[ubuntu-uk] How old is your computer?

[David Chatterton]

For what it is worth, I recently bought a Dell XPS13-9333 that came with 
Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed. Almost as soon as I switched it on, I 
received a message advising of an upgrade to 14.04 being available which 
I accepted. The upgrade retained the Dell-supplied drivers for the WiFi 
and Bluetooth chip however.

Since I bought the laptop specifically as a platform on which to learn 
more about Linux and Ubuntu, I experimented with creating a bootable USB 
thumbdrive containing the Ubuntu 14.04 ISO installation downloaded from 
the Ubuntu website. The laptop booted up well enough (using Ubuntu's own 
drivers) to give me the confidence to do a fresh install from the 
thumbdrive. I have since upgraded the OS to Ubuntu 14.10 and most things 
seem to work reliably with the exception of the built-in sound system 
that seems to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it does not detect the 
built-in speakers and at other times it links them to HDMI. I find that 
plugging in a pair of headphones and re-selecting the speakers will 
correct the linkage although the sound remains directed to the 
headphones as one would expect with a normal headphone socket. I have 
filed a number of bug reports on this and similar subjects but Canonical 
people seem to have more important things to do.

I have not attempted to contact Dell and, after reading your message, 
have no intention to do so. Dell, unfortunately, seem to be tied to Windows.

I have to admit that a MacBook Pro is my main and dependable workhorse 
as they are for my architect daughter and my design engineer son. I see 
no reason to change that at present although I am hopeful that Linux / 
Ubuntu will become the preferred platform for software that is otherwise 
over priced.

Regards,

David

On 05/01/15 15:25, TT Mooney wrote:
> 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
>