The version tested had the 4K touchscreen option, which is crisper than practically anything else, super bright, colour accurate and all-round gorgeous. That means you get a relatively large display in the body of what would traditionally have been a laptop with just an 11in screen. I like how small it is and I love how fast Ubuntu is on the machine.The thin bezel at the top of the screen has a webcam with infrared face recognition. My initial impression is pretty positive. I’ll have more to say about the laptop itself and how well it works with Ubuntu in future posts. The install went off without a hitch and I never had to see Windows. (LINK UPDATED: ) Here is the forum post that tells you how to use the PPA’s from Kamal Mustafa Canonical that let the track pad work. After the reboot, the computer was working perfectly including the track pad. This also was super easy and went flawlessly. The final step was to install the special XPS fixes that Ubuntu and Dell developed as part of their Sputnik project. This also went flawlessly and was super fast. Before rebooting into Ubuntu, be sure to change the boot loader back to boot from the Hard Drive.Īfter I rebooted, I started the updates and waited for several hundred packages to download and install. Part of the installation was to set the WiFi connection. It was fast, both due to the speedy processor and it being 64 bit. The Ubuntu installer came up and I started the installation. Otherwise, it would have booted into Windows. This brought up the firmware boot loader. I then turned on the laptop, and pressed down on F2. Don’t use the right hand side’s USB 3.0 for booting. This little tidbit was gleaned from a forum on the Ubuntu site. I then plugged in the USB stick to the Left side USB 2.0 socket. As a precaution, I plugged it into the wall charger for the duration of the install. When I unboxed the laptop, it was fully charged. This information was simple to follow and resulted in a USB stick that was ready to install Linux. In the day and a half prior to its arrival, I downloaded the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and used the Pen Drive Linux’s Windows USB creator program as suggested by this page on the Ubuntu website.

I ordered the laptop on the 4th of July, an American holiday and it arrived at my door on the 6th. I purchased the base model XPS 13 from the Dell website and paid the $25.00 for next business day shipping. If that’s not your bag, check out some other posts listed on my About page. What follows is a step-by-step look at installing Ubuntu on a new Dell laptop.

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