We had a lot of good things to say about Dell’s XPS-13 Developer Edition when we reviewed it in April 2013—in fact, the best thing about it was how normal it was. Dell took the time to do Linux on an Ultrabook correctly, and the resulting platform was a slim Linux-powered portable that just worked, Cupertino-style.

This morning, Dell has announced that their Developer Edition line of Linux-powered laptops is getting a pretty significant revamp. In addition to an upgraded XPS-13 Developer Edition based on Dell’s 2015 XPS-13 refresh, the line is adding a piece of workstation-class hardware: the Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation, Developer Edition.

The branding is a bit of a mouthful, but the hardware to back it up is substantial. Built around Dell’s M3800 workstation-class laptop, the Developer Edition ships with what Dell Web Vertical Director Barton George calls "the vanilla image of the most recent LTS release (14.04)." The workstation’s default configuration includes a 15.6" 1920x1080 display, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive, but it can be customized with up to 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, a 1TB mSATA SSD, and a 15.6 UltraSharp IGZO UHD Touch display with 3840x2160 pixels.

The base configuration lists at $1533.50, while the price with upgrades comes up in the configuration tool as $2,765.50 (though about $1,000 of that is the 1TB SSD—going with a 256GB 2.5" SSD instead of the mSATA 1TB option drops the price by $735 to $2,030.50).

As we saw when we reviewed the original XPS-13 Developer Edition, the key selling point of buying an Ubuntu portable from a company like Dell is the integration and support, especially with peripheral drivers for things like Wi-Fi chipsets and trackpads. Dell has promised Ars a review unit as soon as they’re available, and our expectation is that the M3800 Developer Edition will hold together under daily usage just as well as its predecessor did. We're especially curious to see how Ubuntu's desktop environment handles HiDPI mode—various reports from around the Web indicate that things more or less work for hobbyists who have tried, and so we definitely want to put our eyes on what an OEM's implementation looks like.

Would-be customers with money to spend don’t have to wait on our review to see what the new device is like, though: the M3800 Developer Edition is available to purchase right now.