I got a dell XPS 13 this week for work and its absolutely insane. Best laptop I have ever had and I have had macbooks. I'm running Fedora 29 on it and it works perfect. The battery life is amazing, I'm seeing about 10+ hours while running Gnome and a bunch of dev tools. Made sure to pick one without a nvidia GPU. The only thing I can fault it for is you can't open the hinge with one hand.
I have an XPS 13 with Linux too. One thing I notice that's not mentioned very much about battery life is how hybrid sleep works.
On macOS closing the lid is suspends to sleep i.e. it keeps RAM powered only. On Fedora 29 (and every other Linux I've tried) it's the same.
The difference is that after some set amount of time macOS is smart enough to stop powering the RAM and suspend to SSD. That's not the case under Linux and instead the laptop just goes completely flat.
Anyone with any suggestions on that I'd love to hear it.
(I should add that I see the XPS 13 as a competitor to the old MacBook Air 11 but with a quad-core CPU and a bigger screen).
Yes! Thank you. It's not working out of the box for me on Fedora but I've decided to play with an Arch install anyway so hopefully should be able to get this working.
Personally I like the 2017 model (9360) better than the 2018 model (9370).
The 2018 model notebook is thinner but it suffers from problems as a result of this: No USB A port. The SD card slot was replaced by a Micro SD card slot. CPU heat management is also an issue. Finally, it has a smaller battery (52Wh instead of 60Wh, 13% less!).
The display went from 3200x1800 to 4K which doesn't really make sense for a 13inch display anyway.
I got the 9360. It seems they updated it to have a 2018 version. I guess for the people who don't want to go all usb C. The specs seemed to be way better for the price as well.
I made the MacBook Pro (mid-2011) to XPS (15" i7 9570 4K) switch a few months ago, after putting off an upgrade about as long as possible. I'm still not liking the XPS with Kubuntu 18.04 - to the extent that I'm seriously considering switching back to Apple. At this point, I've got all the major issues sorted (like, not going to sleep when closed, docking station weirdness, etc), but there are constant smaller issues with the sort of things that "just work" with Apple hardware and MacOS.
Hardware wise - it's most of the way to being a great laptop, but has a few aspects that seem "designed by committee". The 4K screen looks really nice, keyboard is pretty good, it's quite fast, battery life is good. But, the trackpad is massively irritating - it's constantly picking up the heel of my hands while typing and causing the cursor to jump and click. The webcam is terribly located, the TB16 dock is a piece of junk, speakers only sound OK if you're working on a hard surface. They still use a barrel connector for power - would've preferred to get power over USB-C (which the dock uses to provide power), and have a second USB-C port on the laptop.
There are several issues with Linux support - if you're successful making an XPS Hackintosh, then those won't be a problem, but I'd encourage getting the lower resolution screen if you're considering the Linux route.
Linux won't be a good choice for desktop os on a laptop for a long time. It is not a priority for any vendor to fix issues and the community won't support 10.000 different hardware effectively. Hackintosh is an interesting option. I am wondering if you can run it on XPS properly.
For most of the last 15 or so years, I've been running Linux on the desktop on a work or personal computer, actually, and wouldn't say it has always been a bad choice.
Some hardware + distro combinations have certainly made that easier than others, but the general trend has been towards a good experience. Certainly there's been less headache with the average Linux desktop, than some Windows (plus whatever Antivirus that the IT higher-ups have mandated) machines I've had...
This particular laptop though, has highlighted the poor Linux support for "DPI Scaling" (a 15" 4K screen was the only option at the time), and touch screens. Combined with some questionable hardware design decisions (webcam, speakers), and some generally crap design (the TB16 dock) though, this whole package just isn't a purchase that I'm really happy about - and that's only partially about Linux. The touchpad might well be the sort of issue you describe, where a better driver could better adjust the sensitivity, but even there I'd look first at the vendor before blaming "the community".
It's a shame really, because as these MacBook Pro threads attest, there are a lot of folks looking for something that's totally feasible, but no manufacturer seems to be aiming at...
Because the I/O performance sucks, there's an AV process that goes haywire whenever anything is compiled, the terminals suck, I've not found a non-bad way of SSH'ing into WSL remotely, it's about as clunky as using Wine on Linux some years ago, there's spyware and ads on the enterprise install of Windows 10, software I can't remove by using the tools to remove all other software (installers for Office and the like), but above all, when I'm running the NT kernel, it's mostly to run software that only runs on the NT kernel. I've not run NT on bare metal in a while, but looking at the struggles of people around me, I don't intend to in the near or long term.
It is its own silo on Windows. Yes, it is native from an implementation standpoint, but does not play well (yet) with the rest of the Windows environment.
Install Visual Studio Code, the usual Windows version.
Explain to VS Code that it is really a good idea to use the Linux subsystem as its command-line environment. Not only interactive sessions like Bash on its integrated terminal, but also for git, compilers, Node, etc.
Once you have got that set up and your development workflow going ok, try setting up the same on Linux or macOS.
Which one would you prefer?
The Windows Subsystem for Linux is brilliant. PowerShell is brilliant. The dotNET universe can be brilliant.
I've switched from Linux (Thinkpad X240) to macOS (Macbook Pro 2015, and now 2018) because of those small issues [1].
However, nowadays I feel like your experience with Linux laptop really depends on what kind of work you are doing, and how often do you have to interact with 3rd party tools.
I've been primarily desktop Linux user for something like 13 years before switching to Mac, and those small issues had only become a problem once I've started encountering them on a daily basis.
[1] For me issues were mostly interaction with random conference software and screen sharing (e.g. webex), or random hangs when connecting external displays (e.g. doing a presentation before CTO).
I had a Dell XPS 9530 and the support was an absolute disaster. The techs had no idea (all local contractors I’d imagine), they fried the power, WiFi and incorrectly applied the thermal paste so it never worked properly
After just one year I tried to get more support and they said I’d have to send it in for three weeks which was impossible, I was using it every day. Onsite support was only for the first year, whereas apple stores you can just walk into
Finally the warranty ended and I decided to fix the damn thing myself. Was extremely careful and it was perfect for about a week, then the power somehow failed and it now refuses to turn on. Windows is also horrible for coding due to heavy file system use, fat threads and windows defender, let alone the constant privacy invasion. Was planning to install Ubuntu but figured if I ever did send it in it would just confuse them all the more
I finally got an MBP 2015, should have done it from the beginning.
I had only one issue with my XPS 13 9350 so far - at one point the battery died and I had to send it in. It got replaced quickly and since then it's been fine.
Apple on the other hand will disable your computer if they detect that an unauthorized 3rd party has serviced it (if you bought a recent one with a T2 chip).
Weird, I have the 9550 and had the opposite support experience. It did have a couple of issues, but each time Dell had a guy out at my house the following day with replacement parts, no charge, no questions asked.
I purchased the extended support once the warranty expires, so have another 2 or so years left on that.
