network, no sound, low res graphics, I felt lucky it had given me a keyboard and mouse...
The manufacturer support for Windows was better - several CDs. So I started running through them, making sure I used the correct order - failure to install chipset drivers from Intel would probably leave me in trouble later! And every driver seemed to want a reboot...
At the end of about eight reboots, I finally had a working system. Except that to this day, I've never been able to get dual-screen working. The screens go haywire, and won't work. I've given up on fixing that, as I only booted into Windows to play games anyway, and that hardly requires dual screens.


So it's a mixed bag as an anecdote. Neither is perfect. But Ubuntu was definitely faster to get up and running, and required less mucking about. And works slightly better.

That day, I realised that Windows doesn't have better hardware support.

Manufacturers have better Windows support.

It's a big difference, and one you can only really learn by doing a blank install on a new bit of kit...