Well after spending all afternoon with this new Dell XPS 13 9315 I absolutely love it. The fit and finish feels exactly like a Macbook Air.
I have Linux installed (Pop_OS) and the only two issues I had were getting the webcam running and the fingerprint reader. I managed getting both of them up and now the hardware is 100% operable! I am so happy I kept giving Linux a go and found a great laptop with few compatibility issues.
Thanks to all of you who recommended Dell laptops. There were a couple minor problems, but both were solvable with a bit of ddg searching.
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Yooo is that a trackball? I made the switch to a trackball because I’m a giant hipster a few months ago, but mine is an index finger one, not a thumb one. Setup looks good - an XPS is definitely on my radar for whenever the Surface I’ve been using for the past seven-ish years dies, it looks so clean.
Congratulations!
I thought you wanted to use Geforce Now. Something changed? Or you just not going to game much on your Dell XPS?
I’ll just go with the 1080p/60 version for now. Maybe I can hack something together in WINE down the line. Heh it rhymes.
I forget what its called off the top of my head but there are decent debian screen recording softwares that can record a game in fullscreen that work on PopOS!
My god an actual trackball user!
Sorry I just hardly ever see any these days.
I have also found PopOS! to be a fantastic distro. Easy to setup, user friendly, has tons of software that works with it , great UI, and I have not had a main OS patch/update break anything since I think 3 years ago now.
And it also does not punish you too hard if you tinker under the hood a bit!
Only real room for improvement is the PopShop, but thats relatively easy to fix, so I do think it makes more sense for them to focus harder on general stability, compatibility, and the new Rust based DE.
You can always install synaptic or the debian software manager for deb based stuff, and a flatpak store if you get tired of the PopShop and want to stick with PopOS’s deb/flatpak paradigm.
I use one too.
It’s a lot more convenient as a lazy slob in bed or on the arm of the couch.
I love my trackballs. I’ll never move on, dammit! (⌐■_■)
I have such mixed feelings about my Ergo, I really want to like it but I feel clumsy on it and it seems like the extra strain on my thumb will take a toll long term with that repetitive stress.
I only use track balls that are bigger and use 4 fingers that way I get way more control, less movement of my joints/wrist, and far more comfortable. Never figured out how to use a thumb one.
I kinda thought that was the way to go as well, but I need to find one that supports my giant troll hands. The ones I’ve tried in the past were too short I think so my hand ended up just on my desk at a weird angle.
adding to the trackball love and specifically this thumbball type. I do hate that I can’t get a wired. Turned my wife on to them. Great for anyone who is clutter inclined and does not want a device moving around.
adding to the trackball love and specifically this thumbball type. I do hate that I can’t get a wired. Turned my wife on to them. Great for anyone who is clutter inclined and does not want a device moving around.
I miss the old days when someone was being annoying and you could take the rubber ball out of your mouse and bounce it off their head haha!
kde runs terribly on popos tho, so its definitely not the best choice if you need that
Sorry to double post, but … kind of a huge part of what PopOS! /is/ is making their own DE in Rust.
They originally started prototyping their idea of a DE by modifying GNOME, but … thats a bit of a story.
They still contribute to GNOME, patching compatibility issues, but they eventually realized that for their window manager and other ideas, they would not be able to convince the largely Ubuntu centric GNOME maintainers to make some critical changes and add needed support that they would need.
So they started two of their own repos to more or less install on top of mainline GNOME and patch in what they needed.
The end result is DE that I find more useful than GNOME in many ways, and PopOS! has since been seemingly largely satisfied with how this has turned out and is now just massively working on developing what will likely be the first ever DE written entirely in Rust.
Yep, thats true.
You can always install synaptic or the debian software manager for deb based stuff
One word: aptitude. Learn no mark your packages as dependency installed (capital M) and do it every update. The only downside is that it doesn’t sync that info with synaptic. But if you use it exclusively for package management you’ll end up with little to no stay packages after dist-upgrade.
The interface is very similar to and predates synaptic, but it’s a terminal tool in ncurses. So even if you lose access to the GUI you still have something friendly to try and recover.
I bring mine to work everyday. My manager has one, and oddly enough the manager at my old job did too lmao.
Trackball gang here. Reporting for duty.
I honestly thought the days of trackball were at an end. I haven’t seen one in ages. I can’t stand them personally but I’m glad they live on nonetheless! It’s good to have choices.
Theres many people that go for ergo mice these days as well as ergo mech keyboard enthusiasts that sometimes put trackballs on their builds.
Huh, how did you get the fingerprint driver working? Or was it not made by some random Chinese company?
I use arch btw :(
i’ll try, thx!
The Arch Wiki has a page for the tool :)
Edit: forgot the link https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fprint
That machine looks slick af 👌 I find linux distros are so much nicer to use when the hardware itself feels great. Enjoy!
Clean look, good job!
the xps line is awesome, but I’d like to suggest something to whoever reads this comment: stay away from budget consumer grade dells! (aka inspirons and similar limes)
i got an awesome deal on mine (used) but the build quality is atrocious and it’s literally starting to fall apart after like 3 months of use
ik consumer grade crap sucks but dell is the worst offender (…they’re not even trying to hide it like hp lol)Maybe I’m not used to quality products as I’m poor in a poor country but I really loved my inspiron 14 …I bough it back in 2011 and decided to buy a new dell laptop in 2019 (inspiron too) because the 14R had died and the tech guy said it was the motherboard. I’ve never had any issues with them …the 14R is all plastic and looks fragile but I dropped it some times and it never broke. The new inspiron I got has an aluminum structure so looks it handles more falls hahaha. Anyway, I had a great experience with dell inspiron laptops regarding hardware and Linux compatibility but I’m not a demanding user. I intend to keep buying dell laptops in the future. Hey turns out the 14R just needed a new power supply and it’s running Fedora smoothly since I upgraded it’s ram.
EXACTLY! Got an Inspiron with an i7 1260p. Solid system, atrocious body. Dented the top with the charge cable in my bag THROUGH PADDING, the bottom case snapped while doing a drive change and a replacement also cracked, it’s buckled in the middle 3 times, stock screws fell out, and now it won’t recognize drives anymore. $1300 piese of shit. Switched to a used P50 and soooo much happier.
Had an old, used optiplex once. Not great performance due to its age, but it was solid. Super easy to work on (upgrade etc.) too since it had all these parts that folded out like a Transformer, but that also made it quite heavy.
Enjoy this little guy and Linux! You won’t regret your choice.
As I mentioned in the other thread, I’d advise to keep your firmware up to date with fwupd. Litterally one command line and your system will automatically update all firmware for you (including the bios). This is too often overlooked while very important and this tool makes the process so simple (no search, no manual download, no complex commands).Pop_OS has a firmware updater built in! Already updated all of it.
Right, I didn’t know updating firmware from the fwupd service was came pre-installed in Pop_OS.
So you only have one more task on your list: enjoying your new laptop! :)
Unrelated, but that mouse is what I totally want to get in the future. Trackball mice are so good.
I’m really happy to be reading your posts. I kind of forgot about the xps line and have been wanting a “cleaner” computer and something with better hardware.
I was looking at Mac’s but you get so little for the money you spend on them.
I think it’s similar cost with the xps line, but you get at least double the ram and storage.
I’ll probably go the XPS 15 when I’m ready to upgrade at this point.
I have the same mice. Really nice isn’t it?
It makes my hand happy.
lol first thing I do when getting a computer is wiping the disk and installing Linux.
First thing I do when getting a computer is setting up the preloaded Linux.
If I buy the M$ Windows crap, they keep making it.
Honestly, this is a great sequence of posts, and precisely the sort of community interaction that I love to see.
Glad to hear you settled on a S76 eventually, too - I love that enthusiast/developer-tier Linux-focused laptops are becoming more of a thing, and that they’re moreover often from much smaller, independent companies instead of the IT giants.
I have to say that I’m unreasonably excited to get this Lemur Pro.
Would you mind sharing your Linux Hardware DB entry? I’m curious about the results.
