Following last month’s release of the Ubuntu-loaded M3800 Developer Edition, Dell has today formally announced the availability of the smaller and lighter 2015-model XPS-13 Developer Edition. The new XPS-13 Developer Edition replaces the original one, which we reviewed two years ago, bringing all the improvements we loved with the 2015-model XPS-13 Ultrabook under the Project Sputnik umbrella.
The new XPS-13 Developer Edition is available immediately in North America and Europe. According to Dell’s announcement blog post, there is a wide variety of possible configurations available (visible on the XPS-13 Developer Edition store page), but all will have Ubuntu 14.04 SP1, solid state disks, Broadwell i5 or i7 CPUs with integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500 GPUs, and 8GB of RAM; the different configuration options will be CPU type, SSD size, and whether the included 13.3-inch display is 1920×1080 or 3200×1800 with touch.
Interestingly, the blog post also includes details on testing that the company has done with various other Linux distros on the XPS-13, including Fedora and Debian. Knowing that not everyone will be happy with Ubuntu 14.04 as an operating system choice (something Ars readers made clear in the M3800 Developer Edition review’s comments), this time around Dell has provided quick run-downs on how to get the XPS-13 working with a few alternate distros—including recommendations for kernel choices and BIOS revisions to load.
The XPS-13 Developer Edition is priced between $949 and $1,849 depending on equipped options; we don’t have one to test yet, but Dell has promised that a review unit will be headed our way as soon as possible. If anyone has any suggestions about things they’d like to see in the review beyond the obvious basics, drop a note in the comments below!
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