How Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops (and why it's called 'Project Sputnik')

pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 287 points – How Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops (and why it's called 'Project Sputnik')
zdnet.com

Today, the Dell XPS-13 with Ubuntu Linux is easily the most well-known Linux laptop. Many users, especially developers -- including Linus Torvalds -- love it. As Torvalds recently said, "Normally, I wouldn't name names, but I'm making an exception for the XPS 13 just because I liked it so much that I also ended up buying one for my daughter when she went off to college."

So, how did Dell -- best known for good-quality, mass-produced PCs -- end up building top-of-the-line Ubuntu Linux laptops? Well, Barton George, Dell Technologies' Developer Community manager, shared the "Project Sputnik" story this week in a presentation at the popular Linux and open-source community show, All Things Open.

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such as?

Linux mint, Fedora, openSUSE and tons of other options

Yeah and there is a big issue. I would place myself as quite tech savvy, but last time i looked for a distrobI got overwhelmed... Good thing: there are questionnaires that lead you to a good enough suggestion... Back then it proposed mint

But then the next question: which desktopp environment?

I installed on my huawei matebook and it worked okay-ish, but it had one dealbreaker: even with a lot of tinkering there was no way I got standby or hibernation to work. Which is a must for me...

So I removed mint and installed kubuntu... Now standby and even hibernate work (kind of) But it totally craps up when I try to use my external monitor together with the internal screen... Even a lot of terminal tinkering later I don't have it working... Oh and the speakers still crap now

There is a lit of information around how to maybe get stuff working, but a lot of it requires a lot of upfront knowledge:

  • a lot of questions are answered with "yeah, enter that in your terminal" without any explanation what exactly it does (which is bad in two ways in my opinion)
  • a lot of official documentation doesn't explain very well what the configs do and what syntax etc. is expected
  • there is often a lot of elitism around that really pushes away newcomers

EmI do love tinkering, but sometimes it's really frustrating even for me. No way I could my GF to try that out..