Setting up a new XPS 15 for Software Development

[@AZisk]

JOIN: youtube.com/@azisk/join

[@jolynele2587]

the dell is especially good for dev work in winter especially when i compile larger projects because it warms up my room in 20 minutes 🙏

[@mryo-yobzh9485]

@@darrinito Well, seeing that at 4:00 he explains how to turn the XPS into a hand warmer for no reason, I would expect it to thermo-throttle.

[@venuev]

I have similar (i9), the fan always on (even on light load), keyboard hot to the touch, hate it. Intend to replace soon. Too many Dell I have purchased had heat/fan issues. No more, will be buying other brands.

[@jolynele2587]

@@venuev i use a lenovo ideapad with ryzen 7. can handle 1080p gaming and various workloads well. if you're looking for a laptop then consider one

[@Meritumas]

it can probably be used as a frying pan to prepare scrambling eggs. I could use my mac his way. All that it takes is to start microsoft teams on my MacBook pro :-)

[@huyvole9724]

@@venuev because its very slim. Maybe you need a slim laptop with arm cpu like snapdragon x lite or macbook

[@nelwhix]

I was tired of watching laptop reviews from people that use it for photo/video editing. glad to see a dev's perspective. Thank you👍

[@michalsvihla1403]

If you think about it, all youtubers are basically photo/video editors (because they post videos). And I do agree with your point.

[@techniumtech4887]

As a new dev (web and app), I've watched many of your videos to determine hardware choices, prepping machines and just related material to code....wow. Your easy going style really helps take the pressure off! Going to look into some of your courses! Thanks Alex!

[@TubeSwarn]

Finally a tech channel which addresses stuff that's relevant to developers like me. Thank you sir for the windows and mac setup videos. Also your comparison videos helped me a lot. Please keep uploading :)

[@Fapados123]

6:40 I'd recommend enabling font smoothing, since you're going to work with a lot of text. No font smoothing feels more eye straining to read.

[@AZisk]

reverted that setting indeed. Good call!

[@maxvamp]

I bought one of those about 5 weeks ago. Its a nice laptop. I got the 13700, and upgraded to 64GB. Nice machine!!

[@AZisk]

It does get pretty loud under stress, but i’m just used to that from any Intel pc laptop at this point

[@flexairz]

@@AZisk Its the Intel space heater thats factory built in.

[@mryo-yobzh9485]

@@AZisk Disable performance mode and it will stop wasting power (turboing) for no reason, you will probably ear it instantly.

[@AshenafiGodana-m1u]

You are a life saver. I was confused wondering between linux VirtualBox, dual boot and windows 11 trying to figure out how wsl works and all that stuff to get efficient workflow of web development until I finally landed on this video. Thank you very much it's been a relief.

[@traustitj]

I installed docker desktop and choose wsl2 option. Then pretty regularly and especially after a wake up, even if the screen saver came on. The cpu load and IO load become so excessive that the machine could not be used for a while. Repeated many times over the day. I uninstalled docker desktop, installed hyper V and installed DD again choosing not to use WSL. Works amazingly well. I gave the VM much more memory and no side issues. Works with WSL linux machines.

[@saurabhranjan4951]

Wow, the video I never knew I had to watch until I did. It covered most of my workflow and the setup part has always been pretty mesy for me. Thank You!!

[@rudedogg_2]

Thanks! I appreciate all the extra info

[@AZisk]

thanks a lot! glad it was helpful!

[@rastineshgho8637]

Just bought a laptop and i didn't know what to do because i haven't had a pc or laptop for a long time. This video is saved! Full of good information🙌

[@ChrisGVE]

Still a big fan of your channel and your style! Question: are you targeting Windows development on this machine? if not why not simply replacing Windows with Linux or is any real downside? Personally I'd be looking at an Intel machine for Nvidia for AI training though using cloud based GPU-enable virtual machines is probably more economical. Wdyt?

[@AZisk]

Yes, I specifically needed a Windows machine for Visual Studio here. I may throw Linux on it if enough people like your comment :)

[@AZisk]

@@husseinhelal9283 my daily driver is the macbook pro (as i mentioned in the video). i needed this xps for a project

[@funtom2484]

Ngl, I have also bought the xps 15 (i7-12th) Running Linux on it is the best experience

[@i.am.rossalex]

@@AZisk what is the real battery life of this Dell while coding, docker, etc…?

[@AZisk]

@@i.am.rossalex Haven’t done the battery test yet. Afraid of perf loss when I use the machine so I’ve been keeping it plugged in. But will have to try out the battery

[@chrislykk]

Thanks for this. I got a Windows laptop (as opposed to spending almost 4x as much $ to replace my Mac just for more RAM) and I didn't want to dual-boot Linux. This setup works a treat.

[@RGB81-vr2se]

for the first time ever, I was able to follow along, i got a brand new mini PC, and managed to do all the instalation and testing, now i have to continue my jurney alone. 😒 Anyhow, thank you so much, I hope for more detailed videos like this, for total beginers

[@MrSparc]

I'm software engineer in cross-platform C++ projects. My laptop OS is Linux, with cross compilers for x86, arm, mingw for windows,etc. Most tests for Windows runs using Wine but when I need a real Windows environment I use it in a VM with a shared code folder mounted. So the workflow that you have show us probably will be more easy in this way. The only potential issue is Windows licensing included with your XPS being used actually in a VM when the OS host is Linux. But this approach increased my productivity, just a single code folder no matter Windows/ Linux targets.

[@user-bb1cn1we1e]

which linux distro ??

[@sto3359]

First thing I’m gonna do is… Wipe the hard drive and install Linux!

[@AZisk]

Next things, you reinstall Windows because you forgot you needed Visual Studio :)

[@gtangari]

Also a fresh installation of Windows is a good idea. My experience is that is almost impossible to get rid of all the McAfee components etc. etc. ...

[@awex7]

you should get the windows code first bc ur buying windows when u buy the laptop. if it didn’t have the os it would be cheaper

[@mrpaasha]

@@AZisk i have 512 gb ryzen 5 16gb ram, i installed Linux too.

[@person1227]

For anyone wanting to try, I have had a ton of trouble dual booting Linux with my XPS 15. Had to mess around in the BIOS. I got a nice graphics card with it but something is wrong with the Nvidia video drivers. It's very unstable on Linux Mint. It mostly functions but still crashes occasionally. I finally got it all working but it took way longer than other laptops I've worked with. Definitely Google for a bit more info on some of the issues, it's well documented.

[@jayv_tech]

Thank you so much for this video. I learned a lot, and I am now starting to understand how all of these pieces come together.

[@isachomonik2377]

Thanks for the video! Just got a new Samsung notebook for studies, and your video helped me a lot to setup it.

[@alexeiz]

Dell XPS 15 is great because not only you can use it to do your work, it doubles as a stove, so you can also make yourself a breakfast while building your project.

[@drishalballaney]

HAHA JustJosh did try cooking an egg on it :D

[@ultravioletiris6241]

@@drishalballaney seriously even the newest ones?

[@borngraced]

pizza ready lmao

[@foofoighter]

Haha never. The battery dies to fast to cook the egg properly

[@borngraced]

I love my Thinkpad z16 :xD

[@troyroa7768]

FUN VID AS USUAL, GOOD SIR. Like this format the best!

[@danhvokhanhtoan2984]

really straight forward video. love it

[@blablababaa]

Thank, I discovered a few things and you are very enjoyable to listen !

[@vincentnestler1805]

Thanks!

[@AZisk]

🤩 thank you so much!

[@magicmulder]

Funny enough I have two opposed setups for work. At home I have a Windows 11 PC running a Mint VM (VMWare Workstation), at work an Ubuntu laptop running a Windows 11 VM (VirtualBox). Main reason is my home PC is also used for gaming so I didn’t want to go Linux native on it. But that way I have basically the same distribution of programs so I never have to change my workflow.

[@CHURCHISAWESUM]

What’s your solution for sharing files between the two devices quickly and easily? Cloud storage? Thumb drive?

[@magicmulder]

@@CHURCHISAWESUM Thumb drive may be forbidden by company rules. Cloud storage. I use rclone for encrypted cloud storage with obfuscated file names. Can mount the B2 bucket on both machines. Also in our case we use Office 365 so we have OneDrive (and soon Sharepoint).

[@xenos321]

25:31 > when you say "linux type of environment whether it's on my mac..." do you mean unix-type or do you somehow use a vm on your mac?

[@Brazil1970]

Could you test this laptop and compare it to M1/2 Macs? Thanks for all your efforts on making these videos.

[@ShinyTechThings]

I'm curious if/how your stack would run on a Windows ARM laptop like the Inspiron 14 3420 🤔

[@xiaodhruv7693]

Really enjoyed this video, thankyou I learnt a lot about windows aswell

[@lwa.dev74]

Thanks Alex this was awesome for windows platform setup :-)

[@cubano100pct]

Power Mode can be set in Windows 11, under Settings -> Power & Battery -> pick Best Performance under "Power Mode"

[@lokeshloke0109]

Actually for the WSL error after the reboot, you have to list the WSL distros (distributions) using WSL -l -v , then wsl -deregister

[@hursh6525]

Thanks! the wsl part was really helpful

[@Helloguys743j]

Nice video man!

[@kamurashev]

Should we expect xps vs mac performance comparison tests?

[@AZisk]

yep 👍

[@nathanrye]

Learned a lot from the first part

[@homerogazze1000]

Great Tutorial Man! Thank you very much : )

[@joe.luke.]

very helpful for a beginner developer like me

[@lisovyy]

I haven't touched Windows in years, but recently I've strated seriously considering switching to it as a daily work driver, there are just a couple of things, mostly related to virtualization, which simply don't work on Arm Mac. Thanks for refreshing my memory how to do stuff ;)

[@infeltk]

virtualization doesn't work on arm mac? Interesting

[@lisovyy]

@@infeltk indeed interesting. Try to emulate non-arm architecture, have fun.

[@teslasiddha9365]

Clean and Neat. Grazie Signore!

[@mibeon]

After you uninstall and uncheck all the windows default stuff, there is only one thing left, which is really useful and that is the linux (wsl) 😄

[@User1-m5x3y]

What an amazing, precise, fantastic video. Everything that you did on this video was to the point & precisely. I appreciate you and keep it up.....!!!!!!

[@AZisk]

Wow, thank you!

[@HUAHAM]

You can also disable the laggy auto web search the one in the taskbar by going to the registry editor use... “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer” path in the Registry, create the “DisableSearchBoxSuggestions” key, and set it to “1.” ... its also irritating as it often pulls results from the web and not the computer this gave me good performance after disabling this and the taskbar weather...the refresh in the back...

[@muhamedfathy]

This is great video. Thanks for sharing 👍

[@ZabiAzimy]

Very useful video! Thanks

[@Frank2tek]

Waiting for the Dell XPS 15 Bench.... 🙂

[@krey_ton]

When you (re-)install Windows you have in some iso images e.g. Windows 10 Home / Pro N included which doesn't has stuff like Xbox Game Services or Skype preinstalled so far.

[@elpsykongrooo]

Have you tried sdkman to handle multiple java environments in macOS/Linux/WSL?

[@Abedoss]

From Windows visual effects you should have kept: • Show window contents while dragging I think it’s hard to live without it.

[@doctor9228]

Huge video, thank you

[@rudedogg_2]

Very informative! I'll be back a number of times when mine is delivered. Playing the waiting game.

[@DAWID13ful]

So many apps to delete and commercials/news in search 😮 Staying with my Pop_OS (luckily I don't need Visual Studio).

[@csisticsakanyfeju1415]

I'd really like to see some cpu/gpu code benchmarks and maschine learning between this new xps and the m2max.

[@krzyczak]

This video should be started with: this is how you remove windows from your machine to avoid the bloatware and crappynes

[@joseph_donovan]

Oh that was a sweet video! Filled me with ineluctable vim, verve and vitality! Loved it! Makes me want to run out onto the street and kiss the first developer I see on the streets of London! Pure gold!

[@prashantn687]

Is XPS 13 plus good choice for little bit of photo and video editing along with MS office and web browsing thing?

[@alphabasic1759]

High perf mode is natively available on thinkpads

[@josephregallis3394]

Dell XPS machines are usually very nice!

[@MarkTrudgeonRulez]

I run SQL Server in a Linux Docker container, works a treat

[@bhavanshgupta6476]

Can you create a new video of setup using the windows 11 Dev Home and other new features for Devs rolled out in recent Microsoft Build 2023, also how does it compare to Mac in terms of development?

[@ladislavvarga9317]

I tried Azure data studio and with comparison with behemoth of SSMS it gives similar feature with smaller size.

[@TorreyBraman]

I didn't know about winget, thanks!

[@Jayme]

Something else I like to do is change the confirm popup to never pop up.

[@jafarjuneidi7585]

I would greatly suggest looking into fnm as a node version manager instead of NVM

[@hanes2]

What made u choose XPS over Precision line? Was it the price? The recent Precision design wise took what they learned from XPS and made it just better for professional work. I agree , the Dell XPS/Precision is best pc laptop.

[@AZisk]

haven’t checked out precision, as I’ve always been a fan of the xps lineup.

[@hanes2]

@@AZisk think of the xps, but it’s suited up, pricier, little thicker, Quadro/rtx, some have dedicated ports like Ethernet and hdmi 2.1 which I really appreciated. Like the xps it has that nice 4k touch/120hz display and great trackpad etc. there’s quite a lot of different models. But for many, it’s just too expensive for non-enterprise customers compared to a xps.

[@charlesborlase2238]

@@hanes2 depending on the development one does, the availability of ECC on the higher end precision models (e.g. 7770) can be a benefit. The last few years I've stuck with XPS at home as the price/performance is pretty good. Having a powered fan to push air into the XPS helps with temperatures (and throttling)

[@raymondji1006]

Just got a windows laptop after using mac for years, thanks for the video! Im curious if you have any experience with react native on windows for android development? I'd like to run node in WSL as well, but still figuring out how to get everything working together

[@CalmArgha1243]

How can I solve the problem that reads 'This probably means Tcl was not installes properly'?

[@dinnyemag]

I'm finishing highschool on math and IT and want to go to Technical University for automation and computers, but I feel almost parallel with this part. 😅

[@mazharkhan8339]

Great video as always. A question do you use resharper with visual studio community? What are your thoughts on resharper?

[@AZisk]

i haven’t tried resharper recently, but i did maybe 7 years ago, and back then it slowed down my development instead of speeding me up, so I stopped using it.

[@EmptyNonsens]

I am missing one thing and that is CUDA installation, after all with dedicated GPU it's a waste not to use it

[@AZisk]

good addition!

[@markdillon9588]

Brill vid i learned a lot 😊

[@anwarjujara]

Hello Alex. After preparing your system for the first time and you mention it took you almost a day. Do you take an image copy of your c drive?.

[@clickratio]

I personally wouldn't disable waves or Realtek services on startup simply because sometimes audio related functions might be "funky," for example, when u plug something into the headphone jack, the interface that pops up asking u whether its a headset or headphone is part of the waves app

[@AZisk]

I NEVER want to be asked that if I plug something in. That’s something that should be automatically detected.

[@mryo-yobzh9485]

@@AZisk How do you expect it to differentiate between this 3.5mm jack and that same 3.5mm jack ? (spoiler they look the same, but are connected to different devices)

[@baxobapo]

Thank you for the video! Could you also do this for the Dell XPS 17 with an i9?

[@AZisk]

👍 i can’t imagine the xps 17 setup would be any different.

[@Makingdifference100]

Could you confirm what flavor of windows operating system you are using on your XPS 15? Can you tell me if you are using the Home or Pro version? Thanks a lot! I want to buy a new laptop for the same purpose, and I want to make sure my new laptop has the same features as yours and tools. Thanks a lot!

[@philosyche]

If you're someone who does audio work, or even uses audio for music/media on your dell machine, do NOT turn of the waves max start up service, its a nightmare to get it working properly again.

This XPS 15 (9530 i7 version with Intel Arc A370M). It's realy hot, fan noise and poor battery during web development coding ? Want to replace my thinkpad carbon x1 gen6 to be able to do some editing video

[@jeroenadamdevenijn4067]

Is WSL2 still orders of magnitude slower compared to a Linux VM? Especially memory and disk I/O which makes it a very poor experience for power users.

[@AttilaKozma]

Oh god I read only the title and I got a headache. I use a precision 5560 and for basic tasks the fan is audible. I don’t want to know how loud the xps gets for you in performance mode while compiling…

[@astrajingga1485]

can you make system prep and cleanup video separately?

[@zman7494]

great guide! um. where can I get the wallpaper you're using? 😬

[@jameskariuki1091]

How comes your Ubuntu terminal has the authentic ubuntu theme and font by default. Did you customize it? Mine is just a black background with boring font and colors

[@Henry-br1ti]

These days, the first I do when update to new laptop, I format disks, install Arch Linux, and setup.

[@sabrainc]

Thank you!! Will you make some google cloud development work flows please.

[@agostinoromano5016]

WOW... but , Is the Dell XPS 17 version great? do you recommend it?

[@Kedoink18]

A lot of this seems simpler in linux than windows. Much need for wsl and not dual boot?

[@johnutomo8663]

Can you test virtualbox with wsl turn on, i always get poor performance when wsl features turned on

[@callevitt8676]

awesome videos keep up the good work. I am studying computer science with AI and software engineering and was wondering if you would recommend this over the new m2 macbooks for someone like me?

[@og4789]

Please do more PC content as I am now forced to use PC instead Mac at my new job 😅

[@nurilha]

why are you not reviewing the new xps 17?

[@Morzelius]

Nice video! I would add OhMyPosh to the list

[@AnesuC]

Where is the link for the high performance thing you mentioned btw? I don't see it in the description

[@AZisk]

added to description

[@AnesuC]

@@AZisk cool thanks!

[@AnesuC]

@@AZisk I sent you an email a few minutes ago btw! Not necessarily related to this video so I thought I would sent an email instead.

[@nerust69srt]

Sir can i use Macbook pro 14 for Software Development Using Parallels ?

[@ladislavvarga9317]

I ussually install new things when I needed. Ussually first day I install the basic stuff and continue when I need something more. Personally I like Choco more, I don't understand why Microsoft cannot improve the Window store to have possible to install similar like in Google play and have same library as Choco or Winget.

[@Punisher367]

i become a software developer only from your tips and i create 2 big projects

[@oscarmurillo2200]

Just curious, why SQL Server Express and not Developer edition?

[@KaajiSaab]

You don't need to open Command Prompt to change power mode, just go to setting->Battery and Power-> Power Mode, there you will find power mode to choose: Best Efficienty, Balance and Best Performance.

[@nintendo_pilot]

What is your battery life on that with web development use? I have the previous model and I get barely 2 hours total and I’m squeezing every bit of power savings out of it.

[@MrShturman10]

What is the point of installing WSL? i.e. running the front-end part of the project on Linux?

[@henriquepicanco97]

If Visual Studio wasn't a factor, I would recommend to wipe the disk and install Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Real UNIX is better than any virtualization (even when WSL makes Windows virtualizes itself).