Eight years ago, Dell became the first company to sell pre-installed Linux 
on their computers and till date Dell is supporting desktop Linux. But a latest development by the company has come up with a workstation laptop, Precision M3800, and also the latest model of Dell XPS 13, which integrate Ubuntu 14.04.
Both the devices will run on Ubuntu 14.04 SP1, which is the long-term support or LTS version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical supports this operating system and the support will be continued for five years since its release, till April 2019. Dell’s director of developers’ program, Barton George, said in his blog post, a Ubuntu Linux developer laptop has been in high demand for long time and here comes the Precision M3800 for all the programmers.
The laptop is an outcome of joint efforts by Dell software engineer Jared Dominguez and user support. As per George, the key features of the laptop are pre-installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 38-cm (15-inch) next-generation lightweight mobile workstation, fourth generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, professional grade NVIDIA Quadro K1100M graphics, 16GB memory, 4K Ultra HD (3840×2160) screen option and the best part is the laptop will be available across the world.
There is some bad news also. The in-built Thunderbolt 2 port is not supported in the new laptop. Dominguez has explained thus, “Because our Ubuntu factory installs only ship Ubuntu LTS releases, we were not able to ship with official Thunderbolt support. However, thanks to the hardware-enablement stack in Ubuntu, starting with upcoming Ubuntu 14.04.2, you will be able to upgrade your kernel to add some Thunderbolt support. We plan to be working with Canonical to re-certify the Precision M3800 with official Thunderbolt support.”
If the laptop interests you, and if you’re planning to get one, visit the Dell Precision M3800 Mobile Workstation page and you better choose the “Fully Customisable” version. The another one, Ubuntu-powered XPS 13 has not been made available yet.
