Dell Latitude 5340 2-in-1 (and some Linux notes)

I bought another computer. This one has a tragic origin story, an active pen with (like everything about it) shockingly good Linux support, and – bonus – has finally given me the impetus to switch from VirtualBox to libvirt for my VMs for obstinate software.

I decided earlier this summer that I wanted a 2-in-1 laptop with a decent stylus to use for lectures, and UK’s frequently problematic ordering process was looking like it was going to logjam, so I switched looking for something to pick up personally – if UK comes through it’ll be nice to have a similar pair.

I was looking at the usual refurb channels and used market to see what is currently cost effective, because that’s usually the winning way to buy a laptop, and noticed that there was a sudden glut of Dell Latitude 5340 2-in-1 units in the i7-1365U/16GB RAM/512GB SSD configuration being resold as used on eBay, in surprisingly good condition. Computers deprecate fast, but these were uniformly around $400 which is less than I’d expect for machines that were in the $1500-2000 range a year ago.

So, of course, I ordered one from an eBay reseller in Georgia that had tens of them. Jenn was traveling for work the day it showed up, so it looked like I bought another computer when left unattended for <24 hours, which is … plausibly a concern… but at least I have a practical excuse for this one.

I picked the seller I used because they did their listings individually and showed the service tags of the unit being shipped, and you can shake quite a bit of information out of a Dell service tag, so it gave me confidence that they were legit.

… and the information from the service tags and details once received tell an interesting story. Mine was shipped – with a custom contract configuration and preinstalled software environment for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and a 4 year support contract – in July 2024. It showed up with some original packaging (cardboard retainers on the power supply cables, screen protector insert) still conspicuously attached, a battery with no wear or cycles, and absolutely no signs of use. Matching that information up to the news, I strongly suspect a significant number of these things were ordered by the VA for some function that got DOGE’d before they were put into use, then got surplussed. Which, in the larger picture, is grim and wasteful, but at least they made it onto the used market in a year, instead of rotting somewhere.

I made an ownership transfer request for it with Dell, mostly because I was curious what would happen, got a request for additional information – from their special federal services division – then a few days later full approval including the remainder of the 4-year premium warranty the feds paid for, so that’s neat.

Hardware

I find the hardware nice but not extraordinarily so – which is in keeping with the leading digit 9=ultra premium, 7=premium, 5=standard, 3=cheap, thing Dell did with Latitudes and Precisions for years. The hinges have a very nice two-stage action that separates the clam-shell open and flip back action (I have a couple beater used 2-in-1 Chromebooks that are “less satisfying”), and very little play. The weight balance is also pleasing, it very much feels like a laptop until you’ve really committed to converting it into a slightly-awkwardly-large tablet. The back cover is definitely black plastic with metallic paint on it, as opposed to the carbon fiber of the several 7-series Latitude/Precision machines I’ve owned, and I scratched a corner almost immediately. If it starts to get ugly, I have a box of stickers, a laser printer, a craft cutter, and various stock, so the options for new looks are endless.

The port layout is not bad for a compact machine; I slightly miss the [Micro]SD slot (it would certainly be more useful than the SIM slot to nowhere), and I’d like a USB-C port on the RHS as well for power-source and dongle placement flexibility. The absence of built-in Ethernet is only slightly annoying; I don’t need it all that often, but I did end up ordering a USB-C to GigE adapter after moving a couple large files via WiFi. According to the service tag it originally shipped with one, but it wasn’t included.

RAM is unfortunately soldered, but storage is a M.2 2230 module. The unpopulated WWAN option seems to mean there is an unused M.2 3042 B-key slot as well, which I see conflicting reports on if you can jam a m.2 2242 B-key SSD into.

I also picked up a matching Dell PN7522W Stylus, which is their current upmarket model, for around $50 in new condition from another eBay seller. The Latitude 5xxx 2-in-1 chassis and Stylus interaction is delightful, not only is the performance (from my limited exposure) pretty close to the nice Apple pencil variants, the stylus contains magnets and there are several ferromagnetic points on the chassis that it will grab it in convenient locations; a strong spot along the right hand side of the body for storage, a weaker set behind either side of and below the display that is ideal for tossing the pen while using the regular input devices. The PN7522W is also USB-C charging like the host computer, so no stupid AAAA batteries.

Software

The software situation is both boring and interesting, in the best possible ways.

I lasted about an hour playing with the included Windows 11 install (which was a new install but had the out of the box setup already run by the reseller, and a generic local account created) to check out the hardware and pen features, then put a Linux system on it. The Linux support for this hardware is essentially perfect – I haven’t tested the “Broadcom Corp. 58200” smartcard reader and a quick google indicates it might be a problem (in more than one way) – but everything else Just Works™ on a modern distribution, including all the fancy pen and fold/orientation features (at least under a KDE environment, the compositor seems to have some special sauce for that).

I’m running KDE Neon on it for the time being. I’ve had a few positive exposures and seemed like a good opportunity to try it since the Trixie (Debian 13) release hadn’t officially dropped, and I feel like I’m getting too mono-cultured on Arch desktops. Neon is a great way to get a *buntu LTS without most of the more grating annoyances; it’s pre-desnapped, running a current, not hacked up KDE Plasma, and you get to the environment without more effort than doing a ground-up install of something else. It’s not bad, and has been able to appear me acceptably-recent versions of nearly every software package I want via Ubuntu repos or Flatpack (which is still not my preference, but at least it’s not snaps). The update-on-reboot behavior is a different compromise than I’m accustomed to, but not obviously worse.

I’m not even terribly enraged by the clickpad. It’s responsive, the tactile regions that are almost buttons mostly work, and the two finger tap for right click, three finger tap for middle click setup is reliable if not ideal. You can middle click by depressing the center of the tactile edge, but the region is narrow, without any sort of indication, and not configurable in libinput (and for that reason alone I’d still rather have buttons).

Performance has been solid, I had concerns about asymmetric cores but the Capacity Aware Scheduling scheme Linux is using with CFS seems to be doing a good job automatically. It is a little bizarre because the tooling hasn’t really caught up; the 4 threads from 2 SMT’d P cores and 8 E cores all look the same in most user-space utilities. I suppose there have been ARM Big.Little parts in Android devices working fine for years, so something must have been figured out. It does seem to run a fan under low load more than some of the other laptops in it’s class I’ve owned, but that is influenced by firmware settings and ambient temperature.

As for pen software, Krita is impressive (and way out of my skill level), xournal++ is pretty likable albeit with slightly weird PDF annotation behavior, and browser-based things like OneNote and Canvas hook it nicely. Nothing quite as slick as Goodnotes or Concepts for hand-drawn explainers, but also not attached to a subscription.

Virtualization

While I’m trying things, I’ve been using it as an opportunity to finish migrating my day-to-day virtualized desktop environments off VirtualBox on to libvirt. I generally have a recent-version Windows VM and a recent set of Xilinx tooling on the best-supported Linux system for that version in tow for various professional tasks, and am always looking to make that experience less annoying.

I’d done a few recent experiments in that direction and found everything I require is in place: the actual qemu-kvm CPU virtualization setup is superior in most ways. They’ve got dynamic USB pass-through working reliably, dynamic display resizing working pretty reliably, and shared folders working ..mostly… in ways that don’t make me want to tear my hair out, which is an extremely welcome change. It does require using the virt-viewer spice client rather than the one built into virt-manager, and a little software in the client to get all the features working; the WebDAV based shared folder needs a spice-webdavd in the client, Windows also needs a whole package of virtio drivers, etc. There are even some bonus niceties like qcow2 images containing supported file systems allowing you to use fstrim to reclaim space back to the host OS.

Importantly, it means I don’t have to run any tainted out-of-tree kernel drivers, and it doesn’t create an opening for Oracle’s infamous army of vampiric lawyers to potentially become aware of my existence. KDE’s new Karton frontend is extremely appealing, but (openly) isn’t quite ready for prime time, so I’m getting by with virt-manager and its various ugly GTKisms for now. I am slightly disappointed that libvirt can’t handle non-kvm qemu machines – occasionally I want something weird and it’d be nice to share the frontend when I spin a sun4 or m68k or some other odd instance to check a thing – but it is admittedly of out-of-scope.