Is Dell pre-installed Ubuntu the same as the general release?

Is Dell pre-installed Ubuntu the same as the general release? Or does the Dell pre-installed version have special Dell drivers etc?

Based on my experience with a Dell laptop that came with Ubuntu 16.04, the Dell version has quite some additional material, not just related to drivers:

sudo fdisk -l lists

 Device          Start        End   Sectors   Size Type  
/dev/sda1        2048    1026047   1024000   500M EFI System  
/dev/sda2     1026048    7317503   6291456     3G Microsoft basic data  
/dev/sda3     7317504  380581887 373264384   178G Linux filesystem  
/dev/sda4  1937289216 1953523711  16234496   7.8G Linux swap  

• /dev/sda2 is described as "Microsoft basic data" and appears to be related to restoring the original Ubuntu OS installed on the system.

• /dev/sda3 is the partition containing the Ubuntu 16.04 OS. I've reduced its size to accommodate other flavors of Ubuntu.

• Looking at /boot shows several subfolders with Dell-related executables.

• /usr/share/applications lists two .desktop files: "Dell Driver Installer" and "Dell Recovery"

• man dell-recovery tells us that "dell-recovery is a tool for generating recovery media for Dell factory shipped systems. This media can then be used to rebuild a system with a factory image in the event of a hard drive failure."

• The Dell version may come with the Super key disabled by default and requires several steps, described in the link to get this basic functionality.

• If you view System Details, the image includes the Dell logo.

• The GRUB menu has two entries not, in my opinion, available in a standard release.

• /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xenial-dell.list has http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ xenial-dell public.

• http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/dists/xenial-dell/public/binary-amd64/Packages lists what will be included (depending on your system). One can download that list (as, say, "dell-packages.txt") and run grep -E "(^Package|^Description:)" dell-packages.txt to get a summary.

• Currently, the corresponding bionic area is empty.

• Given that Dell has recently released laptops with 16.04 pre-installed, I think it will be a while before they do anything for 18.04.

I am just wondering if I need to look out for a Dell-special 18.04 when Dell finally start shipping it ...

That'll be your call. I'm quite happy running Kubuntu 18.04 alongside the version of Ubuntu 16.04 installed by Dell, but if you have need of specific drivers, you'll need to keep a watch for their availability.

Here is the backup of all the source-list added by dell, xps13' 2018 developper edition

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  166 mai   24 07:59 bionic-dell-beaver-italia.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  138 juin   8 11:27 bionic-dell.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  154 avril 25 11:24 bionic-dell-service.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  134 mai   17 08:36 bionic-oem.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  189 oct.   9 17:17 google-chrome.list

trif@xps:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat bionic-dell-beaver-italia.list
deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-beaver-italia public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-beaver-italia public

trif@xps:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat bionic-dell.list
deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell public


trif@xps:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat bionic-dell-service.list
deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-service public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-service public

trif@xps:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat bionic-oem.list
deb http://oem.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-oem public
# deb-src http://oem.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-oem public

Here it is for xps13 2019 :

deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-italia-whl public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-italia-whl public
deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell public
deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-service public
# deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-dell-service public
deb http://oem.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-oem public
# deb-src http://oem.archive.canonical.com/updates/ bionic-oem public