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December 28th, 2019 02:00
Dell Latitude XT3 - Linux Ubuntu is no good
This is a post for those who are googling can they use this laptop after 2020, when windows 7 support stops.
The short answer is, NO
A bit longer is; Depends
So Dell Latitude XT3 doesn't have any linux drivers. That's it. Specific hardware is not fully supported, meaning you won't be able to get most out of your computer. The problems in severity order: Power management not supported, you get 1 hour battery life with 6 cell battery, 1.5 hours with 9 cells. Touchpad cannot be configured, it is in hyper sensitive mode all the time which is annoying. WWAN cards dont work. Tablet mode buttons dont work or they are configured wrongly (rotate screen turns off touchpad). Lastly some keyboard layouts are not supported, thus you need to make your own custom one. (this is a problem with windows also).
Thus we come to conclusion you either keep using Windows 7 for maximum compatibility with hardware and accept risks that come when Windows 7 security updates stop, or you rollup to Windows 10 where some functionality of touch screen, pen and such won't work anymore so great. Then lastly you can use linux, where you need to keep laptop all the time plugged into charger.
I am 100% sure Dell wont release Linux drivers for this laptop to fix power management, touchpad, tablet mode and wwan. It is time to say good bye to the last of good laptop that was able to do a lot, cost a lot was sturdier than it looked.
End of era for XT3
U2CAMEB4ME
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December 28th, 2019 03:00
Welcome to the Dell Community @FireFlower
I am not 100% sure but I think I built a W10 image for the XT3???
If it was successful I would have uploaded it to my server???
You say that there are problems with W10 on the XT3???
I'll have to check on Monday if I have the image and if not build one to test???
As far as W7 and its lifecycle.
I have many systems that will continue using W7 for many years to come.
There are some that spread the fear that on the day after W7 ends every computer system that has it will be hacked!!!
There are others that will ill-advise people to purchase a new system.
If your responsible and know what your doing W7 will be good for years to come.
Best regards,
U2
FireFlower
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June 11th, 2020 04:00
Just my a few cents more:
Linux Mint seems to be implementing its own power solutions but they still are not perfect. You at least can get 3 hours out of 6 cell battery, which is not so great but something at least.
Further tuning with powertop and installing auto-cpufreq helps a lot and you can get 5-6 hours with 6 cell battery. Further on, you need to disable onboard webcamera via USB block, because it is consuming on standby as much as it is recording video! This is somewhat about 2-3W! Disabling webcamera via USB block gives you another hour on 6 cell battery. Finally replacing your old WLAN card to Intel AX200 (Ẁifi 6+ BT 5.0, minipcie model available from ebay) and disconnecting the bluetooth module (unplug the cable) drops WLAN + bluetooth power consumption from 7W to 2.5-3.5W giving you almost 10 hours on 6 cell battery.
To fix touchpad sensitivity it has to be done via CLI most likely because none of the GUI tools affect anything. Also tablet mode buttons have to be edited via CLI. WWAN and finger printer work out of the box on RHEL.
So if you want to give this machine more life with linux you have to replace some components, manually install things, manually edit configuration files to fix tablet mode buttons and touch pad behavior. I just gave up using touchpad and use bluetooth mouse or trackpoint.