XPS 13 9350 DE - my experiences...

Hi folks,

Got my shiny new XPS 13 DE yesterday (i7, 500GB, 16GB). Here are a few of my experiences - I'll be interested to see if anyone else has had anything similar.. (tl;dr: I'll be getting an engineer out next week to mend the paperweight).

(rant warning! I'm just venting below, and I really appreciate Barton and his team's efforts, but a "linux ready" laptop surely shouldn't be so temperamental! I'd hoped linux had made it past the point of "spending more time getting the OS working than actually using it"..) 

Build quality: Overall not bad, although there is a hint of backlight bleed at the bottom right, the lid doesn't close tightly all the way along (right hand side is looser than left, with approx 1-2mm gap appearing if I stand the laptop on its rear edge, while the left side stays tightly shut), there's very annoying coil whine/beeping and the enter key doesn't seem to fit the cut-out for it, meaning that it often catches and "clicks" when pressed - sounds like grit caught under the key, but isn't.

Software: I created a recovery drive during initial installation. Updated the BIOS by copying the .exe from the Dell website into the boot partition and updating in the BIOS (so no windows to go disk required). Is the adaptive backlight firmware fix applicable to this machine, and if so can it be applied without using a windows to go disk? 

Then I updated the OS using apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, but this resulted in lots of things being "held back" and a complete inability to install some programmes (e.g. steam). So I decided to start afresh, and booted from the recovery USB, used Dell recovery to reinstall just the original version of Ubuntu. Reinstallation hung at "Copy installation logs", so I rebooted and ubuntu started happily. Then used apt-get dist-upgrade and everything seemed OK - steam installed etc. but there were lots of errors about alp touchpad and an inability to build a kernel modules during the upgrade process.

Seems that bluetooth always turned on after a reboot - is this by design? If I turn it off I want it to stay off... anyway, I then installed KDE, but its HiDPI scaling isn't wonderful, so reverted to using Unity. Then noticed that e.g. the language icon at the top right had been replaced by a "no entry" symbol and also that the original splash screen had been changed to a kubuntu splash screen, plus closing the laptop and reopening it resulted in a black unresponsive screen.

So I used my Dell recovery USB stick again, this time it hung again during the copying installation files part and after rebooting gave a grub error. Looked online about the copying installation files hang and it seemed to be related to a corrupt recovery image, so created a new boot USB using the factory_image.iso included in the downloads folder of the original installation. Booted with that, tried replacing the linux installation, rebooted, kernel error with flashing caps lock. Tried again with a complete rebuild of the recovery partition etc., get yet another kernel hang with flashing caps lock. Given up, currently have expensive paperweight and I am very thankful I got the business version with prosupport! 

And rant over, thanks for bearing with me. Anyone experienced anything similar re: coil whine, gritty-feeling keys?

UPDATE: Just finished chatting with an amazingly helpful support tech - engineer visiting and replacing many parts early next week, and *hopefully* sorting out the ubuntu installation as well... very impressive! 

UPDATE 2: Never give up, never surrender! Another complete reinstall (error can't write to boot/efi), followed by a reinstall of just the linux partition (hung on copy installation logs again) and it seems to be working! Only error now something to do with alps touchpad driver already being installed. And, no matter which region/keyboard you select during initial configuration, you get the US keyboard mapping. Bluetooth is off though.