Dell announces prototype development laptop with Ubuntu (The H)

[Posted May 9, 2012 by ris]

Dell has announced Project Sputnik, which is aimed at producing a laptop for developing mobile and cloud applications. The H takes a look. "The laptop is pre-installed with an image based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS that has been optimised for Dell's XPS13 Ultrabook. The project has already solved problems with the brightness control and the WiFi hotkey and is now working on issues with the touchpad which currently only works as a single touch pointing device with no scrolling. The install also includes several development packages such as version control systems and automatic deployment tools. Plans for the future include the automatic fetching of setup profiles for other software packages from GitHub."

Appropriate hardware for developer?

Posted May 10, 2012 4:25 UTC (Thu) by lemmings (guest, #53618) [Link] (2 responses)

It's really great that Dell are working on this.

I question whether the XPS 13 hardware would be attractive to developers though due to the low screen resolution (only 1366 x 768). Extra pixels make development work a lot more comfortable and efficient in my experience.

Sputnik coupled with better hardware would be an awesome combination.

Appropriate hardware for developer?

Posted May 12, 2012 21:38 UTC (Sat) by Klavs (guest, #10563) [Link] (1 responses)

I definetely agree on that. I would never purchase a machine with less than 1680x.. resolution (widescreen is really nice) but then it needs to be 15".

Appropriate hardware for developer?

Posted May 12, 2012 23:54 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. As a multi-monitor fiend with huge chunky ergonomic keyboard, I'd never dream of developing on a laptop anyway, any more than I'd dream of living in a house made entirely of foam rubber bricks. But a lot of people seem to cope, so maybe it's just a personal idiosyncrasy.