[ubuntu-uk] How old is your computer?

[TT Mooney]

On 08/12/14 13:53, Alan Pope wrote:
> On 6 December 2014 at 15:51, George Tripp <luggeorge at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> I feel it's a pity that Canonical don't collaborate with a supplier to provide PC / laptops which are definitely compatible with Ubuntu.
> 
> Canonical does. For example there are around 300 different lines of
> Dell machines which are certified to run Ubuntu. We have a lab in
> China where machines are tested and approved. It's up to the OEM which
> ones they sell in what region though. Some countries have very
> significant sales of Ubuntu machines, whereas others do not.

This is from last year, but still worth a reply.

I bought the Ubuntu-flavour XPS 13 9333 (Sputnik 3). It came with a
totally supported 12.04 release, which worked well. I wanted LUKS (from
the install) and when 14.04 LTS came out, I did a fresh install.

14.04 is not incredibly reliable, mostly due to regressions in the WiFi
driver. Dell support doesn't really care, and they don't even seem to
know they're supposed to provide support for Linux. And I bought the
all-singing, all-dancing support package, as well.

In the end I narrowed the problem down (with help of the Internet) to an
occasional problem in the interaction of powersaving mode and 5 GHz
connectivity. So I keep the laptop plugged in most of the time when I'm
on a 5 GHz AP. Not great, but kind of okay. However, if I wanted to
troubleshoot my own issues I could have got two laptops for the amount I
paid for the XPS 13.

Now, this isn't Canonical's fault, but Dell isn't really keeping up
their end of the deal. I hope that their support on the approximately
298 lines that we don't get in the UK is superior to that I get here.

So, just getting Ubuntu preinstalled is not enough. And this is why I
see Linux Devops people carrying Macs all the time now. It's a bit sad.

travis