Dell has a special edition of its XPS 13 ultrabook announced, which is delivered standard with the Linux distribution Ubuntu. The computerbouwer wants to use the notebook mainly developers appeal.
Dell and Canonical have worked together to make all the hardware of the XPS 13 under Ubuntu working. There were problems with three different parts: the screen brightness, the wi-fi shortcut key and the touchpad. The first two appeared to resolve quickly, but at the touchpaddrivers is still working. Especially multitouch support is not complete yet and the manufacturer of the touchpad is currently working on a solution.
The Linux-variant of the ultrabook is the result of an internal fund from Dell. Employees can have ideas to pitch and then get six months time in order to keep the idea from to build. The Ubuntu edition of the XPS 13, which is internally known as ‘Project Sputnik’ is the first result of this process. People can through dell’s IdeaStorm suggestions for the project.
This is not the first time that Dell Ubuntu on a notebook. In the past, the company sold netbooks with the Linux distribution from Canonical and also in 2009 was a previous edition of the XPS 13 with Ubuntu to order. These notebooks, however, were aimed at consumers, not developers.
The XPS 13 recently came on the market and is the first ultrabook from Dell. The device features a 13.3″screen, but thanks to the thin screen borders previously the dimensions of a 12″model. The laptop comes with Core i5 2467M processor, 4GB of ram and a ssd of 128GB.