What is it about Dell that you hate? Anyways, Thinkpads are also held in high esteem for running Linux. I'm currently using a Dell XPS (2016 model) at home and a Thinkpad at my current customer project, both running Ubuntu 16.04, and I can recommend both. I chose the Thinkpad over a MacBook Pro, and would do again, but the display and touchpad is no match to Dell's, much less Apple's; that's however no problem because the thing is hooked on a docking station/two monitors/external keyboard.
1) The docking station is horribly buggy. If I unplug it to take my laptop somewhere and then plug it back in, I have to do a full reboot or none of the USB peripherals on the docking station get power. Monitors, power, ethernet all still work through the docking station after being plugged back in. Dell support took 4hrs of my time installing/uninstalling drivers and firmware updates before finally giving up and sending me a new one. Which suffers the exact same issue. So I can buy a different brand of docking station, not take my laptop anywhere, or constantly reboot my machine.
2) Rebooting takes forever then fails. Every single time. After 8-10 minutes of sitting on the blue "Rebooting" screen it finally crashes and tells me something went wrong while rebooting. Every single time.
3) Sleep still doesn't work about a third of the time. If I put my machine to sleep through the Windows start menu and wait for all the various indicators to power off before closing the lid, there's a good chance that when I boot up tomorrow, the battery has fully drained and the machine has to boot back with all my applications closed down and context lost.
All 3 of these issues appear to be related to one common variable.. Windows. I have a Dell XPS 13 9360 8th Gen i5-8250u running Fedora 29 and I've never experienced any of these issues. Why don't you try another OS instead of blaming the hardware. If it continues with Ubuntu 18.04/18.10/Fedora 29 then contact Dell for support..
It's almost certainly a driver issue. Drivers that are provided by Dell. I'm not at all blaming the hardware for the issues. I'm blaming Dell.
To answer your question, I don't switch OS because the machine belongs to my employer and they set the rules. They say everyone runs Windows so I run Windows. It's actually a very usable OS.
You also seem to have missed the part where I spent 4 hours on the phone with Dell support already. Why would you expect that will be more successful with a different OS?
Not sure how far up the thread you've read, but this thread began because a person wanted a Laptop for running Linux. Hence the discussion of whether your complaints are Windows-only.
FWIW, my aforementioned Dell and the Thinkpad both are running Ubuntu flawlessly and without any reboots for months on end, as true workhorses should. In fact, out-of-the-box experience for Linux desktops with first-party support by manufacturers has never been better IMO.
agree 100%. every dell and thinkpad (and now thinkstation) I've installed ubuntu linux on for the past 3-4 years has worked flawlessly (wifi, sound, and gfx being the big three). What really impressed me was the Dell 5520 I had when working at Google- it had a nice nvidia card that was dedicated to running tensorflow training while the rest of the machine was perfectly usable for software development. All of this on battery.
I suggested Linux because all of your issues are specific to the OS that you are running. As previously mentioned, I have an XPS 13 9360 with 8th gen and none the issues you are complaining about. As for it being employer provided notebook, it may not be the drivers but some crap employer installed security software like Tanium that is causing the issue.
not always. they actually removed a dock already because it was too faulty.
it was the tb15. my colleague needed a motherboard upgrade and they replaced the tb15 with the new tb16 because it just couldn't handle what it should have.
2x 4k monitors, ethernet, usb and power over a single thunderbold cable. btw. the tb16 is mostly fine
Did you intend to answer someone that is having troubles with Windows on their XPS?
Ubuntu 18.04 has been rock solid for me on the XPS, and it has been getting BIOS updates (and Linux has been getting device driver updates if I want to reinstall).
Linux worked perfectly on the Toshiba I had for the previous 4 years (I didn't buy it with Linux in mind, it just worked).
In my experience, Windows laptops often get "driver rot" over time (amongst other issues). As a developer I can usually fix the Windows issues, but it certainly is not a painless task.
Dell's XPS Windows drivers were particularly bad considering the sticker price - Windows blue-screened two clicks into the install after opening the box - and I had some other blue-screen problems that took me a while to resolve when I first got the laptop. I haven't booted into Windows after installing Ubuntu, and Ubuntu has given me far less trouble than Windows (on this machine).
The Dell thunderbolt docks apparently simply don't work. I have a friend who's gone through a ton of Latitude hardware. Dell just can't make it work, period.
Depends on what model. The IT department gave me a dock and I couldn't get it to work with my Dell laptop. It was insufficient to charge the laptop, and I got tired of trying. Later a BIOS update plus driver changes will get it working on windows, and there are people successfully here using their dell thunderbolt dock with Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.
Ultimately, I gave up and bought an intel nuc with an M2 SSD and plenty of ram. It just works.
That’s not true. My work laptop has been a ThinkPad for the last five years, and while I like the TrackPoint for some things, I use the precision touchpad on my X1C6 more. Modern touch pads have good heuristics for fine motions versus large sweeping motions. And the touchpad is way better for scrolling through documents or web pages.
