How Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops (and why it's called 'Project Sputnik')
How Ubuntu Linux snuck into high-end Dell laptops (and why it's called 'Project Sputnik')
The Dell XPS 13 is the best-known developer-focused, high-end Linux laptop. Here's how it got there.
Today, the Dell XPS-13 with Ubuntu Linux is easily the most well-known Linux laptop. Many users, especially developers -- including Linus Torvalds -- love it. As Torvalds recently said, "Normally, I wouldn't name names, but I'm making an exception for the XPS 13 just because I liked it so much that I also ended up buying one for my daughter when she went off to college."
So, how did Dell -- best known for good-quality, mass-produced PCs -- end up building top-of-the-line Ubuntu Linux laptops? Well, Barton George, Dell Technologies' Developer Community manager, shared the "Project Sputnik" story this week in a presentation at the popular Linux and open-source community show, All Things Open.
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Lol, no mention of the fact that Ubuntu was already shipped on almost the entire Dell range, but only in China and developing world markets. This was because they had sold millions of laptops without OS in those markets, which immediately were flashed with pirated Windows, and Microsoft were pissed off. They pressured the Chinese govt to require computers must ship with an OS, so Cannonical/Ubuntu stepped in, did it for cheap (~$1/machine) and... they were still of course flashed with pirated windows immediately.
They didn't ship to the US or Europe etc., because in those markets Dell got more kickback-money than they spent, from Windows and the various crapware they shipped pre-installed. So shipping Ubuntu in the US actually cost Dell money.
Do you have a source for this that I can read more about?
Just me. It was my job for a while at Canonical, until the work was moved to China.
Oof, is canonical fully offshore now?
Just that work, and frankly doing it near the factories makes sense. We were "offshore" doing it from the US. Canonical is global, headquartered in the UK.
so Cannonical/Ubuntu stepped in, did it for cheap (~$1/machine)
What did they charge for?
Hardware enablement. A factory install where all the hardware worked, meanwhile all the fixes are upstreamed. So backported fixes to the current LTS.
I found this page on hardware enablement. My understanding is that new hardware isn't supported with old kernels, which older LTS releases are stuck with. So Ubuntu solves this problem by backporting newer drivers to the older kernel release.
That's quite an interesting way of making money. I guess if Dell wanted the newer drivers, they could just install a newer version of Ubuntu. But since they wanted more stability, they preferred that Canonical backport the fixes to an LTS release.
Most often it's a case of minor patches to the audio system, or recognizing a card reader (both of which are weirdly often unique per model, often even on sub-models), and these are patches that do make it into the older kernel. That process just takes time, and they want a usable image right away, so they get something specially patched that will shortly be replaced by a mainstream kernel update. For extreme cases there's dkms, where you can have a package that replaces a kernel module from source that is rebuilt on kernel upgrades.
Canonical used to manage PPAs and packages to handle this - keeping them updated and then eliminating them as the fixes appear upstream. The PPA packages also contain trivial things like tweaks to get the keyboard hotkeys to work right.
I know this lives on because I have a Thinkpad and the vanilla Ubuntu installer adds "sutton" packages to tweak its install, and sutton is the internal name for Lenovo enablement (although the package has nothing active in it, so presumably vanilla just works by now, which I'd hope, as it's a 3 year old machine).
I've never used Ubuntu much, but that was interesting to know! Thanks for sharing.
Xps developer edition has been a thing since almost a decade. I bought a xps13 with ubuntu in Europe. I replaced it as soon as it arrived though. The built in OS was not "standard".
I still use it almost daily. Battery has gone, but everything else works
They sell a bunch of models with Ubuntu pre installed in Brazil also. Not every model / configurations, but even gaming laptops are available here.