Dell XPS 14 9440 Support

[christian-p26]

Hello,
First time poster here looking for some help. I recently got the new Dell XPS 9440 Laptop with the RTX 4050 dedicated graphics card.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

This machine ships with Windows but I was needing to load Ubuntu 22.04 on it. When I do the display fails to load unless I remove the Nvidia driver and use the Xorg driver instead. In addition webcam, speaker, and microphone all fail. I have tried to update the kernel to 6.8 but libc6 is too old to allow this. I have tested Ubuntu 23.04 and the nightly 24.04 releases. On 23.04 there is no difference from the behavior seen on 22.04 however with 24.04 I do get Nvidia support out of the box which is great and seems to indicate kernel 6.8 has support for this graphics card except that the devices mentioned above fail still. Looking at dmesg I saw that perhaps audio card firmware is missing so I followed the instructions in the sof-bin repo to install them. This seems to have cleared the dmesg error, yet no audio still.

Unfortunately even if 24.04 was successful at this time it is not a viable option as certain compilers and applications for my work only support up to 22.04.

Any advice on how to get Ubuntu 22.04 would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance,

[halogen2]

seems to indicate kernel 6.8 has support for this graphics card

So as a test, does Pop!_OS 22.04 work? It is based on Ubuntu 22.04, currently uses 6.8 kernel, and has a Nvidia-specific ISO image.

[MAFoElffen]

I'm not even going to comment on PopOS> That is a derivative of Ubuntu, but is not Ubuntu...

Your CPU is Intel Ultra, and your GPU is 4060.

Ubuntu Noble 24.04 does have Kernel 6.8... But again, the key sticking point is that you said that

Unfortunately even if 24.04 was successful at this time it is not a viable option as certain compilers and applications for my work only support up to 22.04.

I have been testing DEV Noble since it hit the repo's. Even with that, that (out-of-the-box) wont work for you, without modulations.

To fall within the bounds of your requirements and boundaries... You have two options...

1. ) You can start out with 22.04 and upgrade the kernel and Linux util's to 6.8... (It needs the base upgraded to run that kernel)

2.) Or Upgrade to 24.04 (which is still in beta), but add the gcc-11 & g++-11 to it, to fulfill your legacy compiler challenges. You would have to use update-alternative so that it has priorities set on the compilers, and you would then have a facility to choose which...

What other applications, with their versions are in your requirements?

[halogen2]

PopOS> That is a derivative of Ubuntu, but is not Ubuntu...

I should have explained why I suggested trying it "as a test":

• If graphics works, and Pop!_OS 22.04 meets OP's needs, it is the easiest way to get 6.8 kernel with a 22.04 base on non-System76 hardware.

• If graphics works, but OP finds that Pop!_OS 22.04 does not meet their needs in ways Ubuntu 22.04 would, it is possible to install that kernel/driver stack on Ubuntu 22.04 via the System76 driver PPA, even on non-System76 hardware. Note that setting this up correctly on non-System76 systems requires an extra step (and the non-System76 systems on which I have done this don't have Nvidia graphics, so not sure if setting up the correct Nvidia driver for OP's laptop would require additional step?)

[Yellow Pasque]

The Nvidia driver should work. Which version were you trying?

Also, is this laptop one with hybrid graphics or did Dell disable the Intel GPU?

[dook123]

Hey there. I'm in the same basket as you. Dell XPS 14" (9440) and trying to get Ubuntu working on it.

I stumbled across this - https://askubuntu.com/questions/1508...508411#1508411 which was crazy helpful. Here's how i got my machine running on 23.10

• Downloaded ubuntu-23.10.1-desktop-amd64 and burned to USB, booted from USB to install. I also ensured i had a USB-C ethernet dongle attached during the installation, which gave me working internet during the process.
• During the setup, theres a prompt to "Allow installation of Third Party drivers". Make sure this is UNSELECTED.
• Continue the installation, and you should get it installed OK, and wifi should be working.
• Now, using Mainline (https://github.com/bkw777/mainline?t...v-file#install) upgrade your kernel to 6.8.
• Once installed, you should then be able to install Nvidia drivers using sudo ubuntu-drivers install

Thats where i currently am, and it's working OK. But so far, the following still don't work:

• Audio
• Webcam

Keen to follow along on this thread too, help get it working with the remaining bits.

[dook123]

Also replying to some other comments

MAFoElffen = The 9640 (16") has a 4060 GPU. 9440 (14") has a 4050 GPU.

Yellow Pasqu = AFAIK, they have the dual gfx cards in. Here's the output of lspci (https://ibb.co/VgpRhRD)



Keen to help out with any details etc which can help it fully get running, so please let me know what i can do

[Yellow Pasque]

Maybe this fixes your graphics issues with 22.04:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread....8#post14182328

Keen to help out with any details etc which can help it fully get running

Thanks for the info.

[christian-p26]

Hello all,
Thank you so much for the help we have some progress!

I have currently gotten Ubuntu 22.04 with the Nvidia 550 driver working and booting! I ended up needing to compile the 6.8(.2) kernel and modules myself and use the Nvidia provided .run installer from their site. I did this because if I just used the downloads from mainline PEM when I later went to install Nvidia Drivers it would complain that the gcc version used to compile the kernel did not match what is on system. I am sure I could of just updated gcc or made the install work similar to what @dook123 but compiling the kernel for me seemed easy enough (and interesting).

I am however still in the same boat as @dook123 where no built in audio, mic, or webcam are working. If I plug in a microphone I can get it to work but no external hdmi speaker. I have looked into dmesg and it is complaining about a missing topology file 'sof-mtl-rt711.tplg' which I cant seem to find anywhere including the sof-bin repo. I am also confused why it searches for this file as my understanding is the audio chipset is a Cirrus model.

Any advice would be amazing and once again thank you!

[mixer2]

@dook123 glad that the hint that the kernel 6.8 is mostly working out of the box on askubuntu helped you.
it seems that this forum is way better place to discuss and help each other to get the xps 14 to work.

so for the webcam:
there are open pull-requests to make ipu6 drivers work on 6.8 kernel https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers/pull/213 https://github.com/intel/ivsc-driver/pull/44

however i didn't got icamera to compile https://github.com/intel/icamerasrc/...rasrc_slim_api

for details check: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1508...-lake-platform

i think we might just have to wait a little bit longer until they got 6.8 kernel support merged in all the ipu6, icamera repos, then just installing the nightly builds should just work, i guess. but if anyone has a better idea, would be great. i think audio isn't that important, but webcam in a time where home office is that common, would be nice.
does anyone know which sensor is used in the xps 14 9440, or how we could find out? if it's a sensor that is not yet supported by ipu6 drivers (HM11B1, OV01A1S, OV01A10, OV02C10, OV02E10, OV2740, HM2170, HM2172 and HI556 sensors) then we might have to wait even longer.

for audio i'm more optimistic. with the command:
$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio

i get:
0000:00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P HD Audio Controller [8086:7e28] (rev 20)

and if we google we find Dell Precision 3591 with the same audio controller as ubuntu certified (https://ubuntu.com/certified/202312-33218/22.04%20LTS). might be that we need some propritery driver from the dell packages or something, but it sounds as if we could get it to work with some research (or some help from someone who know about all the linux driver stuff).
it might even be, that it's the same webcam, since it's also dell and also fhd. but as said, there ipu6 6.8 kernel support is the limiting factor, as far as i understand.

so far that's everything i know
if i get something to work, i'll post it here.

one more question: is s0 standby working for you guys? if yes, how much battery does it take? s0 is not working for me, but i think it might be, because i'm currently running ubuntu from external ssd.