Re: Ubuntu on Dell Xps 15 9550 new Infinity display (i7 6gen 16gbr UHD 4k touch

[alberink-stampfini]

Looking at the screenshot, I see that the first 5 or so commands require an awfull lot of virtual memory (1.4Gig per process). Are you sure you aren't looking at your culprits right there?
Other that that, I don't know. I have the same kernel and memory setup and I don't experience any issues.

[astroman3001gt]

Hi guys,

So everything was working almost perfectly, however today after an update and restart I lost the grub boot menu.

In the boot sequence I have the option for "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi" but still I cannot load grub. Did this happen to some of you before? Any ideas to fix this?

[astroman3001gt]

A quick fix. I changed the option in boot sequence from "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi" to "\EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi"...

Still I am curious, anyone had the same problem?

[artur20]

[
Hi Artur,

When I was using Kernel 4.4xxx from Kubuntu 16.04, I remember my nvidia working normally although I never really tested it thoroughly as I have no use for it. I am currently running on linux 4.6.2 from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.6.2-yakkety/ and I have purged all nvidia and nouveau and I am just using bbswitch to turn the nvidia chip off at boot time. This way I have a reliable and smoothly tuned workstation, and it also saves battery. The current official ubuntu-nvidia packages don't dkms-compile with the 4.6x kernels. If one day I get some free minutes, I might try to use the edgers-ppa or another source to see how far I can get with 4.6.x and nvidia, but for now I am content and happy with intel-only (if the machine had been available without the nvidia chip, I would have bought it that way).

PS, with 4.6.2 USB-C/Thunderbolt hot plugging now works for me, at least with the included LAN adapter, as well as entering airplane mode with the special key (Fn+PrtScr) which is also good for power saving.

Cheers,
Jan

Hi,

I am still running 4.4.0-31 as kernel now. When I talked on #ubuntu I was strongly advised to not manually upgrade the kernel which is why i haven't done that so far.

I am using graphics-drivers-ubuntu-ppa-xenial.list as repository to get the drivers. I also did purge everything and reinstall it, however so far no luck (neither with 364 or 367 of the nvidia dirvers). I read on the nvidia page that optimus is simply not supported.

However, on my laptop with Ubuntu 16.04 everything worked out of the box (hot plugging hdmi/usb c, no random freezes anymore). I did have to disable sleeping since the laptop required a hard-cycle when waking up (sometimes, not easily reproducible). I found some info on that and I believe this may be fixed. Since I don't really require the laptop to sleep I haven't properly tested this yet.

You mentioned that you turn the NVIDIA chip off on startup - isn't that admitting defeat You have a box with this great chip inside that you just can't use. I use nvidia-prime to set the laptop to power-safe-mode and this also produces a reliable system. I just don't accept Dell selling this laptop as Ubuntu laptop (that is the Precission 5510) with hardware that can't be used with ubuntu.

Thanks!

Artur

[Jan_Drewes]

I just wanted to report a few issues I have recently run into.

1) BIOS version 1.2.10 appears to have problems. With it, the backlight control essentially stops working after suspend/resume: you can still regulate many steps, but the screen really always stays at full brightness or completely zero brightness, depending on the setting. It seems to be unpredictable whether backlight after supsend will be on or off.

2) Kernel 4.7 from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.7/ is currently missing the dell_wmi and dell_laptop modules among others, causing lack of functionality (obviously). Apparently, this was a misconfiguration of the kernel build and is about to be fixed (I talked to someone in the ubuntu kernel IRC)

Ultimately, kernel 4.6.5 with BIOS 1.2.0 runs fine for me, suspend, hotkeys, backlight and all.

@artur20: I admitted defeat when I bought the machine with the power-wasting badly-supported proprietary-driver-needing nvidia chip installed. However, being able to just switch it off and forget about it feels like a minimal victory

I now also own a USB-C to VGA cable (https://www.amazon.it/Adattatore-All...ords=usb+c+vga) which works as expected: it uses USBC-video, rather than being a USB-VGA-graphicscard-in-a-cable (it does not add another graphics card to the system). Under Kubuntu, however, plugging it in can cause the same problems as plugging in a HDMI cable - I sometimes have to try more than once before it works. When plugging it in before the Plasma session starts, everything is fine though. So, it might be a Plasma issue rather than a Linux/kernel issue.

Cheers

[artur20]

@artur20: I admitted defeat when I bought the machine with the power-wasting badly-supported proprietary-driver-needing nvidia chip installed. However, being able to just switch it off and forget about it feels like a minimal victory

Hi!

you are right - it is better than nothing. And for my purposes of writing code and watching Netflix, that is completely fine. I am upset mainly because dell has a big fat screenshot on their website running ubuntu on this exact laptop. And I consider that false advertising since the Optimus chip just doesn't work.

Having said that, I am thinking of nuking it again (after holiday), then go from scratch with 16.04 and try a later kernel. Or try a later kernel without erasing everything and hope for the best
The issue is really that I tried so many things that I am not sure in which state I am in at this point. It might be a good choice to start from scratch.

When I talked in #ubuntu though I was strongly advised not to manually update the kernel to a later version. There is lack in support for the later kernels, is what they said. I have a bit of experience with ubuntu, though I have never installed new kernels. Might be an interesting experiment.

I also found a different thread where someone with the equal Intel + Nvidia combo apparently made it work. The same config that worked for him though does not do anything for me.

Thanks!

artur

[seubri]

Hi guys,

Thank all of you (in particular Jchedstrom) for helping with this thread.

I have an issue that I am hoping maybe I can get help with here.

I am using Ubuntu 16.04 on a laptop Dell XPS 15 9550. Current kernel is 4.4.0-34. Display resolution is 3840x2160. I am using nvidia prime and currently the nvidia driver 370, but I select "Intel" in the prime-indicator by default. I don't know what other information is relevant, please feel free to ask.

My system is mostly working but there are a few issues:
- Sometimes (most times) Ubuntu takes a long while to shut down, don't know why.
- Sometimes when I edit a text file (say in gedit text editor), my system "doesn't like it", it seems to be lagging for no reason.
- Some programs often crash (Firefox for instance)
- Sometimes I get error messages "System program error detected".

None of these problems are so frustrating that I really tried to do something about it. But recently I starting working again on a Qt/C++ project using Qt Creator, and Qt Creator crashes all the time, making it unusable. Here is what happens: as soon as I start editing a file such as main.cpp in Qt Creator, it crashes. If I run it from the terminal with strace, all I can read is:
--- SIGSEGV {si_signo=SIGSEGV, si_code=SI_KERNEL, si_addr=0} ---
+++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

At first I thought something may be wrong with my Qt Creator, but now I think the fault is on Ubuntu (I have tried several versions of Qt Creator, several install methods, all produce the same effect). Although I have no clue what is going on, I suspect maybe the problem is related to the graphics driver? As well as my other issues described above?

If you could help me with this, it'd be great.

Brice

[eastingandnorthing]

Hello,

New to this thread, and I assume having a FHD instead of UHD with 8GB ram doesn't really matter

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 with kernel 4.7.0-040700-generic, having some trouble with my nvidia/optimus deal.

I've had nvidia-prime together with prime-indicator working when I first set it up...


So, A few days ago I've installed kernel 4.7. after doing this, I noticed that prime-indicator was showing the nvidia symbol, but actually using Intel graphics. Switching using nvidia-settings wasn't working either.


So, I decided to use bumblebee instead. Removed and purged nvidia* etc. Installed bumblebee like described here. Later, I also tried this method.


In both cases, optirun/primusrun tell me 'Could not load GPU driver'. So, I went to Bumblebee troubleshooting, and it seems like my nvidia .ko files are not present. (bumblebeed: Module 'nvidia' is not found.)


troubleshooting: "Then ensure that you the module is built."


How does one build these kernel modules?

Also: I've tried using dkms autoinstall for my nvidia drivers, this was its output:

Building module:
cleaning build area....
'make' -j8 NV_EXCLUDE_BUILD_MODULES='' KERNEL_UNAME=4.7.0-040700-generic IGNORE_XEN_PRESENCE=1 IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1 SYSSRC=/lib/modules/4.7.0-040700-generic/build LD=/usr/bin/ld.bfd modules.....(bad exit status: 2)
ERROR (dkms apport): kernel package linux-headers-4.7.0-040700-generic is not supported

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.7.0-040700-generic (x86_64)

So, is the 4.7 kernel not supported by dkms?

Anyone having the same issues?

[eastingandnorthing]

Haha, so, I managed to fix it myself.

Check out my askubuntu thread:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/81901.../819219#819219

[ptsneves]

Hey there. I finally got my XP15 UHD running at 11~13 Watts with Primus in 4.4.0-38. I followed the steps in this blog:

http://www.webupd8.org/2016/08/how-t...bumblebee.html

I also needed to create some aliases in /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf like the following:

alias nvidia-drm nvidia_370_drm
alias nvidia-uvm nvidia_370_uvm
alias nvidia-modeset nvidia_370_modeset

A very specific problem which I had with bumblebee, was that I mapped a static address to the loopback which caused the connection of bumblebee to X to not succeed.


Hope it is of use.