Dell XPS 13 2016................
Jonni Bidwell wonders if Dell will mind if he just holds on to their fancy Ultrabook for the time being…
Does the Dell remain the Linux laptop to own or have the problems with Intel Skylake tarnished the sheen? Jonni Bidwell runs off with the review unit never to be seen again…
Dell began offering Linux support through its Project Sputnik initiative, which culminated in the release of the original XPS 13 Developer Edition in 2012. First, this machine looks nice, seriously nice. Thanks to the amazingly thin bezel, Dell has effectively squeezed a 13-inch screen into an 11-inch form factor. This ‘InfinityEdge’ screen is a thing of beauty. We reviewed the QHD+ glossy touchscreen model and were in awe of the crisp edges and vibrant colour reproduction. Reflections in daylight diminish the display’s brilliance, but not to the point of unusability. The chiclet keyboard looks good and is satisfying to type on. A hotkey provides a pleasing soft transition between two levels of backlighting. The large touchpad produces a satisfying click on operation and gliding around is generally responsive and accurate. The aluminium shell looks suave and professional and the woven-texture on the internal casing is a nice touch. As is the Ubuntu sticker in the corner.
The machine comes with a blazingly fast NVMe SSD, which we clocked using dd at 473MB/s write (with fdatasync and notrunc options) and 960MB/s read. Battery life is a little disappointing—just over five hours with 50% brightness while looping a 720p video fullscreen and wireless and bluetooth deactivated. Windows reviewers saw closer to eight hours (the non-touch variant managed 12), so driver issues could be to blame here. We were lucky enough to get the i7 edition (with Iris 540 graphics) and 16GB of RAM, a powerhouse which boots to the login screen in 5 seconds. The graphical offering here means that some quite demanding games ought to be playable, but here we run into a conundrum.
Old OS
At present, Dell only supports Ubuntu 14.04 on the XPS. It has done a great job in getting the hardware working and provide its own updates through a handful of pre-configured PPAs. But 14.04 is old now, by no means obsolete, but even with the Vivid Enablement Stack (provided through said PPAs) we get only a 3.19 series kernel which doesn’t make the most of our new hardware. Notably, the video drivers don’t support OpenGL 4.2, putting the kybosh to any hopes of playing serious games. Fear not though, it’s possible to install 16.04. Dell says it does have longer term plans to support this, but you’ll find some helpful tips in its forum.
There are some annoyances though, the dell-super-key package’s only purpose is to disable the Windows key when it’s useful for bringing up the dash. Also the awkward webcam positioning (aimed squarely up your left nostril) remains from the previous model. But that screen though…