Review: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

Dell has long been one of the most Linux-friendly PC manufacturers. But with its project Sputnik, Dell has really embraced open source software in a way unique to all PC makers. Sputnik is the nickname for Dell's newest Linux laptop – the XPS 13 Developer Edition, a sleek ultrabook that runs Ubuntu out of the box.

If the idea of running Linux full-time is foreign or novel to you, this is not the laptop for you. Likewise, if you're of the opinion that Linux on the desktop just isn't ready for everyday use, then this is not the laptop for you. It's also not the laptop for the Linux geek who scoffs at everything but Arch and loves to search out obscure hardware drivers.

Dell's newest Linux laptop is a sleek ultrabook that runs Ubuntu out of the box.The XPS 13 Developer Edition is aimed squarely at people already working in Linux and already comfortable with the platform, but who'd rather do without all the fiddling. Dell is trying to create a computer where everything just works – Linux without the tedious process of getting all your hardware humming perfectly.

And I'm happy to say that Dell has pulled it off. Out of the box, Ubuntu 12.04 does indeed just work. In fact, everything just works – trackpad, keyboard backlight, function keys and all the other little bits that sometimes require extra tweaks, even in Ubuntu.

That said, there are some hardware shortcomings that may give you pause. The ultrabook features hardware from the higher end of the XPS line – 8GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 4000 and a Intel i7-3537U CPU that clocks in at 2.00Gz. Following Apple's lead, none of that hardware is upgradeable. And while the specs are respectable, many developers may want more RAM and perhaps a larger storage drive, neither of which are currently available in the developer edition. The screen is also glossy Gorilla Glass which makes it strong, but prone to glare. There is no matte option.

The real hardware disappointment though is the lack of ports – just two USB ports, a DisplayPort and a headphone jack. There's no SD slot. A $5 USB SD card reader fixes that, but it eats up a precious USB port and frankly, for a laptop priced north of $1,500, there should be a third USB port. Even my Asus netbook manages to pack in three USB ports.

The other major issue in my testing was Wi-Fi. Dell's wireless card works just fine in Ubuntu, but reception was terrible. Where my MacBook Pro, Asus netbook and iPad would all pull four bars, the Dell never managed to top two. Worse, in places the others had only two bars, the XPS failed to connect at all. A bit of research revealed that this is an issue across the XPS line, likely a result of construction materials and antenna location rather a problem with Ubuntu, but it's definitely a snag. If you travel a lot and frequently have to connect to weak Wi-Fi signals, the XPS is probably not the best choice.

On the plus side, battery life was good. During casual use – web surfing, half a dozen tmux panes and a virtual machine running – the XPS will last about 5 to 5.5 hours, provided you dim the screen a bit (and you can dim the screen to about 50 percent brightness and still see everything just fine). More intensive tasks like compiling software will obviously eat up battery life much faster. Suffice to say that battery life is pretty good for a Linux machine, and if you're willing to dive deep into the power management config files you can probably coax even more out of it.

The first thing I did when the XPS arrived was upgrade Ubuntu, first to 12.10 and then to the just released 13.04. As with nearly every company that works with Ubuntu, Dell is sticking with Canonical's Long Term Support releases, which lag a bit behind the Ubuntu mainline. Most of Dell's customizations (more on those in a minute) have since made it into the Linux kernel proper, so all the XPS's hardware worked just fine with Ubuntu 13.04. But personally I found nothing particularly compelling about the latest release, so I restored to the more stable 12.04 release using the built-in 4GB recovery partition, which made things fast and painless.

I also managed to install the Ubuntu-based Mint Linux 15, and while the function buttons never worked for me, everything else seemed to be fine. But it's worth bearing in mind that if Ubuntu isn't your distro of choice, then the XPS 13 DE isn't necessarily any better than any other piece of hardware – you'll likely still be wrestling with drivers.

If you wipe away Ubuntu, you'll also miss out on much of what makes the Developer Edition great. Of course, how helpful you find Dell's developer tools will depend somewhat on the tools you need and how you work. I work primarily with Python, sometimes Ruby, building both web applications and the occasional desktop app. As with most developers I meet these days, I don't use a monolithic IDE like Eclipse. Instead, I rely on tmux to split my fullscreen terminal window into a variety of panes and tabs that run Python interpreters, vim, mutt and other command-line tools I rely on for work. For testing on other platforms, I use VirtualBox.

Dell has never announced exactly what sort of developers the Developer Edition is geared toward, but most of the included extra packages were tools I would have installed anyway. While installing software in Ubuntu with apt-get is a fast, painless process it's still nice to find that many of your must-have apps – like tmux, VirtualBox, Python, Ruby and loads of extra tools for both languages – are already part of Dell's stock Ubuntu build. You'll find a complete list of developer-oriented packages over on Dell's site.

Many developers probably have a script to install and set up the packages they need, but it's still a nice effort on Dell's part to include many of the more popular developer tools out of the box. But that's really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Dell's efforts. Far more useful and sophisticated is Dell's Profile tool, something you'll need to install yourself. The Profile tool gives you a way to clone and replicate a particular development environment and share it with others.

For example, let's say you've set up and configured the perfect Android dev environment with all the packages you need. You're working with a team, and you want everyone to have access to the same tools. With Profile, you can bundle your environment up into an executable script you can then share, upload to a server, or save to use when you move to a new machine. It's still a work in progress (check out the GitHub page for more details), but eventually, Dell's Linux developers hope to offer a "signature series" of profiles which will allow developers to clone their environments and share them with others.

The other major benefit of the XPS is actual support for a Linux-based machine. The XPS 13 DE comes with a year of Dell's "ProSupport" service, which gets you 24/7 tech support (North American-based even) and next-business-day on-site servicing if you need it. For $250 more, you can extend that to three years.

While Dell's support line may be something of a running joke among nerds, support for the XPS 13 DE was, in my brief testing, just fine. Granted I didn't have an actual hardware failure, nor could I test the on-site service. But in three separate calls, I never spent the legendary hours on the phone in "Dell Hell," and the support staff was knowledgeable about Linux and the XPS 13 DE.

The internal SSD and 8GB of RAM made for one of the fastest Ubuntu laptops I've tested. Cold booting takes about 14 seconds (curiously, waking from sleep still takes about 10) and VirtualBox machines are fast enough to feel native when running fullscreen. Sure, more RAM would be nice, but more RAM would always be nice.

Speaking of fullscreen, the XPS offers a full HD 1920x1080 resolution on a 13.3-inch screen, which works out to about 165 pixels per inch – not quite up to what Apple offers in its "Retina" laptops, but still plenty sharp. I did find text to be painfully small at times, especially on the web where, more often than not, I had to zoom if I was doing any extended reading. Small text was also something of a problem in some apps where the interface becomes difficult to read (for example, the otherwise awesome Darktable).

I experimented with changing the resolution via a config file, but it resulted in blurry text in Firefox, so I reverted to the default resolution and used Ubuntu Tweak to up the text scaling to 1.1 and cranked up the default font in Firefox. If your eyes aren't the best, you'll find yourself either squinting a lot or messing with the font settings.

Despite these hardware shortcomings, I found the XPS a pleasure to use and would have no problem recommending it if it were priced around $1,300. However, Dell is currently charging $1,650 ($1,550 with rebate) which pushes the XPS' price tag well beyond similarly spec'd offerings from competitors. The brand-new 13-inch MacBook Air with a 256 GB SSD and 8GB RAM runs $1,400. The Asus UX32VD can be had for around $1,400 with 10GB RAM and a dual-drive arrangement (24GB SSD and 500 GB platter), and that model lets you upgrade the hardware. Other PCs in this $1,300-$1,400 range are available from Samsung and Lenovo, as well.

All this makes it about $200 or $300 more expensive than the norm. The XPS is a great Ubuntu laptop, but not great enough to justify the extra cost.

WIRED Linux without hardware issues. Blazing fast performance. A bunch of welcome developer extras. Decent enough battery life.

TIRED Poor Wi-Fi performance. Only two USB ports. No way to upgrade the hardware. A little too rich for what you get.