Ten years after establishing a pioneering combination of Linux preinstalled on a commercial laptop with Project Sputnik, Dell and Canonical revealed that the XPS 13 Plus is the first OEM PC certified for Ubuntu 22.04 Long-Term Support (LTS).
It creates a straightforward route to having a PC that works without worrying whether each component is ready to work with Linux.
Linux-equipped Developer Edition representatives of the laptop were already available, with costs starting at $1,289.00, but nowadays ship with the older 20.04 LTS software. Long-term support waivers deliver what it states on the tin, with the end of standard support for this rendition scheduled in 2027 and the end of life in 2032. Certified devices are lab experimented with checking the compatibility of each component, which means your device reaches the specific drivers installed that will create all of its features work correctly.
That goes for the machines marketed as Developer Editions with Linux out of the box but involves if you’re installing a new OS on a device that initially shipped with Windows 11. Commerce exec Barton George was one of the individuals at Dell behind Project Sputnik.
In a 2019 interview with Forbes, he demonstrated that the Developer Edition branding is intentional, applied to keep people from accidentally buying a Linux laptop to save a few bucks and getting an incredible experience.
These days Dell ships Ubuntu on numerous other machines — and other flavors of the XPS line, including its redesigned XPS 13 standard bearer — so it feels unlikely that the certified list will survive this short forever.
The Ubuntu 22.04 LTS box was officially terminated on April 21 and had a long list of upgrades, including better power management, new touchpad gestures, and improved support for Bluetooth audio devices.
If you’d like to have your XPS 13 Plus and its “capacitive touch function row” set up with a hardware-optimized variant of 22.04, there are a few ways to occur. One is to request a new XPS 13 Plus laptop and stay for it to ship, beginning in August. Otherwise, if you’re in haste, you can achieve a fresh install, and you’ll be right. The last alternative is to wait until August 4, when Ubuntu 22.04.1 is released, as it will flick on the upgrade path for all LTS users so you can do as little work as possible.
Dell XPS is a string of consumer-oriented high-end laptop and desktop computers fabricated by Dell.
The XPS name dates back to 1990, while Dell concentrated more on corporate enterprise than consumers. Gateway was digit one in the high-end customer market. In early 1993, a staff meeting managed how to pursue this emerging market.
Dell’s annual revenue was more petite than $500 million, and Michael Dell was interested in most decisions. At this meeting, it was determined to launch a new high-end product line to contend with Gateway. Vernon Weiss was appointed as product manager to spearhead and drive the marketing of the new product.
He operated with Brian Zucker, who led the architecture and engineering endeavor. In September 1993, the first two renditions of the XPS line were revealed. The first era of the XPS system was open as either a desktop or a tower box.
With Weiss and Zucker persisting in evolving the product line for the next three years, the XPS systems beat the competition in around 100 magazine reviews and covers, being the first to embrace the latest PC technology available and get it to the consumers at an attractive cost. The XPS mainly contends against computers like HP’s Pavilion, Acer’s Aspire and Envy, Lenovo’s X1, Samsung’s Sens, and Apple MacBook Pro.
From 1997 to 2001, as Dell developed into a large corporation, the XPS line failed its position as the leading-edge performance machine and became essentially just a streak for fast computers. In 2005 Dell updated the XPS line to contend with Alienware and Falcon Northwest.
In 2005, Dell split its home desktop systems into two lines: Dell Dimension and XPS. Correspondingly, consumer notebooks were divided into two lines: Inspiron and XPS.
Dell had considered buying Alienware in 2002 but did not take action until March 22, 2006, when they purchased the company. Alienware maintained its autonomy in terms of innovation and marketing.
However, Alienware’s key to Dell’s supply chain management, buying power, and economies of scale reduced its operating costs. The XPS line originally had the exact specifications submitted by the Alienware division. In 2008, Dell raised “Studio XPS,” and Dell broadcasted it as a performance computer line while Alienware was being promoted for gaming. On June 2, 2009, The M17x was submitted as the First Alienware/Dell branded system.