• Day One Linux Support on Panther Lake:

  • Dell, Intel, and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) collaborated to deliver out-of-the-box support for the Arch-based Omarchy distribution on 2026 Dell XPS 14 and 16 laptops, eliminating the typical 6–8 month kernel delay.
  • The team tested pre-production silicon 6–8 months prior to release, backporting roughly 20 patches from Linux 7 release candidate builds into a temporary linux-ptl kernel (served via the Limine bootloader) until Linux 7.0 lands upstream.
  • Work resolved early hardware incompatibilities across speakers, mic, Wi-Fi, NPU/OpenVINO GenAI, display panel self-refresh/VRR, MIPI camera architecture (via v4l2-replayd), and platform thermals (lpmd/thermald).

• Dell’s Open-Source & Mainline Heritage:

  • Reaffirms Dell's longstanding open-source contributions dating back to 1998, including the creation and open-sourcing of Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) in 2003.
  • Highlights early adoption of Red Hat's Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) in 2015, contributing over 8,600 native firmware files (BIOS, Thunderbolt, docks, SSDs) through fwupd.
  • Emphasizes a strict upstream-first policy, holding component vendors accountable to push mainline kernel drivers rather than relying on out-of-tree blobs.

• Omarchy & Developer Workflow:

  • DHH designed Omarchy as an opinionated, developer-focused system built on Arch Linux and the Hyprland tiling window manager, emphasizing keyboard-first navigation, curated terminal tooling, and rapid installation.
  • The setup enables fresh installations with full-disk encryption in roughly 4–5 minutes.
  • 37signals has adopted the 2026 XPS running Omarchy as standard-issue developer hardware, mirroring their on-premise infrastructure based on Dell PowerEdge servers.

• Hardware Course Correction:

  • The 2026 XPS hardware directly incorporates community and developer feedback by replacing capacitive-touch function rows with dedicated physical keys.
  • Introduces updated display panels, upgraded battery technology, and refined build ergonomics tailored to professional workloads.

Dell COO in q3 earnings call said 500 million PCs that could have not been upgraded to Windows 11, and 500 million PCs that couldn't are also still in operation on Windows 10. 1billion PCs thusfar not moving to Win11.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-15-6-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-8gb-memory-256gb-solid-state-drive-carbon-black/6508652.p?skuId=6508652

Someone recommending to avoid using Dell SupportAssist on Windows 11. I came across this because I was trying to see if there was a way to update SA in order to ensure the driver iqvw64e.sys was removed. Related to the problem here. Uninstalling SupportAssist resolved the aforementioned problem since recursive file search through C drive failed to find driver iqvw64e.sys

Based on other comments in this thread, seems like it's best to let Windows Update handle the drivers. Will no longer use Dell SA and will utilize "Optional Updates" to handle drivers

Currently, the only perceived benefit from SA is automating support tickets submissions if product is under warranty. Last IT support experience with Dell was positive (they did the best they could), but they didn't know much about sys admin stuff on Windows (weren't very helpful in resolving issue without losing all files and installed software).

This worked well for me with a Dell Vostro 3550 and Ubuntu Server 14.04.4 virtualised inside VirtualBox (Version 5.0.16 r105871). When you run this command, the shell will present the configurator and the choices this user recommends are valid mostly. By contrast, I chose the Dell SK-8125 as a reasonably close match to the Vostro 3550. I also set the left Alt key to function as the AltGr key and this solved the problem. Now, if I want to type the pipe ( | ) character, I use the key combination

ALT+~

This is not the most intuitive solution; but it works!