the more i am delving into things, the dell documentations are saying that the two really aren’t compatible except for like an outdated version of ubuntu… I never even thought about this, but looking back in time, I’ve tried many distros and the all have had some sort of internal issues that I couldn’t figure out and had to wipe the disk and try a new one…
Considering it was a windows computer to begin with, is this causing problems with my Linux installations or is it more likely user error? Especially the firmware and driver side of things, as outlined in my prior post. Did Dell lock down their XPS laptops to basically only be compatible with Windows??? Im tired of distro hopping because of all the issues I have with other distros on my machine. I’m hoping you kind folks could help clear this up for me and offer insight? perhaps the bios needs some special configuring to help make Linux work as it should? Thanks
edit: whoops, I should clarify the exact model, I have an xps 13 9310 dell laptop
The real problem is that certain XPS laptops like the 9500 had terrible design problems that dell tried to mask with software in linux. E.g., speaker balancing or high idle power draw. Other design atrocities such as unstable touchpads or improper grounding were initially blamed on linux even though the problem was hardware.
I got mine two years ago and I’ve regretted it since two weeks into it. But since my job bought it for me, I’m stuck with the POS. Do yourself a favor and stick with Thinkpad, or even better Framework.
yea i’m just about ready to invest in a new computer. the damn usb-c ports are so unreliable too after years of wear and tear. things disconnect just by the slightest shift in cable.
Are you sure the ports aren’t dirty? That’s often/always the case with faulty USB-C ports
That’s also true! I’m really disappointed in what the XPS line became after 2020. :(
I have two XPS laptops that run the latest Ubuntu Linux flawlessly. Hell, that’s why I bought them. They are literally sold with Linux preinstalled, why wouldn’t they work?
I even get BIOS/firmware updates in GNOME Software!
Dell provides XPS laptop with Ubuntu on it. It works great and Ubuntu can be replaced with other distro ( I did successfully tested Mint and now Debian 11)
I have a 13 plus (9320). Everything works in any distro, except for the webcam. Dell provides drivers for it for ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, and only for the default kernels it comes with. You can also get it working on arch.
Work is being done on these alder lake webcams, but there still is no support for them in the kernel at the moment.
I run mine in ubuntu with a newer kernel. And use my phone with droidcam as a webcam as a work-a-round. The newer kernels run better for battery life etc. I still have the default kernel installed, so I can reboot and use that, when I really need the built in cam.
I sure hope so . I have a new XPS 13 9315 on the way!
I’ve been running a 2019 XPS 13 on Debian without any major issues, just sleep that has high battery drain. But I think that’s a common issue.
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9520, everything works but the trackpad sometimes has terrible lag. It’s a common issue, some also report it on Windows. Don’t care enough to ask IT to replace it.
I don’t buy Dell laptops anymore because of how poorly the hardware they choose works with Linux. I swear they’ll literally look for the one wifi chipset that doesn’t work on Linux when they’re building they’re laptops.
(I’ve had three different XPS laptops, each with unique hardware incompatibilities under Linux. I now have an Acer, an MSI, and a Chuwi, and all work 100%.)
Lenovos have been great as well, if you don’t count the fingerprint reader incompatiblity
+1 for Lenovo. My Gen5 x1 carbon is without question, the single best Linux on a laptop experience I’ve ever had. Running tumbleweed as my daily driver, fwiw.
My yoga 9 graphics laptop is fantastic on Ubuntu.
I just hate the person who decided soldering in a 300mb wifi card was cool, and soldered ram.
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I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on an XPS 13 9360 with an 8th-gen i7. No problems at all, and it runs much faster and cooler than it ever did under Windows. As far as I can tell everything works, including trackpad, touchscreen, wifi and Bluetooth. (This is under X11; under Wayland the trackpad doesn’t work properly and the scaling is all off.) This one doesn’t have a fingerprint reader though.
I support only Dell XPS 13/15 inch laptops at work exclusively with Fedora Linux, 99% of things work; occasional issues with things like the fingerprint sensor which is better supported in Ubuntu (it’s a usb based goodix fingerprint sensor). The latest 15 inch has some issues with sound being quiet but over amplification solves this with some fidelity loss which isn’t a problem for normal alet type noises.
Iirc your model (we had one of) works more or less flawless out of the box.
I’ve been using a Dell XPS L502X with fedora since it was delivered 10/8/2011. No real problems, but I recently moved to voidlinux and almost doubled my battery life. Dell put quite a lot of time into supporting linux.
Void is probably my favourite rolling release distro. I ran it for 2 years on my old PC and had very few problems.
What issues do you have? Maybe try to spend some time to fix the issues and not resort to distro hopping. Learn to fix it and you should know how to deal with the issues on any distros.
Arch wiki states that everything but Bluetooth should work: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_13_(9310)
It needs some config and firmware packages to work, though.
Dell puts some effort into making their devices work on Linux, but they often target LTS versions of Linux. Drivers and hardware should continue to work in later versions, but Dell isn’t putting as much effort into making sure of that.
My XPS 9310 2 in 1 works great with Fedora. Literally the only hardware that didn’t work after install was the fingerprint scanner. Everything else seems perfect. It even recognizes when the laptop is folded into a tablet and provides the virtual keyboard and does auto rotate.
