Dell XPS 14 9440 Support

[mixer2]

Yeah definitely not perfect, lots of issues with wake up, and unlocking after wakeup.
I haven't had any issues with my Dell monitors and USB-C, but i have noticed that any dongle that has the 2 x USB-C ports won't fit this. Soooo infuriating.
I loved my 2020 13" XPS, but this one just is not as good at all. Kind regret buying it tbh, and might sell to in place of something else

so i'm not the only one having problems.
me personally still not regretting it, because the performance is very good. when it runs it's super snappy. just has to get a little bit more stable (already stable enough for me for daily work). if they would just write and optimize the drivers upfront instead of having to wait for 6-8 month after release until the drivers get stable.
hope the ARM chips get better linux support on release dates. then my next notebook in 3 years will be ARM based.

[hnyk94]

@dook123 nice that you got audio working, thanks for the effort!
what's a pitty is, that it requires a mainline kernel verison. hopefully it will at some point also just work with the ubuntu 24.04 kernel.

regarding webcam it seems as also the 16" 2024 dell notebooks have the same issue: https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/issues/223

hopefully they'll fix it soon in the ipu6 drivers.

Was anyone able to fix the camera issue? Does anyone have an update?
I was able to fix the audio/mic issue with @dook123's solution, and that helped a lot!

[mixer2]

Was anyone able to fix the camera issue? Does anyone have an update?
I was able to fix the audio/mic issue with @dook123's solution, and that helped a lot!

don't think there is much progress on camera.

however, with kernel 6.9.9, latest bios update and current ubuntu everything else seems to work much smoother than a few weeks ago.
standby is great, very reliable and quick in getting into sleep and waking up. also not draining a lot of power in standby. beside stability also battery performance overall got very good (at least with tlp).
not sure if it's bios, kernel, ubuntu updates... or maybe a combination out of it. but beside camera the notebook is slowly getting really really usable.

[csymeonides]

don't think there is much progress on camera.

however, with kernel 6.9.9, latest bios update and current ubuntu everything else seems to work much smoother than a few weeks ago.
standby is great, very reliable and quick in getting into sleep and waking up. also not draining a lot of power in standby. beside stability also battery performance overall got very good (at least with tlp).
not sure if it's bios, kernel, ubuntu updates... or maybe a combination out of it. but beside camera the notebook is slowly getting really really usable.

Sorry if this is a noob question but, how did you get the 6.9.9 kernel? Is it via mainline as dook123 describes here?

I'm struggling to understand the pros and cons of installing a mainline kernel vs waiting for Ubuntu to release an update. Any advice would be super helpful! I've been very frustrated with this new Dell, but I don't want to create new problems while trying to fix the existing ones...

[mixer2]

Sorry if this is a noob question but, how did you get the 6.9.9 kernel? Is it via mainline as dook123 describes here?

I'm struggling to understand the pros and cons of installing a mainline kernel vs waiting for Ubuntu to release an update. Any advice would be super helpful! I've been very frustrated with this new Dell, but I don't want to create new problems while trying to fix the existing ones...

sorry for the late respone, only checking the thread from time to time.
yes just use mainline as dook described, it's super easy.

benefit is, that you get newer kernels. Ubuntu is just providing new kernels (beside bugfix and security updates) when they release a new ubuntu version. current ubuntu version is still using kernel 6.8 while there is already 6.10. on the other side, you're missing with mainline kernels the testing, ubuntu specific adaptions and stuff that is precompiled for the specific kernel ubuntu is shipped with.
usually it's the best to stick with the ubuntu kernel, but if you have very new hardware (like the 9440 still is), it's sometimes better to use latest kernel, if it's supporting your hardware better. and in 6.9 and 6.10 there are a lot of improvements for 9440s hardware.

[concesar]

As per September 3rd 2024, I am still having issues with my dell xps14 9440, I have the kernel: 6.8.0-41-generic and I am using ubuntu 24.04, I fixed the screen issue by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf , and adding this line: options i915 enable_psr=0, apparently the power self refresh has issues with the Nvidia card, so we disable it, it will consume just a bit more of power but as long as the flickering issue is solved is fine to me. Since this is a work pc I do need to have official kernel on. Therefore, adding a pre-released kernel is not an option to me. I guess the most annoying problem now is the sound card not being recognized, so I can't use any microphone or connect anything in the audio jack because no audio is coming out. I heard in he next release ubuntu 24.10 things might get better, does anyone has any idea if this is really like this?

[mixer2]

As per September 3rd 2024, I am still having issues with my dell xps14 9440, I have the kernel: 6.8.0-41-generic and I am using ubuntu 24.04, I fixed the screen issue by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf , and adding this line: options i915 enable_psr=0, apparently the power self refresh has issues with the Nvidia card, so we disable it, it will consume just a bit more of power but as long as the flickering issue is solved is fine to me. Since this is a work pc I do need to have official kernel on. Therefore, adding a pre-released kernel is not an option to me. I guess the most annoying problem now is the sound card not being recognized, so I can't use any microphone or connect anything in the audio jack because no audio is coming out. I heard in he next release ubuntu 24.10 things might get better, does anyone has any idea if this is really like this?

pretty sure that it's getting better out of the box with the new ubuntu version, since they include a current kernel. mainline kernels do run quite well. only real problems left is 1. shutdown with some dell displays via usb-c (not a linux issue, same happens on windows) 2. webcam. the audio problem can be fixed with current kernels, as dook123 described in this thread (as long as you do have a current kernel, which is the case for mainline kernels or the new ubuntu version which will be released next month).

[danrees84]

OK update - Working Audio on Dell XPS 14" (9440)!

So, Ubuntu 24.04 got released in Beta a few days ago (https://releases.ubuntu.com/noble/)
So...downloaded ubuntu-24.04-beta-desktop-amd64.iso to USB and installed it. This time i actually selected to install third party drivers, and it seems happy (Working GFX card) and is showing a 4050 GTX in System Details

This version of Ubuntu comes with 6.8.0-22-generic kernel

So i installed mainline
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cappelikan/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mainline
And updated the kernel to 6.9-rc3 (latest but i suspect some earliers would work too)

Then downloaded latest available sof binaries from https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/releases (v2024.03)
Extracted tar and then ran install.sh as sudo (Had issues with some folder not extracting/removing properly so removed contents of /lib/firmware/intel/sof-ace-tplg first and re-ran installer again)


Then as per @Yellow Pasque comment, i "patched UCM" as per the thread in github issue (https://github.com/thesofproject/lin...ent-2024076848)

curl -L -o alsa-ucm-conf.tar.gz https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa.../master.tar.gz
tar xvzf alsa-ucm-conf.tar.gz -C /usr/share/alsa --strip-components=1 --wildcards "*/ucm" "*/ucm2"
Rebooted and....Working audio!


If anyone needs any further info, let me know

I have followed these instructions on Kubuntu 24.04, running 6.10.9 via mainline. Bluetooth audio works but not the onboard speaker. I don't see a speaker device in the KDE Audio Devices settings, or via pavucontrol (only "Pro" or "Off"). Any suggestions welcome! First Nvidia laptop so haven't even got to trying to sync up Nvidia drivers onto a mainline kernel yet...

[odnaratsuj]

Thanks @dook123, for the solution to fix the internal audio on the Dell XPS 14! I can confirm that the solution worked for me. However, my headphone audio and mic aren't working through the audio jack, so I’m curious—has the solution fixed the headphone issue for anyone else?

[danrees84]

For what it's worth, I just tried the live environment of the Fedora 41 beta, and the speaker was working fine out of the box. Didn't seem to in the Ubuntu 24.10 beta but hopefully this will settle down and get sorted with sane defaults in the final 24.10 version. It is reassuring at least it works on some version of Linux already...