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Dell releases powerful, well-supported Linux Ultrabook

(arstechnica.com)
520 points iProject | 2 comments | 29 Nov 12 14:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.461s | source
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dkhenry ◴[29 Nov 12 14:53 UTC] No.4847958[source]▶
Every time I read this I have to think to my self how silly it is to lead an article with Some things (particularly components like trackpads and Wi-Fi chips) take some fiddling to get working

Thats total balony, trackpads and WiFi have been well supported in Linux for almost a decade. It is _rare_ to find a labtop that when you install la fresh modern distro on it , things don't work. Yes every now and then you get a vendor who insist on doing something different, but most of the time its a synaptic track pad ( well supported ) and a Broadcom or Intel WiFi card ( well supported ). I can remember back in 2004 taking my Government Issued Dell laptop and installing Fedora on it and everything working out of the box.

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w1ntermute ◴[29 Nov 12 15:59 UTC] No.4848375[source]▶
I just got a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon[0] ultrabook 2 days ago and installed Xubuntu 12.10. It really is stunning how the hardware just works. I didn't have to fiddle with any of it - I had out of the box support for the video card, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. Even multitouch trackpad gestures work (although I personally prefer the trackpoint). The laptop itself is nothing short of amazing[1], especially once you wipe Windows from it. In fact, Lenovo TrackPoints have never worked the way I like in Windows (where you can use the middle mouse button for both middle-clicking and scrolling), but they do in Linux.

I thought I would dislike the new chiclet keyboard, which deviates from IBM/Lenovo's two-decade old keyboard design, but unbelievably, I actually like it. Having used chiclet keyboards on MacBooks, I never liked them, but Lenovo seems to have done it right.

Edit: there's one other issue, but this seems to be a (depressing) trend in the industry: decline in user serviceability of laptops. You can't replace the SSD (it's soldered onto the mobo), and replacing the RAM is not recommended. The price is quite high, especially if you upgrade the SSD (not recommended; just get a 2.5" USB 3.0-powered external HDD - I got a 1 TB one for $70 just a few days ago) or RAM (recommended; 8 GB is always good to have these days, and there's only one slot, so if you replace it later, you'll still have to buy 8 GB), so watch for sales/coupon codes (there was a good one for Black Friday) or use your college .edu address to get a student discount.

Edit 2: Lenovo also changed the power connector to a rectangular shaped one, because the X1 Carbon's profile is too thin to use the old, circular one. This means all your old ThinkPad power cables are now useless.

0: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x...

1: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/13/3232132/lenovo-thinkpad-x1...

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1. chimeracoder ◴[29 Nov 12 16:05 UTC] No.4848419[source]▶
I'm curious what your experience with the Thinkpad X1 Carbon has been - I was one of the beta testers for the XPS 13 (as noted in my other comment in this thread). I absolutely love the XPS 13, but the X1 Carbon was the other laptop I would have considered getting.
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2. w1ntermute ◴[29 Nov 12 16:38 UTC] No.4848589[source]▶
It's been great. It's very light, has good battery life (5+ hours), and is responsive (only tried XFCE) so far. One of the great things about this machine is that it's the same size as 13" ultrabooks, but it has a 14" screen. Some people have said that the 1600x900 screen is a letdown compared to some Asus ultrabooks that sport 1080p displays, but that is most definitely not the case for me. There's more than enough screen real estate for me on the X1 Carbon.

Perhaps it's because I'm running a lightweight Linux distro, but I have absolutely none of the heat problems mentioned in the Verge review. The laptop runs very cool - much more so than my ThinkPad T410.

The trackpad is responsive, although I have little use for it. The keyboard design is fantastic, but the layout is a little annoying. They got rid of the 'back' and forward' keys next to the 'up' key, and I used those all the time in the browser. They also eliminated Scroll Lock, which I had repurposed as a keyboard shortcut. Finally, they moved the multimedia keys from Fn+up/down/left/right to Fn+F10/F11/F12, which is really annoying.

But those are specific to previous ThinkPad owners. The only other real complaint I have is that it's useless for 3D gaming. I installed the Steam Linux beta, and even a game as simple as Cogs[0] stutters. However, I'm not a big gamer, so it's no big loss. In fact, it will probably help my productivity.

0: http://www.cogsgame.com/