Dell laptop for Fedora (XPS 13 or Latitude 7490) or worthier alternatives?

[Wolfgang Pfeiffer]

But careful: Dell - at least when I look at their pages - do seem to
offer Nvidia only for their new machines - and I wouldn't recommend to

Correction: should say: "for their new Alienware machines"

Sorry ..
--
Basics of Unix (1982):

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[Gordon Messmer]

The XPS13 has a slightly lower spec for the processor (maybe, because it appears to be of slightly earlier stock - 8550U versus 8650U) but the specs are fairly comparable. The resolution is no doubt better for the XPS13. This configuration will cost me $700 more than the Latitude. Which I am willing to pay unless there are technical reasons for preferring the Latitude. The XPS13 is about a pound lighter from what I can tell.

My personal machine is an XPS 13 9370.  My employer provides me with a
Latitude 7390.  Pretty close to the two models you're considering... 
Right now I'm waiting for a BIOS update for both, because the keyboard
loses some key events and the fix is due out .. soon.

For my use, the two are extremely similar.  I like the Latitude slightly
better, since I'd rather have actual buttons for the mouse.  I don't
like clicking trackpads.  Having some USB-A ports is useful, too.  Other
than that, there are no noticeable differences.

Your price note seems odd, though.  My XPS cost about $850 , and a
Latitude 7390 with similar specs was close to twice that much. If the
Latitude were similar in cost or less expensive than the XPS, I'd have
definitely purchased that one.
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[George Avrunin]

A couple of weeks ago, I got an XPS 13" 9370 with the 8th generation i7 and
the same screen, SSD, and memory as the OP shows. On our university contract,
I couldn't get the one with Ubuntu and had to take Windows (but Dell adjusted
the price a bit so we didn't pay the full Microsoft tax). I deleted Windows
and installed Fedora. (It was a bit of a headache; I had to Google how to
reset the way it sees the disk before I could repartition, etc.) And I have
to switch a lot of things to USB-C now. ;-)

But once I got it configured, the only issue is that the webcam doesn't work
under Linux. There's a lot of discussion of this on the Dell Linux community
forum
(https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Dell-xps-13-9370-Webcam-support/td-p/6032049).
Apparently, at least on the ones that shipped with Ubuntu, Dell is willing to
come out and replace the whole screen (which downgrades the firmware on the
webcam to something the linux kernel knows about). And it sounds like they
may have an actual software fix very soon. I hope that they'll release that
upstream and it will get to Fedora quickly... In any case, the webcam works
in a Windows VM (I'm using VirtualBox; you need to enable USB 2/3 and then
tell it to use the webcam), so it's definitely not a hardware problem. The
issue seems to involve UVC 1.50 and maybe the infrared camera. (But, at least
for now, I don't have to put a piece of tape over the webcam.)

I don't like the keyboard and trackpad as much as my 5-year-old Lenovo X1 (on
which the battery is dying and keycaps are falling off, but it has real
mouse buttons). But the battery life on the new Dell is really good, much
better than the X1 ever was. And the screen is very nice when you do the
appropriate HiDPI scaling. If you carry it around a lot, I would go with the
13" for the weight advantage.

George