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XPS 15 9530 Ubuntu 14.04 4K ultra hd screen problem
Hi,
Recently I've become the proud owner of a XPS 15 9530 4k ultra hd laptop. I've installed Ubunutu 14.04 on the machine and I'm impressed that everything works out of the box. Although I'm having a problem with getting the desktop to fit the screen.
The screen seems to have a black bar on the bottom. When I maximize a window, the bottom line of this window falls in this black bar and isn't visible anymore. I've installed the nvidia-349 drivers from ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa and installed and configured bumblebee (and also tried the proprietary nvidia drivers and nouveau drivers). This all works fine but it didn't solve the problem.
So I searched online and found the following: "The X server doesn't derive the physical dimensions of the screen properly so you need to edit it's config file to tell it that the screen is 345x194 milliliters" source: http://xps-15.wikia.com/wiki/Linux But there was no clear instruction on how to to this.
So I tried to set dimension of the screen in several xorg.conf files but to no avail. This is the output of xrandr at the moment:
Screen 0: minimum 3840 x 2160, current 3840 x 2160, maximum 3840 x 2160
default connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 0mm x 0mm
3840x2160 0.0*
And the output of xdpyinfo | grep -B2 resolution
screen #0:
dimensions: 3840x2160 pixels (351x191 milimeters)
resolution: 2278x287 dots per inch
So I'm posting this question to gather if other users have this same problem with the xp15 or m3800 and might have found a solution to this, or if someone can point me in the right direction in order to solve this problem.
Thanks in advance,
Pieter
itzcoatl
4 Posts
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April 18th, 2015 09:00
I've solved the problem by installing Ubuntu Gnome 14.02.2
Now everything is in good order and it works like a charm!
MankyGitt
2 Posts
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May 27th, 2015 17:00
I have just procured a shiny new Dell XPS 15 QHD 16Gb 512Gb SSD model pre-loaded with Windows 8.1 with a view to running Ubuntu on it. Sadly Dell Australia still do not distribute Dell hardware with an alternative to Windows OS pre-installed.
Did you remove Windows altogether, or did you dual boot your device?
I intend to avoid the dual boot inefficiencies and completely replace the OS. When I powered up my unit to examine the current disk allocation I found that there are MANY partitions present, with the main data partition allocated in the middle of them.
I haven't popped the cover off yet, having had this unit for less than 1 hour, but I suspect that the operating system is running on an mSATA device with the C:\ partition being allocated for data only.
Any feedback / gotchas would be greatly appreciated.
itzcoatl
4 Posts
0
May 28th, 2015 10:00
I completely replaced windows with ubuntu. Create an usb image with ubuntu 14.04.2 and plug it in. Remember though that you need to disable the secure boot option, enable the legacy boot option and edit the boot order in the bios. I also had to select the nomodeset option from the 'F6 Other Options' in order to get the installer to work. Other than that it should work pretty straigth forward.
If you have any other questions then let me know, good luck!
MankyGitt
2 Posts
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May 28th, 2015 16:00
Thanks ITZCOATL.
I took the plunge based on confidence that Dell and Canonical have been working together, and that the XPS13 is shipped with Ubuntu in the USA, so fingers crossed the XPS15 was going to be fine ....
... and it was.
I didnt need to alter any settings in the BIOS. I simply inserted my USB installer witn 14.04.2 x64 and on boot, pressed F12 to trigger the boot menu - selected the USB key, and Voila!! it installed just fine without requiring the Legacy mode.
The 512Gb SSD was repartitioned by the installer (gparted) to retain the 500Mb EFI boot partition, and the rest (all 7 partitions on the Windows Dell Factory build) were removed and replaced with the EXT4 + Swap partition as one expects with an ubuntu live disk installation.
Note - I had connected an external monitor via HDMI before the installation, and the installer correctly handled this. I have had no need to muck around with Optimus/bumblebee, and have no issues others reported with black bars etc.
the only tweaks I've done are selected from the following guides.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI
namely - update the default font scaling, the unity launcher, and firefox and thunderbird displays.
itzcoatl
4 Posts
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May 31st, 2015 05:00
awesome that it worked without any problem!