Upcoming XPS 15 & Linux

[SniperSlap]

I'm interested in hearing about or discussing whether Dell's upcoming 15" XPS laptops with the high res LCDs are going to be well supported by Linux/Ubuntu (13.04 or 13.10).

I think the biggest concern would be if the GeForce 750M ships in an Optimus configuration, which I've heard is a sticking point for Linux.

The touch screen I could probably wait for, but just as a laptop, would anyone here be able to infer or have insights?

 

[Truethug]

I will report here when my order comes in about a month. I will most likely be installing xubuntu 13.10

 

[Infohawk]

Isn't this laptop out?

 

[Truethug]

Got this today and really like t so far. I need to tweak it some to get it working 100% but here is what I have found:

First the good; all the hardware seems to work. I have not tested the Nvidia card yet (installing the driver now).

The bad: the touch screen seems to only work sometimes. It works off a 13.10 xubuntu thumbdrive, but not always (changes with reboot). This is the same for a full install, but since it did work I'm saying it will work more regularly in the future.

Second problem I found is that the sound icon in the indicator applet doesn't work. The sound works and the volume buttons work, just no icon in xfce. This is a problem I have seen before and fixed in xfce.

Lastly I changed the resolution to 1920 x 1080 because a lot of applications are just too hard to read at the full resolution.

Side note: I installed by shrinking the main windows partition and creating 3 new ones (/ swap, and a bootable one), In the bios I changed to legacy and it seems to work quite well. I can change back to the default and boot into windows if I feel I need to (maybe for a bios update as it can be a pain to do it in linux sometimes).

feel free to shoot me questions and I'll report back on Nvidia.

 

[mredub]

Can you guys Update on this thread?


very interested in understanding whether the Nvidia Drivers work correctly and the touch working on reboot.

-Eric

 

[Truethug]

Can you guys Update on this thread?


very interested in understanding whether the Nvidia Drivers work correctly and the touch working on reboot.

-Eric

Touch is currently working, but may just be lucky. I'm using kernel 3.11 and I read that 3.12 has better functionality. They were using fedora.

As far as Nvidia goes I installed nvidia-319 and got a black screen after reboot (this has been reported by others as well). I reinstalled to get to a known state and installed bumblebee. I'm getting an error when I try to use the card. There are newer drivers from nvidia's web site. 331 i believe, and I may be able to fix bumblebee. I will keep you posted.

 

[GreenMeters]

Thanks for the info, Truethug, definitely interested to hear how the video drivers work out. I've been seriously looking at the XPS 15 as an all-purpose, traveling work & play machine--but only if it can run Linux full time.

 

[Truethug]

Got bumblebee working by doing this:

only for ubuntu 13.10

sudo apt-get install nvidia-319-updates nvidia-settings-319-updates

Then you need to edit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

KernelDriver=nvidia_319_updates
LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-319-updates:/usr/lib32/nvidia-319-updates
XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-319-updates/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules
Driver=nvidia

Restart bumblebee

sudo service bumblebeed restart

Unrelated I also found that to pastewith the middle button tap the top right corner of the touchpad. This is the default.

 

[Truethug]

Forgot to mention the volume indicator in xfce 13.10 is fixed by editing
sudo su nano /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service

and change the Exec path to /usr/lib/indicator-sound-gtk2/indicator-sound-service

 

[Truethug]

fix for the touchscreen: http://en.community.dell.com/techce...2013/11/14/ubuntu-on-the-precision-m3800.aspx

Updated graphics drivers: http://wiki.belmankraul.com/linux/mint16_bumblebee