Finally content with my purchase

Hello,

What problems did you have exactly with the OS upgrade and the Broadcom Wifi? It would be helpful to know for anyone wanting to follow this plan.

Regards,

Bob

That's great to hear, thanks.

I believe I wouldn't be able to upgrade to 4.x because of my need for Virtual Box (I prefer to use the distro copy, rather than download separate packages). This is the same reason I can't upgrade 14.04 to 3.19 in situ.

I'm waiting to see whether an upgrade to 15.04 or waiting for 14.04 backports is going to be the best way forward. It's a bit of a *** situation to be stuck with a machine crashing every time it sleeps and which the vendor isn't providing a clear support path for.

Bob

Also to be clear, you dont HAVE to install Kernel 4.x. 3.19.0-16 works very well out of the box on Ubuntu 15.04.

Installing the Broadcom wireless drivers during the Ubuntu 15.04 install is as easy as clicking a box. Literally. On one of the first screens of the install, just check the box that says "Install proprietary drivers" or "Install 3rd party drivers" (something to that effect, cant remember the exact wording right now. After you check that and click next, you'll see your wireless and bluetooth start working (little icons in the top right corner).

There is an issue with the Broadcom drivers not installing correctly when trying to upgrade to kernel 4.x in place. If you follow the link below, about half way down that page are instructions for patching the broadcom kernel source so that it recompiles correctly for the new 4.x kernel.

forthescience.org/.../installing_ubuntu_14_04_on_the_new_dell_xps_13_v2

FWIW I am running VirtualBox 4.3.26-dfsg-2ubuntu2 (installed from Ubuntu vivid repo) with Kernel 4.0.4 (installed from Ubuntu wily repo) and it runs perfectly.

Agreed the wake from sleep kernel panics are very very annoying. It's my last remaining major issue. My microphone doesnt work in kernel 4 but I can just boot back to 3.19.0-18 if I need it, which I usually don't.

To get the Broadcom (wl) driver installed you need to install the bcmwl-kernel-source package. I do not believe that the Xubuntu 15.04 installation image includes all of the dependencies for this package because I was unable to install bcmwl-kernel-source on the command line when I was running Xubuntu-15.04 from the thumb drive before installing the OS.

The simplest away around this is to purchase a USB Ethernet adapter. I am happy with my 'Cable Matters SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter' which I paid $18 for.

I agree, this is a great little laptop. I'm going to keep using it here at work and at h omee for a whilee longer to make  sure, just in casee new problems aappear, but it looks l ike a keeper.

NOTE: I'm m leaving typos in this message, correcting only those  I made m yself,  so you can see the key repeat issue is alive & well even with BIOS A04.

There were  numerous issues to resolve and it still has several bugs, but the Macbook  Air I aim to replace wasn't perrfect either. And  I believe these remaining issues will be resolved eventually as the drivers mature annd  Linux supports this new haardware better, and  Dell continues supporting it.

So it'ss a keeper - if I don't discover  new  problems. But you can imagine how annoying this key repeat i ssue is. And the spacebar is not very relliable.

Hey MRC01 you are on 3.19.0-18 right?

After the BIOS upgrade did you apply the 3.13 backport fixes?  I know it's counter-intuitive since the backports were targeted for 3.13, but applying the 3.13 .deb fixes actually resolved the touchpad/keyboard resurgence issues I had after upgrading the BIOS on my 14.04.2 and 3.19.0-18 system.

FWIW, I am leaving typos in this message (even ones I make myself), so for some reason or another I currently have a stable keyboard experience.

Yes I'm BIOS A04, Ubuntu 14.04, kernel 3.19.

According to Dell, on Ubuntu 15 or kernel 3.19 no patches are needed, so I didn't load any.

Where are these .DEB files? I looked on Dell  support but it only shows Windows stuff.

I am referring to the stickied post at the top of the forum:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/t/19632338

Here is a direct link to the download page:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/mediagallery/20441258

To stabilize my system here is what I did:

1) Upgrade Kernel in place to 3.19 according to our other thread...

2) Upgrade BIOS to A04 using the Dell Boot BIOS Flash tool...

3) Apply the 3.13 backports since the BIOS flash brought back some of my touchpad and keyboard issues...

Oddly, the 3.13 backports fixed the issues that ressurrected after the A04 BIOS upgrade.

I am glad that it fixed it for you!

But yeah, it is counter-intuitive for a couple of reasons:

1) By all accounts Dell seems to suggest that the original keyboard issues were fixed in kernel 3.19, so a BIOS update shouldn't break the keyboard in 3.19...

2) The backports were targeted to 3.13, so applying it to 3.19 shouldn't work the same way...

But applying the backports stabilize the system, so I don't really care to figure out why.  Haha...

Cheers,

Ah, I didn't think I needed to reapply these after the A04 BIOS update.

I just did, and the keyboard seems better - as you can  see from these words.

Thanks

Strangely, the trackpad & keyboard are still jittery running Windows 7 under  Virtualbox. The patches fixed it (mostly) in  Ubuntu.

I've tried running both with and  without those 3 Dell packaages (one of fthe 4 is just a meta-package). It makes no  difference either way.

I've tried changing (in Grub) the boot params for the kernel - either  blank (none) or the ones that came as shipped by Dell. It makes no difference either way.

The Dell params are: pcie_aspm=force radeon.modeset=0 nouveau.modeset=0 video.use_native_backlight=1 acpi_osi=\"Windows 2013\"

The touchpad works OK (and  is in  i2c mode). But this keyboard still throws out spurious characters. I wonder if it's a defective keyboard.