2y ago

How Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops (and why it's called 'Project Sputnik')

www.zdnet.com

Today, the Dell XPS-13 with Ubuntu Linux is easily the most well-known Linux laptop. Many users, especially developers -- including Linus Torvalds -- love it. As Torvalds recently said, "Normally, I wouldn't name names, but I'm making an exception for the XPS 13 just because I liked it so much that I also ended up buying one for my daughter when she went off to college."

So, how did Dell -- best known for good-quality, mass-produced PCs -- end up building top-of-the-line Ubuntu Linux laptops? Well, Barton George, Dell Technologies' Developer Community manager, shared the "Project Sputnik" story this week in a presentation at the popular Linux and open-source community show, All Things Open.

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2y ago

Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops

www.zdnet.com /article/how-ubuntu-linux-snuck-into-high-end-dell-laptops-and-why-its-called-project-sputnik/

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2y ago

Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops

www.zdnet.com /article/how-ubuntu-linux-snuck-into-high-end-dell-laptops-and-why-its-called-project-sputnik/

107 comments

$1400 for a non upgradable SSD and RAM, not to mention there are no USB, HDMI or audio jacks. What a ripoff.
- For 1400 bucks you can get a really nice Framework Laptop. And when it breaks, you don't have to spend 1400 on a new one or 2000 on a overpriced repair that can only be performed by the manufacturer, you can actually repair everything yourself!
  
  Or you can get like 2 good thinkpads
  
  or a Starbook
  which has coreboot, repair guides, and a very generous warranty
  
  These are cool. I love the concept.
- Even apple's most io-limited macbook ever had a headphone jack. Dell is really trying to outperform them.
- Project Sputnik didn't start yesterday. It started in 2013 and Dell XPS was much different back then.
- Dell love pretending they're the Apple of the Windows/Linux world, except the issue is that for one, people specifically bought their stuff for the things you mentioned, and that the build quality was not exclusively just black plastic. The current XPS is everything that people hated about the "Macbook" from almost a decade ago. The one with the first butterfly switches
- Oh no, I see the mistake, just let me
  $14.00
  there we go
- The framework is cheaper when comparably equipped. It's not even any thicker or heavier despite everything being replaceable. Dell just wants to make you pay a huge repair fee when the SSD fails.
- Is it supposed to be submersible? WTF no jacks or ports?
  Non upgradable SSD & RAM?
  So Dell is trying to out-stupid Apple. Maybe they'll come out with their own maps.
- linux users when a laptop that ships Linux isn't absolutely perfect and cost $20 (they don't care that it helps get linux to average users)
  
  Soldered SSD and RAM is something we expect from a cheap chromebook. It's just not acceptable in a high end laptop.
  There are plenty of other good laptops that come with Linux installed.
  
  We are pretty happy with framework, tuxedo and system76 even if their products often cost loads of money and for sure aren't perfect.
  
  I came here to disagree with you, but in thinking a little about it, I'm not sure I do.
  I find the lack of ports and upgradability extremely problematic. And while I understand they're supposed to be light, slim, quality laptops, the price point feels high even so.
  But, these are personal gripes with the device. And nothing to do with Linux. But these are basically the same things Apple aims for and people seem to love that.
  So, I might argue the price doesn't make it reasonable for the average user. But otherwise the more devices with Linux pre-installed, the better.
Dell has sold an XPS-13 with Ubuntu out of the box for at least a decade now.
- Yeah I bought an ubuntu laptop in 2018..don't know what's the news here...
  
  What's news is the presentation
I don't like the wordings and insinuations in the article. Ubuntu Linux 'snuck' into Dell laptops? Dell - best known for good-quality mass-produced PCs - end up building Linux laptops? What are they saying? Linux is low quality and it being in Dell laptops is bad?
Dell and Canonical have a partnership. And Linux isn't a choice that's forced on consumers. That's hardly what one can say about Windows. An ad-ridden spyware that's disguised as an OS and forced down everyone's throat even when we don't want it. (Not dell, but there are cases where I had to buy a laptop and clean out Windows).
I don't understand the author's exact intentions (I read the entire article). Seems like they are trying to say something positive. But the choice of words is bad.
- Dell - best known for good-quality mass-produced PCs -
  I'd disagree with the "good-quality" part, but they certainly are mass-produced
  
  I think it's very much a "you get what you pay for" thing. Cheap Dells are cheap. The XPS line is not cheap. I've had two XPS 13s now, and the build quality is top notch. And easy to open up and work on.
Earlier this year I was given one of those XPS machines with Ubuntu and decided to install Debian on it. The camera driver was so bad - I can't remember technical details but you can't simply get it to run on another kernel, it was a mess of hacks to get it to work. I decided I won't get a camera driver. "We ship a laptop with Ubuntu" does not necessarily mean working Linux drivers.
EDIT: To add insult to injury, the touch bar suddenly decided to stop responding to input. It's already bad enough to not have tactile feedback for Esc / Fn keys / Delete / Print Screen.
- Very true also for the opposite direction; I am daily driving an HP Elite Dragonfly for work and my Elite x360 1030 G2 for private and both work almost flawlessly despite no official Linux support. I have to disclaim that I never tested the Fingerprint reader or IR face recognition crap. But microphone, orientation sensors, webcam, keyboard, trackpad all work extremely well (Arch linux).
  It always comes down to the individual hardware it seems.
  
  I love those x360s. I have a G5 and it's surprisingly capable of handling somewhat intense tasks.
- I bought a used 2018 model over a new current model because of the lack of physical function keys.
  Also, Dell, bring back Fn + Left for Home and Fn + Right for End!
  Who looked at a great keyboard layout and decided, "I know! I'll make this Developer Edition hardware more difficult to develop on!"
- Same with the finger print sensor. But a bodge is better than no support.
- Crazy! So it was only the ubuntu kernel, with some akmods or PPA?
  
  You needed: kernel driver, closed source userspace driver, GStreamer plugin, v4l2 loopback driver, v4l2 relay daemon copying frames from the GStreamer source into v4l2 loopback. Technically I could have made it work, I just decided not to.
  https://launchpad.net/~oem-solutions-group/+archive/ubuntu/intel-ipu6 https://github.com/intel/ipu6-camera-bins
Ubuntu needs to stop being a standard. There are better alternatives at this point
- Popularity makes all forms of support infinitely easier. I'd struggle to come up with any technical reason that could be worth giving up the ability to easily google for issues or install software. That doesn't mean I think you shouldn't use other distros, just that I believe Ubuntu is the best choice for a default install targeting average people.
  
  Yes, that's me. I have no interest in a nerdy deep-dive into esoteric distros that may be "better" according to whatever metric you suggest. To me, it's just a machine that needs to work.
  With Windows, getting help when things break is easy. For a non-nerd USER, it has to be the same for Linux. Ubuntu was intended from the start to be made for people like me, and with AskUbuntu there's a large support site.
  I know you can tweak your distro better, and it's faster, and so on. But it requires knowledge that I don't care to learn - just as I am not an auto mechanic, I just drive the machine.
- If you want it to stop being a standard, help your distro do a better job at marketing. Ubuntu is one of the few that do some actual market research and dedicate resources to getting the OS into the hands of people by getting them interested in it. It's one of the things we are looking forwards to doing better in Fedora.
  
  Ubuntu got to be most popular because they focused on making it easy to setup and use by non-technical people. Even now they, for example, patch gnome to make it usable.
- As much as people don't like Ubuntu, for users who aren't enthusiasts they don't want a million different options to choose from
  If we keep changing the standard it'll drive people away and leave behind support
  
  Or you could just recommend Linux mint. It is so much more usable
- There may be, but realistically it's probably the most well known.
  I'm just happy to have Linux as a standard at all. If it works on Ubuntu, there's a high chance it works on other distros and can be easily replaced
- Ubuntu sucks for many reasons, but new user experience is on the better side. I don't want to use Ubuntu over Debian myself but I feel like it's the mandatory corporate evil that can make Linux more appealing to more than just techies while also making Linux desktop more appealing to corpos in Microsoft's ecosystem. Intune already has some rudimentary support for managed Linux Desktop, with Ubuntu currently supported.
  
  I don't know the last time you used Ubuntu but its user experience is not on the "better side". They are pushing snap so hard that they are blind
- This one is tough for me. I'm opposed to any distro being considered the "standard". It feels so antithetical to what makes Linux great.
  But it's also probably what we need for better user adoption. I don't know which I'd pick if I had to, but I know it wouldn't be Ubuntu.
  
  What we need it distro independent tooling. We already have flatpak and XDG portals to that's a start
- It's fine, I bought an XPS 13 years ago with Ubuntu and immediately put OpenSuSE on it. At least I'm not paying Microsoft. I still have that laptop, and it's great. I think Lenovo deserves an honourable mention here, too - we buy T and X series laptops at work with Ubuntu and they work great too.
- such as?
  
  Linux mint, Fedora, openSUSE and tons of other options
- Agreed, still when you sell a laptop and want to put in an OS that's going to be supported for the whole lifetime of the device then there are not options for people who don't tinker.
- It also runs terribly. What we need is a more diverse ecosystem that is more than just ubuntu
Lol, no mention of the fact that Ubuntu was already shipped on almost the entire Dell range, but only in China and developing world markets. This was because they had sold millions of laptops without OS in those markets, which immediately were flashed with pirated Windows, and Microsoft were pissed off. They pressured the Chinese govt to require computers must ship with an OS, so Cannonical/Ubuntu stepped in, did it for cheap (~$1/machine) and... they were still of course flashed with pirated windows immediately.
They didn't ship to the US or Europe etc., because in those markets Dell got more kickback-money than they spent, from Windows and the various crapware they shipped pre-installed. So shipping Ubuntu in the US actually cost Dell money.
- Do you have a source for this that I can read more about?
  
  Just me. It was my job for a while at Canonical, until the work was moved to China.
- They sell a bunch of models with Ubuntu pre installed in Brazil also. Not every model / configurations, but even gaming laptops are available here.
- so Cannonical/Ubuntu stepped in, did it for cheap (~$1/machine)
  What did they charge for?
  
  Hardware enablement. A factory install where all the hardware worked, meanwhile all the fixes are upstreamed. So backported fixes to the current LTS.
- Xps developer edition has been a thing since almost a decade. I bought a xps13 with ubuntu in Europe. I replaced it as soon as it arrived though. The built in OS was not "standard".
  I still use it almost daily. Battery has gone, but everything else works
Not a fan of the XPS line (expensive, not great thermals, and meh port selection) and I have never own one (though I've seen others with them). That said, I have a few of their Latitudes (currently using Latitude 7420) and one Precision and those run Linux really well.
One thing most people don't realize is that Dell does support Linux (ie. Ubuntu) beyond the XPS line and you can buy Latitudes or Precisions with Linux support OOTB. Additionally, Dell ships firmware updates via LVFS on their XPS, Latitude, and Precision lines. The support isn't perfect, but I have been happy with using Dell hardware and Linux for over a decade now.
PS. You can get really good deals via the Dell Outlet (my current laptop is refurbished from there), and you can usually find a number of off-lease or 2nd systems or parts on Ebay (very similar to Thinkpads).
- The selling point of xps is that they are light. Many of us just need light laptops nowadays, as almost any hardware is more than capable of any task with the exception of gaming. But I have never gamed on laptops
  
  Some of the Latitudes are pretty lightweight too. My Latitude 7420 is 2.7 lbs while the most recent XP 13 is 2.59 lbs. I should note that the Latitude 7420 is a 14in display rather than 13in and it has an HDMI port, 2 USB-C/TB ports, 1 USB-A port, and a microsd card reader (oh yeah, and a headphone jack). So for a small amount of more weight, you get more I/O and a larger screen.
Snuck. What a load of click bait shit.
How the hell is Dell openly choosing to sell stuff to linux user. In any way shape or form snuck.
- I think it’s more like “snuck up on us” than any kind of nefarious connotation. Kind of like “how did a niche game like BG3 sneak into the top ten games list”?
I used to buy computers for a research lab as part of my job, we had a contract with dell.
Overall dell's entire market is made of companies like the one I used to work at, that signed a nice contract with 5 year on-site warranty, bulk order rebates and the like.
These (or the ones they sold 3 years ago, at least) aren't that bad. They're not exactly good, but you have a Linux laptop with some manufacturer support (as much as you're getting with windows at least) and they're capable machines, with good drivers and they come from the factory with Ubuntu if that's what you tick in their custom order form they give you when you sign that contract. As the guy in charge of fixing the computer, its nice knowing that its not the Linux support for the laptop that's trash.
- For research labs, dell workstations used to be great. Put debian on it and you could forget about problems. I don't know if it is the case anymore.
The XPS line was popular at work. Desk candy to compete with Mac books. However the engineering did not complete at all. The battery was the biggest fail point, we had a high percentage of battery issues under warranty, and they would take months to get replaced by the vendor.
We stopped buying them, if someone wants desk candy these days it's mostly Mac book pro as expensive as your budget can handle.
- Same, we got several small batches of XPS13 over a period of several years and just about all had problems. We had issues with batteries, drivers, random hardware failures, or total failure. We switched ThinkPad X1 Yoga and Surface Laptops 13 and have far fewer issues now.
- Precision are much better than XPS
I have an (old) developer xps13. Got it with Linux on it. Great device.
- Main issue of mine was the wifi card. Awful. Everything else very nice.
  
  Mine was Intel so it works well.
  
  I had this issue when I bought my laptop with Ubuntu and tried to install Debian. Since I needed the laptop right away I kept Ubuntu that came installed that was running flawless till 4 months ago when I switched to Fedora
Buy framework.
- I would, but they don't ship to my country :sadface:
The pricing is preposterous…no option to forego the windows license, and only a 12th gen i7 and 16gb ram for $1400…on plastic with a shitty keyboard and no IO? Why not just buy a macbook air at that point and jail break it?
Lenovo is absolutely stomping Dell right.
- Superfish stomped Lenovo.
I had a linux 5520 and it was terrible. Standby and bluetooth never worked properly. Are the new models any better?
- My family bought a dell vostro 3468 in a time of emergency
  Came with ubuntu(16.04 I think, maybe 18)
  It was dead slow after a few updates, thanks to snap
  We loaded windows on it and it was my second main computing machine ever
  I recently installed openSUSE tumbleweed on it with kde and it's awesome! (Except for a dead battery)
If only it had USB-A ports
I'm happy with my somewhat overpriced XPS15, but I had to get it with Widows. I wiped that nvme & installed Kubuntu right away.

107 comments