The beta version of my excellent Dell Sputnik (XPS 13) wasn’t quite cutting the mustard for some side freelance work I’m doing since it only has 4GB of RAM, but I loved the machine so much I opted to get its big brother, the XPS 15. Specifically I got this model, and yes since I needed it pronto I actually bought it in person at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue, WA. I’ll always hate myself a little for going to a Microsoft Store but it was darn handy to have one nearby and just go get the new machine as opposed to waiting to have one shipped.
When I got it home I didn’t even boot into Windows 8.1, I just stuck an Ubuntu 14.04 USB stick in the machine and installed that. The only trick to installing Ubuntu is you have to go into the BIOS, turn off Secure Boot, and turn on Legacy Boot Mode.
Once Ubuntu is installed everything works out of the box. The screen runs at the full, mind-blowing 3200×1800 resolution, and even the touch screen works. No issues with sound card, WiFi, or anything else. Awesome.
The only annoyance is the default settings for the Synaptics trackpad are a little jumpy. OK, more than a little jumpy. Luckily with a bit of research I found an easy fix that definitely did the trick for me. Basically you just need to change the FingerLow and FingerHigh settings to reduce the sensitivity and the cursor jumps around no more. I used the settings in the link but you can adjust as needed if those specific settings don’t work for you.
Only remaining thing to figure out is what to do with this ridiculous amount of screen real estate. Couldn’t be more pleased with this laptop!
Hey Matt, how's the battery life? Have you tried using TLP (http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html)?
Hi Ryan — I haven't tested in any organized fashion but I can say "several hours" as a general answer. One day I used it with no regard to conserving power (reducing screen brightness, etc.) and I got 6 hours out of it with plenty to spare.
I'll look into TLP and let you know how it goes — thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for the post. I just picked up one of these and sure enough it all works out of the box. Now I'll touch the "publish your comment" button… 🙂
Because of your blog, I too got one of these (now discounted at MS store) and wow! great machine running ubuntu 14.04.
Thanks for the experience report. I might well go for this one as well.
One question though: How does Ubuntu handle suspend/resume when folding the screen up/down on XPS 15. I have had some problems with my older laptops and Ubuntu.
Happy to report that suspend/resume works perfectly.
Hi Matt,
thanks for the report. I'm tempted to get one myself. Does your model have the NVidia Optimus graphics, and do you use an external display?
Mine has the NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M — haven't used it with an external display.
Hi Ryan – is the ultra-high resolution on the XPS 15 (3200×1800) on a relatively small screen (15") not more of a hindrance than an advantage – very small icons etc …??
Actually it kind of is — you can mess with it but much as I love this machine in principle, I actually ordered a ThinkPad X1 Carbon today to replace this one. It just took too much tweaking to get it to work only kind of well because of the extremely high resolution, which is a failure of the Linux distributions, not of this Dell machine which is extremely nice. It just doesn't meet my needs well enough after using it for a while and I think the X1 with the lower resolution will work better as a development machine.
Cool Matt.. I have grown fond of Mint and use it daily. A coworker also got a system 76 model that I have seen firsthand and is also impressive for the price: https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1
I'm thinking of getting an XPS 15 and installing Ubuntu, but a little concerned with the 'small' icons/text due to high screen resolution. Can't one "simply" change the display resolution in the System Settings and resolve this issue?
Yep you can change the screen resolution, it'll just start looking grainy. But that's the easy solution. The messier solution is use native resolution and start resizing fonts, menus, etc. accordingly, but it takes some time and doesn't "stick" (meaning I'd do that and it'd be messed up when I'd reboot).
Long and short of it is Ubuntu (well, Unity specifically I guess) needs a better, simpler way of dealing with ultra high resolution screens for it to be very useful. This is clearly a problem other operating systems have solved.
Thanks for the advice that this thing just works. I can't stand Unity and recall some ability / limitations setting screen DPI config in kubuntu … anyone been down this road and care to comment?
Our standard issue is 15" MBP, upon which I run Ubuntu in a VM. But since Yosemite the performance has been tanking so call me open-minded . . .
Hi, I just got a dell xps 15 but I cannot seem to boot from a usb. I have been trying for about a week now. Could you please point me in the right direction?
Hi, for information, touchscreen on my XPS 15 suddenly stopped working 2 days ago.
I'm using Ubuntu 14.10. I was using latest automatic updated kernel (3.16), tried going up to the latest (3.18) with no success.
My touchscreen don't appear on xinput list, I'm afraid it's dead.
I'm tracking my debugging on this link:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/562691/ubuntu-14-10-touchscreen-not-recognized-anymore-on-xps-15-9530-haswell
I would be glad if someone could help me to find that it's not a hardware issue! 🙂
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