The 2018 XPS 13 Developer’s Edition—Have it your way on a “just works” Linux laptop

It has been six years since Dell first introduced its XPS Developer Edition moniker, which refers specifically to the company’s XPS laptop models that ship with Ubuntu Linux (and not Windows) pre-installed. Ever since, Dell has been producing some of the best Linux “ultrabooks” in recent memory.

Ars has already put the Windows-boasting XPS 13 through its paces earlier this year since the device received a serious overhaul in 2018. Dell bumped up the hardware specs, revamped the thermal system, and introduced a new rose and white version, for instance. But how is latest edition of the premier “just works” Linux laptop doing with the added muscle?

Recently, Dell finally sent Ars the latest model of the XPS 13 DE for testing. And while Dell did put a lot of work into this latest iteration, the biggest upgrade with the latest Developer Edition is the inclusion of Ubuntu 18.04.

SPECS AT A GLANCE: DELL XPS 13 DE LAPTOP Worst Best Screen 13.3-inch FHD (1920×1080) Infinity Edge non-touch display 13.3-inch 4K UHD (3840×2160) Infinity Edge touchscreen OS Ubuntu 18.04 CPU Intel Core i5-8250U (up to 3.4GHz) Intel Core i7-8550U (up to 4.0GHz) RAM 4GB LPDDR3 16GB LPDDR3 HDD 128GB PCIe SSD 2TB PCIe SSD GPU Intel UHD Graphics 620 Networking 802.11ac [2x2], Bluetooth 4.1 Ports 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports (PowerShare DC-In, DisplayPort), 1 USB Type C 3.1 port (PowerShare DC-In, DisplayPort), headset jack, Noble lock slot, microSD card slot Size 11.9×7.8×0.46 in (302×199×11.6 mm) Weight 2.68 pounds Battery 52Whr Price $890 at Dell $1,680 at Dell

It’s true that Linux users did have to wait a bit longer than Windows fans, but that delay came more from Ubuntu’s release schedule than any of Dell’s changes. Since 2012, the XPS DE line has always tracked Canonical’s LTS releases. That meant even the XPS DE released in February of this year still shipped Ubuntu 16.04. And while I’ve never had a problem upgrading to the latest Ubuntu release on any of the three XPSes I’ve tested over the years, nothing beyond 16.04 has ever been supported by Dell.

The XPS 13 Developer Edition model 9370 changes that. The latest and greatest pre-built Linux hardware now features full support for Ubuntu 18.04, the latest (and possibly greatest) Linux OS. The change is no small footnote: the move from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 means a completely new desktop, GNOME 3, a major revamp of underlying technologies (more modern GTK libraries), and a new, very different user interface to contend with. And on the hardware side, that newer tech in the XPS 13, including USB-C and Thunderbolt, all now works under Ubuntu without a hitch.

After a few weeks living with the XPS 13, I’m happy to say that, with a few small exceptions, Dell has pulled off the transition to Ubuntu 18.04 with remarkable aplomb.

Hardware

The Dell XPS 13 DE has always been an exceptionally well-built, great-looking piece of hardware. The revamped version is no exception, and the new white and rose-gold version looks pretty slick (even if it’s not your style, exactly). On the rose-and-white model, the palm rest area and space around the keyboard are covered with a very nice fiberglass-like weave that gives it a bit of texture and makes for a little bit softer edge. It’s noticeably easier on my wrists than the last model I used.

As the neater crowd may understand, I was hesitant to take a white laptop out and about for fear of sending Dell back a gray-brown laptop. But in the six weeks I’ve been using it, it hasn’t picked up a single spot of dirt or a mark that didn’t easily disappear with the quick swipe of a rag.

The Infinity Edge display on the XPS 13 comes in two flavors—3840×2160 touchscreen 4k or an FHD non-touch option. There’s a roughly $200 difference between the two, but the big catch, as far as I could tell on the Dell website is that the 16GB RAM model is only available with the HiDPI screen. Since most developers are going to want the max RAM possible, that pretty much means you’re going to get the HiDPI display.

There are two things to note about the 4K display (which is what came with the model I tested): First, it’s wonderfully bright and sharp. Ubuntu’s GNOME interface works well at this resolution, but keep in mind there’s no half scaling—it’s 2x or 1X. KDE supports arbitrary scaling, which might make Kubuntu a compelling option for some users. The downside to the HiDPI screen is that battery life isn’t as good as the FHD non-touch version, and, if you’re buying it with the idea of running some other distro, well, do your research. Not every desktop/distro combo is going to work well with this display (I happen to really like LXQT these days, but even the Lubuntu version did not play well with the HiDPI screen out of the box).

The 16GB model comes equipped with an 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8550U Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz, 4 cores) and has the onboard Intel UHD Graphics 620. There are two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and Dell has made it possible to use four-lane PCI connections, which means in theory you could add an external graphics card for a better gaming experience. At least, that’s possible with the Windows version. I did not test how well this works under Ubuntu because I am not a gamer, and this is a serious developer laptop (no playing games here, he says only half-kidding). I did throw some video rendering tasks at it using Blender, however, and the XPS 13 cranked through them with impressive ease.

Despite the new case color, not everything on XPS 13 comes up roses. There’s still that webcam—yes, it’s still at the bottom of the screen aimed up your nose. At this point, it seems safe to assume Dell isn’t changing the location. As an alternative, I found some nice white electrical tape at my local hardware store and stuck it over the camera and had no further problems with it. If you’re going to do any teleconferencing or the like, the $20 you spend on an external USB webcam will not be wasted.

On the upside, some of the earlier models of the XPS 13 I tested had a tendency to produce a high-pitched whine in some situations. If you read users’ complaints around the Web, you’ll get a mix of theories, the most likely being coil whine. Whatever it was, I have not noticed it with this model.

Aside from the aforementioned Thunderbolt ports, you’ll find that, like a certain other laptop maker, the latest version of the XPS 13 ditches USB-A in favor of a USB Type C port. Technically, the XPS 13 has three USB type C ports, two of which are Thunderbolt 3 enabled and the other which is USB 3.1.

I understand this move somewhat. USB-C is the future, and users want a laptop to last a few years, which means desiring at least one USB-C port. You also aren’t getting that 4mm edge with USB-A ports in there. But the USB-C future still feels a long way off. I have plenty of devices that are USB-A, and I’m not going to be replacing perfectly capable accessories just because hardware ports are disappearing. Dell does helpfully include a USB-C to A dongle, but I really did not need yet another dongle.

Other ports include a microSD card reader, headset jack, and Noble lock slot. The included power supply remains small enough that toting it around does not significantly alter the weight of your bag. Just remember to throw in that USB-C to A dongle as well (plus the USB-A to Ethernet dongle if you’re hoping to use the Internet from a hotel room). That’s not really criticism of Dell so much as the industry at large, but the potential daisy chain of dongles necessary to connect modern ultrabooks to any technology older than six months is quickly approaching “ridiculous.”

Ubuntu 18.04 on the XPS

What’s approaching “ridiculous” in a good way is Ubuntu 18.04, which is perhaps the best mainstream version of Linux ever released. Coupled with Dell’s hardware and support, Ubuntu 18.04 makes for an outstanding desktop experience that will, for many developers, trump both Windows and macOS.

That said, it’s worth noting that if you’re coming from Ubuntu 16.04 or earlier, you’re in for something of a shock. The Ubuntu that ships with the latest XPS 13 is significantly different from the moment you first turn it on—there’s a new desktop, a new lock screen, some new default apps, and, of course, a new kernel under the hood. (For a full review of everything that’s new, see Ars’ earlier review of the OS.)

To help users transition from previous releases to this one, Canonical has a little “first-run” app called “Welcome to Ubuntu,” which Dell includes as well. The app does a good job of highlighting some of the most used new features and points out where things are in GNOME.

The Developer slant to the XPS 13 DE starts to show as soon as you configure Ubuntu and book to the desktop for the first time. Regular Ubuntu users will note that Dell has included quite a few things out of the box that Ubuntu does not, things such as both the Chrome and Chromium Web browsers and the very nice Dell recovery tool that allows you to create an image of your XPS as it arrived. (If you plan to do any distro experimenting, I strongly suggest you create a backup image with Dell’s extra repos and tools before you do anything else.)

One bit of missing hardware support I immediately noticed out of the box is support for two-finger clicks for right-click. From what I can tell, this is a shortcoming of GNOME, not Dell. Still, it would be nice for Dell to include the GNOME Tweaks tool by default since it allows for customization options that the GNOME devs have seen fit to remove from GNOME proper. Of course, you could also enable two-finger right clicks and some other tweaks using included tools like xinput.

One of the big things you get with Ubuntu 18.04 is much-improved support for Snap applications. It’s a little bit of an oversimplification, but a Snap application is an app packaged in a container, which ships separately from Ubuntu itself. That doesn’t sound all that great, but what it allows you to do is stay up to date with releases of the Snap application without needing to worry about updating Ubuntu itself. (This is similar to the decoupling approach Google has taken to many core Android apps, for instance.)

Snaps are useful as a way to keep up to date with desktop apps that may be developing faster than Ubuntu’s package maintainers can package them. For example, I used both Darktable and Gimp as Snaps to be able to have the latest releases of both, which are sometimes a bit ahead of what’s in Ubuntu’s repositories.

Snaps are also useful for developers because Snaps contain all their own dependencies. This means it’s easy, for instance, to run a Snap app that requires a specific version of Python without worrying about that conflicting with the system-wide version of Python. Developers wanting the latest version of any number of tools would do well to look at Canonical’s Snapcraft store, where you’ll find Snaps for developer necessities like Docker, LXD and PostgreSQL. There, you’ll also see the latest version of nearly every language you can think of from Go to Javascript to even .NET (if you’ve got one of “those” jobs).

Conclusion

Some might argue that Linux has reached a stage where it tends to work out of the box on almost any hardware. But while the situation is certainly better than it once was, my experience has been that it remains rare to buy a brand-new laptop and get everything working right away. Stick with last year’s OS version and you’ll likely be fine, but with new hardware there almost always seems to be an edge case. Maybe a trackpad is missing drivers in all but the latest kernel (which might not be available immediately in your distro of choice, unless that happens to be Arch Linux). Or, perhaps some application lacks good support for HiDPI screens. I haven’t come across anything deal-breaking, but there’s often something annoying with out of the box Linux options.

If you depend on Linux to get work done every day, that reality is not acceptable—which is why Dell’s official Linux support has become not just nice to have, but potentially necessary. You don’t want to be tracking down hardware drivers or trying to figure out the best Xrandr settings for your display when you have work to get done and deadlines to meet.

Today, if you want a Linux rig that “just works,” weighs under 3lbs, and has the battery life allowing users to work most of the day, power-cable free, the latest XPS 13 DE is the laptop you’ve been looking for. The upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 means you’ll also have the latest and greatest tools that Ubuntu has to offer, including much-improved support for Snap packages (again, that’s a genuine game changer for anyone sticking with the LTS base system).

But while the update to 18.04 is a welcome one, and there are a couple of bones thrown specifically to developers, overall the XPS 13 DE does subtly suggest Dell may be moving away from the developer angle to a more mainstream Linux laptop… I think that’s a good thing.

Previous releases shipped with quite a few pre-installed developer tools, Virtualbox, some extra programming languages, and Dell-developed devops tools like Cloud Launcher and Profile Tool. Aside from the extra Web browsers, though, there’s nothing particularly developer-oriented about the newest Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition. Yet, I appreciate that Dell chooses to err on the side of “not enough” rather than throwing in a bunch of IDEs or tools that not every developer is going to want.

Part of the reason Linux is so popular with developers is that it allows everyone to work in their own way using whatever toolset they happen to like from the vast array of tools available in the open source world. And rather than worrying about some custom tools developers aren’t going to use anyway, Dell’s efforts have instead focused where they should: getting Linux working seamlessly with the hardware. In other words, Dell gets out of your way. That’s not to belittle the effort Dell has made here (it’s considerable), rather I think at this point Dell should drop the developer pretense and call this the XPS 13 Linux Edition.

In an odd way, that is probably the best thing about the XPS 13 Developer Edition. It provides a solid platform from which you can build up your workflow and tools to suit your tastes, whether you’re a developer or just want a solid laptop with an operating system that stays out of your way and lets you do what you want to do.

The Good Light weight hardware with a brilliant screen Solid performance Ubuntu 18.04 No bloatware The Bad No USB Type A ports Max 16GB of RAM feels limited for a “Developer” machine The Ugly The webcam. Still.