Does Dell XPS 13 2020 9310 (Ubuntu 20.04) work with Thunderbolt 3 docks?

Hi,

There is currently no driver for the Killer AX500 wlan adapter (I believe it used the Qualcomm 6390 chipset). From what I found in my search the driver may be released with the 5.9 kernel (I hope).

Bluetooth works only with the 5.8 backport kernel.

With Ubuntu 20.10 (5.8 kernel) bluetooth works fine (until now) but still no wlan

About the docks you mentioned I don't know. With the Mobile Dell USB-Adapter works just fine.

Thunderbolt drivers seem to work with the official distribution (but no promises ).

Hi @FlashKartoon ,

What do you mean by "still no wlan"? On the build page it says the following under wireless:

Killer™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2 x 2) and Bluetooth 5.1

Are you saying that the wifi does not work?

Sorry @dpardo, I was not precise enough.

With the Killer™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 it may work (I cannot say) but not the variant with the Killer™ Wi-Fi 6 AX500. Lucky you (I hope).

After returning my 9300 for Thunderbolt 3  compatibility issue, this is the first thing I tested after I received my 9310. It works perfectly(both vanilla Arch and Ubuntu 20.10) on my TS3+

My build comes with the same Wi-Fi 6 AX500. There seem to be some works submitted on the upstream kernel that haven't merged yet. After applying a few patches I can get to the point where the kernel brings up the device and the NetworkManager can scan the wifi, but I am still having trouble properly connect to an AP.

I can see there are tons of active submission to the ath11k driver to bring up Qualcomm 6390 chipset. You can follow https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/ if you are down to apply the patches and compile the kernel yourself.

Could you be more specific on which patch you applied?

Thanks

My steps:

1. Have kernel build environment ready(depends on your distro and your build env preference...), and checkout 5.10 RC2(People are reporting that applying to RC3 has the same result)

2. Apply this patch https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/1605121102-14352-1-git-send-email-kvalo@codeaurora.org/

3. Then revert commit 7fef431be9c9 mm/page_alloc: place pages to tail in __free_pages_core()

4. Follow https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/11/4/740 to enable ath11k in kernel config and install QCA6390 firmware

5. Build and install the kernel

Please note that this driver is still experimental and not stable. It causes my system to hang a lot, so now I have switched back to a stable kernel without wifi.

There are active investigation on the issue, you can follow the ath11k email archives: http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/ath11k/2020-November/thread.html

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation.

From what you wrote it sounds like  still too experimental for my taste.

I guess I'll wait until there's a stable release.