Dell prepares to rebrand

[Retrograde]

From the «Apple had nothing to do with it I swear» department:
Title: Dell rebrands its entire product line: XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, etc. are going away
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:41:34 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/141494/dell-rebrands-its-entire-product-line-xps-inspiron-latitude-etc-are-going-away/

Dell has announced it’s rebranding literally its entire product line, so
mainstays like XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are going away. They’re replacing
all of these old brands with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, and within each
of these, there will be three tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium. Of course, the
reason is “AI”.

The AI PC market is quickly evolving. Silicon innovation is at its strongest
and everyone from IT decision makers to professionals and everyday users are
looking at on-device AI to help drive productivity and creativity. To make
finding the right AI PC easy for customers, we’ve introduced three simple
product categories to focus on core customer needs – Dell (designed for play,
school and work), Dell Pro (designed for professional-grade productivity) and
Dell Pro Max (designed for maximum performance). 

We’ve also made it easy to distinguish products within each of the new
product categories. We have a consistent approach to tiering that lets
customers pinpoint the exact device for their specific needs. Above and
beyond the starting point (Base), there’s a Plus tier that offers the most
scalable performance and a Premium tier that delivers the ultimate in
mobility and design.
↫ Kevin Terwilliger on Dell’s blog[1]

Setting aside the nonsensical reasoning behind the rebrand, I do actually kind
of dig the simplicity here. This is a simple, straightforward set of brand
names and tiers that pretty much anyone can understand. That being said, the
issue with Dell in particular is that once you go to their website to actually
buy one of their machines, the clarity abruptly ends and it gets confusing
fast. I hope these new brand names and tiers will untangle some of that mess to
make it easier to find what you need, but I’m skeptical.

My XPS 13 from 2017 is really starting to show its age, and considering how
happy I’ve been with it over the years its current Dell equivalent would be a
top contender (assuming I had the finances to do so). I wonder if the Linux
support on current Dell laptops has improved since my XPS 13 was new?

Links:
[1]: https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/dell-transforms-ai-pc-portfolio-for-anywhere-productivity/ (link)

[D]

Post by Retrograde
Title: Dell rebrands its entire product line: XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, etc. are going away
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:41:34 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/141494/dell-rebrands-its-entire-product-line-xps-inspiron-latitude-etc-are-going-away/
Dell has announced it’s rebranding literally its entire product line, so
mainstays like XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are going away. They’re replacing
all of these old brands with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, and within each
of these, there will be three tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium. Of course, the
reason is “AI”.
The AI PC market is quickly evolving. Silicon innovation is at its strongest
and everyone from IT decision makers to professionals and everyday users are
looking at on-device AI to help drive productivity and creativity. To make
finding the right AI PC easy for customers, we’ve introduced three simple
product categories to focus on core customer needs – Dell (designed for play,
school and work), Dell Pro (designed for professional-grade productivity) and
Dell Pro Max (designed for maximum performance). 
We’ve also made it easy to distinguish products within each of the new
product categories. We have a consistent approach to tiering that lets
customers pinpoint the exact device for their specific needs. Above and
beyond the starting point (Base), there’s a Plus tier that offers the most
scalable performance and a Premium tier that delivers the ultimate in
mobility and design.
↫ Kevin Terwilliger on Dell’s blog[1]
Setting aside the nonsensical reasoning behind the rebrand, I do actually kind
of dig the simplicity here. This is a simple, straightforward set of brand
names and tiers that pretty much anyone can understand. That being said, the
issue with Dell in particular is that once you go to their website to actually
buy one of their machines, the clarity abruptly ends and it gets confusing
fast. I hope these new brand names and tiers will untangle some of that mess to
make it easier to find what you need, but I’m skeptical.
My XPS 13 from 2017 is really starting to show its age, and considering how
happy I’ve been with it over the years its current Dell equivalent would be a
top contender (assuming I had the finances to do so). I wonder if the Linux
support on current Dell laptops has improved since my XPS 13 was new?
[1]: https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/dell-transforms-ai-pc-portfolio-for-anywhere-productivity/ (link)

Ages ago when I was working at Dell, and later Dell EMC, there was an
internal linux fan group that tried to get as many laptops as possible to
work smoothly with linux. They had a public repository hidden deep, deep
inside some dell sub domain with tools and stuff.

I would be surprised if you would not be able to run linux perfectly fine
on the latest and greatest XPS.

I think they even sell an XPS variety with Ubuntu from the factory.

[Retrograde]

I would be surprised if you would not be able to run linux perfectly fine on the latest and greatest XPS. I think they even sell an XPS variety with Ubuntu from the factory.

I'm using an Optiplex and it's been flawless. It seems to do better
with Ubuntu variants than anything else I threw at it - Elementary,
openSUSE, several BSDs, Kylin - and has no hardware issues at all.
AND, importantly, the keyboard is really truly excellent.

[D]

Post by Retrograde

I would be surprised if you would not be able to run linux perfectly fine on the latest and greatest XPS. I think they even sell an XPS variety with Ubuntu from the factory.

I'm using an Optiplex and it's been flawless. It seems to do better
with Ubuntu variants than anything else I threw at it - Elementary,
openSUSE, several BSDs, Kylin - and has no hardware issues at all.
AND, importantly, the keyboard is really truly excellent.

Since I have a great collection of linux masters here, and for the sake of
conversation, did anyone ever have this in their journalctl?

"gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file"

It's just an annoying error but does not affect me in any meaningful way.
Would just be nice to be able to get rid of it.

As for keyboard, that is the weakness of my current Asus Expertbook B5.
One arrow key is broken and I have a feeling that within a month or two,
the E key will break as well.

My old consumer asus which by nos is about 5 years old, has no such
problems. On the other hand, the screen and battery are waaaay better on
the expertbook than the older consumer grade asus, so I guess there are
always tradeoffs. =/

[Scott Alfter]

Post by Retrograde
I'm using an Optiplex and it's been flawless. It seems to do better
with Ubuntu variants than anything else I threw at it - Elementary,
openSUSE, several BSDs, Kylin - and has no hardware issues at all.
AND, importantly, the keyboard is really truly excellent.

I have a Latitude 7370 that has always been fully functional with Linux. I
ran Gentoo on it for years, only replacing it with a Framework 13 back when
those were introduced. While a bit long in the tooth today, it's still
kicking, running Arch in my kitchen. I use it to look up recipes.

[Theo]

Post by D
Ages ago when I was working at Dell, and later Dell EMC, there was an
internal linux fan group that tried to get as many laptops as possible to
work smoothly with linux. They had a public repository hidden deep, deep
inside some dell sub domain with tools and stuff.

http://dell.archive.canonical.com/
for Ubuntu. You need to work out the codename for your laptop and then you
can add the repo for eg:
http://dell.archive.canonical.com/dists/bionic-dell-bighorn-grizzly-mlk/
(mlk = Meteor Lake, whl = Whisky Lake, and other Intel CPU generations)

Post by D
I would be surprised if you would not be able to run linux perfectly fine
on the latest and greatest XPS.
I think they even sell an XPS variety with Ubuntu from the factory.

Often the deal is that Ubuntu is often available for purchase with the
latest XPS, but it's not always the latest Ubuntu - Dell are 1+ year behind
because of their QA and testing. If you buy a laptop today it might have
22.04 LTS on it, because it shipped around the time of the 24.04 LTS release
and 22.04 was the current LTS at the time they did the development work.
Their repo contains packages which patch Ubuntu to make it work out of the
box on their hardware, plus some Dell management stuff you don't need.

However, you often don't really need their repo. Once the laptop has been
out a few months, the patches get upstreamed and a fresh Ubuntu install
works fine. So what I'd do is install the latest interim release of Ubuntu
(eg 24.10 currently) and keep on interim releases until you hit the next LTS
(now 26.04), at which point you can decide whether to stay on LTS or keep on
interims. That way you should have an install that works for the first
couple of years - the first six months after release can be bumpy but should
settle down after that.

Even then, most new laptops don't introduce anything new that isn't covered
by existing releases. This is really only for when something new is
released and Linux/Ubuntu need to catch up. In my case, it was the
'soundwire' audio drivers on an XPS17 shipped spring 2020 - I stuck with
Dell's 18.04 until that had landed in mainline (20.10 I think).

Theo

[D]

Post by Theo

Post by D
Ages ago when I was working at Dell, and later Dell EMC, there was an
internal linux fan group that tried to get as many laptops as possible to
work smoothly with linux. They had a public repository hidden deep, deep
inside some dell sub domain with tools and stuff.

http://dell.archive.canonical.com/
for Ubuntu. You need to work out the codename for your laptop and then you
http://dell.archive.canonical.com/dists/bionic-dell-bighorn-grizzly-mlk/
(mlk = Meteor Lake, whl = Whisky Lake, and other Intel CPU generations)

Post by D
I would be surprised if you would not be able to run linux perfectly fine
on the latest and greatest XPS.
I think they even sell an XPS variety with Ubuntu from the factory.

Often the deal is that Ubuntu is often available for purchase with the
latest XPS, but it's not always the latest Ubuntu - Dell are 1+ year behind
because of their QA and testing. If you buy a laptop today it might have
22.04 LTS on it, because it shipped around the time of the 24.04 LTS release
and 22.04 was the current LTS at the time they did the development work.
Their repo contains packages which patch Ubuntu to make it work out of the
box on their hardware, plus some Dell management stuff you don't need.
However, you often don't really need their repo. Once the laptop has been
out a few months, the patches get upstreamed and a fresh Ubuntu install
works fine. So what I'd do is install the latest interim release of Ubuntu
(eg 24.10 currently) and keep on interim releases until you hit the next LTS
(now 26.04), at which point you can decide whether to stay on LTS or keep on
interims. That way you should have an install that works for the first
couple of years - the first six months after release can be bumpy but should
settle down after that.
Even then, most new laptops don't introduce anything new that isn't covered
by existing releases. This is really only for when something new is
released and Linux/Ubuntu need to catch up. In my case, it was the
'soundwire' audio drivers on an XPS17 shipped spring 2020 - I stuck with
Dell's 18.04 until that had landed in mainline (20.10 I think).
Theo

Thank you for the link and the up to date information! I've been using 1
year old Asus laptops for the past 5 years and never had any problems.

Before that I used an old Macbook air 11.6", which also worked well. The
trick is not to buy the latest and greatest, as you say, but to buy 1
generation older hardware to make sure patches and support is in the
kernel.

For regular day to day office machines, I have no problems with that. I do
imagine though, that if you are a power developer, it can be frustrating
that the latest and greatest might not work.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Retrograde
Dell has announced it’s rebranding literally its entire product line, so
mainstays like XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are going away. They’re replacing
all of these old brands with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, and within each
of these, there will be three tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium. Of course, the
reason is “AI”.

This is confusing.

Which is the one made as cheaply as possible so the fans and electrolytic
caps fail five years down the road? That used to be the Optiplex, what is
it now?

Which is the rackmount server that is I/O performance driven? Which is
the one that is CPU driven? It took me years to figure out Dell's
language... but which one is it now?

Post by Retrograde
We’ve also made it easy to distinguish products within each of the new
product categories. We have a consistent approach to tiering that lets
customers pinpoint the exact device for their specific needs. Above and
beyond the starting point (Base), there’s a Plus tier that offers the most
scalable performance and a Premium tier that delivers the ultimate in
mobility and design.

I want the ultimate in one thing but not the ultimate in another. I want a
10G network device but I don't want a GPU or an ILO. In fact, I'll pay
extra to not have a GPU or ILO....

Post by Retrograde
Setting aside the nonsensical reasoning behind the rebrand, I do actually kind
of dig the simplicity here. This is a simple, straightforward set of brand
names and tiers that pretty much anyone can understand. That being said, the
issue with Dell in particular is that once you go to their website to actually
buy one of their machines, the clarity abruptly ends and it gets confusing
fast. I hope these new brand names and tiers will untangle some of that mess to
make it easier to find what you need, but I’m skeptical.

It took years to figure out the old names. Now I have to figure them all
out all over again?
--scott

[Andy Burns]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Retrograde

Post by Retrograde
Dell has announced it’s rebranding literally its entire product line, so

mainstays like XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are going away. They’re replacing
all of these old brands with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, and within each
of these, there will be three tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium.

This is confusing.
Which is the one made as cheaply as possible so the fans and electrolytic
caps fail five years down the road? That used to be the Optiplex, what is
it now?

At a guess "Dell" & "Base"

Post by Scott Dorsey
Which is the rackmount server

None of XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are servers

Their website for servers is very confusing now, too split up by
industry, what does a server care about that?

Easy to find 1U/1xsocket/4xdrive servers for about £1k
Easy to find £30kto £50k, 1U servers too

Not so easy to find boxes with a bit more expansion (2U, 2xsocket, 8-16
drives) they do exist and reasonable about £3-4k starting price, but
they're almost hidden.

I'm sure they'd love to spend they time sending out horrifically priced
quotes, but for customers who haven't gone to the cloud, but don't wnt a
poverty spec server, they don't appear to be trying very hard?

Post by Scott Dorsey
It took years to figure out the old names. Now I have to figure them all
out all over again?

I'm sure we'll cope

[D]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Retrograde

Post by Retrograde
Dell has announced it’s rebranding literally its entire product line, so

mainstays like XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are going away. They’re replacing
all of these old brands with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, and within each
of these, there will be three tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium.

This is confusing.
Which is the one made as cheaply as possible so the fans and electrolytic
caps fail five years down the road? That used to be the Optiplex, what is
it now?

At a guess "Dell" & "Base"

Post by Scott Dorsey
Which is the rackmount server

None of XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron are servers
Their website for servers is very confusing now, too split up by industry,
what does a server care about that?
Easy to find 1U/1xsocket/4xdrive servers for about £1k
Easy to find £30kto £50k, 1U servers too
Not so easy to find boxes with a bit more expansion (2U, 2xsocket, 8-16
drives) they do exist and reasonable about £3-4k starting price, but they're
almost hidden.
I'm sure they'd love to spend they time sending out horrifically priced
quotes, but for customers who haven't gone to the cloud, but don't wnt a
poverty spec server, they don't appear to be trying very hard?

Post by Scott Dorsey
It took years to figure out the old names. Now I have to figure them all
out all over again?

I'm sure we'll cope

It is very sad. Cheap 1U servers seem to be going out of fashion. I spoke
with a business partner that deals exclusively in hardware (well, with
some software defined storage on top, and the occasional HPC setup) and he
says that all HW vendors only want to sell huge GPU boxes for AI, and they
no longer want to sell smaller and cheaper boxes. This is very sad.

I have 5 rented servers (not VM:s) in hetzner for various customers, and I
would like to consolidate them onto 2 geographically distant servers in
some data center.

I have a feeling that if I could only find some budget servers, possibly
even used, I might actually be able to build a business case for that. But
we'll see. Time will tell.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by D
It is very sad. Cheap 1U servers seem to be going out of fashion. I spoke
with a business partner that deals exclusively in hardware (well, with
some software defined storage on top, and the occasional HPC setup) and he
says that all HW vendors only want to sell huge GPU boxes for AI, and they
no longer want to sell smaller and cheaper boxes. This is very sad.

Have you tried Supermicro? They aren't the cheapest thing around, but they
can do an entry level server.

The absolute cheapest ones are from Chinese companies like Chenbro, but
we aren't allowed to buy that stuff unfortunately. You might be.
--scott

[D]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by D
It is very sad. Cheap 1U servers seem to be going out of fashion. I spoke
with a business partner that deals exclusively in hardware (well, with
some software defined storage on top, and the occasional HPC setup) and he
says that all HW vendors only want to sell huge GPU boxes for AI, and they
no longer want to sell smaller and cheaper boxes. This is very sad.

Have you tried Supermicro? They aren't the cheapest thing around, but they
can do an entry level server.
The absolute cheapest ones are from Chinese companies like Chenbro, but
we aren't allowed to buy that stuff unfortunately. You might be.
--scott

I have very good connections at supermicro, and sadly what was
communicated to me a few months ago was that they are only interested in
selling "AI" servers now, so cheap, high:ish density 1U servers are out
and no one gets a lot of commission on it, so it's a pain to get anyone to
care about those orders. =(

Chenbro I have not heard about. I will check it out! Another option is
Gigabyte, sometimse it seems as if Gigabyte can be a good replacement for
supermicro.

[Theo]

Post by D
I have very good connections at supermicro, and sadly what was
communicated to me a few months ago was that they are only interested in
selling "AI" servers now, so cheap, high:ish density 1U servers are out
and no one gets a lot of commission on it, so it's a pain to get anyone to
care about those orders. =(
Chenbro I have not heard about. I will check it out! Another option is
Gigabyte, sometimse it seems as if Gigabyte can be a good replacement for
supermicro.

We have some Gigabyte. They're fine, they're kind of mid range in price and
in creature comforts (BMCs etc) but they're ok. Chenbro is very much at the
budget end, would tend not to go there (sharp metal, cheap PSUs, ...)

Put in some Asrock 1Us, there are some with Ryzen desktop CPUs that
have very good price/performance (~£3k for similar spec to a £6-8k Dell) but
they can be a bit hard to buy.

But the most recent batch was Supermicro AS-1015A-MT, Ryzen 7950X3D, 128GB
RAM, 4TB NVMe, 1U for about £3k.

Theo

[D]

Post by Theo

Post by D
I have very good connections at supermicro, and sadly what was
communicated to me a few months ago was that they are only interested in
selling "AI" servers now, so cheap, high:ish density 1U servers are out
and no one gets a lot of commission on it, so it's a pain to get anyone to
care about those orders. =(
Chenbro I have not heard about. I will check it out! Another option is
Gigabyte, sometimse it seems as if Gigabyte can be a good replacement for
supermicro.

We have some Gigabyte. They're fine, they're kind of mid range in price and
in creature comforts (BMCs etc) but they're ok. Chenbro is very much at the
budget end, would tend not to go there (sharp metal, cheap PSUs, ...)
Put in some Asrock 1Us, there are some with Ryzen desktop CPUs that
have very good price/performance (~£3k for similar spec to a £6-8k Dell) but
they can be a bit hard to buy.
But the most recent batch was Supermicro AS-1015A-MT, Ryzen 7950X3D, 128GB
RAM, 4TB NVMe, 1U for about £3k.
Theo

I discussed Chenbro today with my HW partner and the price difference
compared with supermicro once you start to add apu, ram, nvme etc. is
minimal. His recommendation was to stick with supermicro to get a better
quality chassi, psu etc. and if the difference will only be a few 100 of
USD it does sound reasonable.

[Rich]

Post by Andy Burns
Their website for servers is very confusing now, too split up by
industry, what does a server care about that?

It does not care. But this is likely a reflection of the dumbing down
of the purchasing agents/procurement departments in that they don't
know 1U/2U/4CPU/8CPU etc., but do know they want something for
"webserving".

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Scott Dorsey
It took years to figure out the old names. Now I have to figure them all
out all over again?

"Life-long learning" is supposed to be about learning *new* stuff,
not about learning the same stuff over and over again, just with new
names, new icons, new GUI features for the old stuff.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Mike Spencer

Post by Scott Dorsey
It took years to figure out the old names. Now I have to figure them all
out all over again?

"Life-long learning" is supposed to be about learning *new* stuff,
not about learning the same stuff over and over again, just with new
names, new icons, new GUI features for the old stuff.

Oh, I understand. Management gets so upset when I refer to "cloud
computing" as "that obsolete timesharing stuff."
--scott