Dell has got to be one of the most frustrating companies that put out a linux laptop. They put out a laptop certified for ubuntu but then never support newer releases. A big part of their hardware is always proprietary drivers like webcam, fingerprint reader etc… Then you update to a new LTS release because lets be serious 20.04 at this point is going to sunset in a couple of years… However after you update the webcam stops working, or some other hardware stops working. Then you are constantly troubleshooting to get it working and every kernel update it breaks again. If you ever did ask support they will just tell you to go back to 20.04 image from dell. Not to mention all their OS tools are made for windows even the ones for making linux recovery images… like WTF! I am two years in on this laptop and I am just getting rid of it I cannot put up with this nonsense anymore from them.
I have a gen 6 X1 carbon. Have Pop on it, and it’s a dream. Got it new, half price from lenovo, as it was a couple years old and they were shifting stock. Best laptop I’ve had, and an exceptional Linux experience.
Even on the Windows side of things they’re frustrating. Company took my perfectly working Thinkpad and replaced it last September with an “upgraded” Dell Inspiron laptop. It’s a piece of crap. Wakes up all the time in my bag, randomly drops wifi, and randomly drops ViewSonic monitors. Official IT solution: this happens sometimes, we don’t know why, and we’re going to send you Dell monitors instead.
*Edit I guess it’s actually a Precision, not Inspiron. I don’t buy Dells so I don’t know all the names!
Waking up in the bag is a known problem with Windows’ new sleep mode but the rest ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Inspiron? Must be a small company. That’s consumer class, they’re made to be sold at Walmart. Latitudes are pretty good imo, I actually prefer them to thinkpads.
My error, I just checked and apparently it’s actually a Precision. I don’t deal in Dells so I don’t know all their nomenclature! It’s still been a downgrade though from my ThinkPad.
The problem is, that there are not many notebook producer, that are
- Supporting Linux
- Have reasonable prices and hardware
- (Are not from an authoritarian country that has shady spying practices and uses slave labour)
There is Dell, Acer, Framwork and that’s it, I guess?
(Are not from an authoritarian country that has shady spying practices and uses slave labour)
So you’re not buying Frameworks, Acers, Hewlett-Packards, or Lenovos then? The NSA codified ‘shady spying practices’ via domestic spying on their own people, and we’ve been using prison slaves since the drafting of the 14th Amendment.
I put the last one in brackets, because it is debatable. But my hole point is, that there are not many producers out there to chose from.
Bought a Yoga Pro 7 7840HS 32GB 1TB. Everything works fine in Linux. Battery does 8-10h on full charge, good build quality, no issues with any parts. Running EndeavourOS after had some minor issues with Manjaro, WiFi connecting 1 minute after booting and some weird disconnects after a while. No such thing in EndeavourOS.
Running idle with minimum brightness, Bluetooth off, WiFi connected and keyboard backlight turned off consumes minimum 3.6W. Got it less than $900 around 4 months ago.
Dell is an American company? As is Framwork, (I think?).
The US is the most authoritarian state in the world with over 20% of the world’s prison population in its slave labour camps.
Hmmm. I didn’t know Dell had a Linux laptop. I bought a vostro with windows pre-installed and flashed fedora on it, expecting to get no WiFi webcam but everything worked out. It’s interesting that their windows machines run Linux better than their flagship Linux machine.
The issue is whether the thing is running a mainline compatible or distro kernel. If the device is running an orphan kernel, you’re screwed. This is the depreciation mechanism built into Android. It is “not Linux” because they are all orphans.
Technically even this is not enough if you want to get in the weeds. Technically the device can be on mainline but the company has a full time dev maintaining the required modules while the hardware itself it undocumented. If the hardware is documented at the api/registers level and it is already on mainline, it will likely remain supported for decades.
This is the true benchmark of ownership; public hardware documentation and fully merged support in the mainline kernel. Just for reference there is not a single mobile device that fully checks all of these boxes. Just to further illustrate how pervasive this is and how ignorant most of us are, the Raspberry π is proprietary with its full documentation locked under NDA. The vast majority of the silicon is made for a defunct TV tuner box, but you’ll never find documentation about any of this hardware at the registers level.
Your computer is the same, the microcode on ×86 is undocumented and things like the ALU architecture are not fully known except that it is a CISC wrapper around a RISC architecture. ARM is mostly proprietary at the registers level. All modems have been proprietary since the Atheros stuff over a decade back. The closest you can come to a FOSS computer are the old Duo series Intel chips supported by Libreboot and that is only because of the wonderful Leah Rowe’s hacking skills.
If you want to know what really works, go to https://linux-hardware.org and search. Either way, get the Hardware Probe from flathub or your package manager, run the test and review/upload your results to save the next person from similar issues. Seriously, don’t just ignore this. Upload your scan to the database with 233,034 other tested computers and 474,877 parts that have already been tested and uploaded. You can also see the configurations other people have used on the same hardware and get an idea if another kernel might work.
I don’t think you’re right on this. When DELL is branding a laptop as “linux supported”, then the hardware normally works out of the box with at the very least, Ubuntu (and probably by most other distros too). If you’re seeing hardware incompatibilities, it’s probably because the Linux kernel itself might have dropped some of the older hardware drivers from its list of support. I’m writing this on a DELL Latitude 5480 from 2017, and I have installed the latest ubuntu without any hardware issue whatsoever. Everything’s just supported out of the box. No special image from DELL was ever required. So if you’re seeing your hardware stop working, you should look if DELL provided closed source drivers or firmware for your laptop’s hardware. If that’s the case, then you didn’t have a “linux supported” laptop, you had a laptop with specifically-added Linux support after the fact. I wouldn’t have bought that in the first place.
I do want to make this point as well even though I know this thread is old. A lot of the issue comes down to very new hardware that isn’t in the mainline kernel yet but may be in the future. So the case of a 2017 laptop being fully supported is not that surprising. The question is if you could get a 2024 laptop from dell to run on mainline kernel with no extra drivers and the answer is likely mixed. The majority would likely work however things like webcam and the fingerprint reader would likely not work. You might still be able to get the drivers directly from dell and get it to work but it can be a hodgepodge and difficult to support. For instance the dell I had when I wrote this I could run on the latest Ubuntu however I had to download the debs for the webcam and fingerprint reader and screw around with the settings and config files to get them to work. Sometimes I would get an update that would break them and then I would need to mess around again to get them working. It’s linux so many things are “doable” however I wouldn’t say that it was user friendly or simple a lot of times. I am on system76 now and a whole lot happier to be honest.
Exactly, never going to buy any Dell anymore… I’m so pissed with their XPS 13 issues.
Their XPS’ have gotten worse IMO. I have an XPS now running Linux Mint and it seems fine. Issue here or there.
I went to buy a new one but now they only come with 2 USB-C ports and that’s it! It’s not practical…
Do not buy dell… They are like apple without the whole “good products” part.
Suggest a better choice, please. Lenovo?
If you want a PC laptop, my recommendation is that you either get a framework or buy one from a linux manufacturer (System76/Tuxedo/Slimbook)… Or if you need GPU horsepower on the go, just get whichever gaming laptop is on sale, they are all pretty much the same. If you’re on a budget, try your hand at 2nd hand. If you country doesn’t have a developed 2nd hand market, then you might consider getting a budget laptop, however those generally tend to suck and I’d recommend against it, unless you really just NEED a laptop.
Just don’t buy dell “flagship” products, they are just worse macbooks
Fuck Dell with the rust backend of a sword.
I experienced the same shit with their dumb hardware. Honestly, I don’t know why they are Ubuntu Certified. It feels more like a cash grab from Canonical for non-linux vendors to be able to target corporate customers who only buy “linux certified” stuff. Then they pay off a few mainstream tech bloggers or tech “newspapers” to write a raving review about it and non-corporate people purchase it thinking they’re getting good linux hardware.
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev gave a good recommendation: tuxedo computers. They do linux hardware well - albeit it’s pricey.
And of course Linux Preloaded is a great page to find other vendors.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
backend of a sword
You mean the hilt?
Hilt is unspecific. Any weapon can have a hilt.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
You are lucky. My laptop’s fingerprint scanner did not work out of the box. I also had troubles with audio (“subwoofer” was disabled) and WiFi (losing connection). This all was fixed in later Ubuntu updates, but I had to wipe out Dell’s spyware manually. So I’d say Dell with preinstalled Ubuntu is the same as any laptop with FreeDOS: you have to install the OS you need instead preinstalled one and troubleshoot all the driver issues. No guarantees that all hardware is Linux compatible.
Just gonna leave this here for anyone who wants a laugh. It wasn’t a Linux based desktop, but it was hilarious. Buying a PC with Dell: my journey into hell
I bought a dell xps15 circa 2017 and it is god awful with Linux. I will never buy another dell ever again.
Not to mention they sell proprietary parts and couldn’t sell me a replacement ac adapter for my docking station. They wanted to force me to buy a new docking station instead of just purchasing an AC adapter… Horrible company and horrible compatibility.
Dell are shit. It was a good day when the last Dell in the family was switched out for Macs.*
*I don’t like Macs either but I could plausibly refuse to support them on the basis that I didn’t know how they worked and the hardware is all locked down.
I’ve been more fortunate than you apparently. I’ve got a xps15 5520 which is not officially supported, but thx to the return policy I felt safe to buy it and give it a try.
I’ve been using mint on it without any problems. Hibernation was what took me the most with to get working. Very happy user so far.
Not sure why anyone would by linux certified laptops and expect to be treated with the same level of care as windows users.
Sorry you got ripped off, but hopefully this will be a lesson for the future.
One would expect that a Linux certified laptop would use Linux compatible hardware.
Yes, one would hope.
But that’s just not how the capitalist world works.
