I saw a few posts online of people having some issues setting up the new XPS 17 as a Linux machine so I thought I'd share my journey here in case it'd be of anyone's interest. I've been using Ubuntu as my only OS for roughly 2 years now, so I'm somewhat knowledgeable about Linux itself but as far as drivers and kernel stuff goes I'm definitely a beginner so I hold very few credits apart from copying what other people did.
From my Github page: https://github.com/letourneaualex/xps17-9700_Ubuntu2010.git
I might add some shell script eventually to automate some of the steps, just need some of that ever elusive spare time!
Laptop specs:
Dell XPS 17 (9700)
64Gb RAM
i7 10875H
1Tb SSD
RTX 2060
4k screen
Install:
Ubuntu 20.10 single-boot- kernel 5.8.0-38-generic
I thought 20.10 was a better option due the the newer kernel looking at issues other people had
Used LVM with encryption
Results: It took me like 3 attempts to be able to install the OS, the process failed both during and after the the OS install. I then tried to create the partitions beforehand and then was able to finish the install. I chose the minimal install, no update and no 3rd party stuff to make it quicker and I also though there was less chance of trying to install drivers that aren't supported, but looking at the installation details maybe the normal install would've been faster as I think it loaded everything from the normal install and then removed everything. Anyway now it works well so I'm not going to dig more into this.
The first few reboots I got and error with cups-browsed, but it stopped happening by itself after a few reboots.
Configure Gestures using this process: https://medium.com/@kaigo/mac-like-gestures-on-ubuntu-20-04-dell-xps-15-7ea6e3be7f76 and it works well
GPU seems to work well on Intel and NVidia profiles, but doesn't seem to switch properly when I set it to On-Demand - more investigation needed. As reference even though I'm not much of a gamer. I tried Rise of the Tomb Raider and hit 60-90 FPS at 1080p High settings.
I'm realizing that the screen max refresh rate seems to be 60 no matter which resolution I chose which is weird because I bought this to replace my XPS 9570 which had a refresh rate of 120 for 2k and under. I never thought to check that before buying it as I thought for sure it would have at least the same refresh rate as my 2 years old xps 15, especially considering the RTX GPU, maybe it's a config issue - more investigation needed
alex@alex-XPS-17-9700:~$ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2560 x 1600, maximum 32767 x 32767 DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) eDP-1-1 connected primary 2560x1600+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 366mm x 229mm 3840x2400 59.99 + 48.00
3840x2160 60.00 60.01 59.98 59.97
3200x1800 59.96 59.94
2880x1620 59.96 59.97
2560x1600 59.99 59.97* 2560x1440 59.99 59.99 59.96 59.95
2048x1536 60.00
1920x1440 60.00
1856x1392 60.01
1792x1344 60.01
2048x1152 59.99 59.98 59.90 59.91
1920x1200 59.88 59.95
1920x1080 60.01 59.97 59.96 59.93
Sound does not work on speakers and headphone jack as I anticipated with what I read before buying it, works well on Bluetooth - Issue fixed using this process: https://km.kkrach.de/p_dell_xps_17_9700/ (however there's a typo in the commands, you're looking at sof-firmware-1.6-1 , not sof-firmware-1.6-2, also the wget command didn't work so I downloaded it straight from the website)
More to come as I go along... Cheers!
0 Answers