Ubuntu 16.04 on Dell Xps 15 9550 (i7-6700HQ - 1TB SSD - UHD 4k touch)

[alberink-stampfini]

Hi guys,
However, I'm stuck with an issue relating to the headphones
When I plug them in, it seems they get detected but can't hear anything.
I've checked alsamixer and pavucontrol and they both detect them.
In alsamixer when I plug them in the speaker volume gets turned down and the headphone volume is turned up but still no sound through the headphones.

Has anyone had this or has any ideas on how to fix this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance.

Same problem here. Headphone detection is very unreliable or non-existant. Also, if it does work, then unplugging the headphones fails to restore the state. Would love to hear if someone fixed this as well. I have the WD15 docking station as well and the headphone output there is detected reliably. Swithing to that output is not automatic as well, but manual switching works reliably.

I'm running kernel 4.8.0-21 on Ubuntu 16.10 Beta2.

[Tazza101]

Hi guys,
As many have said before this thread is amazing. I've got 16.04 up and running on my XPS 15 9550 really quickly thanks to this thread.

However, I'm stuck with an issue relating to the headphones
When I plug them in, it seems they get detected but can't hear anything.
I've checked alsamixer and pavucontrol and they both detect them.
In alsamixer when I plug them in the speaker volume gets turned down and the headphone volume is turned up but still no sound through the headphones.

Has anyone had this or has any ideas on how to fix this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance.

Hello, when I boot into the system I also have the problem of sound not coming out from headphones, even if they are recognize and the volume is up on alsamixer. HOWEVER if I suspend and resume the laptop the problem disappears... so, since I rarely shut down the machine completely, it is a non problem.

A few more updates/questions:

- On the Dell support forum (http://en.community.dell.com/techcen...229=3#20927410) someone reports that with kernel 4.4.0-42 the backlight problem after resume (which came after a bios update) is no longer present! I am going to upgrade the bios, if the problem is NOT solved I will post an update

-Is anyone experiencing problems with nvidia drivers and strange behavior when taking screenshots? See on askubuntu:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/8333...1275779_833328
https://askubuntu.com/questions/8013...1275771_801378

-There will be a new thread now that ubuntu 16.10 is out? anyone tried upgrading?

Thanks to everyone for contributing in making this machine working propertly! (If only MATLAB & Mathematica developers made a high-DPI GUI my real life problems with the machines would be gone...)

[the_person]

Has anyone else had extreme instability with usb c even after running the following command?

```
sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan"
```

I am on xubuntu 16.04 using the WD15 dock for the laptop and every time I plug it in the system will generally slow down significantly, sometimes it will pop up a notification to switch displays but even when it does the external (display port) will not turn on. I have tried a few other desktop environments with similar results, LXDE seems to work but unfortunately I don't really like LXDE. Any help figuring out how to debug this would be greatly appreciated.

edit: uname -a results
Linux Flere 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:33:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

edit2: found a solution: Install 16.10 and it just works. Hopefully this works for others who run into the same problem.

[mlabieniec]

Are you having any luck with the nvidia card? I finally got mine to work when I switch with nvidia-prime from intel, but when I reboot or suspend it doesn't come back up I do have the intel 3d drivers, but was doing the same thing before...intel isn't the best performance, the nvidia works fantastic ... trying with the updating kernel 4.7.6 to see if that fixes it.

[kuscsik]

Hi,

I thought you may find this useful. On the XPS 15 with the Broadcomm wifi there were couple of power management
issues with the recent Kernels. I built a 4.9rc1 Ubuntu kernel with the default ubuntu config where finally these issues
seems to be solved. I can put the laptop to sleep and battery life is better. Nvidia drivers work (v370.28).

Here is the link to my binary Kernel:

http://people.linaro.org/~zoltan.kuscsik/xps15/

The files with MD5 sum:

ce5740adedc1c810c61e9906a5acc9db linux-firmware-image-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
cae5763b5a82a34ece389685b64acf1a linux-headers-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
7c378e6be5215d2d13eb8e7c7fcc4117 linux-image-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
5b8129ce4ed966554665bba9ab1e9efb linux-libc-dev_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb

Use it for your own risk.

Zoltan

[Tazza101]

Thank you kuscik, I didn't try the kernel yet, but anyway it's good to know it's there.

But I was wondering: the regressions in the power management were introduced with kernel 4.8 (i.e. are they present in ubuntu 16.10), or just in the 4.9?

Hi,

I thought you may find this useful. On the XPS 15 with the Broadcomm wifi there were couple of power management
issues with the recent Kernels. I built a 4.9rc1 Ubuntu kernel with the default ubuntu config where finally these issues
seems to be solved. I can put the laptop to sleep and battery life is better. Nvidia drivers work (v370.28).

Here is the link to my binary Kernel:

http://people.linaro.org/~zoltan.kuscsik/xps15/

The files with MD5 sum:

ce5740adedc1c810c61e9906a5acc9db linux-firmware-image-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
cae5763b5a82a34ece389685b64acf1a linux-headers-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
7c378e6be5215d2d13eb8e7c7fcc4117 linux-image-4.9.0-rc1-custom_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb
5b8129ce4ed966554665bba9ab1e9efb linux-libc-dev_4.9.0-rc1-custom-5_amd64.deb

Use it for your own risk.

Zoltan

[edmyloo]

hi edmyloo,
what kernel are you on? I have noticed that my laptop will come on if it gets a hard bump, even though the screen does not open at all. Does anyone else have this issue?

I'm on 4.7 but this also happened when I was on 4.6! It's pretty frustrating that I can't just close the lid and shove it in my backpack without it overheating.

[matthias.kurz]

Is the "Gnome flashback" desktop working? Did someone try it? Maybe with the newer Ubuntu 16.10?

[Javier_Macias-Guar]

Is the "Gnome flashback" desktop working? Did someone try it? Maybe with the newer Ubuntu 16.10?

I tried (hard) to make it work during my initial attempts with 16.04 (back in March 2016), without success. I didn't attempt to install it since then, but given that I'm not a fan of Unity, I finally tested cinnamon and I'm very happy with it. I first installed the stock version in 16.04, and now I'm running cinnamon 3 (following the instructions at http://www.webupd8.org/2016/04/how-t...in-ubuntu.html). There should be more recent howtos on this, but it worked for me.
Cinnamon has good support for HiDPI, allows having panel applets (which are important for me) and has additional nice capabilities, being highly customizable too.

Hope it helps!

PS: I'm still running 16.04 with kernel 4.6.0-040600-generic

[alberink-stampfini]

I wanted to report something I hadn't seen before:

On my installation of Ubuntu 16.10, I was looking at my Software Center and found that I got offered an XPS 9550 bios update! I didn't know that this was integrated already in Ubuntu. I had downgraded my BIOS to 1.2.10 and this was the update to 1.2.14. Installed worked without a hitch. Unfortunately, BIOS 1.2.14 still kills the backlight. On 1.2.10 I can bring up the backlight by cranking up the backlight to the max, logging in and setting a register (cumbersome, but it works!), but resuming on BIOS 1.2.14 results in a reboot.

Unfortunately no Changelog is presented when looking at the details, but this was a nice suprise in and of itself.