Dell’s Skylake XPS 13, Precision workstations now come with Ubuntu preinstalled

Some of the best laptops we’ve tested—now with Linux.

Ars Staff – Mar 11, 2016 5:33 pm | 68

A Dell laptop running Ubuntu. Credit: Dell

We really liked the updated Skylake-powered Dell XPS 13, and its bigger brother, the XPS 15, was also pretty great.

But if you’re looking at those machines and thinking, “Well, the hardware is nice; I just wish they came with Linux,” Dell has some good news. The company’s “Developer Edition” program has just been updated to include the newest Skylake systems.

The Developer Edition XPS 13s are slightly different from the Windows versions, as they use Intel Wi-Fi adaptors (instead of Dell-branded parts). Otherwise, little has changed save for them coming with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS instead of Windows 10. The range of configurations available is also narrower. Currently, only the i7 processor is available with the beautiful 3200×1800 touch display. This can be had with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD, or 16GB RAM and 512GB, or 1TB of SSD. Dell says that later on, an i5 model with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and the 1920×1080 non-touch display will be available.

A range of Precision-branded workstations are also available. For those who liked the look of the XPS 15, the Precision 5510 is a near identical clone, just with slightly different CPU and GPU options and Intel Wi-Fi. In the Precision guise, the system can include Xeon-branded processors and Quadro-branded GPUs. The Precision 3510, 7510, and 7710 ranges will also be available, giving buyers a wide range of sizes, weights, and specifications.

Unlike the XPS 13, which only offers limited configurations, the Precision systems are fully configurable: any combination of processor, storage, memory, CPU, and display is possible. The operating system is simply a configurable option. They come with Windows by default, but you can pick Ubuntu instead and shave about $100 off the price.

Dell plans to support Ubuntu 16.04 LTS when it ships next month.

Dell’s Developer Edition program, called Project Sputnik, is now four years old. Rather than emulating the many failed attempts at building mainstream Linux PCs, Dell’s efforts have been focused more on a particular kind of customer—developers and administrators. What started out as essentially a hobby has transformed into what we see today: four different models with full Linux support and a fifth model with somewhat more limited support.