Linux laptops alive in South Africa

While it may serve a small niche in South Africa, Dell has been offering laptops that run Ubuntu Linux for years.

This is according to Chris Buchanan, client solutions director at Dell EMC in South Africa.

Dell and Canonical recently announced the new version of the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop, offering up to 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSB. Since then, a 2TB version has become available.

Like other Developer Edition variants of the Dell XPS 13, the 2018 model comes with Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows. At the time, the latest long-term support release: Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver”.

Linux in South Africa

“We offer Ubuntu version 18.04 on the XPS, and version 16.04 on our Latitude laptops,” Buchanan told MyBroadband.

Despite the fact that these laptops serve a small demand, Dell continues to offer them in South Africa. “You can order today,” he said.

Buchanan said that many computer users still consider Linux as a technical operating system, however, and perhaps don’t understand it.

Linux performs a range of tasks better than Windows, though, including the package management features it offers.

Additionally, while Windows and MacOS offer some level of customisation, on Linux there are several desktop environments for you to choose from.

The key specifications of the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition (2018) are summarised in the table below.

Now read: What happened with Linux in 2018