I refuse to believe that what you described was a default experience.
I've used the same model my self and never seen the issues you described. I've looked for reviews and all the ones I find only mention poor high DPI scaling, which has gotten better.
If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website.
If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website.
The parent comment mentioned a Thunderbolt monitor. That's a more likely explanation for glitching issues. Linux users generally don't install random software from random websites.
A "thunderbolt" monitor is likely just Mini DisplayPort, unless he's talking about some funky thing that daisy chains a USB hub through the same cable.
I don't use any laptop without reinstalling the OS from known good media. I work on security code for a financial site.
I've also been running Linux since the 90's. I've got a pretty good idea on how to make things work. Unfortunately, the thunderbolt drivers aren't there yet, and high DPI support is weak. The trackpad or driver is garbage compared to Apple's touchpads, and screen corruption on boot is unacceptable. It's possible that I just had a bad unit, but with so many things bad, I think that's unlikely.
I'm not hating on Dell. Most of the people I know work for Dell. I love their servers. I just don't appreciate something being labeled as Ubuntu-certified, and the hardware doesn't work. They installed a binary driver for the network card rather than putting an intel network card in the thing... Total crap.
I've used the same model my self and never seen the issues you described. I've looked for reviews and all the ones I find only mention poor high DPI scaling, which has gotten better.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subne...
If what you described is what it's really like out of the box then there should be a lot more scathing reviews. I have a feeling you probably installed some third party software from some random website.