From f6ad38a27871c55eb7e5b2c2a7fd7ff554124f17 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: luxagraf Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2016 09:10:49 -0500 Subject: archived published pieces --- dellxps13-2.html | 37 -------------- dellxps13-2.txt | 73 --------------------------- fedora25.txt | 114 ------------------------------------------ fedora25review.html | 67 ------------------------- published/dellxps13-2.html | 37 ++++++++++++++ published/dellxps13-2.txt | 73 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ published/fedora25.txt | 114 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ published/fedora25review.html | 67 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 8 files changed, 291 insertions(+), 291 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 dellxps13-2.html delete mode 100644 dellxps13-2.txt delete mode 100644 fedora25.txt delete mode 100644 fedora25review.html create mode 100644 published/dellxps13-2.html create mode 100644 published/dellxps13-2.txt create mode 100644 published/fedora25.txt create mode 100644 published/fedora25review.html diff --git a/dellxps13-2.html b/dellxps13-2.html deleted file mode 100644 index 4ad639b..0000000 --- a/dellxps13-2.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,37 +0,0 @@ -

Dell recently updated the company's extremely popular XPS 13 Developer Edition.

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Dell's Linux effort, known as Project Sputnik, is led by developer Barton George, who, along with the rest of the Sputnik team, has done an excellent job of bringing a "just works" Linux experience to Dell Ultrabooks. The XPS 13 Developer Edition has been available for 4 years now and this release marks the 7th version of Dell's Ubuntu powered ultrabook.

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Dell isn't the only manufacturer producing great Linux machines. In fact there's almost an embarrassment of riches for Linux fans these days. System76, whose Oryx Pro remains my top pick for anyone who needs massive power, Purism, ZaReason and others are all producing solid offerings that work with Linux out of the box.

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Even hardware not explicitly made for Linux tends to work out of box these days. I recently installed Fedora on a Sony Vaio and was shocked that the only problem I encountered was that the default trackpad configuration was terribly slow.

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Admittedly, the Vaio is a few years old, which means there's been more time for hardware issues to be addressed. Sometimes getting Linux running on the bleeding edge hardware is still a bit tricky -- or requires running a bleeding edge distro like Arch. That's where efforts like Dell's Project Sputnik come in handy, the hardware is already vetted, the drivers pre-installed and configured for a great out of the box experience.

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It also doesn't hurt that the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is an exceptionally well built, great-looking piece of hardware. If you want your Linux rig to "just work" and be a powerful, svelte little package that weighs under 3lbs, the XPS 13 is the laptop you've been looking for.

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The latest iteration of the XPS 13 line, and the third I've tested, features Intel's new Kaby Lake chip that bumps the clock speed by about 10 percent. The more impressive side of the chipset upgrade is the different graphics architecture which is said to improve performance in 3D graphics and 4K video. The results in this Linux-based model make especially 4K video playback incredibly smooth and not nearly as battery-draining as previous models.

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The Specs

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Outwardly there's nothing new to see here. The 7th generation Dell XPS 13 DE uses the same wonderful InfinityEdge display that manages to pack a 13 in screen into a body that looks and feels more like an 11 inch laptop. The model I tested came with the 3200x1800 IPS touch panel. There's also a version with a 1920x1080 IPS non-touch panel, but I think the higher res display is worth the extra money.

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This is quite simply the best looking display I've seen in a laptop. Naturally the HiDPI model suffers a little in battery life compared to the lower res model. I've never used the lower res version so I can't compare battery life times, but more pixels takes more power, so if battery life is your top priority don't go with the HiDPI model. That said, I find the brightest setting (400 nit brightness) to be a bit much indoors. It's great for working outside and goes a long way to compensate for the inevitable glare on glossy screens, but indoors I rarely push the brightness past 60 percent, which improves battery life considerably.

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The model Dell sent me featured a i7-7500U Kaby Lake chip with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive. As configured the model I tested would set you back $1799. The lowest model, which has the 1920x1080 display, an i5 chip, 128GB SSD and only 8GB of RAM, can be had for $975. For an extra $375 you can step up to the higher res screen and a 256GB SSD. There's also a new option in there for what Dell calls a "Rose Gold" exterior.

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The model I tested had the same full aluminum exterior as previous models. Underneath it there's an aluminum frame as well, which provides a stiffness that makes the XPS line feel very solid even at their minimal weight. As has been my experience with most Dell machines, the construction is excellent. I used the previous model for over six months, shoving it in and out of my bag on several times a day every day and it doesn't have a scratch on it. I can see no reason to think the latest model would be any different.

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Also unchanged in this release are the ports and layout. There are still two USB 3.0 ports, one with PowerShare for charging your devices (note that USB charging generally requires a trip into the BIOS settings to enable, see Dell's support site for more info). There's also a Thunderbolt port that supports charging, a 3-in-1 card reader, DisplayPort 1.2 video output, VGA and HDMI. As with any laptop this thin, Ethernet requires an adapter (sold separately).

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There's the same 720p webcam that has been in the last couple of models, and yes, it's still at the bottom of the lid. And yes, it still sucks that it's down there, though in fairness to Dell, there is nowhere else to put it, the InfinityEdge display comes within 1/8 inch of the edge of the lid. Still, like fellow Ars reviewer Peter Bright, I find this decision irritating: why not just move the display panel down an 1/8 inch and put the camera at the top so it's usable? Or stop pretending that the bottom camera is useful and just ditch the camera altogether.

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The palm rests are made of a carbon fiber composite that I found very comfortable. The keyboard also appears to be the same as previous models. It's a very thin chiclet-style keyboard that works just fine, though coming from the ThinkPad world I still find these keyboards disappointing. More disappointing for some Linux fans, Dell still uses the Windows logo on the super key.

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The touch pad is reportedly the same, though using the testing model next to the previous I felt a noticeable difference with the newer model being somewhat "stickier", which doesn't sound good, but I found my movements were actually more precise with the new trackpad. This was particularly noticeable in Darktable, a photo editing app with some of the tiniest imaginable control elements, which that can be a real pain to adjust, especially on such a HiDPI screen like the one the XPS 13 uses. The problem I experienced previously, where the trackpad would unaccountably freeze at times appears to have been related to something in Ubuntu 14.04, because the new XPS, which comes with Ubuntu 16.04, did nothing of the sort.

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Another common complaint about the XPS 13 is a high pitched coil whine that plagues some models. At least in Reddit threads. In the three models I've used I've never encountered this issue. It's possible that the whine comes from something related to Windows drivers (some people report fixing the problem by reinstalling drivers), though I have seen reports of the whine being present on the Ubuntu-based models as well.

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Performance

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The previous iteration of the XPS 13 DE was plenty fast and the much hyped Kaby Lake should give performance a roughly 10 percent boost overall, though some tasks, particularly things that involve hi-res video, may see an even bigger performance improvement. In terms of everyday tasks like compiling small programs, browsing the web and so on I did not notice a huge difference from the previous release. One things I did notice, however, was that the Unity interface is considerably snappier, though that may well be a combination of hardware and software improvements. Even for more significant tasks, like say compiling the Linux kernel on a regular basis, the previous version seems to be good enough for Linus Torvalds.

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As with previous models the RAM limit is 16GB, which is disappointing but makes sense given the space available inside the very compact chassis. There's only room for one RAM card and so far compatible, low-powered RAM chips at 32GB don't exist. Would it make sense to have a slightly larger profile and ability to go up to 32 or even 64 GB? Sure it would, but for that scenario there's the XPS 15.

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After the Kaby Lake upgrade, The other major improvement is the move from a 56wHR 4 cell battery to a slightly greater capacity 60wHR model. That doesn't sound like much, but Dell now claims an astounding 21 hour battery life for the 1080p version of the XPS 13. That claim was largely borne out in Ars testing of that model, which managed to last for over 18 hours in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test.

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If Linux on laptops has an Achilles heel it's power consumption. Straight out of the box, running stock Ubuntu 16.04 I only managed to get 11 hours of battery life in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. The difference may well be largely attributable to the HiDPI screen, but the good news is that it's possible to get more life of the XPS 13 if you take a dive into the world of laptop-mode-tools. To get started install the package from the Ubuntu repositories. The project has some documentation on how to configure things, but I find the Arch Wiki entry to be more helpful.

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After playing with customizations like disabling Bluetooth and tweaking some of the disk-related parts of laptop-mode-tools, I re-ran the Ars WiFi browsing test and managed to get 13 hours, a score I can only beat with my Lenovo x240, which has a far inferior screen, a larger battery and a second battery, making it a less than fair comparison. Suffice to say, in my experience, the Dell XPS 13 is as good as battery life is going to get with such a hi-res screen in such a small package. It's good enough that in all my time with the XPS models I've tested I have never really had to think about battery life.

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Another change worth noting is the move to "Killer Wireless". Killer is marketing-speak for Qualcomm Atheros cards. There's a bunch of technical upgrades compared to the older Broadcom chips, like much improved throughput and traffic prioritization, which are all good news, but for Linux users the move away from Broadcom more importantly means there are open source Linux drivers that don't suck.

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Ubuntu 16.04

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For a complete rundown of Ubuntu 16.04, see my earlier review. The short story is that I have found Ubuntu 16.04 fairly buggy. Dell does not officially support the just-released Ubuntu 16.10, and given that Dell sticks with LTS releases, it likely never will. Most of Dell's hardware support revolves around a half dozen or so PPAs that come installed and which may or may not work with 16.10. But since this is a review laptop I went for the upgrade to 16.10 and have had no problems in my week of testing. That said, I don't necessarily suggest doing it unless you're comfortable troubleshooting Linux.

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The "developer edition" in the XPS 13 line isn't just a code word for ships with Linux installed, you actually get some tools pre-installed. For example Virtualbox is pre-installed, which means you can get your Vagrant-based development environment set up quickly. Ubuntu isn't always completely up to date with every programming language, but with 16.04 things are reasonable. For example, gcc is at 5.3.1 and most languages are current -- Python is at 2.7, with version 3.5 available via the python3 command. Ruby is not installed by default.

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Other little touches include the more popular-with-developers Chromium browser (and Chrome if you want the bundled Flash player) instead of the Ubuntu default, Firefox. Dell's own devops tools, like "Cloud Launcher" and "Profile Tool," are available on Project Sputnik's Github page as well, though none of them have seen updates in several years.

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In my view though what's more impressive about Dell's developer tools is that it doesn't ship with any massive IDEs or any monolithic tools. If you want those they're in the repos, but out of the box there's nothing to get in your way, just a few nice little additions that save you a few apt-get commands.

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Finally, there's some good news on the horizon for those of us who like the HiDPI screens. For now, my criticisms of Ubuntu in HiDPI environments still stand from the last review. Things have improved a bit in the move to 16.04 (versus 14.04 in the last model), but most of the improvement comes from Ubuntu moving to newer version of GNOME and GTK+ elements. The problems specific to LightDM and Ubuntu's own interface customizations remain in this release, as do problems with any third-party software, for example GIMP.

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All that said, a recent partnership between System76 and Canonical may provide some improvements to the HiDPI situation in Ubuntu (specifically Unity 7, not the great white whale that is Unity 8). Canonical recently released a statement about the improvements, noting that "some patches that improve HiDPI support are in review and they are expected to land in Ubuntu soon." It seems safe to assume -- judging by the new emphasis on HiDPI bugs in Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker -- that many of these fixes will land in 17.04. There's one bug in particular that you'll see if you buy the XPS 13 DE, during the setup process there will be two header bars across the screen. It doesn't affect anything and it goes away once you get done with the setup, but it's a disconcerting way to start out with a brand new machine that supposedly supports Ubuntu.

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While these are welcome improvements, they don't help outside applications like GIMP or Virtualbox. The latter will work with HiDPI screens, but it sometimes takes considerable work to get the guest OS looking good. There are in other words, workarounds for most the HiDPI problems you're likely to encounter, but be aware that HiDPI on Ubuntu, even with Dell tweaking things for you, is far from a "just works" experience right now.

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I should probably note here as well that I did install and test both Fedora 25 and Arch on the new hardware and had no problems in either case. For Fedora I went with the default GNOME 3.22 desktop, which, frankly, it's what I think Dell should ship out of the box. It's got far better HiDPI support than Ubuntu and the developer tools available through Fedora are considerably more robust than most of what you'll find in Ubuntu's repos.

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Conclusion

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The XPS Developer Edition has developed a strong following over the years and the big question for many fans will be, is this worth the upgrade? If you've got the previous release I would say probably not. If you do a lot of video editing (what kind of developer are you?) or want it to do double duty as a gaming machine then you might see some benefit to the upgrade, but that's a lot of money for not much gain.

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If you've got an XPS 13 from further back, say the first InfinityEdge version with a Haswell chip then the upgrade becomes more appealing. The gains in battery life, coupled with performance improvements make a much more convincing case for the upgrade.

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If you're new to the idea of buying hardware specifically tailored to Linux and you're wondering why you should, the answer is more complicated. The XPS 13 DE is a fantastic machine, web cam aside, regardless of what OS it's running. But it's an especially fantastic machine for anyone who's tired of wrestling with their hardware just to get their OS of choice set up. If you want a machine that's stylish, reasonably powerful, light in your bag and runs Linux without a hitch the Dell XPS 13 DE continues to make a great choice.

diff --git a/dellxps13-2.txt b/dellxps13-2.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9fca4c3..0000000 --- a/dellxps13-2.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,73 +0,0 @@ -Dell recently updated the company's extremely popular XPS 13 Developer Edition. - -Dell's Linux effort, known as Project Sputnik, is led by developer Barton George, who, along with the rest of the Sputnik team, has done an excellent job of bringing a "just works" Linux experience to Dell Ultrabooks. The XPS 13 Developer Edition has been available for 4 years now and this release marks the 7th version of Dell's Ubuntu powered ultrabook. - -Dell isn't the only manufacturer producing great Linux machines. In fact there's almost an embarrassment of riches for Linux fans these days. System76, whose [Oryx Pro](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/system76-oryx-pro-review-linux-in-a-laptop-has-never-been-better/) remains my top pick for anyone who needs massive power, Purism, ZaReason and others are all producing solid offerings that work with Linux out of the box. - -Even hardware not explicitly made for Linux tends to work out of box these days. I recently installed Fedora on a Sony Vaio and was shocked that the only problem I encountered was that the default trackpad configuration was terribly slow. - -Admittedly, the Vaio is a few years old, which means there's been more time for hardware issues to be addressed. Sometimes getting Linux running on the bleeding edge hardware is still a bit tricky -- or requires running a bleeding edge distro like Arch. That's where efforts like Dell's Project Sputnik come in handy, the hardware is already vetted, the drivers pre-installed and configured for a great out of the box experience. - -It also doesn't hurt that the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is an exceptionally well built, great-looking piece of hardware. If you want your Linux rig to "just work" *and* be a powerful, svelte little package that weighs under 3lbs, the XPS 13 is the laptop you've been looking for. - -The latest iteration of the XPS 13 line, and the third I've tested, features Intel's new Kaby Lake chip that bumps the clock speed by about 10 percent. The more impressive side of the chipset upgrade is the different graphics architecture which is said to improve performance in 3D graphics and 4K video. The results in this Linux-based model make especially 4K video playback incredibly smooth and not nearly as battery-draining as previous models. - -## The Specs - -Outwardly there's nothing new to see here. The 7th generation Dell XPS 13 DE uses the same wonderful InfinityEdge display that manages to pack a 13 in screen into a body that looks and feels more like an 11 inch laptop. The model I tested came with the 3200x1800 IPS touch panel. There's also a version with a 1920x1080 IPS non-touch panel, but I think the higher res display is worth the extra money. - -This is quite simply the best looking display I've seen in a laptop. Naturally the HiDPI model suffers a little in battery life compared to the lower res model. I've never used the lower res version so I can't compare battery life times, but more pixels takes more power, so if battery life is your top priority don't go with the HiDPI model. That said, I find the brightest setting (400 nit brightness) to be a bit much indoors. It's great for working outside and goes a long way to compensate for the inevitable glare on glossy screens, but indoors I rarely push the brightness past 60 percent, which improves battery life considerably. - -The model Dell sent me featured a i7-7500U Kaby Lake chip with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive. As configured the model I tested would set you back $1799. The lowest model, which has the 1920x1080 display, an i5 chip, 128GB SSD and only 8GB of RAM, can be had for $975. For an extra $375 you can step up to the higher res screen and a 256GB SSD. There's also a new option in there for what Dell calls a "Rose Gold" exterior. - -The model I tested had the same full aluminum exterior as previous models. Underneath it there's an aluminum frame as well, which provides a stiffness that makes the XPS line feel very solid even at their minimal weight. As has been my experience with most Dell machines, the construction is excellent. I used the previous model for over six months, shoving it in and out of my bag on several times a day every day and it doesn't have a scratch on it. I can see no reason to think the latest model would be any different. - -Also unchanged in this release are the ports and layout. There are still two USB 3.0 ports, one with PowerShare for charging your devices (note that USB charging generally requires a trip into the BIOS settings to enable, see [Dell's support site](http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN155147/EN) for more info). There's also a Thunderbolt port that supports charging, a 3-in-1 card reader, DisplayPort 1.2 video output, VGA and HDMI. As with any laptop this thin, Ethernet requires an adapter (sold separately). - -There's the same 720p webcam that has been in the last couple of models, and yes, it's still at the bottom of the lid. And yes, it still sucks that it's down there, though in fairness to Dell, there is nowhere else to put it, the InfinityEdge display comes within 1/8 inch of the edge of the lid. Still, like fellow Ars reviewer Peter Bright, I find [this decision irritating](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/review-dells-kaby-lake-xps-13-isnt-quite-good-enough-to-keep-its-crown/): why not just move the display panel down an 1/8 inch and put the camera at the top so it's usable? Or stop pretending that the bottom camera is useful and just ditch the camera altogether. - -The palm rests are made of a carbon fiber composite that I found very comfortable. The keyboard also appears to be the same as previous models. It's a very thin chiclet-style keyboard that works just fine, though coming from the ThinkPad world I still find these keyboards disappointing. More disappointing for some Linux fans, Dell still uses the Windows logo on the super key. - -The touch pad is reportedly the same, though using the testing model next to the previous I felt a noticeable difference with the newer model being somewhat "stickier", which doesn't sound good, but I found my movements were actually more precise with the new trackpad. This was particularly noticeable in Darktable, a photo editing app with some of the tiniest imaginable control elements, which that can be a real pain to adjust, especially on such a HiDPI screen like the one the XPS 13 uses. The problem I experienced previously, where the trackpad would unaccountably freeze at times appears to have been related to something in Ubuntu 14.04, because the new XPS, which comes with Ubuntu 16.04, did nothing of the sort. - -Another common complaint about the XPS 13 is a high pitched coil whine that plagues some models. At least in Reddit threads. In the three models I've used I've never encountered this issue. It's possible that the whine comes from something related to Windows drivers (some people report fixing the problem by reinstalling drivers), though I have seen reports of the whine being present on the Ubuntu-based models as well. - -## Performance - -The previous iteration of the XPS 13 DE was plenty fast and the much hyped Kaby Lake should give performance a roughly 10 percent boost overall, though some tasks, particularly things that involve hi-res video, may see an even bigger performance improvement. In terms of everyday tasks like compiling small programs, browsing the web and so on I did not notice a huge difference from the previous release. One things I did notice, however, was that the Unity interface is considerably snappier, though that may well be a combination of hardware and software improvements. Even for more significant tasks, like say compiling the Linux kernel on a regular basis, the previous version seems to be good enough for Linus Torvalds. - -As with previous models the RAM limit is 16GB, which is disappointing but makes sense given the space available inside the very compact chassis. There's only room for one RAM card and so far compatible, low-powered RAM chips at 32GB don't exist. Would it make sense to have a slightly larger profile and ability to go up to 32 or even 64 GB? Sure it would, but for that scenario there's the XPS 15. - -After the Kaby Lake upgrade, The other major improvement is the move from a 56wHR 4 cell battery to a slightly greater capacity 60wHR model. That doesn't sound like much, but Dell now claims an astounding 21 hour battery life for the 1080p version of the XPS 13. That claim was largely borne out in Ars testing of that model, which managed to last for over 18 hours in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. - -If Linux on laptops has an Achilles heel it's power consumption. Straight out of the box, running stock Ubuntu 16.04 I only managed to get 11 hours of battery life in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. The difference may well be largely attributable to the HiDPI screen, but the good news is that it's possible to get more life of the XPS 13 if you take a dive into the world of laptop-mode-tools. To get started install the package from the Ubuntu repositories. The project has some documentation on how to configure things, but I find the Arch Wiki entry to be more helpful. - -After playing with customizations like disabling Bluetooth and tweaking some of the disk-related parts of laptop-mode-tools, I re-ran the Ars WiFi browsing test and managed to get 13 hours, a score I can only beat with my Lenovo x240, which has a far inferior screen, a larger battery and a second battery, making it a less than fair comparison. Suffice to say, in my experience, the Dell XPS 13 is as good as battery life is going to get with such a hi-res screen in such a small package. It's good enough that in all my time with the XPS models I've tested I have never really had to think about battery life. - -Another change worth noting is the move to "Killer Wireless". Killer is marketing-speak for Qualcomm Atheros cards. There's a bunch of technical upgrades compared to the older Broadcom chips, like much improved throughput and traffic prioritization, which are all good news, but for Linux users the move away from Broadcom more importantly means there are open source Linux drivers that don't suck. - -## Ubuntu 16.04 - -For a complete rundown of Ubuntu 16.04, see my earlier review. The short story is that I have found Ubuntu 16.04 fairly buggy. Dell does not officially support the just-released Ubuntu 16.10, and given that Dell sticks with LTS releases, it likely never will. Most of Dell's hardware support revolves around a half dozen or so PPAs that come installed and which may or may not work with 16.10. But since this is a review laptop I went for the upgrade to 16.10 and have had no problems in my week of testing. That said, I don't necessarily suggest doing it unless you're comfortable troubleshooting Linux. - -The "developer edition" in the XPS 13 line isn't just a code word for ships with Linux installed, you actually get some tools pre-installed. For example Virtualbox is pre-installed, which means you can get your Vagrant-based development environment set up quickly. Ubuntu isn't always completely up to date with every programming language, but with 16.04 things are reasonable. For example, gcc is at 5.3.1 and most languages are current -- Python is at 2.7, with version 3.5 available via the python3 command. Ruby is not installed by default. - -Other little touches include the more popular-with-developers Chromium browser (and Chrome if you want the bundled Flash player) instead of the Ubuntu default, Firefox. Dell's own devops tools, like "Cloud Launcher" and "Profile Tool," are available on Project Sputnik's Github page as well, though none of them have seen updates in several years. - -In my view though what's more impressive about Dell's developer tools is that it doesn't ship with any massive IDEs or any monolithic tools. If you want those they're in the repos, but out of the box there's nothing to get in your way, just a few nice little additions that save you a few apt-get commands. - -Finally, there's some good news on the horizon for those of us who like the HiDPI screens. For now, my criticisms of Ubuntu in HiDPI environments still stand from the last review. Things have improved a bit in the move to 16.04 (versus 14.04 in the last model), but most of the improvement comes from Ubuntu moving to newer version of GNOME and GTK+ elements. The problems specific to LightDM and Ubuntu's own interface customizations remain in this release, as do problems with any third-party software, for example GIMP. - -All that said, a recent partnership between System76 and Canonical may provide some improvements to the HiDPI situation in Ubuntu (specifically Unity 7, not the great white whale that is Unity 8). Canonical recently released a statement about the improvements, noting that "some patches that improve HiDPI support are in review and they are expected to land in Ubuntu soon." It seems safe to assume -- judging by the new emphasis on HiDPI bugs in Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker -- that many of these fixes will land in 17.04. There's one bug in particular that you'll see if you buy the XPS 13 DE, during the setup process there will be [two header bars](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1622686) across the screen. It doesn't affect anything and it goes away once you get done with the setup, but it's a disconcerting way to start out with a brand new machine that supposedly supports Ubuntu. - -While these are welcome improvements, they don't help outside applications like GIMP or Virtualbox. The latter will work with HiDPI screens, but it sometimes takes considerable work to get the guest OS looking good. There are in other words, workarounds for most the HiDPI problems you're likely to encounter, but be aware that HiDPI on Ubuntu, even with Dell tweaking things for you, is far from a "just works" experience right now. - -I should probably note here as well that I did install and test both Fedora 25 and Arch on the new hardware and had no problems in either case. For Fedora I went with the default GNOME 3.22 desktop, which, frankly, it's what I think Dell should ship out of the box. It's got far better HiDPI support than Ubuntu and the developer tools available through Fedora are considerably more robust than most of what you'll find in Ubuntu's repos. - -## Conclusion - -The XPS Developer Edition has developed a strong following over the years and the big question for many fans will be, is this worth the upgrade? If you've got the previous release I would say probably not. If you do a lot of video editing (what kind of developer are you?) or want it to do double duty as a gaming machine then you might see some benefit to the upgrade, but that's a lot of money for not much gain. - -If you've got an XPS 13 from further back, say the first InfinityEdge version with a Haswell chip then the upgrade becomes more appealing. The gains in battery life, coupled with performance improvements make a much more convincing case for the upgrade. - -If you're new to the idea of buying hardware specifically tailored to Linux and you're wondering why you should, the answer is more complicated. The XPS 13 DE is a fantastic machine, web cam aside, regardless of what OS it's running. But it's an especially fantastic machine for anyone who's tired of wrestling with their hardware just to get their OS of choice set up. If you want a machine that's stylish, reasonably powerful, light in your bag and runs Linux without a hitch the Dell XPS 13 DE continues to make a great choice. diff --git a/fedora25.txt b/fedora25.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7a2353c..0000000 --- a/fedora25.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,114 +0,0 @@ -The Fedora project has released Fedora 25, a major update for the Linux distribution. - -For the past several releases Fedora has been pursuing what it calls Fedora Next. Essentially Fedora Next took a step back and looked at how Fedora is used and came up with editions specifically tailored to those use cases. The most notable of these are Fedora WorkStation and Fedora Server, which are the desktop/laptop and server versions respectively. - -Previous Fedora releases also had a "cloud" edition, but that's now been replaced by Fedora Atomic. Fedora Cloud, aside from having a meaningless name, didn't quite pan out. Since "cloud" is just a word for "someone else's server", it doesn't make much sense to release a "cloud" distro. - -What does make sense is to package up a version of Fedora specifically tailored for running container-based systems that uses a stable base system and the latest and greatest package. Using it is a bit like checking Fedora out from a Git repo. More on that in a minute. - -Interesting as Fedora Atomic is, much of the headlining news in Fedora 25 is in the WorkStation edition and can be summed up in a single word: Wayland. - -Yes, after being pushed back from release after release, Fedora 25 defaults to using Wayland (assuming you have a supported graphics card). This is perhaps the biggest change to come in the Linux world since the move to systemd, but unlike systemd the switch to Wayland was so seamless I had to logout and double check that I was in fact using Wayland. - -I called Fedora 24, released earlier this year, "the year’s best Linux distro" but one that I would have a hard time recommending thanks to some ugly kernel-related bugs. Well, Fedora 25 is here with an updated kernel, the bugs appear to be gone and I have no problem recommending it. Not only is Fedora 25 a great release, the updated GNOME 3.22 running on top of Wayland is slick and very stable in my testing. - -## Wayland, New Kernel, and Updates - -The biggest change in this release is undoubtedly the move to Wayland as the default, erm, protocol, replacing the venerable X Server. Wayland's goal is to be easier to develop and maintain and, to a lesser degree, to get rid of the X's confusing clutter of accumulated bits that have been bolted on over the years. - -Wayland is not, strictly speaking, a display server like X. Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk through. To make things more confusing the compositor can be a Wayland client itself. It could also be an X application, some input device or a standalone display server. Wayland doesn't actually do much and that's by design. As the Wayland FAQ puts it, "the compositor sends input events to the clients. The clients render locally and then communicate video memory buffers and information about updates to those buffers back to the compositor." - -[image="fedora25-desktop.jpg" caption="The stock Fedora 25 desktop with GNOME 3.22"] - -What's perhaps most remarkable for a change that's so low-level, and in fact one that's taking a lot of X functionality and moving lower down into the stack, is how unlikely you are to notice it. In my experience so far -- about two weeks of use as I write this -- the transition to Wayland has been totally transparent. Even better, GNOME 3.22 feels considerably smoother with Wayland. It's difficult to describe without seeing it, but little moments of tearing that used to happen under X are gone and common tasks like dragging windows are much smoother. - -To be clear there are still plenty of things that don't work with Wayland. In fact there likely will always be legacy system elements that don't know what to make of Wayland and will never be updated. For that situation there's XWayland, which is a plugin for Wayland compositors that runs a real X server inside Wayland. XWayland is a big part of why you're unlikely to notice the move to Wayland. - -There are also some things to bear in mind about using Wayland with GNOME, more than a few GNOME hacks won't work anymore. For example desktop icons, which aren't really a GNOME 3.x thing, though you could use Gnome Tweak Tools if you can get them, are not supported in Wayland and never will be. I've also been unable to find a clipboard manager that works properly under Wayland. - -The other problem I've run into is that neither of the tint-shifting applications I use work with Wayland. Neither f.lux nor redshift do anything when running under Wayland. Judging by posts from around the web, video playback is sometimes an issue too, though I have not actually experienced this problem. In terms of hardware support and Wayland, I would definitely suggest sticking with kernel 4.8.x or newer, which is exactly what Fedora 25 ships with. - -The other major gripe I have with Wayland is that it doesn't appear to support fractional scaling for HiDPI screens. It works great at 2X, which covers most screens, but there are those where 1X is too small, but 2X is too much. If you have a screen that works best at 1.5X, you might want to stick with X for now. - -Those are, however, relatively minor issues. The biggest caveat to all the good news in Wayland is that Nvidia's proprietary driver does not support Wayland. The open source Nouveau drivers do, but those drivers can be a noticeable step down depending on your system and what you're trying to do. In my experience the Nouveau drivers are also a little buggy, though to be clear I haven't tested them with Wayland. - -Along with Wayland Fedora 25 brings Linux kernel 4.8.6, which means any lingering [Skylake bugs](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1353103) should be fixed. I tested Fedora 25 on the [Dell XPS 13](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell-continues-to-build-a-reliable-linux-lineage/) I reviewed earlier for Ars and found Fedora 25 worked flawlessly. - -I should also note that for the first time I was able to update from Fedora 24 to 25 using the GNOME Software system upgrade tool without any issues at all. That's a first for me in over ten years of using Fedora (to be fair most of that time I didn't even try because it was flat out hopeless) and goes a long way to making Fedora a distro that's friendly to less sophisticated users. - -In the past updating Fedora meant you'd need a few days to troubleshoot all the things that broke. It was a pain point that the project has been aware of and working on for some time. The nicely named FedUp tool arrived around Fedora 23, which helped some. Then the dnf upgrade tools came along in Fedora 24 and now there's a completely graphical upgrade path via GNOME software and perhaps most surprising, it just works. - -The only caveat I would add is that, like I imagine many Linux users do, I maintain an install of Fedora primarily to get a rough idea of what's coming in future CentOS releases. Which is to say that while Fedora gets a partition on my drive, I have not heavily customized it and don't have a ton of RPM Fusion repos installed, which could make for more problematic updates. Still, judging by comments sections, forums and posts around the web, my experience is not uncommon for the move from Fedora 24 to Fedora 25. That's not to say you're guaranteed a smooth upgrade though. The real problem for most people seems to be with conflicting dependencies, often related to packages installed via RPM Fusion or other less-than-official repositories. - -My long standing criticism of Fedora is that major updates come too frequently for how terrible the updating process has been historically. Now that that seems to be changing and updates are smooth (and even have a nice GUI via GNOME Software) Fedora could start to find a wider audience. - -## The Little Things - -Fedora 25 has plenty of other little changes beyond the move to Wayland by default. For example, shocking as it sounds, Fedora 25 ships with MP3 support straight out of the box. Look for a lot of distros to start doing this since in the United States the patents covering the MP3 codecs expired earlier this year.There's no encoding support yet, which could be related to fact that two of the patents are still valid until April of next year, but it's a start. - -In a bid to make Fedora a bit easier for newcomers to try out, Fedora 25 ships with a revamped Fedora Media Writer in the repos (curiously, it's not installed by default). Media Writer gives you a nice GUI to grab the latest Fedora release (or any of the official spins) and write it to a USB stick. It's a step up from the more simplistic tools in previous versions. I actually tried to use Media Writer back in Fedora 24 and it wrote to the wrong USB stick. Fortunately I didn't have anything of value on that stick and to this day I'm not 100% sure it was Media Writer's fault and not user error, but in either case I was leery of testing it again. This time, to be extra safe I made sure that my thumb drive was the only drive plugged in and it worked as advertised, grabbing the MATE spin and burning it to disk with a mere two clicks. - -[image="fedora25-live-writer.jpg" caption="Fedora's Media Writer is a very slick and easy way to get a bootable USB stick with Fedora (or any other distro) in couple of clicks."] - -Fedora used to position itself as the distro for developers. This meant in part that Fedora was looking for users who would contribute back to the community, but it also meant that Fedora shipped the latest stable version of most programming languages and was quick to adopt new ones. This release follows in that tradition; developers can look forward to a version bump for PHP (to version 7.0), Node JS to 6.5, Ruby on Rails 5.0, and new support for the Rust language with a Rust Compiler (Cargo) installed by default. - -## GNOME 3.22 - -GNOME 3.22 arrived a bit ahead of Fedora 25, but Fedora remains the single best showcase for the GNOME desktop and, with Wayland under the hood, this is doubly true for Fedora 25. You'd be hard pressed to find a slicker, more polished looking desktop than GNOME 3.22 running on Wayland in Fedora 25. - -GNOME 3.20 made Wayland perfectly usable, though the GNOME team reports that 3.22 is "even more polished", with support for display rotation and Wacom tablets, among other things. - -Perhaps the best news for GNOME fans in this release is that GNOME 3.22 has reached a new development stability plateau. This means, for example, that GNOME shell's extension API is now considered stable, which in turn means that any shell extension you rely on will continue to work as-is when you update. Yes it's come to this: GNOME 3.22's headlining feature is that the tools you rely on to turn GNOME into a workable desktop no longer break with every new release. - -It's not entirely fair to make fun of GNOME 3's previous ever-shifting updates, it has been a perfectly usable desktop for several year's worth of releases now. Perhaps not a good choice for those who like to configure and tweak every setting, but workable nonetheless. - -[image="fedora25-software.jpg" caption="GNOME's Software app has seen a slight redesign and now offers a little more info about Flatpak apps. Still odd that it wastes a featured app spotlight on a web browser that's installed by default anyway."] - -This release also brings improved support for Flatpak apps in GNOME Software. Flatpak apps are designed to improve the software installation process in GNOME and Linux in general by making it easier for developers to package, and users to install, software across distributions. With Flatpaks you don't need to worry about dependency conflicts or even if your distro of choice has the app you want. Flatpaks also offer improved security and stability by sandboxing applications. - -With GNOME 3.22 you can add Flatpak repos, and then browse and install apps from those repos without ever needing to drop into the command line. The Software app also now shows a bit more information about Flatpak apps -- like source information and the sandboxing status. - -GNOME's Nautilus File Manager, nee Files, also gets some attention in this release, including a new tool for bulk renaming files. Just select the files you'd like to rename and then you can apply bulk renaming features, like adding a prefix, suffix or even using a completely custom template. - -[image="fedora25-files-rename.jpg" caption="The new file renaming dialog in GNOME 3.22 Files app (right click a selection or press F2)."] - -There's also a new integrated file compression utility that means you can now double click a .zip file and it just extracts the contents to a folder without opening File Roller. That should make working with compressed files much more familiar for mac and windows users making the switch to GNOME. - -[image="fedora25-files-compress.jpg" caption="Creating archives via the new compress feature in Files. Just right-click your selected files and chose 'compress'."] - -Also worth mentioning, GNOME Maps has been fixed and now uses Mapbox map tiles. - -## Fedora Spins - -While GNOME has long been Fedora's flagship desktop (and Fedora serves as GNOME's showcase distro), it's far from the only option. The Fedora installer offers up all the usual suspects like KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, and more. There are also tailored spins for most of the major desktops. - -The notable Spin for Fedora 25 is the MATE Compiz Spin, which bundles MATE Desktop with Compiz Fusion, and brings a lot more GTK+ 3 to MATE in this release. That makes for an overall more polished MATE and means that if you've ever had problems getting MATE to look good on HiDPI screens, you might want to try again because MATE 1.16 works quite well. - -Other spins like KDE, XFCE and Cinnamon have significant upgrades with Fedora 25. The Fedora Spins site has [full details](https://spins.fedoraproject.org/) and release notes for each. - - -## Fedora Next Next - -Not to be confused with Spins, Fedora Next, Fedora's reorganization that began several releases ago, consists of three "editions". As mentioned above, Fedora has rearranged the components of Fedora Next. Fedora Cloud has taken a backseat in the Fedora Next roster; Fedora Atomic edition is the replacement. The Cloud Base image continues to be available for those who'd like to build on a more traditional rpm-based foundation, but the future is looking like Atomic. - -Unless you've been living under a rock you know the new hotness in Linux server deployment is containers, and containerization is the whole point of Atomic. - -Fedora Atomic takes the Fedora 25 base and functions a bit like Git -- you check out a particular point and that's your OS. Updates come every two weeks, which makes it sort of a rolling distro with snapshots (major releases come every six months). Fedora also notes that Atomic can be run as a desktop if you'd like something lightweight and highly reconfigurable, or presumably, if your love of containers runs that deep. - -To go along with Fedora Atomic's move into the limelight, the Fedora Project has been hard at work on the other end of the container equation with expanded Docker support and a very cool looking tool that simplifies the process of building out images from the base using RPM-like tools. So the workflow becomes Fedora Atomic for your base, checked out identically across all your machines and then the expanded docker support gets your containerized apps installed and running. - -The other major edition in the Fedora Next triumvirate, Fedora Server, does not have a ton of new stuff in this release -- for that you'll have to wait for Fedora 26, which will be an experimental release that ships with a lot more apps already in containers. - -There is one thing worth mentioning here though, namely the new SELinux management tool that's part of the updated Fedora Cockpit suite of server management tools. The SELinux Troubleshooter module is, frankly, the first thing I've ever used that didn't leaving me bashing my head into my keyboard after five minutes of working with SELinux. The standout feature is simple, when SELinux encounters a denial, Cockpit lets you know. - -The SELinux Troubleshooter does take a lot of sysadmin voodoo out of SELinux though, even I can sort of figure it out now. If your job depends on the befuddlement mere mortals get when trying to use SELinux, don't update Cockpit to Fedora 25. - -## Conclusion - -Fedora 24 was very close to my favorite distro of the year and with Fedora 25 I think it's safe to say that the Fedora Project has finally nailed it. I still run a very minimal Arch install (with Openbox) on my main machine, but everywhere else -- family and friends who want to upgrade, clients looking for a stable system and so on -- I've been recommending Fedora 25. - -That said, Wayland is new and there are bugs out there in addition to the less-than-complete application support mentioned here. Just because I haven't run into any show stopping bugs in my month or so of testing, doesn't mean they aren't there so do proceed with caution. I strongly recommend researching your specific hardware to see what other people have experienced. - -The only remaining problem I have with Fedora is the release cycle, however, with the upgrade situation much better than it used to be, hopefully upgrading won't be the pain it once was in Fedora land. - -In general though, I have no qualms recommending both Fedora and Wayland, provided you have the hardware that works with the latter. diff --git a/fedora25review.html b/fedora25review.html deleted file mode 100644 index c8926f4..0000000 --- a/fedora25review.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,67 +0,0 @@ -

The Fedora project has released Fedora 25, a major update for the Linux distribution.

-

For the past several releases Fedora has been pursuing what it calls Fedora Next. Essentially Fedora Next took a step back and looked at how Fedora is used and came up with editions specifically tailored to those use cases. The most notable of these are Fedora WorkStation and Fedora Server, which are the desktop/laptop and server versions respectively.

-

Previous Fedora releases also had a "cloud" edition, but that's now been replaced by Fedora Atomic. Fedora Cloud, aside from having a meaningless name, didn't quite pan out. Since "cloud" is just a word for "someone else's server", it doesn't make much sense to release a "cloud" distro.

-

What does make sense is to package up a version of Fedora specifically tailored for running container-based systems that uses a stable base system and the latest and greatest package. Using it is a bit like checking Fedora out from a Git repo. More on that in a minute.

-

Interesting as Fedora Atomic is, much of the headlining news in Fedora 25 is in the WorkStation edition and can be summed up in a single word: Wayland.

-

Yes, after being pushed back from release after release, Fedora 25 defaults to using Wayland (assuming you have a supported graphics card). This is perhaps the biggest change to come in the Linux world since the move to systemd, but unlike systemd the switch to Wayland was so seamless I had to logout and double check that I was in fact using Wayland.

-

I called Fedora 24, released earlier this year, "the year’s best Linux distro" but one that I would have a hard time recommending thanks to some ugly kernel-related bugs. Well, Fedora 25 is here with an updated kernel, the bugs appear to be gone and I have no problem recommending it. Not only is Fedora 25 a great release, the updated GNOME 3.22 running on top of Wayland is slick and very stable in my testing.

-

Wayland, New Kernel, and Updates

-

The biggest change in this release is undoubtedly the move to Wayland as the default, erm, protocol, replacing the venerable X Server. Wayland's goal is to be easier to develop and maintain and, to a lesser degree, to get rid of the X's confusing clutter of accumulated bits that have been bolted on over the years.

-

Wayland is not, strictly speaking, a display server like X. Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk through. To make things more confusing the compositor can be a Wayland client itself. It could also be an X application, some input device or a standalone display server. Wayland doesn't actually do much and that's by design. As the Wayland FAQ puts it, "the compositor sends input events to the clients. The clients render locally and then communicate video memory buffers and information about updates to those buffers back to the compositor."

- -[image"fedora25-desktop.jpg" caption"The stock Fedora 25 desktop with GNOME 3.22"] - -

What's perhaps most remarkable for a change that's so low-level, and in fact one that's taking a lot of X functionality and moving lower down into the stack, is how unlikely you are to notice it. In my experience so far -- about two weeks of use as I write this -- the transition to Wayland has been totally transparent. Even better, GNOME 3.22 feels considerably smoother with Wayland. It's difficult to describe without seeing it, but little moments of tearing that used to happen under X are gone and common tasks like dragging windows are much smoother.

-

To be clear there are still plenty of things that don't work with Wayland. In fact there likely will always be legacy system elements that don't know what to make of Wayland and will never be updated. For that situation there's XWayland, which is a plugin for Wayland compositors that runs a real X server inside Wayland. XWayland is a big part of why you're unlikely to notice the move to Wayland.

-

There are also some things to bear in mind about using Wayland with GNOME, more than a few GNOME hacks won't work anymore. For example desktop icons, which aren't really a GNOME 3.x thing, though you could use Gnome Tweak Tools if you can get them, are not supported in Wayland and never will be. I've also been unable to find a clipboard manager that works properly under Wayland.

-

The other problem I've run into is that neither of the tint-shifting applications I use work with Wayland. Neither f.lux nor redshift do anything when running under Wayland. Judging by posts from around the web, video playback is sometimes an issue too, though I have not actually experienced this problem. In terms of hardware support and Wayland, I would definitely suggest sticking with kernel 4.8.x or newer, which is exactly what Fedora 25 ships with.

-

The other major gripe I have with Wayland is that it doesn't appear to support fractional scaling for HiDPI screens. It works great at 2X, which covers most screens, but there are those where 1X is too small, but 2X is too much. If you have a screen that works best at 1.5X, you might want to stick with X for now.

-

Those are, however, relatively minor issues. The biggest caveat to all the good news in Wayland is that Nvidia's proprietary driver does not support Wayland. The open source Nouveau drivers do, but those drivers can be a noticeable step down depending on your system and what you're trying to do. In my experience the Nouveau drivers are also a little buggy, though to be clear I haven't tested them with Wayland.

-

Along with Wayland Fedora 25 brings Linux kernel 4.8.6, which means any lingering Skylake bugs should be fixed. I tested Fedora 25 on the Dell XPS 13 I reviewed earlier for Ars and found Fedora 25 worked flawlessly.

-

I should also note that for the first time I was able to update from Fedora 24 to 25 using the GNOME Software system upgrade tool without any issues at all. That's a first for me in over ten years of using Fedora (to be fair most of that time I didn't even try because it was flat out hopeless) and goes a long way to making Fedora a distro that's friendly to less sophisticated users.

-

In the past updating Fedora meant you'd need a few days to troubleshoot all the things that broke. It was a pain point that the project has been aware of and working on for some time. The nicely named FedUp tool arrived around Fedora 23, which helped some. Then the dnf upgrade tools came along in Fedora 24 and now there's a completely graphical upgrade path via GNOME software and perhaps most surprising, it just works.

-

The only caveat I would add is that, like I imagine many Linux users do, I maintain an install of Fedora primarily to get a rough idea of what's coming in future CentOS releases. Which is to say that while Fedora gets a partition on my drive, I have not heavily customized it and don't have a ton of RPM Fusion repos installed, which could make for more problematic updates. Still, judging by comments sections, forums and posts around the web, my experience is not uncommon for the move from Fedora 24 to Fedora 25. That's not to say you're guaranteed a smooth upgrade though. The real problem for most people seems to be with conflicting dependencies, often related to packages installed via RPM Fusion or other less-than-official repositories.

-

My long standing criticism of Fedora is that major updates come too frequently for how terrible the updating process has been historically. Now that that seems to be changing and updates are smooth (and even have a nice GUI via GNOME Software) Fedora could start to find a wider audience.

-

The Little Things

-

Fedora 25 has plenty of other little changes beyond the move to Wayland by default. For example, shocking as it sounds, Fedora 25 ships with MP3 support straight out of the box. Look for a lot of distros to start doing this since in the United States the patents covering the MP3 codecs expired earlier this year.There's no encoding support yet, which could be related to fact that two of the patents are still valid until April of next year, but it's a start.

-

In a bid to make Fedora a bit easier for newcomers to try out, Fedora 25 ships with a revamped Fedora Media Writer in the repos (curiously, it's not installed by default). Media Writer gives you a nice GUI to grab the latest Fedora release (or any of the official spins) and write it to a USB stick. It's a step up from the more simplistic tools in previous versions. I actually tried to use Media Writer back in Fedora 24 and it wrote to the wrong USB stick. Fortunately I didn't have anything of value on that stick and to this day I'm not 100% sure it was Media Writer's fault and not user error, but in either case I was leery of testing it again. This time, to be extra safe I made sure that my thumb drive was the only drive plugged in and it worked as advertised, grabbing the MATE spin and burning it to disk with a mere two clicks.

- -[image"fedora25-live-writer.jpg" caption"Fedora's Media Writer is a very slick and easy way to get a bootable USB stick with Fedora (or any other distro) in couple of clicks."] - -

Fedora used to position itself as the distro for developers. This meant in part that Fedora was looking for users who would contribute back to the community, but it also meant that Fedora shipped the latest stable version of most programming languages and was quick to adopt new ones. This release follows in that tradition; developers can look forward to a version bump for PHP (to version 7.0), Node JS to 6.5, Ruby on Rails 5.0, and new support for the Rust language with a Rust Compiler (Cargo) installed by default.

-

GNOME 3.22

-

GNOME 3.22 arrived a bit ahead of Fedora 25, but Fedora remains the single best showcase for the GNOME desktop and, with Wayland under the hood, this is doubly true for Fedora 25. You'd be hard pressed to find a slicker, more polished looking desktop than GNOME 3.22 running on Wayland in Fedora 25.

-

GNOME 3.20 made Wayland perfectly usable, though the GNOME team reports that 3.22 is "even more polished", with support for display rotation and Wacom tablets, among other things.

-

Perhaps the best news for GNOME fans in this release is that GNOME 3.22 has reached a new development stability plateau. This means, for example, that GNOME shell's extension API is now considered stable, which in turn means that any shell extension you rely on will continue to work as-is when you update. Yes it's come to this: GNOME 3.22's headlining feature is that the tools you rely on to turn GNOME into a workable desktop no longer break with every new release.

-

It's not entirely fair to make fun of GNOME 3's previous ever-shifting updates, it has been a perfectly usable desktop for several year's worth of releases now. Perhaps not a good choice for those who like to configure and tweak every setting, but workable nonetheless.

- -[image"fedora25-software.jpg" caption"GNOME's Software app has seen a slight redesign and now offers a little more info about Flatpak apps. Still odd that it wastes a featured app spotlight on a web browser that's installed by default anyway."] - -

This release also brings improved support for Flatpak apps in GNOME Software. Flatpak apps are designed to improve the software installation process in GNOME and Linux in general by making it easier for developers to package, and users to install, software across distributions. With Flatpaks you don't need to worry about dependency conflicts or even if your distro of choice has the app you want. Flatpaks also offer improved security and stability by sandboxing applications.

-

With GNOME 3.22 you can add Flatpak repos, and then browse and install apps from those repos without ever needing to drop into the command line. The Software app also now shows a bit more information about Flatpak apps -- like source information and the sandboxing status.

-

GNOME's Nautilus File Manager, nee Files, also gets some attention in this release, including a new tool for bulk renaming files. Just select the files you'd like to rename and then you can apply bulk renaming features, like adding a prefix, suffix or even using a completely custom template.

- -[image"fedora25-files-rename.jpg" caption"The new file renaming dialog in GNOME 3.22 Files app (right click a selection or press F2)."] - -

There's also a new integrated file compression utility that means you can now double click a .zip file and it just extracts the contents to a folder without opening File Roller. That should make working with compressed files much more familiar for mac and windows users making the switch to GNOME.

- -[image"fedora25-files-compress.jpg" caption"Creating archives via the new compress feature in Files. Just right-click your selected files and chose 'compress'."] - -

Also worth mentioning, GNOME Maps has been fixed and now uses Mapbox map tiles.

-

Fedora Spins

-

While GNOME has long been Fedora's flagship desktop (and Fedora serves as GNOME's showcase distro), it's far from the only option. The Fedora installer offers up all the usual suspects like KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, and more. There are also tailored spins for most of the major desktops.

-

The notable Spin for Fedora 25 is the MATE Compiz Spin, which bundles MATE Desktop with Compiz Fusion, and brings a lot more GTK+ 3 to MATE in this release. That makes for an overall more polished MATE and means that if you've ever had problems getting MATE to look good on HiDPI screens, you might want to try again because MATE 1.16 works quite well.

-

Other spins like KDE, XFCE and Cinnamon have significant upgrades with Fedora 25. The Fedora Spins site has full details and release notes for each.

-

Fedora Next Next

-

Not to be confused with Spins, Fedora Next, Fedora's reorganization that began several releases ago, consists of three "editions". As mentioned above, Fedora has rearranged the components of Fedora Next. Fedora Cloud has taken a backseat in the Fedora Next roster; Fedora Atomic edition is the replacement. The Cloud Base image continues to be available for those who'd like to build on a more traditional rpm-based foundation, but the future is looking like Atomic.

-

Unless you've been living under a rock you know the new hotness in Linux server deployment is containers, and containerization is the whole point of Atomic.

-

Fedora Atomic takes the Fedora 25 base and functions a bit like Git -- you check out a particular point and that's your OS. Updates come every two weeks, which makes it sort of a rolling distro with snapshots (major releases come every six months). Fedora also notes that Atomic can be run as a desktop if you'd like something lightweight and highly reconfigurable, or presumably, if your love of containers runs that deep.

-

To go along with Fedora Atomic's move into the limelight, the Fedora Project has been hard at work on the other end of the container equation with expanded Docker support and a very cool looking tool that simplifies the process of building out images from the base using RPM-like tools. So the workflow becomes Fedora Atomic for your base, checked out identically across all your machines and then the expanded docker support gets your containerized apps installed and running.

-

The other major edition in the Fedora Next triumvirate, Fedora Server, does not have a ton of new stuff in this release -- for that you'll have to wait for Fedora 26, which will be an experimental release that ships with a lot more apps already in containers.

-

There is one thing worth mentioning here though, namely the new SELinux management tool that's part of the updated Fedora Cockpit suite of server management tools. The SELinux Troubleshooter module is, frankly, the first thing I've ever used that didn't leaving me bashing my head into my keyboard after five minutes of working with SELinux. The standout feature is simple, when SELinux encounters a denial, Cockpit lets you know.

-

The SELinux Troubleshooter does take a lot of sysadmin voodoo out of SELinux though, even I can sort of figure it out now. If your job depends on the befuddlement mere mortals get when trying to use SELinux, don't update Cockpit to Fedora 25.

-

Conclusion

-

Fedora 24 was very close to my favorite distro of the year and with Fedora 25 I think it's safe to say that the Fedora Project has finally nailed it. I still run a very minimal Arch install (with Openbox) on my main machine, but everywhere else -- family and friends who want to upgrade, clients looking for a stable system and so on -- I've been recommending Fedora 25.

-

That said, Wayland is new and there are bugs out there in addition to the less-than-complete application support mentioned here. Just because I haven't run into any show stopping bugs in my month or so of testing, doesn't mean they aren't there so do proceed with caution. I strongly recommend researching your specific hardware to see what other people have experienced.

-

The only remaining problem I have with Fedora is the release cycle, however, with the upgrade situation much better than it used to be, hopefully upgrading won't be the pain it once was in Fedora land.

-

In general though, I have no qualms recommending both Fedora and Wayland, provided you have the hardware that works with the latter.

diff --git a/published/dellxps13-2.html b/published/dellxps13-2.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ad639b --- /dev/null +++ b/published/dellxps13-2.html @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +

Dell recently updated the company's extremely popular XPS 13 Developer Edition.

+

Dell's Linux effort, known as Project Sputnik, is led by developer Barton George, who, along with the rest of the Sputnik team, has done an excellent job of bringing a "just works" Linux experience to Dell Ultrabooks. The XPS 13 Developer Edition has been available for 4 years now and this release marks the 7th version of Dell's Ubuntu powered ultrabook.

+

Dell isn't the only manufacturer producing great Linux machines. In fact there's almost an embarrassment of riches for Linux fans these days. System76, whose Oryx Pro remains my top pick for anyone who needs massive power, Purism, ZaReason and others are all producing solid offerings that work with Linux out of the box.

+

Even hardware not explicitly made for Linux tends to work out of box these days. I recently installed Fedora on a Sony Vaio and was shocked that the only problem I encountered was that the default trackpad configuration was terribly slow.

+

Admittedly, the Vaio is a few years old, which means there's been more time for hardware issues to be addressed. Sometimes getting Linux running on the bleeding edge hardware is still a bit tricky -- or requires running a bleeding edge distro like Arch. That's where efforts like Dell's Project Sputnik come in handy, the hardware is already vetted, the drivers pre-installed and configured for a great out of the box experience.

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It also doesn't hurt that the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is an exceptionally well built, great-looking piece of hardware. If you want your Linux rig to "just work" and be a powerful, svelte little package that weighs under 3lbs, the XPS 13 is the laptop you've been looking for.

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The latest iteration of the XPS 13 line, and the third I've tested, features Intel's new Kaby Lake chip that bumps the clock speed by about 10 percent. The more impressive side of the chipset upgrade is the different graphics architecture which is said to improve performance in 3D graphics and 4K video. The results in this Linux-based model make especially 4K video playback incredibly smooth and not nearly as battery-draining as previous models.

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The Specs

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Outwardly there's nothing new to see here. The 7th generation Dell XPS 13 DE uses the same wonderful InfinityEdge display that manages to pack a 13 in screen into a body that looks and feels more like an 11 inch laptop. The model I tested came with the 3200x1800 IPS touch panel. There's also a version with a 1920x1080 IPS non-touch panel, but I think the higher res display is worth the extra money.

+

This is quite simply the best looking display I've seen in a laptop. Naturally the HiDPI model suffers a little in battery life compared to the lower res model. I've never used the lower res version so I can't compare battery life times, but more pixels takes more power, so if battery life is your top priority don't go with the HiDPI model. That said, I find the brightest setting (400 nit brightness) to be a bit much indoors. It's great for working outside and goes a long way to compensate for the inevitable glare on glossy screens, but indoors I rarely push the brightness past 60 percent, which improves battery life considerably.

+

The model Dell sent me featured a i7-7500U Kaby Lake chip with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive. As configured the model I tested would set you back $1799. The lowest model, which has the 1920x1080 display, an i5 chip, 128GB SSD and only 8GB of RAM, can be had for $975. For an extra $375 you can step up to the higher res screen and a 256GB SSD. There's also a new option in there for what Dell calls a "Rose Gold" exterior.

+

The model I tested had the same full aluminum exterior as previous models. Underneath it there's an aluminum frame as well, which provides a stiffness that makes the XPS line feel very solid even at their minimal weight. As has been my experience with most Dell machines, the construction is excellent. I used the previous model for over six months, shoving it in and out of my bag on several times a day every day and it doesn't have a scratch on it. I can see no reason to think the latest model would be any different.

+

Also unchanged in this release are the ports and layout. There are still two USB 3.0 ports, one with PowerShare for charging your devices (note that USB charging generally requires a trip into the BIOS settings to enable, see Dell's support site for more info). There's also a Thunderbolt port that supports charging, a 3-in-1 card reader, DisplayPort 1.2 video output, VGA and HDMI. As with any laptop this thin, Ethernet requires an adapter (sold separately).

+

There's the same 720p webcam that has been in the last couple of models, and yes, it's still at the bottom of the lid. And yes, it still sucks that it's down there, though in fairness to Dell, there is nowhere else to put it, the InfinityEdge display comes within 1/8 inch of the edge of the lid. Still, like fellow Ars reviewer Peter Bright, I find this decision irritating: why not just move the display panel down an 1/8 inch and put the camera at the top so it's usable? Or stop pretending that the bottom camera is useful and just ditch the camera altogether.

+

The palm rests are made of a carbon fiber composite that I found very comfortable. The keyboard also appears to be the same as previous models. It's a very thin chiclet-style keyboard that works just fine, though coming from the ThinkPad world I still find these keyboards disappointing. More disappointing for some Linux fans, Dell still uses the Windows logo on the super key.

+

The touch pad is reportedly the same, though using the testing model next to the previous I felt a noticeable difference with the newer model being somewhat "stickier", which doesn't sound good, but I found my movements were actually more precise with the new trackpad. This was particularly noticeable in Darktable, a photo editing app with some of the tiniest imaginable control elements, which that can be a real pain to adjust, especially on such a HiDPI screen like the one the XPS 13 uses. The problem I experienced previously, where the trackpad would unaccountably freeze at times appears to have been related to something in Ubuntu 14.04, because the new XPS, which comes with Ubuntu 16.04, did nothing of the sort.

+

Another common complaint about the XPS 13 is a high pitched coil whine that plagues some models. At least in Reddit threads. In the three models I've used I've never encountered this issue. It's possible that the whine comes from something related to Windows drivers (some people report fixing the problem by reinstalling drivers), though I have seen reports of the whine being present on the Ubuntu-based models as well.

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Performance

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The previous iteration of the XPS 13 DE was plenty fast and the much hyped Kaby Lake should give performance a roughly 10 percent boost overall, though some tasks, particularly things that involve hi-res video, may see an even bigger performance improvement. In terms of everyday tasks like compiling small programs, browsing the web and so on I did not notice a huge difference from the previous release. One things I did notice, however, was that the Unity interface is considerably snappier, though that may well be a combination of hardware and software improvements. Even for more significant tasks, like say compiling the Linux kernel on a regular basis, the previous version seems to be good enough for Linus Torvalds.

+

As with previous models the RAM limit is 16GB, which is disappointing but makes sense given the space available inside the very compact chassis. There's only room for one RAM card and so far compatible, low-powered RAM chips at 32GB don't exist. Would it make sense to have a slightly larger profile and ability to go up to 32 or even 64 GB? Sure it would, but for that scenario there's the XPS 15.

+

After the Kaby Lake upgrade, The other major improvement is the move from a 56wHR 4 cell battery to a slightly greater capacity 60wHR model. That doesn't sound like much, but Dell now claims an astounding 21 hour battery life for the 1080p version of the XPS 13. That claim was largely borne out in Ars testing of that model, which managed to last for over 18 hours in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test.

+

If Linux on laptops has an Achilles heel it's power consumption. Straight out of the box, running stock Ubuntu 16.04 I only managed to get 11 hours of battery life in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. The difference may well be largely attributable to the HiDPI screen, but the good news is that it's possible to get more life of the XPS 13 if you take a dive into the world of laptop-mode-tools. To get started install the package from the Ubuntu repositories. The project has some documentation on how to configure things, but I find the Arch Wiki entry to be more helpful.

+

After playing with customizations like disabling Bluetooth and tweaking some of the disk-related parts of laptop-mode-tools, I re-ran the Ars WiFi browsing test and managed to get 13 hours, a score I can only beat with my Lenovo x240, which has a far inferior screen, a larger battery and a second battery, making it a less than fair comparison. Suffice to say, in my experience, the Dell XPS 13 is as good as battery life is going to get with such a hi-res screen in such a small package. It's good enough that in all my time with the XPS models I've tested I have never really had to think about battery life.

+

Another change worth noting is the move to "Killer Wireless". Killer is marketing-speak for Qualcomm Atheros cards. There's a bunch of technical upgrades compared to the older Broadcom chips, like much improved throughput and traffic prioritization, which are all good news, but for Linux users the move away from Broadcom more importantly means there are open source Linux drivers that don't suck.

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Ubuntu 16.04

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For a complete rundown of Ubuntu 16.04, see my earlier review. The short story is that I have found Ubuntu 16.04 fairly buggy. Dell does not officially support the just-released Ubuntu 16.10, and given that Dell sticks with LTS releases, it likely never will. Most of Dell's hardware support revolves around a half dozen or so PPAs that come installed and which may or may not work with 16.10. But since this is a review laptop I went for the upgrade to 16.10 and have had no problems in my week of testing. That said, I don't necessarily suggest doing it unless you're comfortable troubleshooting Linux.

+

The "developer edition" in the XPS 13 line isn't just a code word for ships with Linux installed, you actually get some tools pre-installed. For example Virtualbox is pre-installed, which means you can get your Vagrant-based development environment set up quickly. Ubuntu isn't always completely up to date with every programming language, but with 16.04 things are reasonable. For example, gcc is at 5.3.1 and most languages are current -- Python is at 2.7, with version 3.5 available via the python3 command. Ruby is not installed by default.

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Other little touches include the more popular-with-developers Chromium browser (and Chrome if you want the bundled Flash player) instead of the Ubuntu default, Firefox. Dell's own devops tools, like "Cloud Launcher" and "Profile Tool," are available on Project Sputnik's Github page as well, though none of them have seen updates in several years.

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In my view though what's more impressive about Dell's developer tools is that it doesn't ship with any massive IDEs or any monolithic tools. If you want those they're in the repos, but out of the box there's nothing to get in your way, just a few nice little additions that save you a few apt-get commands.

+

Finally, there's some good news on the horizon for those of us who like the HiDPI screens. For now, my criticisms of Ubuntu in HiDPI environments still stand from the last review. Things have improved a bit in the move to 16.04 (versus 14.04 in the last model), but most of the improvement comes from Ubuntu moving to newer version of GNOME and GTK+ elements. The problems specific to LightDM and Ubuntu's own interface customizations remain in this release, as do problems with any third-party software, for example GIMP.

+

All that said, a recent partnership between System76 and Canonical may provide some improvements to the HiDPI situation in Ubuntu (specifically Unity 7, not the great white whale that is Unity 8). Canonical recently released a statement about the improvements, noting that "some patches that improve HiDPI support are in review and they are expected to land in Ubuntu soon." It seems safe to assume -- judging by the new emphasis on HiDPI bugs in Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker -- that many of these fixes will land in 17.04. There's one bug in particular that you'll see if you buy the XPS 13 DE, during the setup process there will be two header bars across the screen. It doesn't affect anything and it goes away once you get done with the setup, but it's a disconcerting way to start out with a brand new machine that supposedly supports Ubuntu.

+

While these are welcome improvements, they don't help outside applications like GIMP or Virtualbox. The latter will work with HiDPI screens, but it sometimes takes considerable work to get the guest OS looking good. There are in other words, workarounds for most the HiDPI problems you're likely to encounter, but be aware that HiDPI on Ubuntu, even with Dell tweaking things for you, is far from a "just works" experience right now.

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I should probably note here as well that I did install and test both Fedora 25 and Arch on the new hardware and had no problems in either case. For Fedora I went with the default GNOME 3.22 desktop, which, frankly, it's what I think Dell should ship out of the box. It's got far better HiDPI support than Ubuntu and the developer tools available through Fedora are considerably more robust than most of what you'll find in Ubuntu's repos.

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Conclusion

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The XPS Developer Edition has developed a strong following over the years and the big question for many fans will be, is this worth the upgrade? If you've got the previous release I would say probably not. If you do a lot of video editing (what kind of developer are you?) or want it to do double duty as a gaming machine then you might see some benefit to the upgrade, but that's a lot of money for not much gain.

+

If you've got an XPS 13 from further back, say the first InfinityEdge version with a Haswell chip then the upgrade becomes more appealing. The gains in battery life, coupled with performance improvements make a much more convincing case for the upgrade.

+

If you're new to the idea of buying hardware specifically tailored to Linux and you're wondering why you should, the answer is more complicated. The XPS 13 DE is a fantastic machine, web cam aside, regardless of what OS it's running. But it's an especially fantastic machine for anyone who's tired of wrestling with their hardware just to get their OS of choice set up. If you want a machine that's stylish, reasonably powerful, light in your bag and runs Linux without a hitch the Dell XPS 13 DE continues to make a great choice.

diff --git a/published/dellxps13-2.txt b/published/dellxps13-2.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fca4c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/dellxps13-2.txt @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +Dell recently updated the company's extremely popular XPS 13 Developer Edition. + +Dell's Linux effort, known as Project Sputnik, is led by developer Barton George, who, along with the rest of the Sputnik team, has done an excellent job of bringing a "just works" Linux experience to Dell Ultrabooks. The XPS 13 Developer Edition has been available for 4 years now and this release marks the 7th version of Dell's Ubuntu powered ultrabook. + +Dell isn't the only manufacturer producing great Linux machines. In fact there's almost an embarrassment of riches for Linux fans these days. System76, whose [Oryx Pro](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/system76-oryx-pro-review-linux-in-a-laptop-has-never-been-better/) remains my top pick for anyone who needs massive power, Purism, ZaReason and others are all producing solid offerings that work with Linux out of the box. + +Even hardware not explicitly made for Linux tends to work out of box these days. I recently installed Fedora on a Sony Vaio and was shocked that the only problem I encountered was that the default trackpad configuration was terribly slow. + +Admittedly, the Vaio is a few years old, which means there's been more time for hardware issues to be addressed. Sometimes getting Linux running on the bleeding edge hardware is still a bit tricky -- or requires running a bleeding edge distro like Arch. That's where efforts like Dell's Project Sputnik come in handy, the hardware is already vetted, the drivers pre-installed and configured for a great out of the box experience. + +It also doesn't hurt that the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is an exceptionally well built, great-looking piece of hardware. If you want your Linux rig to "just work" *and* be a powerful, svelte little package that weighs under 3lbs, the XPS 13 is the laptop you've been looking for. + +The latest iteration of the XPS 13 line, and the third I've tested, features Intel's new Kaby Lake chip that bumps the clock speed by about 10 percent. The more impressive side of the chipset upgrade is the different graphics architecture which is said to improve performance in 3D graphics and 4K video. The results in this Linux-based model make especially 4K video playback incredibly smooth and not nearly as battery-draining as previous models. + +## The Specs + +Outwardly there's nothing new to see here. The 7th generation Dell XPS 13 DE uses the same wonderful InfinityEdge display that manages to pack a 13 in screen into a body that looks and feels more like an 11 inch laptop. The model I tested came with the 3200x1800 IPS touch panel. There's also a version with a 1920x1080 IPS non-touch panel, but I think the higher res display is worth the extra money. + +This is quite simply the best looking display I've seen in a laptop. Naturally the HiDPI model suffers a little in battery life compared to the lower res model. I've never used the lower res version so I can't compare battery life times, but more pixels takes more power, so if battery life is your top priority don't go with the HiDPI model. That said, I find the brightest setting (400 nit brightness) to be a bit much indoors. It's great for working outside and goes a long way to compensate for the inevitable glare on glossy screens, but indoors I rarely push the brightness past 60 percent, which improves battery life considerably. + +The model Dell sent me featured a i7-7500U Kaby Lake chip with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid state drive. As configured the model I tested would set you back $1799. The lowest model, which has the 1920x1080 display, an i5 chip, 128GB SSD and only 8GB of RAM, can be had for $975. For an extra $375 you can step up to the higher res screen and a 256GB SSD. There's also a new option in there for what Dell calls a "Rose Gold" exterior. + +The model I tested had the same full aluminum exterior as previous models. Underneath it there's an aluminum frame as well, which provides a stiffness that makes the XPS line feel very solid even at their minimal weight. As has been my experience with most Dell machines, the construction is excellent. I used the previous model for over six months, shoving it in and out of my bag on several times a day every day and it doesn't have a scratch on it. I can see no reason to think the latest model would be any different. + +Also unchanged in this release are the ports and layout. There are still two USB 3.0 ports, one with PowerShare for charging your devices (note that USB charging generally requires a trip into the BIOS settings to enable, see [Dell's support site](http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN155147/EN) for more info). There's also a Thunderbolt port that supports charging, a 3-in-1 card reader, DisplayPort 1.2 video output, VGA and HDMI. As with any laptop this thin, Ethernet requires an adapter (sold separately). + +There's the same 720p webcam that has been in the last couple of models, and yes, it's still at the bottom of the lid. And yes, it still sucks that it's down there, though in fairness to Dell, there is nowhere else to put it, the InfinityEdge display comes within 1/8 inch of the edge of the lid. Still, like fellow Ars reviewer Peter Bright, I find [this decision irritating](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/review-dells-kaby-lake-xps-13-isnt-quite-good-enough-to-keep-its-crown/): why not just move the display panel down an 1/8 inch and put the camera at the top so it's usable? Or stop pretending that the bottom camera is useful and just ditch the camera altogether. + +The palm rests are made of a carbon fiber composite that I found very comfortable. The keyboard also appears to be the same as previous models. It's a very thin chiclet-style keyboard that works just fine, though coming from the ThinkPad world I still find these keyboards disappointing. More disappointing for some Linux fans, Dell still uses the Windows logo on the super key. + +The touch pad is reportedly the same, though using the testing model next to the previous I felt a noticeable difference with the newer model being somewhat "stickier", which doesn't sound good, but I found my movements were actually more precise with the new trackpad. This was particularly noticeable in Darktable, a photo editing app with some of the tiniest imaginable control elements, which that can be a real pain to adjust, especially on such a HiDPI screen like the one the XPS 13 uses. The problem I experienced previously, where the trackpad would unaccountably freeze at times appears to have been related to something in Ubuntu 14.04, because the new XPS, which comes with Ubuntu 16.04, did nothing of the sort. + +Another common complaint about the XPS 13 is a high pitched coil whine that plagues some models. At least in Reddit threads. In the three models I've used I've never encountered this issue. It's possible that the whine comes from something related to Windows drivers (some people report fixing the problem by reinstalling drivers), though I have seen reports of the whine being present on the Ubuntu-based models as well. + +## Performance + +The previous iteration of the XPS 13 DE was plenty fast and the much hyped Kaby Lake should give performance a roughly 10 percent boost overall, though some tasks, particularly things that involve hi-res video, may see an even bigger performance improvement. In terms of everyday tasks like compiling small programs, browsing the web and so on I did not notice a huge difference from the previous release. One things I did notice, however, was that the Unity interface is considerably snappier, though that may well be a combination of hardware and software improvements. Even for more significant tasks, like say compiling the Linux kernel on a regular basis, the previous version seems to be good enough for Linus Torvalds. + +As with previous models the RAM limit is 16GB, which is disappointing but makes sense given the space available inside the very compact chassis. There's only room for one RAM card and so far compatible, low-powered RAM chips at 32GB don't exist. Would it make sense to have a slightly larger profile and ability to go up to 32 or even 64 GB? Sure it would, but for that scenario there's the XPS 15. + +After the Kaby Lake upgrade, The other major improvement is the move from a 56wHR 4 cell battery to a slightly greater capacity 60wHR model. That doesn't sound like much, but Dell now claims an astounding 21 hour battery life for the 1080p version of the XPS 13. That claim was largely borne out in Ars testing of that model, which managed to last for over 18 hours in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. + +If Linux on laptops has an Achilles heel it's power consumption. Straight out of the box, running stock Ubuntu 16.04 I only managed to get 11 hours of battery life in Ars' standard WiFi browsing test. The difference may well be largely attributable to the HiDPI screen, but the good news is that it's possible to get more life of the XPS 13 if you take a dive into the world of laptop-mode-tools. To get started install the package from the Ubuntu repositories. The project has some documentation on how to configure things, but I find the Arch Wiki entry to be more helpful. + +After playing with customizations like disabling Bluetooth and tweaking some of the disk-related parts of laptop-mode-tools, I re-ran the Ars WiFi browsing test and managed to get 13 hours, a score I can only beat with my Lenovo x240, which has a far inferior screen, a larger battery and a second battery, making it a less than fair comparison. Suffice to say, in my experience, the Dell XPS 13 is as good as battery life is going to get with such a hi-res screen in such a small package. It's good enough that in all my time with the XPS models I've tested I have never really had to think about battery life. + +Another change worth noting is the move to "Killer Wireless". Killer is marketing-speak for Qualcomm Atheros cards. There's a bunch of technical upgrades compared to the older Broadcom chips, like much improved throughput and traffic prioritization, which are all good news, but for Linux users the move away from Broadcom more importantly means there are open source Linux drivers that don't suck. + +## Ubuntu 16.04 + +For a complete rundown of Ubuntu 16.04, see my earlier review. The short story is that I have found Ubuntu 16.04 fairly buggy. Dell does not officially support the just-released Ubuntu 16.10, and given that Dell sticks with LTS releases, it likely never will. Most of Dell's hardware support revolves around a half dozen or so PPAs that come installed and which may or may not work with 16.10. But since this is a review laptop I went for the upgrade to 16.10 and have had no problems in my week of testing. That said, I don't necessarily suggest doing it unless you're comfortable troubleshooting Linux. + +The "developer edition" in the XPS 13 line isn't just a code word for ships with Linux installed, you actually get some tools pre-installed. For example Virtualbox is pre-installed, which means you can get your Vagrant-based development environment set up quickly. Ubuntu isn't always completely up to date with every programming language, but with 16.04 things are reasonable. For example, gcc is at 5.3.1 and most languages are current -- Python is at 2.7, with version 3.5 available via the python3 command. Ruby is not installed by default. + +Other little touches include the more popular-with-developers Chromium browser (and Chrome if you want the bundled Flash player) instead of the Ubuntu default, Firefox. Dell's own devops tools, like "Cloud Launcher" and "Profile Tool," are available on Project Sputnik's Github page as well, though none of them have seen updates in several years. + +In my view though what's more impressive about Dell's developer tools is that it doesn't ship with any massive IDEs or any monolithic tools. If you want those they're in the repos, but out of the box there's nothing to get in your way, just a few nice little additions that save you a few apt-get commands. + +Finally, there's some good news on the horizon for those of us who like the HiDPI screens. For now, my criticisms of Ubuntu in HiDPI environments still stand from the last review. Things have improved a bit in the move to 16.04 (versus 14.04 in the last model), but most of the improvement comes from Ubuntu moving to newer version of GNOME and GTK+ elements. The problems specific to LightDM and Ubuntu's own interface customizations remain in this release, as do problems with any third-party software, for example GIMP. + +All that said, a recent partnership between System76 and Canonical may provide some improvements to the HiDPI situation in Ubuntu (specifically Unity 7, not the great white whale that is Unity 8). Canonical recently released a statement about the improvements, noting that "some patches that improve HiDPI support are in review and they are expected to land in Ubuntu soon." It seems safe to assume -- judging by the new emphasis on HiDPI bugs in Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker -- that many of these fixes will land in 17.04. There's one bug in particular that you'll see if you buy the XPS 13 DE, during the setup process there will be [two header bars](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1622686) across the screen. It doesn't affect anything and it goes away once you get done with the setup, but it's a disconcerting way to start out with a brand new machine that supposedly supports Ubuntu. + +While these are welcome improvements, they don't help outside applications like GIMP or Virtualbox. The latter will work with HiDPI screens, but it sometimes takes considerable work to get the guest OS looking good. There are in other words, workarounds for most the HiDPI problems you're likely to encounter, but be aware that HiDPI on Ubuntu, even with Dell tweaking things for you, is far from a "just works" experience right now. + +I should probably note here as well that I did install and test both Fedora 25 and Arch on the new hardware and had no problems in either case. For Fedora I went with the default GNOME 3.22 desktop, which, frankly, it's what I think Dell should ship out of the box. It's got far better HiDPI support than Ubuntu and the developer tools available through Fedora are considerably more robust than most of what you'll find in Ubuntu's repos. + +## Conclusion + +The XPS Developer Edition has developed a strong following over the years and the big question for many fans will be, is this worth the upgrade? If you've got the previous release I would say probably not. If you do a lot of video editing (what kind of developer are you?) or want it to do double duty as a gaming machine then you might see some benefit to the upgrade, but that's a lot of money for not much gain. + +If you've got an XPS 13 from further back, say the first InfinityEdge version with a Haswell chip then the upgrade becomes more appealing. The gains in battery life, coupled with performance improvements make a much more convincing case for the upgrade. + +If you're new to the idea of buying hardware specifically tailored to Linux and you're wondering why you should, the answer is more complicated. The XPS 13 DE is a fantastic machine, web cam aside, regardless of what OS it's running. But it's an especially fantastic machine for anyone who's tired of wrestling with their hardware just to get their OS of choice set up. If you want a machine that's stylish, reasonably powerful, light in your bag and runs Linux without a hitch the Dell XPS 13 DE continues to make a great choice. diff --git a/published/fedora25.txt b/published/fedora25.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a2353c --- /dev/null +++ b/published/fedora25.txt @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +The Fedora project has released Fedora 25, a major update for the Linux distribution. + +For the past several releases Fedora has been pursuing what it calls Fedora Next. Essentially Fedora Next took a step back and looked at how Fedora is used and came up with editions specifically tailored to those use cases. The most notable of these are Fedora WorkStation and Fedora Server, which are the desktop/laptop and server versions respectively. + +Previous Fedora releases also had a "cloud" edition, but that's now been replaced by Fedora Atomic. Fedora Cloud, aside from having a meaningless name, didn't quite pan out. Since "cloud" is just a word for "someone else's server", it doesn't make much sense to release a "cloud" distro. + +What does make sense is to package up a version of Fedora specifically tailored for running container-based systems that uses a stable base system and the latest and greatest package. Using it is a bit like checking Fedora out from a Git repo. More on that in a minute. + +Interesting as Fedora Atomic is, much of the headlining news in Fedora 25 is in the WorkStation edition and can be summed up in a single word: Wayland. + +Yes, after being pushed back from release after release, Fedora 25 defaults to using Wayland (assuming you have a supported graphics card). This is perhaps the biggest change to come in the Linux world since the move to systemd, but unlike systemd the switch to Wayland was so seamless I had to logout and double check that I was in fact using Wayland. + +I called Fedora 24, released earlier this year, "the year’s best Linux distro" but one that I would have a hard time recommending thanks to some ugly kernel-related bugs. Well, Fedora 25 is here with an updated kernel, the bugs appear to be gone and I have no problem recommending it. Not only is Fedora 25 a great release, the updated GNOME 3.22 running on top of Wayland is slick and very stable in my testing. + +## Wayland, New Kernel, and Updates + +The biggest change in this release is undoubtedly the move to Wayland as the default, erm, protocol, replacing the venerable X Server. Wayland's goal is to be easier to develop and maintain and, to a lesser degree, to get rid of the X's confusing clutter of accumulated bits that have been bolted on over the years. + +Wayland is not, strictly speaking, a display server like X. Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk through. To make things more confusing the compositor can be a Wayland client itself. It could also be an X application, some input device or a standalone display server. Wayland doesn't actually do much and that's by design. As the Wayland FAQ puts it, "the compositor sends input events to the clients. The clients render locally and then communicate video memory buffers and information about updates to those buffers back to the compositor." + +[image="fedora25-desktop.jpg" caption="The stock Fedora 25 desktop with GNOME 3.22"] + +What's perhaps most remarkable for a change that's so low-level, and in fact one that's taking a lot of X functionality and moving lower down into the stack, is how unlikely you are to notice it. In my experience so far -- about two weeks of use as I write this -- the transition to Wayland has been totally transparent. Even better, GNOME 3.22 feels considerably smoother with Wayland. It's difficult to describe without seeing it, but little moments of tearing that used to happen under X are gone and common tasks like dragging windows are much smoother. + +To be clear there are still plenty of things that don't work with Wayland. In fact there likely will always be legacy system elements that don't know what to make of Wayland and will never be updated. For that situation there's XWayland, which is a plugin for Wayland compositors that runs a real X server inside Wayland. XWayland is a big part of why you're unlikely to notice the move to Wayland. + +There are also some things to bear in mind about using Wayland with GNOME, more than a few GNOME hacks won't work anymore. For example desktop icons, which aren't really a GNOME 3.x thing, though you could use Gnome Tweak Tools if you can get them, are not supported in Wayland and never will be. I've also been unable to find a clipboard manager that works properly under Wayland. + +The other problem I've run into is that neither of the tint-shifting applications I use work with Wayland. Neither f.lux nor redshift do anything when running under Wayland. Judging by posts from around the web, video playback is sometimes an issue too, though I have not actually experienced this problem. In terms of hardware support and Wayland, I would definitely suggest sticking with kernel 4.8.x or newer, which is exactly what Fedora 25 ships with. + +The other major gripe I have with Wayland is that it doesn't appear to support fractional scaling for HiDPI screens. It works great at 2X, which covers most screens, but there are those where 1X is too small, but 2X is too much. If you have a screen that works best at 1.5X, you might want to stick with X for now. + +Those are, however, relatively minor issues. The biggest caveat to all the good news in Wayland is that Nvidia's proprietary driver does not support Wayland. The open source Nouveau drivers do, but those drivers can be a noticeable step down depending on your system and what you're trying to do. In my experience the Nouveau drivers are also a little buggy, though to be clear I haven't tested them with Wayland. + +Along with Wayland Fedora 25 brings Linux kernel 4.8.6, which means any lingering [Skylake bugs](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1353103) should be fixed. I tested Fedora 25 on the [Dell XPS 13](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell-continues-to-build-a-reliable-linux-lineage/) I reviewed earlier for Ars and found Fedora 25 worked flawlessly. + +I should also note that for the first time I was able to update from Fedora 24 to 25 using the GNOME Software system upgrade tool without any issues at all. That's a first for me in over ten years of using Fedora (to be fair most of that time I didn't even try because it was flat out hopeless) and goes a long way to making Fedora a distro that's friendly to less sophisticated users. + +In the past updating Fedora meant you'd need a few days to troubleshoot all the things that broke. It was a pain point that the project has been aware of and working on for some time. The nicely named FedUp tool arrived around Fedora 23, which helped some. Then the dnf upgrade tools came along in Fedora 24 and now there's a completely graphical upgrade path via GNOME software and perhaps most surprising, it just works. + +The only caveat I would add is that, like I imagine many Linux users do, I maintain an install of Fedora primarily to get a rough idea of what's coming in future CentOS releases. Which is to say that while Fedora gets a partition on my drive, I have not heavily customized it and don't have a ton of RPM Fusion repos installed, which could make for more problematic updates. Still, judging by comments sections, forums and posts around the web, my experience is not uncommon for the move from Fedora 24 to Fedora 25. That's not to say you're guaranteed a smooth upgrade though. The real problem for most people seems to be with conflicting dependencies, often related to packages installed via RPM Fusion or other less-than-official repositories. + +My long standing criticism of Fedora is that major updates come too frequently for how terrible the updating process has been historically. Now that that seems to be changing and updates are smooth (and even have a nice GUI via GNOME Software) Fedora could start to find a wider audience. + +## The Little Things + +Fedora 25 has plenty of other little changes beyond the move to Wayland by default. For example, shocking as it sounds, Fedora 25 ships with MP3 support straight out of the box. Look for a lot of distros to start doing this since in the United States the patents covering the MP3 codecs expired earlier this year.There's no encoding support yet, which could be related to fact that two of the patents are still valid until April of next year, but it's a start. + +In a bid to make Fedora a bit easier for newcomers to try out, Fedora 25 ships with a revamped Fedora Media Writer in the repos (curiously, it's not installed by default). Media Writer gives you a nice GUI to grab the latest Fedora release (or any of the official spins) and write it to a USB stick. It's a step up from the more simplistic tools in previous versions. I actually tried to use Media Writer back in Fedora 24 and it wrote to the wrong USB stick. Fortunately I didn't have anything of value on that stick and to this day I'm not 100% sure it was Media Writer's fault and not user error, but in either case I was leery of testing it again. This time, to be extra safe I made sure that my thumb drive was the only drive plugged in and it worked as advertised, grabbing the MATE spin and burning it to disk with a mere two clicks. + +[image="fedora25-live-writer.jpg" caption="Fedora's Media Writer is a very slick and easy way to get a bootable USB stick with Fedora (or any other distro) in couple of clicks."] + +Fedora used to position itself as the distro for developers. This meant in part that Fedora was looking for users who would contribute back to the community, but it also meant that Fedora shipped the latest stable version of most programming languages and was quick to adopt new ones. This release follows in that tradition; developers can look forward to a version bump for PHP (to version 7.0), Node JS to 6.5, Ruby on Rails 5.0, and new support for the Rust language with a Rust Compiler (Cargo) installed by default. + +## GNOME 3.22 + +GNOME 3.22 arrived a bit ahead of Fedora 25, but Fedora remains the single best showcase for the GNOME desktop and, with Wayland under the hood, this is doubly true for Fedora 25. You'd be hard pressed to find a slicker, more polished looking desktop than GNOME 3.22 running on Wayland in Fedora 25. + +GNOME 3.20 made Wayland perfectly usable, though the GNOME team reports that 3.22 is "even more polished", with support for display rotation and Wacom tablets, among other things. + +Perhaps the best news for GNOME fans in this release is that GNOME 3.22 has reached a new development stability plateau. This means, for example, that GNOME shell's extension API is now considered stable, which in turn means that any shell extension you rely on will continue to work as-is when you update. Yes it's come to this: GNOME 3.22's headlining feature is that the tools you rely on to turn GNOME into a workable desktop no longer break with every new release. + +It's not entirely fair to make fun of GNOME 3's previous ever-shifting updates, it has been a perfectly usable desktop for several year's worth of releases now. Perhaps not a good choice for those who like to configure and tweak every setting, but workable nonetheless. + +[image="fedora25-software.jpg" caption="GNOME's Software app has seen a slight redesign and now offers a little more info about Flatpak apps. Still odd that it wastes a featured app spotlight on a web browser that's installed by default anyway."] + +This release also brings improved support for Flatpak apps in GNOME Software. Flatpak apps are designed to improve the software installation process in GNOME and Linux in general by making it easier for developers to package, and users to install, software across distributions. With Flatpaks you don't need to worry about dependency conflicts or even if your distro of choice has the app you want. Flatpaks also offer improved security and stability by sandboxing applications. + +With GNOME 3.22 you can add Flatpak repos, and then browse and install apps from those repos without ever needing to drop into the command line. The Software app also now shows a bit more information about Flatpak apps -- like source information and the sandboxing status. + +GNOME's Nautilus File Manager, nee Files, also gets some attention in this release, including a new tool for bulk renaming files. Just select the files you'd like to rename and then you can apply bulk renaming features, like adding a prefix, suffix or even using a completely custom template. + +[image="fedora25-files-rename.jpg" caption="The new file renaming dialog in GNOME 3.22 Files app (right click a selection or press F2)."] + +There's also a new integrated file compression utility that means you can now double click a .zip file and it just extracts the contents to a folder without opening File Roller. That should make working with compressed files much more familiar for mac and windows users making the switch to GNOME. + +[image="fedora25-files-compress.jpg" caption="Creating archives via the new compress feature in Files. Just right-click your selected files and chose 'compress'."] + +Also worth mentioning, GNOME Maps has been fixed and now uses Mapbox map tiles. + +## Fedora Spins + +While GNOME has long been Fedora's flagship desktop (and Fedora serves as GNOME's showcase distro), it's far from the only option. The Fedora installer offers up all the usual suspects like KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, and more. There are also tailored spins for most of the major desktops. + +The notable Spin for Fedora 25 is the MATE Compiz Spin, which bundles MATE Desktop with Compiz Fusion, and brings a lot more GTK+ 3 to MATE in this release. That makes for an overall more polished MATE and means that if you've ever had problems getting MATE to look good on HiDPI screens, you might want to try again because MATE 1.16 works quite well. + +Other spins like KDE, XFCE and Cinnamon have significant upgrades with Fedora 25. The Fedora Spins site has [full details](https://spins.fedoraproject.org/) and release notes for each. + + +## Fedora Next Next + +Not to be confused with Spins, Fedora Next, Fedora's reorganization that began several releases ago, consists of three "editions". As mentioned above, Fedora has rearranged the components of Fedora Next. Fedora Cloud has taken a backseat in the Fedora Next roster; Fedora Atomic edition is the replacement. The Cloud Base image continues to be available for those who'd like to build on a more traditional rpm-based foundation, but the future is looking like Atomic. + +Unless you've been living under a rock you know the new hotness in Linux server deployment is containers, and containerization is the whole point of Atomic. + +Fedora Atomic takes the Fedora 25 base and functions a bit like Git -- you check out a particular point and that's your OS. Updates come every two weeks, which makes it sort of a rolling distro with snapshots (major releases come every six months). Fedora also notes that Atomic can be run as a desktop if you'd like something lightweight and highly reconfigurable, or presumably, if your love of containers runs that deep. + +To go along with Fedora Atomic's move into the limelight, the Fedora Project has been hard at work on the other end of the container equation with expanded Docker support and a very cool looking tool that simplifies the process of building out images from the base using RPM-like tools. So the workflow becomes Fedora Atomic for your base, checked out identically across all your machines and then the expanded docker support gets your containerized apps installed and running. + +The other major edition in the Fedora Next triumvirate, Fedora Server, does not have a ton of new stuff in this release -- for that you'll have to wait for Fedora 26, which will be an experimental release that ships with a lot more apps already in containers. + +There is one thing worth mentioning here though, namely the new SELinux management tool that's part of the updated Fedora Cockpit suite of server management tools. The SELinux Troubleshooter module is, frankly, the first thing I've ever used that didn't leaving me bashing my head into my keyboard after five minutes of working with SELinux. The standout feature is simple, when SELinux encounters a denial, Cockpit lets you know. + +The SELinux Troubleshooter does take a lot of sysadmin voodoo out of SELinux though, even I can sort of figure it out now. If your job depends on the befuddlement mere mortals get when trying to use SELinux, don't update Cockpit to Fedora 25. + +## Conclusion + +Fedora 24 was very close to my favorite distro of the year and with Fedora 25 I think it's safe to say that the Fedora Project has finally nailed it. I still run a very minimal Arch install (with Openbox) on my main machine, but everywhere else -- family and friends who want to upgrade, clients looking for a stable system and so on -- I've been recommending Fedora 25. + +That said, Wayland is new and there are bugs out there in addition to the less-than-complete application support mentioned here. Just because I haven't run into any show stopping bugs in my month or so of testing, doesn't mean they aren't there so do proceed with caution. I strongly recommend researching your specific hardware to see what other people have experienced. + +The only remaining problem I have with Fedora is the release cycle, however, with the upgrade situation much better than it used to be, hopefully upgrading won't be the pain it once was in Fedora land. + +In general though, I have no qualms recommending both Fedora and Wayland, provided you have the hardware that works with the latter. diff --git a/published/fedora25review.html b/published/fedora25review.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c8926f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/fedora25review.html @@ -0,0 +1,67 @@ +

The Fedora project has released Fedora 25, a major update for the Linux distribution.

+

For the past several releases Fedora has been pursuing what it calls Fedora Next. Essentially Fedora Next took a step back and looked at how Fedora is used and came up with editions specifically tailored to those use cases. The most notable of these are Fedora WorkStation and Fedora Server, which are the desktop/laptop and server versions respectively.

+

Previous Fedora releases also had a "cloud" edition, but that's now been replaced by Fedora Atomic. Fedora Cloud, aside from having a meaningless name, didn't quite pan out. Since "cloud" is just a word for "someone else's server", it doesn't make much sense to release a "cloud" distro.

+

What does make sense is to package up a version of Fedora specifically tailored for running container-based systems that uses a stable base system and the latest and greatest package. Using it is a bit like checking Fedora out from a Git repo. More on that in a minute.

+

Interesting as Fedora Atomic is, much of the headlining news in Fedora 25 is in the WorkStation edition and can be summed up in a single word: Wayland.

+

Yes, after being pushed back from release after release, Fedora 25 defaults to using Wayland (assuming you have a supported graphics card). This is perhaps the biggest change to come in the Linux world since the move to systemd, but unlike systemd the switch to Wayland was so seamless I had to logout and double check that I was in fact using Wayland.

+

I called Fedora 24, released earlier this year, "the year’s best Linux distro" but one that I would have a hard time recommending thanks to some ugly kernel-related bugs. Well, Fedora 25 is here with an updated kernel, the bugs appear to be gone and I have no problem recommending it. Not only is Fedora 25 a great release, the updated GNOME 3.22 running on top of Wayland is slick and very stable in my testing.

+

Wayland, New Kernel, and Updates

+

The biggest change in this release is undoubtedly the move to Wayland as the default, erm, protocol, replacing the venerable X Server. Wayland's goal is to be easier to develop and maintain and, to a lesser degree, to get rid of the X's confusing clutter of accumulated bits that have been bolted on over the years.

+

Wayland is not, strictly speaking, a display server like X. Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk through. To make things more confusing the compositor can be a Wayland client itself. It could also be an X application, some input device or a standalone display server. Wayland doesn't actually do much and that's by design. As the Wayland FAQ puts it, "the compositor sends input events to the clients. The clients render locally and then communicate video memory buffers and information about updates to those buffers back to the compositor."

+ +[image"fedora25-desktop.jpg" caption"The stock Fedora 25 desktop with GNOME 3.22"] + +

What's perhaps most remarkable for a change that's so low-level, and in fact one that's taking a lot of X functionality and moving lower down into the stack, is how unlikely you are to notice it. In my experience so far -- about two weeks of use as I write this -- the transition to Wayland has been totally transparent. Even better, GNOME 3.22 feels considerably smoother with Wayland. It's difficult to describe without seeing it, but little moments of tearing that used to happen under X are gone and common tasks like dragging windows are much smoother.

+

To be clear there are still plenty of things that don't work with Wayland. In fact there likely will always be legacy system elements that don't know what to make of Wayland and will never be updated. For that situation there's XWayland, which is a plugin for Wayland compositors that runs a real X server inside Wayland. XWayland is a big part of why you're unlikely to notice the move to Wayland.

+

There are also some things to bear in mind about using Wayland with GNOME, more than a few GNOME hacks won't work anymore. For example desktop icons, which aren't really a GNOME 3.x thing, though you could use Gnome Tweak Tools if you can get them, are not supported in Wayland and never will be. I've also been unable to find a clipboard manager that works properly under Wayland.

+

The other problem I've run into is that neither of the tint-shifting applications I use work with Wayland. Neither f.lux nor redshift do anything when running under Wayland. Judging by posts from around the web, video playback is sometimes an issue too, though I have not actually experienced this problem. In terms of hardware support and Wayland, I would definitely suggest sticking with kernel 4.8.x or newer, which is exactly what Fedora 25 ships with.

+

The other major gripe I have with Wayland is that it doesn't appear to support fractional scaling for HiDPI screens. It works great at 2X, which covers most screens, but there are those where 1X is too small, but 2X is too much. If you have a screen that works best at 1.5X, you might want to stick with X for now.

+

Those are, however, relatively minor issues. The biggest caveat to all the good news in Wayland is that Nvidia's proprietary driver does not support Wayland. The open source Nouveau drivers do, but those drivers can be a noticeable step down depending on your system and what you're trying to do. In my experience the Nouveau drivers are also a little buggy, though to be clear I haven't tested them with Wayland.

+

Along with Wayland Fedora 25 brings Linux kernel 4.8.6, which means any lingering Skylake bugs should be fixed. I tested Fedora 25 on the Dell XPS 13 I reviewed earlier for Ars and found Fedora 25 worked flawlessly.

+

I should also note that for the first time I was able to update from Fedora 24 to 25 using the GNOME Software system upgrade tool without any issues at all. That's a first for me in over ten years of using Fedora (to be fair most of that time I didn't even try because it was flat out hopeless) and goes a long way to making Fedora a distro that's friendly to less sophisticated users.

+

In the past updating Fedora meant you'd need a few days to troubleshoot all the things that broke. It was a pain point that the project has been aware of and working on for some time. The nicely named FedUp tool arrived around Fedora 23, which helped some. Then the dnf upgrade tools came along in Fedora 24 and now there's a completely graphical upgrade path via GNOME software and perhaps most surprising, it just works.

+

The only caveat I would add is that, like I imagine many Linux users do, I maintain an install of Fedora primarily to get a rough idea of what's coming in future CentOS releases. Which is to say that while Fedora gets a partition on my drive, I have not heavily customized it and don't have a ton of RPM Fusion repos installed, which could make for more problematic updates. Still, judging by comments sections, forums and posts around the web, my experience is not uncommon for the move from Fedora 24 to Fedora 25. That's not to say you're guaranteed a smooth upgrade though. The real problem for most people seems to be with conflicting dependencies, often related to packages installed via RPM Fusion or other less-than-official repositories.

+

My long standing criticism of Fedora is that major updates come too frequently for how terrible the updating process has been historically. Now that that seems to be changing and updates are smooth (and even have a nice GUI via GNOME Software) Fedora could start to find a wider audience.

+

The Little Things

+

Fedora 25 has plenty of other little changes beyond the move to Wayland by default. For example, shocking as it sounds, Fedora 25 ships with MP3 support straight out of the box. Look for a lot of distros to start doing this since in the United States the patents covering the MP3 codecs expired earlier this year.There's no encoding support yet, which could be related to fact that two of the patents are still valid until April of next year, but it's a start.

+

In a bid to make Fedora a bit easier for newcomers to try out, Fedora 25 ships with a revamped Fedora Media Writer in the repos (curiously, it's not installed by default). Media Writer gives you a nice GUI to grab the latest Fedora release (or any of the official spins) and write it to a USB stick. It's a step up from the more simplistic tools in previous versions. I actually tried to use Media Writer back in Fedora 24 and it wrote to the wrong USB stick. Fortunately I didn't have anything of value on that stick and to this day I'm not 100% sure it was Media Writer's fault and not user error, but in either case I was leery of testing it again. This time, to be extra safe I made sure that my thumb drive was the only drive plugged in and it worked as advertised, grabbing the MATE spin and burning it to disk with a mere two clicks.

+ +[image"fedora25-live-writer.jpg" caption"Fedora's Media Writer is a very slick and easy way to get a bootable USB stick with Fedora (or any other distro) in couple of clicks."] + +

Fedora used to position itself as the distro for developers. This meant in part that Fedora was looking for users who would contribute back to the community, but it also meant that Fedora shipped the latest stable version of most programming languages and was quick to adopt new ones. This release follows in that tradition; developers can look forward to a version bump for PHP (to version 7.0), Node JS to 6.5, Ruby on Rails 5.0, and new support for the Rust language with a Rust Compiler (Cargo) installed by default.

+

GNOME 3.22

+

GNOME 3.22 arrived a bit ahead of Fedora 25, but Fedora remains the single best showcase for the GNOME desktop and, with Wayland under the hood, this is doubly true for Fedora 25. You'd be hard pressed to find a slicker, more polished looking desktop than GNOME 3.22 running on Wayland in Fedora 25.

+

GNOME 3.20 made Wayland perfectly usable, though the GNOME team reports that 3.22 is "even more polished", with support for display rotation and Wacom tablets, among other things.

+

Perhaps the best news for GNOME fans in this release is that GNOME 3.22 has reached a new development stability plateau. This means, for example, that GNOME shell's extension API is now considered stable, which in turn means that any shell extension you rely on will continue to work as-is when you update. Yes it's come to this: GNOME 3.22's headlining feature is that the tools you rely on to turn GNOME into a workable desktop no longer break with every new release.

+

It's not entirely fair to make fun of GNOME 3's previous ever-shifting updates, it has been a perfectly usable desktop for several year's worth of releases now. Perhaps not a good choice for those who like to configure and tweak every setting, but workable nonetheless.

+ +[image"fedora25-software.jpg" caption"GNOME's Software app has seen a slight redesign and now offers a little more info about Flatpak apps. Still odd that it wastes a featured app spotlight on a web browser that's installed by default anyway."] + +

This release also brings improved support for Flatpak apps in GNOME Software. Flatpak apps are designed to improve the software installation process in GNOME and Linux in general by making it easier for developers to package, and users to install, software across distributions. With Flatpaks you don't need to worry about dependency conflicts or even if your distro of choice has the app you want. Flatpaks also offer improved security and stability by sandboxing applications.

+

With GNOME 3.22 you can add Flatpak repos, and then browse and install apps from those repos without ever needing to drop into the command line. The Software app also now shows a bit more information about Flatpak apps -- like source information and the sandboxing status.

+

GNOME's Nautilus File Manager, nee Files, also gets some attention in this release, including a new tool for bulk renaming files. Just select the files you'd like to rename and then you can apply bulk renaming features, like adding a prefix, suffix or even using a completely custom template.

+ +[image"fedora25-files-rename.jpg" caption"The new file renaming dialog in GNOME 3.22 Files app (right click a selection or press F2)."] + +

There's also a new integrated file compression utility that means you can now double click a .zip file and it just extracts the contents to a folder without opening File Roller. That should make working with compressed files much more familiar for mac and windows users making the switch to GNOME.

+ +[image"fedora25-files-compress.jpg" caption"Creating archives via the new compress feature in Files. Just right-click your selected files and chose 'compress'."] + +

Also worth mentioning, GNOME Maps has been fixed and now uses Mapbox map tiles.

+

Fedora Spins

+

While GNOME has long been Fedora's flagship desktop (and Fedora serves as GNOME's showcase distro), it's far from the only option. The Fedora installer offers up all the usual suspects like KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, and more. There are also tailored spins for most of the major desktops.

+

The notable Spin for Fedora 25 is the MATE Compiz Spin, which bundles MATE Desktop with Compiz Fusion, and brings a lot more GTK+ 3 to MATE in this release. That makes for an overall more polished MATE and means that if you've ever had problems getting MATE to look good on HiDPI screens, you might want to try again because MATE 1.16 works quite well.

+

Other spins like KDE, XFCE and Cinnamon have significant upgrades with Fedora 25. The Fedora Spins site has full details and release notes for each.

+

Fedora Next Next

+

Not to be confused with Spins, Fedora Next, Fedora's reorganization that began several releases ago, consists of three "editions". As mentioned above, Fedora has rearranged the components of Fedora Next. Fedora Cloud has taken a backseat in the Fedora Next roster; Fedora Atomic edition is the replacement. The Cloud Base image continues to be available for those who'd like to build on a more traditional rpm-based foundation, but the future is looking like Atomic.

+

Unless you've been living under a rock you know the new hotness in Linux server deployment is containers, and containerization is the whole point of Atomic.

+

Fedora Atomic takes the Fedora 25 base and functions a bit like Git -- you check out a particular point and that's your OS. Updates come every two weeks, which makes it sort of a rolling distro with snapshots (major releases come every six months). Fedora also notes that Atomic can be run as a desktop if you'd like something lightweight and highly reconfigurable, or presumably, if your love of containers runs that deep.

+

To go along with Fedora Atomic's move into the limelight, the Fedora Project has been hard at work on the other end of the container equation with expanded Docker support and a very cool looking tool that simplifies the process of building out images from the base using RPM-like tools. So the workflow becomes Fedora Atomic for your base, checked out identically across all your machines and then the expanded docker support gets your containerized apps installed and running.

+

The other major edition in the Fedora Next triumvirate, Fedora Server, does not have a ton of new stuff in this release -- for that you'll have to wait for Fedora 26, which will be an experimental release that ships with a lot more apps already in containers.

+

There is one thing worth mentioning here though, namely the new SELinux management tool that's part of the updated Fedora Cockpit suite of server management tools. The SELinux Troubleshooter module is, frankly, the first thing I've ever used that didn't leaving me bashing my head into my keyboard after five minutes of working with SELinux. The standout feature is simple, when SELinux encounters a denial, Cockpit lets you know.

+

The SELinux Troubleshooter does take a lot of sysadmin voodoo out of SELinux though, even I can sort of figure it out now. If your job depends on the befuddlement mere mortals get when trying to use SELinux, don't update Cockpit to Fedora 25.

+

Conclusion

+

Fedora 24 was very close to my favorite distro of the year and with Fedora 25 I think it's safe to say that the Fedora Project has finally nailed it. I still run a very minimal Arch install (with Openbox) on my main machine, but everywhere else -- family and friends who want to upgrade, clients looking for a stable system and so on -- I've been recommending Fedora 25.

+

That said, Wayland is new and there are bugs out there in addition to the less-than-complete application support mentioned here. Just because I haven't run into any show stopping bugs in my month or so of testing, doesn't mean they aren't there so do proceed with caution. I strongly recommend researching your specific hardware to see what other people have experienced.

+

The only remaining problem I have with Fedora is the release cycle, however, with the upgrade situation much better than it used to be, hopefully upgrading won't be the pain it once was in Fedora land.

+

In general though, I have no qualms recommending both Fedora and Wayland, provided you have the hardware that works with the latter.

-- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2