15z

Revision 30 as of 2011-11-09 08:24:15

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Introduction

This page should give you all the information you need about running Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 15z laptop.

Installation gotcha's

  • Boot installer with acpi=off

  • USB installation: booting from the USB3 slots won't work. Use the e-SATA slot instead!

Hardware Support Matrix

Hardware

Ubuntu Release

Status

Keyboard

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

Screen

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

External Screen (HDMI)

Natty (11.04)

Does Not Work

Oneiric (11.10)

Does Not Work

Wireless ethernet

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

Trackpad

Natty (11.04)

Works with manual changes

Oneiric (11.10)

Works with manual changes

Wired ethernet

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

Sound

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

Optimus

Natty (11.04)

Works with manual changes

Oneiric (11.10)

Does not works

9-in-1 card reader

Natty (11.04)

Does not work

Oneiric (11.10)

?

Webcam

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

Works

Hardware

Optimus / Graphics cards

With Ubuntu 11.10, vgaswitcheroo no longer seems to work. You can however control heat and noise by going straight to acpi:

# modprobe acpi_call

# echo "\_SB.PCI0.PEG0.PEGP._DSM {0xF8,0xD8,0x86,0xA4,0xDA,0x0B,0x1B,0x47,0xA7,0x2B,0x60,0x42,0xA6,0xB5,0xBE,0xE0} 0x100 0x1A {0x1,0x0,0x0,0x3}" > /proc/acpi/call

# echo "\_SB.PCI0.PEG0.PEGP._PS3" > /proc/acpi/call

As an example, this changes battery rate from 1900+ to around 1600 for me (verwilst).

Switch off NVIDIA card ( Only Ubuntu 11.04! )

# echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Switch on NVIDIA card( Only Ubuntu 11.04! )

# echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Using the following command before and after the switch, you should see a drop/rise in mW being used:

# grep rate /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

You can also completely disable the NVIDIA card and only use the Intel onboard graphics card ( which has more than enough performance for day-to-day work:

# echo "blacklist nouveau" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf

# update-initramfs -c -k all

# reboot

Bumblebee

Bumblebee can be installed either from GIT or from the repositories at GitHub.

The enable/disable scripts can be taken from here.

Trackpad

Full multi-gesture trackpad usage does not work at this moment. It is however possible to get basic mouse functionality with the following command:

# sudo rmmod psmouse; sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps

( Or use proto=bare or proto=exps ).

To make this persistent, add the following line to a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (/etc/modprobe.d/options.conf could be an option, but modprobe parses all the files in that directory):

options psmouse proto=imps

Fix various glitches

Add pcie_aspm=force acpi=noirq i915.semaphores=1 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub.

Then run the following command:

# update-grub

And reboot. This fixes ACPI issues, lowers power consumption and 1-2 second regular freezes of your video card.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

Trackpad

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1108661

Information on Bumblebee (for graphics card Optimus support)

https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee

https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/issues/258