Dell G5 5500 Intel Core i7-10th gen 15.6 inches, 8GB, 512GB SSD, 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti 4GB Graphics, Windows 10 Home & MS Office Full HD Laptop

This review is for Linux compatibility with this laptop. I am not familiar with Windows and therefore not really capable or interested in writing a review from that vantage point.I want to give a little context for this review. I have been running Linux on laptops for a decade or more. I’ve had 2 Asus ROG laptops, a couple of Dells (including the Inspiron Gaming 15 5775) and a handful of Intel only machines.It is also important to note that I prefer to install Arch Linux. Usually when a spec sheet has Ubuntu listed, the machine will also work under Arch just fine. The computer I am typing this on is the Inspiron 5775 with very similar hardware to the G5587 in this review. I assumed it would be basically a drop in replacement but that wasn’t the case.The first thing I did was take an NVME drive I had with an Arch install and try to get that working. On the Intel graphics it worked like a charm, and I thought I was off to the races. However, Optimus video was not activating. I tried playing around with it for 3 hours or so, doing everything I could think of, checking the settings of the Inspiron 5775 etc etc. I couldn’t get it to use the Nvidia graphics.Next I took the step of taking the hard drive out of the 5775 and put it in the G5587 thinking that any misconfiguration or missed packages would be solved because *I KNOW* this install works. Interestingly this did not work at all. The desktop GNOME would just constantly show *Something Went Wrong* and then log out. In addition, via this method the backlit keyboard did not respond to the function keys at all, and was stuck in the OFF positionAs an intermediate step I got a copy of Ubuntu Mate 19.10 Beta and ran through the install taking the defaults, and in 15 minutes was greeted by a working desktop accelerated with the Nvidia graphics.OK I thought, I’ll just nuke this and do a fresh Arch install from scratch. I now know that it isn’t a hardware problem, it’s a software problem. I walked through the setup again, and after a few minutes, arrived at a desktop…. to get the same *Something Went Wrong* error on the Nvidia graphics card. At which point I gave up on ArchThe moral of the story is simply, Dell has right in their spec sheet that they support Ubuntu, so I installed Ubuntu Mate, and set it up and the laptop has been working beautifully ever since. It even has a nice indicator app to switch between the Intel and Nvidia graphics cards and it shows the logo of which one is currently active in the task barAs for the rest of the hardware itself, I did turn on the computer and wait about 10 minutes for the Windows first time setup to show up. This is when I decided the 1TB spinning rust this thing came with was completely insufficient. I yanked that out and threw the entire disk in the drawer never accepting the EULA in the event we sell this laptop to someone else in the future.With an NVME drive, this laptop boots very quickly. Suspend and resume is almost instant. I was very impressed with that. And there are some CPU intensive tasks that I notice improvements on.On a side note, I tried to put some Team T-Force Vulcan 16GB (TLRD416G2666HC18F-S01) in this laptop because it says it supports up to 32GB of ram and the board would not post with this ram in either slot. In fact when I put the original ram back in, the BIOS reported the “last several boots” there was no ram in the board.I returned the ram and ended up getting G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (F4-2666C19S-8GRS) and that gave me no issues whatsoever. I dont know if the Team T-Force ram was dead or incompatible with the board, so just a word of warning.TL;DR* Usually, if a machine supports Ubuntu it is ok to try other versions of Linux. For the G5587, this was not my experience* Laptop may be picky about RAM, possible I could have had a DOA piece. I had no way to testPROS* Good price for decent hardware* Not as heavy as previous generations* Good noise/fan profile when doing non-gaming tasks. Machine is basically silent* has a number pad* It is very easy to service, one screw pops the cover off* works “out of the box” with Ubuntu which is what Dell claims* BIOS is easy to update* has a USB C portCONS* I find the keyboard a bit cramped compared to the Inspiron 5775* Track pad is too far to the left for my liking. This caused accidentally activating the mouse* Spinning rust is terrible. Replace immediately (or get a model with SSD/NVME)* Speakers were quieter than expected* Just different enough from previous versions that Arch and a few other distros could not utilize the same config* Has a latch instead of a solid ethernet port. While it feels solid, if it breaks (as I have had happen to other laptops) the port will become uselessSummary:This is a decent laptop for the price and I am generally happy with the purchase. There are newer GPUs out there (1650 GTX for example) but for my usecase it wasn’t worth the small premium to upgrade. The HDD is garbage, but I expected to replace this anyways. If you are looking for a laptop that “just works” with Ubuntu, this is your guy. Its pretty portable, worked with Ubuntu with no fuss and provides enough performance (for example World of Warcraft Classic on max settings using Lutris @220FPS in Storm Wind) to satisfy my needs. All in all, it doesn’t break the bank and delivers what it says it does

Terrible computer. Constantly crashes. It never starts up properly and constantly gets stuck on a black screen. The box was damaged as it appears it was dropped multiple times.