Does Ubuntu work on the 2013 Dell XPS 15 (9530)?

Question

What hardware components work, and what doesn't work?

Yes!

Works On: 13.10, 14.04

Notes:

The laptop works with very few issues. The hi-DPI screen is somewhat hard to see, but can be tweaked to be acceptable for most people.

---

Touch Screen: fail

Touch screen will click and select, but can't scroll web pages. With multiple monitors, the clicks are detected as being on whatever the "main" monitor is, which might not be the laptop screen.

(the quadhd-touchscreen driver provided here or directly on dell server might help to fix the touch-screen detection problem. Before this, I add touch-screen active 1 time over 10 or 15 reboot, now it seems to work each time I start ubuntu)

Wifi: ok

Ethernet: N/A

Webcam: ok

Microphone: ok

Trackpad: ok

Media Keys: ok

Integrated Graphics: ok

Dedicated Graphics: fail

NVidia 750m does not show up... though I've heard that you can get it working with some effort using bumblebee.

SD Card Reader: ok*

*SD card reader requires kernel 3.13. In 3.12 and before, it is not detected.

HDMI: ok

DVI: N/A

VGA: N/A

DisplayPort: N/A

Mini DisplayPort: ok

Optical Drive: N/A

Bluetooth: ok

1/8" Headset port: works*, though with very annoying background hiss

*Requires kernel 3.13, before that it didn't mute the main speakers when the headset was plugged in.

Comments

[Admin]

why Wouldn't it work?

[Admin]

Because linux hardware compatibility isn't perfect? Note that the SD card doesn't work and the touch screen effectively doesn't work, and the dedicated graphics card isn't detected.

[Admin]

I see what you mean, but that's pretty universal and expected if you're an Ubuntu user. (for the record, I'm not the downvoter, was genuinely curious cuz I'm shopping now also). I guess I just expect all the peripherals to not work without some custom research/driver installs, so I don't even consider it when I got shopping. I'm looking at getting This Samsung

[Admin]

Actually, linux hardware compatibility has come a long way in the last few years, so most peripherals on mainstream laptops tend to work out of the box. I'm actually using this as a template that I'd like other people to follow so it's easier for people to know if a computer will work with Ubuntu, and what peripherals might not work.

[Admin]

How is this opinion based at all? There's a very black and white list of what works and what doesn't. I guess the interpretation of that list of (entirely fact based yes and no answers) into "yes it works" or "no it doesn't" could be considered an opinion (some people might say that not having wifi is a deal killer and others might not). Would it be better if I reworded the question to something like what parts of the hardware on the machine work in ubuntu? That would be entirely fact based.

[Admin]

About which Ubuntu release/version are you talking? I still think this question aiming at something like a snap-shot and answers will be probably wrong by may.

[Admin]

If ubuntu spontaneously stops working on my laptop in may, I'll be pretty pissed :) I could ask about a specific version, I suppose... though it's unlikely that if the laptop worked well in an older release that it would suddenly break in a newer one... All questions are in some ways snapshot... how to fix a problem can change for different releases of ubuntu, too.

[Admin]

I wouldn't expect support to decrease - but the other way may be true - things may work that are failing now.

[Admin]

I guess I don't consider answers that aren't perfect for forever and ever to be a reason to not try to answer questions that a lot of people have. Pretty much every question is going to get less accurate with age. That's one of the reasons I specified the versions of ubuntu that were tested in my answer. If someone comes along and wants to know if the SD card is fixed in 14.10, well, my answer won't help. But it shouldn't hurt either.

[Admin]

@NateFinch Just in case it interest you, I added some links to a driver that fix some of the touch-screen problems, into the community answer.

[Admin]

No, it doesn't work for me. Everything works except for suspend (works about 90%) and hibernate never works. Without reliable (~98%) suspend or hibernate, it is a broken laptop for my purposes.

[hughdbrown]

I have had the SD drive work with kernel 3.13. Then it stopped working with discs that are readable on Windows. Upgrading to kernel 3.16 in August did not help.

[Cristopher G S Freitas]

It's worth noting that there are several reports that the laptop works fairly well with Linux: community.linuxmint.com/hardware/view/18997 valthebald.net/2014/06/17/xps15-linux.html