Dell XPS 13
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Hello!
I'd like to buy a notebook like Dell XPS 13 (Developer Edition) but before buying it I'd like to know if installing a GNU/Linux-Libre operating system there will be problems of hardware compatibility.
Do you know if there are other similar notebook perfectly compatible with Trisquel GNU/Linux?
Thank you very much and sorry for my bad english!
Bye bye!
Apparently that contains an Intel wireless. It will not work.
For computers that do work, I suggest http://trisquel.info/sites/countclick.php?url=http://libre.thinkpenguin.com
I also suggest getting something from http://libre.thinkpenguin.com (side note: there's no point in pasting the click counter from the Trisquel website's link; just pointing to "libre.thinkpenguin.com" means part of the profits will be donated to Trisquel). They have 3 laptop choices: the Gentoo Penguin, which is the cheapest; the Emperor Penguin, which is a bit more expensive, bigger, and more powerful; and the Royal Penguin, which is the most expensive, slimmer, lighter, and has some extra built-in features. All of them can be ordered with varying specs.
Looking at the laptop you're looking at, I'd say you probably would want a Royal Penguin. If the specs I'm seeing online are correct, the closest to the XPS 13 would be to get the Royal Penguin with an i7 processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB SSD. Of course, though, you should customize it to fit your purposes best. :)
Unfortunately I can confirm that th wifi of the Dell xps doesn't work with trisquel 6.0
I bought it because of the so much talked about linux support, and indeed it works great with the latest ubuntu (13.04) and with the sputnik ppa in previous versions.
Anyway I'd really like to use trisquel, maybe I can help reporting issues or just asking for new features.
Can anybody give a hint on how to add support for my wireless card
lspci | grep -i Network
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6230 (rev 34)
This is the info that lshw gives me:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Centrino Advanced-N 6230
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 34
serial: 88:53:2e:e4:80:27
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-38-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 ip=192.168.1.103 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:47 memory:f0500000-f0501fff
--
and even better if anybody has a clue about a free driver...
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It doesn't work like that. Despite the myths that you can get GNU/Linux to run on just about anything it simply isn't true. It relies on the companies designing the chipsets to release code and/or specifications so that free drivers can be developed. Otherwise you are at the mercy of these companies.
The reason GNU/Linux has support for more devices than MS Windows is because of free software. It allows devices that would never be supported on current versions of MS Windows (due to discontinuation) to continue working on GNU/Linux.
Manufacturers generally don't own the code for the devices they sell unless they are also the company which designed the chipset(s) in said device.
In the case of Dell I can't think of a single product that Dell really designed or for that matter really manufactured. However they have some level of control over outer appearances and configuration.
Dell is hostile to free software and locks (configures) its computers so that only the wifi cards it sells will work. After market sales of parts is big business.
In this case Dell is shipping you a card that will not work with free software and won't let you change this card for one that will. The company (Intel) which designed the chipset is not cooperating with the release of code or specs so that a free driver/firmware solution can be released. That means it will only work on distributions that contain non-free software for as long as Intel is willing to "support" it. Now technically you can stick to a 1998 version of the firmware and still use it probably or even in a worse case example a 1998 version of GNU/Linux this isn't acceptable behavior. Its turning GNU/Linux into Microsoft Windows, Mac, or another proprietary product.
In the case of this particular chipset/card it would require a massive reverse engineering project to fix the problem without the support of Intel. There is no chance of that happening.
The only good solution is to be picky about the hardware you buy and support companies / products that are free software friendly. That is extremely hard to do right now. A company I founded, ThinkPenguin, and a handful of others would qualify as being very good about supporting free software. Most others only have categories for which they can be commended for cooperating. As an example HP does an excellent job for the most part in at least documenting and releasing sufficient code for a good chunk of its printers. Atheros is another good example. Atheros designs all sorts of chipsets. Some of these are 802.11 chipsets and for this category they have done an excellent job. However the company has not done a perfect job as there are other categories which are not free software friendly. Even within wireless arena they haven't released code / specs for a usb bluetooth chipset. That might change although its a work in progress as a different department within the company needs to cooperate with such a project.
In any case the only half-solution thats probably going to work for you is to pick up a free software USB wireless card. Dell, HP, Lenovo/IBM, and Toshiba are the worst offenders of hardware locking.
And-yes ThinkPenguin sell laptops... without the locks and even without "trusted computing" technology in the CPUs (at least for now- unfortunately its only going to be possible for as long as there are CPUs available without it and replacing x86 is just not a realistic short term goal).
I should probably add if you use libre.thinkpenguin.com Trisquel will get a portion of the profits. 25% to be exact from any purchase.
Like what the others already said, the wifi won't work. But you can easily replace the wifi-card with this one instead from ThinkPenguin.com
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-half-height-mini-pcie-card
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Are you sure?
I'm guessing you didn't read the above about how Dell restricts the wifi card to those it sells and thus it probably won't work. I know at least some Alienware systems (which is a Dell subsidiary) don't have this issue. However at least a decent percentage of newer Dell systems do as we get a significant number of returns from customers who do not read through the product page sufficiently. The USB wifi cards though should still work.
Okay, my apologies, I didn't read all the previous posts. I'm just speaking from my own experience. I recently replaced the wifi card on my Dell Vostro 1220, and it works perfectly. But maybe it won't work on all the Dell laptops.
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:) Yes- that might be. Dell didn't start locking the slot until more recently. New Dell laptops I would discourage people from buying. You don't have to buy from ThinkPenguin (even though I'd encourage that too- as it'll help fix the spots where there is a lack of free software friendly hardware!) but avoiding Dell, Toshiba, HP, and Lenovo would be a wise move for these companies lock the mini pcie slots on at least some (if not all or almost all) units (and/or new units).
Here are some photos of ThinkPenguin's computers, Usbetti:
I would like to say that what Chris said about Dell locking out things is always true. I don't know Dell's policies and I don't know the background of his statement but, I just bought the Penguin Wireless-N card for my Dell Latitude 6430u and it works perfect. Which you can pick up here: (https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-half-height-mini-pcie-card) I just plugged it in and instantly upon booting it was picking up networks.
Dell isn't completely hostile to the open source movement (I know, not free). If I am correct, they actually give you the option of having Ubuntu installed on some systems. They at one time made a big push in that direction as well as having AMD chipsets. So, I wouldn't say they are completely hostile to at least "Open Source" albeit that IS still proprietary software, it's a movement in the right direction...
Aparently the only example for this I have found is this: http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/dell
So their support has dwindled since I last checked aparently.
Anyways, Thanks Chris for making a great product that works. I'm glad to be free with my laptop.
I am a member!
Just to clarify. They don't care about software freedom. They are supporting "Linux" because it is a convenient public relations move. Nothing more. There may be somebody supporting it out of advocation for 'open source' or for other business reasons (scare tactics, better deals with Microsoft, etc). The point is that if they really cared about software freedom they wouldn't ship hardware dependent on non-free software. Even if they ship with distributions that include non-free software there is no need to ship such wifi cards dependent on non-free software.
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