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Good for them. I couldn't be happier with the XPS 13 Developer Edition I just bought. Even though I had to wait for a firmware update a few weeks ago for the we

Good for them. I couldn't be happier with the XPS 13 Developer Edition I just bought. Even though I had to wait for a firmware update a few weeks ago for the webcam to work :|. But the best part of that? It was a matter of 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

paulie_a 8y ago
I've been really liking my XPS 13 since last year but Dell/Ubuntu really managed to fuck up something recently. My Dell dock works on occasion. Bluetooth randomly disappears. And wifi is hit or miss. I reboot constantly which fixes the issues but that is annoying. On the plus side the click pad is phenomenal and beats the hell out of anything apple has.
- gshulegaard 8y ago
  AFAIK Canonical isn't involved the support process for the Dell Sputnik program. That said, when I first got my XPS 13 the best thing for me was to upgrade kernels and, if possible for you, swap the included Broadcom networking chip for an Intel one. I still had some graphics glitches when waking the screen but it was way better after those two things.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    This is completely unrelated but I have been annoyed by the screenlock...you can literally open the laptop and see things before it locks. That is crap security by gnome. There actually is a bug report but basically it ended with "meh".
    - muro 8y ago
      Same thing used to happen on other Linux laptops too. I think it's fixed now.
- jon_richards 8y ago
  My only issue with the touch pad is that ctrl switches scrolling into ctrl+scrolling mid-scroll-throw. To be clearer, if you 2-finger scroll quickly and lift off before stopping, the scroll continues as if it had been thrown. This is great. If you then press ctrl (in anticipation of making a new tab, for instance), suddenly you are zooming in/out instead of scrolling up/down. This is not great. I don't know enough about user-input to know if this is unavoidable or if it could be fixed driver or browser side.
  - muro 8y ago
    Doh, that was the spurious zooming back when I had a xps15, I never figured out what the cause was. Thank you!
    - exikyut 8y ago
      My reply beside your comment may be interesting
  - exikyut 8y ago
    This is because Synaptics is silently handling capacitative multitouch events from the trackpad and generating a synthetic stream of mouse button 4/5 (scroll wheel) events (with haptic decay and everything). As soon as CTRL accompanies the scroll wheel events... woops. This is primarily an input layer design failure: - scroll up/down is not its own event, built out in such a way that the "CTRL+" could be selectively ignored - Toolkits don't separate input sources sufficiently enough that '"CTRL+" from one device and mouse button 4/5 from another should be ignored' could be implemented. (X11 does expose everything distinctly/discretely, but pretty much nothing on top (Qt, especially GTK) really takes advantage of it. For example you can have unlimited mouse cursors on the screen, but beyond moving and resizing windows at the same time, nothing really does anything novel with this capability, and the input models (single window focused at one time, etc) don't really permit innovation either.) Hmm...... although... maybe if you took evdev apart at a very low level, and/or maybe the synaptics driv--wait. Hack synaptics to bits so it also _watches_ the keyboard, specifically CTRL keypresses, and stops sending its synthesized stream of buttonpress/releases. Maybe.
dangrossman 8y ago
I've had problems with every XPS 13 I've owned. I keep buying them only because there aren't many other options. My XPS 13 9350's USB-C port died after a few months, the battery went bad after about 11 months, and it had graphics glitches. I sent it in for warranty repairs, they sent it back with a note that said "mainboard replaced", but had actually done no work on it: it had the same dusty board as when I sent it in, with the same dead USB-C port. By the time it was returned to me, it was out of warranty. My XPS 13 9370 has terrible wifi and audio drivers that need to be restarted or reinstalled constantly, and it's got its own set of graphics glitches, along with a stuck pixel on the screen.
- wslh 8y ago
  Similar experience. We have even a 9350 at our company which only crashes when we run geth (the Ethereum node). My 9365 cannot recover the native audio if I don't "gently" disconnect other audio devices like a USB headphone or a bluetooth earphone (when it works). Sadly, I cannot find an alternative form factor notebook. Nowadays, I am amazed by how well my mobile phone works (Android) and sometimes I imagine that it is better to extend Android to the desktop than the reverse. I am saying this with frustration by the way.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Dell is really frustrating - they seem to have a computer-wise bimodal distribution between "Works Great" and "Utter and Complete Lemon" with nothing in between.
- DreamSpinner 8y ago
  I recall my now ancient XPS M1330 was known for severe problems with overheating and motherboard failures (I had one replaced) - I also had 2 x HDD failures, and one CardBus slot failure. I knew about this though, so bought the maximum warranty and insurance - which came in handy when I tripped carrying it and smashed the screen. So far I'm very happy with my XPS 15 9650 4K - but I do find that some apps still don't scale properly.
- OnlyLys 8y ago
  I have an XPS 13 9360 that has had so many issues. I shall list them out: - The WiFi was terrible for a long while until I managed to find a stable driver version from Killer instead of from Dell's website. - There is no way to remove the 'Waves' audio software that comes preinstalled. Even if you just use plain Realtek audio drivers from Realtek's website, Waves will be automatically installed along with the Realtek drivers. I guess Waves is packaged along with Realtek's drivers and will force an install when it detects that the system is a Dell XPS 13. While I don't mind having an extra equalization software, if I plug in a webcam and then remove the webcam, Waves would go into a state where it consistently consumes 30% of CPU as it keeps checking for a missing registry key. It was only fixed months after I got the laptop. - The coil whine is annoying. It's loud enough to hear over mild chatter. And this is coming from someone with some hearing damage. - The touch screen developed this strange white spot in the middle of the screen. I got my screen replaced only to have the second one do the same thing at the very same spot. I suspect it's one of the keyboard keys putting pressure on the screen when the laptop is closed and sandwiched between items within a bag. The replacement screen also has a stuck pixel on it. -------------------- On a separate note, right now I'm trying to convince Dell's customer service in my country to let me exchange my 5 month old U3415W monitor because it has developed small grey spots on one side of the screen. Initially I got told that they cannot do a replacement for those. So I offered to pay to have it repaired only to get told that Dell here doesn't do repairs for monitors, only warranty exchanges. So I'm shit out of luck. I'm trying to reason with them further but it doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere.

paulie_a 8y ago

I've been really liking my XPS 13 since last year but Dell/Ubuntu really managed to fuck up something recently. My Dell dock works on occasion. Bluetooth randomly disappears. And wifi is hit or miss. I reboot constantly which fixes the issues but that is annoying. On the plus side the click pad is phenomenal and beats the hell out of anything apple has.

gshulegaard 8y ago
AFAIK Canonical isn't involved the support process for the Dell Sputnik program. That said, when I first got my XPS 13 the best thing for me was to upgrade kernels and, if possible for you, swap the included Broadcom networking chip for an Intel one. I still had some graphics glitches when waking the screen but it was way better after those two things.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  This is completely unrelated but I have been annoyed by the screenlock...you can literally open the laptop and see things before it locks. That is crap security by gnome. There actually is a bug report but basically it ended with "meh".
  - muro 8y ago
    Same thing used to happen on other Linux laptops too. I think it's fixed now.
jon_richards 8y ago
My only issue with the touch pad is that ctrl switches scrolling into ctrl+scrolling mid-scroll-throw. To be clearer, if you 2-finger scroll quickly and lift off before stopping, the scroll continues as if it had been thrown. This is great. If you then press ctrl (in anticipation of making a new tab, for instance), suddenly you are zooming in/out instead of scrolling up/down. This is not great. I don't know enough about user-input to know if this is unavoidable or if it could be fixed driver or browser side.
- muro 8y ago
  Doh, that was the spurious zooming back when I had a xps15, I never figured out what the cause was. Thank you!
  - exikyut 8y ago
    My reply beside your comment may be interesting
- exikyut 8y ago
  This is because Synaptics is silently handling capacitative multitouch events from the trackpad and generating a synthetic stream of mouse button 4/5 (scroll wheel) events (with haptic decay and everything). As soon as CTRL accompanies the scroll wheel events... woops. This is primarily an input layer design failure: - scroll up/down is not its own event, built out in such a way that the "CTRL+" could be selectively ignored - Toolkits don't separate input sources sufficiently enough that '"CTRL+" from one device and mouse button 4/5 from another should be ignored' could be implemented. (X11 does expose everything distinctly/discretely, but pretty much nothing on top (Qt, especially GTK) really takes advantage of it. For example you can have unlimited mouse cursors on the screen, but beyond moving and resizing windows at the same time, nothing really does anything novel with this capability, and the input models (single window focused at one time, etc) don't really permit innovation either.) Hmm...... although... maybe if you took evdev apart at a very low level, and/or maybe the synaptics driv--wait. Hack synaptics to bits so it also _watches_ the keyboard, specifically CTRL keypresses, and stops sending its synthesized stream of buttonpress/releases. Maybe.

dangrossman 8y ago

I've had problems with every XPS 13 I've owned. I keep buying them only because there aren't many other options. My XPS 13 9350's USB-C port died after a few months, the battery went bad after about 11 months, and it had graphics glitches. I sent it in for warranty repairs, they sent it back with a note that said "mainboard replaced", but had actually done no work on it: it had the same dusty board as when I sent it in, with the same dead USB-C port. By the time it was returned to me, it was out of warranty. My XPS 13 9370 has terrible wifi and audio drivers that need to be restarted or reinstalled constantly, and it's got its own set of graphics glitches, along with a stuck pixel on the screen.

wslh 8y ago
Similar experience. We have even a 9350 at our company which only crashes when we run geth (the Ethereum node). My 9365 cannot recover the native audio if I don't "gently" disconnect other audio devices like a USB headphone or a bluetooth earphone (when it works). Sadly, I cannot find an alternative form factor notebook. Nowadays, I am amazed by how well my mobile phone works (Android) and sometimes I imagine that it is better to extend Android to the desktop than the reverse. I am saying this with frustration by the way.
Fomite 8y ago
Dell is really frustrating - they seem to have a computer-wise bimodal distribution between "Works Great" and "Utter and Complete Lemon" with nothing in between.
DreamSpinner 8y ago
I recall my now ancient XPS M1330 was known for severe problems with overheating and motherboard failures (I had one replaced) - I also had 2 x HDD failures, and one CardBus slot failure. I knew about this though, so bought the maximum warranty and insurance - which came in handy when I tripped carrying it and smashed the screen. So far I'm very happy with my XPS 15 9650 4K - but I do find that some apps still don't scale properly.
OnlyLys 8y ago
I have an XPS 13 9360 that has had so many issues. I shall list them out: - The WiFi was terrible for a long while until I managed to find a stable driver version from Killer instead of from Dell's website. - There is no way to remove the 'Waves' audio software that comes preinstalled. Even if you just use plain Realtek audio drivers from Realtek's website, Waves will be automatically installed along with the Realtek drivers. I guess Waves is packaged along with Realtek's drivers and will force an install when it detects that the system is a Dell XPS 13. While I don't mind having an extra equalization software, if I plug in a webcam and then remove the webcam, Waves would go into a state where it consistently consumes 30% of CPU as it keeps checking for a missing registry key. It was only fixed months after I got the laptop. - The coil whine is annoying. It's loud enough to hear over mild chatter. And this is coming from someone with some hearing damage. - The touch screen developed this strange white spot in the middle of the screen. I got my screen replaced only to have the second one do the same thing at the very same spot. I suspect it's one of the keyboard keys putting pressure on the screen when the laptop is closed and sandwiched between items within a bag. The replacement screen also has a stuck pixel on it. -------------------- On a separate note, right now I'm trying to convince Dell's customer service in my country to let me exchange my 5 month old U3415W monitor because it has developed small grey spots on one side of the screen. Initially I got told that they cannot do a replacement for those. So I offered to pay to have it repaired only to get told that Dell here doesn't do repairs for monitors, only warranty exchanges. So I'm shit out of luck. I'm trying to reason with them further but it doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere.