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I recently bought an XPS 13 developers edition from the website after my macbook's screen randomly died (it was old, and ready for an upgrade anyways) looking

by swalsh 9y ago

I recently bought an XPS 13 developers edition from the website after my macbook's screen randomly died (it was old, and ready for an upgrade anyways) looking at new macbooks, I was unhappy with the lack of a USB slot, thought the fancy bar on the top was unnecessary, and generally you just seemed to get less for the same money. I NEEDED the laptop right away. The website said it would take 4 days or so. So I waited, then they delayed the order. I couldn't wait, so I decided to cancel the order. I found Microcenter had an XPS 15, which for all practical purposes seemed like the same thing just slightly "better". So I bought that and threw Ubuntu on it. More or less, it works fine. But I'm not "Wow this is the best laptop ever". I have 1 big complaint. While I'm typing, every once in a while the cursor will skip around. It is infuriating. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue. My second issue is probably more of an ubuntu issue... but the 4k resolution of the screen (which is actually pretty great) can make some windows scaled super small. From a softer point of view, I don't feel like the frame around this laptop is as durable as the macbook's. I'm very careful when I handle it, because I'm certain one accidental drop, and it's all gone. I dropped my macbook (accidentally!) probably 50 times. No issue. I really like running ubuntu as my main machine, but this doesn't feel like the "high-end" machine I dreamed about.

Omnius 9y ago
YMMV - I have the Dell Precision 7510 and i have installed linux and then back to windows 10 about 20 times because i WANT linux to workout but it ends up being to much work to get everything working. This is including the latest ubuntu release. Each attempt i try a different distro. I recently tried again and throw manjaro gnome on the machine and everything just worked. Like zero effort on my part and its awesome.
arachnophobe 9y ago
I had the cursor skip on an older Dell model (not Ubuntu, Windows), but the cause might be the same - the Nub mouse buton (if that makes sense - the little finger mouse? What ever it's called) in the middle of the keyboard would pick up the slightest tap and move the cursor - I ended up disabling it and the problem went away; I've never really experienced it on any other laptop.
christophilus 9y ago
I've had this same experience on Windows laptops. In my case, it was that the touchpad was too sensitive, so it was sensing my (rather hot, generally) hands hovering just over it while I was typing, and misreading them as touch events.
lmm 9y ago
> While I'm typing, every once in a while the cursor will skip around. It is infuriating. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue. I've seen this happen when my palm was hitting the touchpad and I didn't have the right drivers for it - the default touchpad driver "works" but is missing the palm detection functionality in the "proper" touchpad drivers for that hardware. It might be worth looking up the specific touchpad (via lspci or similar) and seeing if there's a driver for touchpads from that manufacturer. You may have to edit the driver's list of PCI IDs.
- bproven 9y ago
  Same here - I had to end up using touchpad-indicator to fix this (disables the touchpad while typing). Its a shame it doesn't work out of the box and requires this hack.

by swalsh 9y ago

Omnius 9y ago

YMMV - I have the Dell Precision 7510 and i have installed linux and then back to windows 10 about 20 times because i WANT linux to workout but it ends up being to much work to get everything working. This is including the latest ubuntu release. Each attempt i try a different distro. I recently tried again and throw manjaro gnome on the machine and everything just worked. Like zero effort on my part and its awesome.

arachnophobe 9y ago

I had the cursor skip on an older Dell model (not Ubuntu, Windows), but the cause might be the same - the Nub mouse buton (if that makes sense - the little finger mouse? What ever it's called) in the middle of the keyboard would pick up the slightest tap and move the cursor - I ended up disabling it and the problem went away; I've never really experienced it on any other laptop.

christophilus 9y ago

I've had this same experience on Windows laptops. In my case, it was that the touchpad was too sensitive, so it was sensing my (rather hot, generally) hands hovering just over it while I was typing, and misreading them as touch events.

lmm 9y ago

> While I'm typing, every once in a while the cursor will skip around. It is infuriating. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue. I've seen this happen when my palm was hitting the touchpad and I didn't have the right drivers for it - the default touchpad driver "works" but is missing the palm detection functionality in the "proper" touchpad drivers for that hardware. It might be worth looking up the specific touchpad (via lspci or similar) and seeing if there's a driver for touchpads from that manufacturer. You may have to edit the driver's list of PCI IDs.

bproven 9y ago
Same here - I had to end up using touchpad-indicator to fix this (disables the touchpad while typing). Its a shame it doesn't work out of the box and requires this hack.