Finally, good news!. Already last May DELL had announced the start of its Sputnik project aimed at implementing a line of portable computers with GNU / Linux as standard, focused on developers who raised expectations at the time; Well, it is already a reality today.
Yesterday the noticia en PCWorld, which covered your launch in the US and Canada. The equipment in question, with the name of XPS 13 Developer Edition, It is an ultrabook with a 13-inch screen, i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid state disk, which goes on the market with a price of $ 1,549 USD that includes 1 year of professional support and that they promise will be available in other markets early next year.
The operating system that will be released by the team will be Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" and will include a set of tools in which the project has been working in order to integrate it with the services available in the cloud and facilitate its interaction with other devices based on Android. An example of this is a tool called "Profile Tool" that allows you to configure software development environments through quick access to Ruby, JavaScript and Android tools in the repositories of Github.
According to DELL, for the configuration and tuning of this equipment, the opinions of the testers were taken into account, which allowed them to achieve a better result, of course, to achieve this they also worked together with Canonical as well as other developers.
If there is something that encourages me in this news, it is that everything seems to indicate that open-source developers are already becoming an important market segment for the large ones, which is good for all of us who in one way or another make use of GNU / Linux, regardless of the distro in question.
So if you behaved well this year you can go asking Santa for one of these ultrabooks, at least I am marking a copy of this post to see if he takes notice ...
Too expensive, too. I know that many are going to want to send me to the stake, but one can get a MacBook Air for less. It really is amazing. Nothing unusual for Linus to wear one.
It makes me a waste to prepare a tremendous machine and not put a video card!
Check the specifications of the equipment on the DELL site, I could not do it or put the link to them because my connection today is so bad that it was impossible. Anyway, XPS series ultrabooks typically have pretty good graphics.
It's for developers, so far I haven't seen a developer that needs more graphics power 😉
So far I have not seen a developer who uses Ubuntu! xD
Many do, in fact most of the ones I know.
For an ultrabook it is fine to bring the intel hd 4000. What's more, the intel boards are the best supported in linux, the drivers exist long before the chips hit the market In addition, these graphics chips perform very well in relation to consumption, and If you don't want to play, you don't need more.
$ 1,549 USD? Is it true that it is more expensive with Ubuntu than the one with Windows?
completely true. I guess it's to make up for possible low sales. the truth, for that price, I better buy it with Windows, which would be cheaper, and then, goodbye to the windows.
For things like that, I have never "swallowed" that Dell campaign in favor of Linux or Ubuntu ... they sell Linux computers that are supposed to be cheaper but no, they are more expensive than Windows, that is ... WTF!
But is that the windows are cheap for all the third-party software that sponsor it, read adobe (flash, reader), oracle (java), norton, etc ...
It is the opposite, all that software causes the price of the equipment to rise. This software is neither given away nor sponsored, it just gets more expensive. On average, about 10% of the total price of a computer is what the licenses of the software it carries are worth.
A computer that is not subject to software licenses has to be cheaper, if not, there is something strange involved.
In these cases, what I imagine they don't want to happen is that the consumer notices the difference. If a computer is much cheaper for not having Windows carrying the same hardware, who would buy the computer with Windows? Almost nobody. Dell is not interested in that happening because although software companies do not sponsor the sale of equipment in any way, they do offer their licenses at a lower price for buying in large quantities. If Dell is dedicated to selling equipment without its software, those companies will stop making that reduction, the prices of the licenses will rise, which will mean the cost of the equipment that carries them or a lower profit margin for Dell.
Which, in short, has been a scam, they are charging more, for nothing.
We'll see. If a company like norton pays to appear in a pre-installation of linux with about X months of trial. The price of the computer can be reduced to be more competitive and thus norton is in a good position for the user to buy a license from it. This extended to several software licenses is what allows the reduction of prices and Microsoft does it even with its own software, it pre-installs MS Office, Skype, etc. and thus places itself in a privileged position from which in the end it benefits.
But it is not a sponsorship or a reduction, the total price of the equipment always increases, instead of the full price of the licenses you pay a little less for being a higher sales volume, but at no time does it mean a decrease in the price of the hardware but quite the opposite.
It is not the software companies that pay to be included in a team, that is always paid by the user, even if they do not agree to tell them that they are overcharging.
It is paid by the user who decides to pay for a non-evaluation license, and with the prices they have, it is profitable for them to pay to have the evaluation software included, since it is effectively paid by the users ... just not all.
The answer is very simple.
Free Software does not mean Free and if it is more expensive than with Winbugs it is simply because of the modifications that were made to be compatible with dell, since not only the testers worked on it but also dell employees, whom they work on a large company and it has to pay those employees, they only cover expenses in reality since what the company does itself is more expensive, no matter how simple it is, instead of putting other companies (flash, adobe, etc.) that do Most of the work and it is cheaper to pay to have it done than to do it yourself, it is obvious that I speak at the company level since at the individual level it is the opposite.
The ones that come with windows have other specifications. This is more expensive because it comes with better hardware.
Not exactly many times the operating system defines if it is more expensive or cheaper and in the majority always a laptop with Linux will be more expensive than with Windows, obviously you will have less problems with Linux. I guess the price goes up because the quality of the product goes up.
Since the morning we bring a series of criticisms and insults against Dell, since this machine is $ 50 dollars more expensive with Ubuntu than with W $. Apparently it has to do with the M $ and Dell deal. As David from EMSLinux told me, 8GB of ram is too much (unless you're a gamer). I have a Dell XPS 15 with 6 gigs of Ram and for more development work, it is very difficult for me to go beyond 3GB of use. The computer is very expensive. Many people would rather save the $ 50, delete W $ and put their favorite distro on it.
The folks at DELL don't want the consumer to compare. They cannot put the same settings between Windows and Ubuntu, the difference in value in favor of Cannonical does not suit them. Do you want GNU / LINUX? Buy us the ULTRA XPS and by the way we have a new audience: Freak Hardocore LinuxSESSUAL!
Ubuntero, that's exactly what I meant by the machine.
i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD… ..this is for a gamer, not a developer, especially speaking of the OS and the amount of RAM.
not gamer, professional developer.
A professional developer and even a Database Administrator with such hardware can be very limited.
Example: The machine was core i5 4gb 512 GB of HHDD with windows Xp, it was slower than my core i3 with Windows 7 of 4gb of ram.
I know they both had windows but one was XP and the other 7. And the core i5 was very good to play? Maybe, but it even took a long time to start up due to the vast number of databases that it had and the number of programs developed with VB.NET that were not just anything I remember a spreadsheet with an interface similar to that of Microsoft Office 2007, it weighed 1gb without loaded the data. I'm talking about 2 or 3 years ago, it is obvious that new developers today need more and not just to play. Also architects and engineers fall short with a machine with 8 gb of ram.
OJO ”is dedicated to developers and a more professional public with a reference price”
And since when is Ubuntu a distro for developers? Sorry to be so outstanding with my question, but I do not consider Ubuntu a distro for developers since Ubuntu handles a state of frozen repositories for a period of 6 months.
That is to say that if I am a Python and Ruby or PHP developer and it happens that a new version of any of these languages comes out if I am on Ubuntu I have to wait for the next version of Ubuntu to come out to enjoy the new version , while in Fedora or Arch it is only a matter of a "sudo yum update" and voila, you can now make use of the current versions of packages and programming languages.
That is why I say that Ubuntu for developers does not go! ..
Ubuntu is for the end user, the friendly user who connects to the Internet listens to music and watches videos ... If you really want to develop, it is better to switch to a slightly more dynamic distro in terms of package and language updates.
All the reason in the world, Fedora or OpenSUSE ... Someday I'll deal with Arch ... Ubuntu is far IN MY POINT OF VIEW from being a development platform.
Greetings.
Wait dude…! Not always having the latest versions is recommended, so the shots do not go there. Developers do not necessarily use the latest stable versions but the standard ones; In the case of Python, Ubuntu 12.10 comes by default with 3.x and in fact, the standard used almost everywhere, even in its bindings, is 2.7; Fedora still uses 2.7 and has version 3.x in its repos, just like Ubuntu.
In fact, you would be surprised by the amount of development packages that Ubuntu has and others do not: node.js, CoffeeScript, npm, many, many things that do not even cross your mind ...
Arch to develop? Better to cut an egg, it is very annoying and updates too much, so maintaining a stable environment (in the sense of versions) is not as easy as some believe.
Stable environment? Ubuntu? well, it depends on the version in any case, 12.04 is perfect, 11.10 and 12.10 pfffff, better not to mention, from the first boot pure failures, but I mean where you want to go with the system, you have always known the orientation of Ubuntu , end user, although it does not mean that other things can be done, although personally I prefer to work "Fedora - CentOS - OpenSUSE" (distributions that I use for monitoring implementations: Nagios, Nagvis, PNP, Centreon, Cacti, etc.). result much better and stable, the few times that tried with ubuntu - debian (pure and hard) or another system based on .deb, I have been a total failure.
Now, as Nano says, in terms of taste, colors.
Greetings!
PS: Arch I have never tried it, I do not know if it is lazy, time, fear, although I see that many have solved the issue of Distro-hopping. Someday…
It is that 12.04 is the stable version of Ubuntu, the intermediate versions between LTS's can be subject to bugs since Canonical introduces many experimental things.
I develop in Fedora. Developing in arch can certainly be an ordeal, I confirm it xD
No. The LTS versions are versions of Ubuntu like any other, the difference lies precisely in the extended support, since a priori they are developed at the same time and under the same conditions as the rest of the versions, so they can present the same problems as any other version. After 8, 10, 12 or 24 months later, thanks to the revisions that have been undergoing, they should be more stable than the intermediate versions, but nothing more, the LTS label does not imply innate stability but longer support time, than to its time involves more revisions, which over time results in a more stable version of Ubuntu.
You're wrong, and if you don't believe it, read it on the wiki:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
1. We are more conservative in our package merge with Debian, auto-synching with Debian testing, instead of Debian unstable.
2. We start stabilizing the release early by significantly limiting the number of new features. We will choose which features we package into the LTS release, versus which ones we leave out and allow for users to optionally download and use from a separate archive.
3. Avoid structural changes as far as possible, such as changing the default set of applications, lots of library transitions, or system layer changes (example: introducing KMS or hal → DeviceKit would not have been appropriate changes in a LTS).
In short, they are more conservative in the packages they introduce, when they go from a non-LTS version to an LTS version they focus on stabilizing the packages and not introducing new features and avoiding structural changes where possible.
«12.10 pfffff, better not to mention»
I was lucky then, the home server that runs Ubuntu Server 12.10 (for compatibility with the multifunction) so far is perfect, it had 2 or three boots since I updated it from 12.04 LTS and it has been uptime for 37 days.
* 27
FUCK
I'm asshole: 17, seventeen-seven days of uptime 😛
Not so, at least not always. Development is usually done against a specific version, be it python, ruby, java or any language. And that version is usually one with a certain patch level; there has to be a very good reason to use the latest versions. I develop in python and we use the versions that come with Debian 6, which is what is available on production servers. On the workstations there are several versions of Ubuntu and Debian Testing (according to the preference of each one), with different versions of python,
but we have to make sure that it works with Python 2.6 which is what is in production.
You are right a debian Testing is better or archlinux preferably a rolling release. hence no fedora. XD
How are you? I think you will have ubuntu by some agreement with Canonical, I do not know for sure.
For the rest, remove ubuntu and put your favorite distro
Generally commenting, the truth is somewhat complicated, ok it is expensive, but someone has to start breaking paradigms; although this way I doubt it will be done, I must admit ...
There are very good options, manufacturers can offer accessible equipment and everyone can create their software for the distro of their choice, Ubuntu surely, maybe Fedora or Suse can open a niche for being influential companies, but not like Canonical in the mainstream commercial space .
From what I see, I think that small companies should offer lower cost Ultrabooks of various types, create their high and low end laptops, focus on them ... god is too much, so much that I can write about it. We'll see what comes out.
They have finally reduced the price to $ 1449 as you can see on the offer page: http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/xps-13-linux/pd
Let's see, in order not to answer the comments individually I will try to make a summarized one:
@DanielC: If you look closely, the configurations with Ubuntu and Windows are not exactly the same, Ubuntu comes with 8GB of RAM and if you take the trouble to check the links to the original news on PCWorld, you will see that this increase in the RAM was made precisely at the request of the developers who were using the test kits. At no time has it been said that these configurations are for gamers, and YES, professional developers need that hardware to work and many of them will be willing to pay the price of the equipment because for them it is a means of work, not entertainment. Additionally, there is a base configuration that comes out with 4GB and is cheaper.
@Mllti: Actually the colleague Xykyz is right in what he says, normally the owners of all the junk software that comes in the pre-installations of Windows pay the brand to include it, note that they are all "trial" versions that they serve to get you used to their use and then you are forced to pay for user licenses. In addition, Microsoft has been accused of having secret agreements with the big brands that supposedly would involve payments from Microsoft to use Windows to the detriment of any other OS, unfortunately this has not been proven to date.
@Xykyz: I totally agree with your proposals.
@Alf: In my opinion, and this is purely speculative, seen in the dilemma of configuring a team with GNU / Linux, DELL had to choose a distro for it, in any case, configuring the team as a whole necessarily implies a collaboration between the parties, where both must make executive decisions to achieve the proposed goal. In any process of this type, agility in decision-making is essential, and as far as I know, the only distro with this possibility is Ubuntu, since it has a management structure with that capacity, while the rest of the distros, for the regular, makes decisions collegially and by consensus, which delays them. I think that's the key why Ubuntu has been the chosen distro, although I do not exclude the possibility of other types of agreements between DELL and Canonical.
@nano: We agree that it is very favorable for a brand like DELL to start breaking paradigms, but I don't think it will end in a failed attempt. It is necessary to pay attention to one detail: the market segment that the team in question is targeting, the professional developers, we'll see how it reacts.
Regarding the price, it is true that it can be considered high, but note that it is an ultrabook, and I do not know of any equipment in this category that is cheap, not only those of this brand, check in HP, Samsung, etc., and the environment in which prices move is very similar.
Now, there is a factor that in my opinion is extremely favorable and it is the following: from the main hardware components of this configuration, I mean the base chipset (chipset), a fully compatible equipment with Ubuntu 12.04, which has the corresponding drivers, then, from that known configuration, it is not very difficult to find other cheaper computers from this same manufacturer, which share the same basic hardware configuration, with the almost absolute certainty that they will support Ubuntu. 12.04, as they can use the same drivers. In fact, some time ago I was forced to do this analysis to select HP laptops for a project that required GNU / Linux support and I did it from the base configuration of a specific model that the manufacturer guaranteed had the drivers , finally achieving that it worked without problems in the model that I selected, different from the one "guaranteed" by HP.
Sorry for the billet, but I have tried to answer most of the comments, everyone, thank you very much for stopping by and for your opinions as they all contribute to a better understanding of these issues.
A Laptop with Linux more expensive than Windows and at the price of a MacBook
Touch your nose …… Dell
I don't like that brand.
Well, I personally don't like it very much either, but about tastes is not discussed ...
Thanks for stopping by
Price is the only thing that I don't like at all, but anyway, good initiative for Open Source: D!
Cheers!
Hopefully it is the gateway to better opportunities for the Linux world. Will you ever be able to buy a good laptop without any OS? Obviously at a pretty decent price.
There are many brands that sell models without OS I had a Gigabyte q1105m, intel su4100, 4GB of ram and 320GB HDD. USD $ 360. I used it with Fedora 15 and Windows 7. now I have an Asus N53SV, core i5, 8GB ram, GT540m 1GB DDR3, 750GB hybrid HDD.
It also came without SO USD $ 1000. I use it with fedora 17 and windows 7. Dell also offers the same and more I do not remember.