Dell's Project Sputnik -- the group responsible for bringing one of the best laptops you can buy to Linux users -- is on a roll. Today it's announcing the 9th generation XPS 13 Developer Edition (which upgrades the system to Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake CPUs), and the relaunch of the Project Sputnik website.
The naming scheme is a bit confusing, however. Beginning with the initial launch in early September, both Windows and Linux users will want to search for the XPS 13 7390. The original system it's based on, the XPS 13 9380, was released in January of this year. Both the Windows and Developer Edition versions of this XPS 13 launched with the 9380 model number, and both are now being upgraded to Intel's 10th gen Comet Lake processors, and in turn both being renamed to the 7390. (This follows the XPS 13 9360, 9370, etc).
These will both ship with the Core-i5 version of Intel's latest CPU, and of course bring the beautiful InfinityEdge display to the party.
The decidedly awesome side of this announcement, however, is that when Dell launches the upgraded XPS 13 7390 in October with Intel's 6-core Comet Lake processors, the Developer Edition (shipping with Ubuntu 18.04 SP1 LTS) will be released right alongside the Windows version. It's great to see Linux treated as a first-class citizen in this regard!
These new XPS 13 laptops will also utilize Killer AX1650 (2x2) wireless, built on the Intel WiFi 6 Chipset. The takeaway here is that it promises a 3x faster connection time than the previous generation. And as the Project Sputnik team emphasizes, their Linux driver work alongside Canonical and various component manufacturers gets carried upstream to the mainline Linux kernel. That means if you buy one of these laptops and want to install another distribution of your choice, it should "just work" on these Developer Edition systems.
And yes, this is the "non-nose cam version!"
This week I sat down with Dell's Barton George for a revealing conversation about the struggles and successes the Project Sputnik group has faced over the last seven years. We covered a wide range of topics including some criticism the team has faced, acknowledged and is actively working on improving. You can listen to the entire discussion on Episode 5 of the Linux For Everyone podcast.
The XPS 7390 Developer Edition begins shipping on September 5 in the US and Europe with the 10th Gen Core i5-10210U processor (6MB cache, up to 4.2 GHz, 4 cores). In October the lineup will expand to the 10th Gen Core-i7 featuring six cores.
