Dell Rolls Out New Precision Developer Laptops With Ubuntu Linux

[starshipeleven]

The screen resolution of the basic model is 1366x768.
To get "Full HD" you have to add 100$ so the listed price of the 'basic' model is kind of misleading to say the least.

Obligatory "fuck you Dell" statement for offering 1366x768 at all on such type of product.

[Hi-Angel]

Linux support to Dell Vostro is a mess. Vostro is designed for Windows.

What does "designed for Windows" mean? Is it, like, they haven't replaced the icon over logo-keys to Tux, or what?

[DanL]

Obligatory "fuck you Dell" statement for offering 1366x768 at all on such type of product.

Believe it or not, some people like the smaller resolution to help them see better without screen magnifier hacks. Anyway, it's a cheaper option, so why the rage?

[darkbasic]

Believe it or not, some people like the smaller resolution to help them see better without screen magnifier hacks. Anyway, it's a cheaper option, so why the rage?

Exactly. Full hd on a 13" is useless. 1366x768 or ~3K (with 2x integer scaling) are much better.
On the contrary full hd works quite nicely for a 15".

[starshipeleven]

Exactly. Full hd on a 13" is useless. 1366x768 or ~3K (with 2x integer scaling) are much better.
On the contrary full hd works quite nicely for a 15".

Guys, did you miss that these laptops are 15'' and 17''?

I wouldn't be raging if they were offering 1366x768 on a smaller screen than 15'', I have a 11'' or 12'' netbook with that resolution and it's fine.

[starshipeleven]

What does "designed for Windows" mean? Is it, like, they haven't replaced the icon over logo-keys to Tux, or what?

I guess he means that it has totally fucked up ACPI tables, which means that only Windows could read them properly, as they were created/compiled with MS's compiler/toolchain instead than with Intel's or whatever.

We are talking of issues about: function buttons, suspend/resume, power management, leds, soft switches (for wifi or whatever) up to actual hardware running at all or kernel panics on startup, depending on how bad are the ACPI tables.

[starshipeleven]

Believe it or not, some people like the smaller resolution to help them see better without screen magnifier hacks. Anyway, it's a cheaper option, so why the rage?

It's the default (and cheaper) option, so the vast majority of these laptops actually found in the wild will have a crappy screen.

For laptops costing 950$ or more with base price this isn't really acceptable.

[starshipeleven]

Hmm, that's interesting. It seems these laptops memory (the 3530 at least) options include ECC ram, and there is a CPU that actually supports ECC (the xeon with 35W TDP and integrated graphics).

And also that the NVIDIA card is an optional, you can get them with the Intel graphics only too.

And they offer the option to "disable the ME" (which is probably using the ME killswitch, but is much better than average)

That's 2.5k (which for some reason are discounted down to 1.7k on the configurator) for a xeon processor, a decent screen and 16GB or ECC RAM, not bad, at least there is the ECC option at all.

[cb88]

The article is incorrect, 7530 and 7730 are not available yet, the 7720 and 7520 are 2017 machines.

[Vistaus]

PS
One level higher: Add Coreboot / Libreboot/core support!

Also add RISC-V to the mix and whatever else is possible. Let's create the ultimate laptop!!!