You should probably utilize your support contract and talk to support, as this is going to be difficult to walk you through on a forum.

Also, I don't understand it when people go and blow away a perfectly good Ubuntu installation to install another Ubuntu flavor. Those flavor installers just install a different set of packages. There's nothing special about them other than that. You can very easily go and install the same packages without blowing away an existing install.

Hi,

I just received my M3800 with Ubuntu 14.04 pre-installed from Dell. However somehow at first boot after entered the initial setup like wifi, timezone, keyboard and admin user details the installer crashed.

I probably have a semi configured(*) machine with OEM as admin user and I had to guess the password (oem :emotion-1:). I'd like to try to re-run the first boot setup which is probably achieved by factory reset.

I tried the esc as you mention and I get the following (GRUB) options :

Ubuntu <- just boot as usual

Advanced options <- which is booting normal or in a save mode

Setup <- which gets me to a BIOS setting environment after which the machine boots as it was.

Am I missing something ?

(*) at least I hope that e.g. some better video drivers would be installed/configured because :

at the high resolution of 3840x2160 and a rescaling menubars and titles [in the Display setting] of 2 (to have something readable) the screen is all messed up. Setting rescaling to 1 works but I need to use a microscope to read. [so this may be an Xorg issue rather than a driver issue]

however running the Unigine "Heaven" graphics benchmark ( https://unigine.com/products/heaven/  ) results is a white screen

and glxgears appears to work but spits out a lot of errors/warnings

I have also following issues :

I cannot ctrl-alt-Fn to switch to a alternate tty terminal (which is
an operation I require to change the admin username (see
http://askubuntu.com/questions/228696/how-to-change-administrator-username ). I found how to get GRUB (press esc at boot) and drop into a root shell : however following the procedure shown in the link results in  "cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later.". Also this root shell appears really small and worse the bottom lin is missing so that one has to type the commands blindly.

keyboard backlight does not work (note it did work initially and then
stopped working : the only thing I think happened was the Ubuntu
updates). 


I also note that there is a dell-driver application which appears to
want to install downloaded drivers (i.e. selected from a file selector)
but alas I don't know where to download what the drivers for this model.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi, my case is a bit different but here's my good reason for not using the pre-installed Ubuntu: I already had all my stuff installed on a fast SSD with Kubuntu 14.04 LTS and I just swapped the disk before even turning the M3800 on.

Now "almost" everything works fine, just a simple question:

are there any M3800 specific ppa or packages that I should install to get bumblebee (or other M3800 HW) working?

Bumblebee it's not working due to this bug

I also have occasional WIFI disconnections and general poor signal, in a word: my old DELL Latitude  E4300 had much better (nearly perfect) Linux support.

Well, it's Linux after all, most of the times you just plug the HDD in and the machine just starts :)

The reason why I'm asking is that in the original shipped HDD there are a couple of strange packages, if it's a vanilla Ubuntu, why it ships those packages? You can easily see that some of them are Nvidia-related and other are DELL related.

BTW, before bumblebee I've also tried nvdia prime from Ubuntu repos and it didn't work either. So, I'm now the proud owner of an expensive Nvidia Quadro that I cannot use.

This is a list of original HDD "strange" packages (what means that somerville suffix?):

ale@darkstar:/media/ale/OS$ ls debs/*                                                                                                                                                                   
debs/bbswitch-dkms_0.7-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb                         debs/nvidia-opencl-icd-340_340.46-0somerville1_amd64.deb                                                                              
debs/config-prime-select-intel-all_0.5_all.deb                    debs/nvidia-prime_0.6.2somerville1_amd64.deb                                                                                          
debs/dell-eula_1.02_all.deb                                       debs/nvidia-settings_331.20-0ubuntu8_amd64.deb                                                                                        
debs/dell-recovery_1.32~somerville6_all.deb                       debs/oem-audio-hda-daily-dkms_0.201408221216~ubuntu14.04.1_all.de
debs/dh-modaliases_1%3a0.2.91.7_all.deb                           debs/oem-unity-auto-scale_1.0kittyhawk3somerville1_all.deb       
debs/fist_0.04_all.deb                                            debs/screen-resolution-extra_0.17.1_all.deb                      
debs/libcuda1-340_340.46-0somerville1_amd64.deb                   debs/ubuntu-drivers-common_1%3a0.2.91.7_amd64.deb                
debs/libunity-core-6.0-9_7.2.3+14.04.20140826-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb  debs/unity_7.2.3+14.04.20140826-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
debs/libvdpau1_0.7-1_amd64.deb                                    debs/unity-services_7.2.3+14.04.20140826-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
debs/linux-firmware_1.127.5_all.deb                               debs/workaround-disable-hda-controller-powersave-trusty_2-9_all.d
debs/nautilus_3.10.1-0ubuntu9.3somerville1_amd64.deb              debs/x11-touchscreen-calibrator_0.2-1somerville1_amd64.deb
debs/nautilus-data_3.10.1-0ubuntu9.3somerville1_all.deb           debs/xserver-common_1.15.1-0ubuntu2.2~ppa2_all.deb
debs/nvidia-340_340.46-0somerville1_amd64.deb                     debs/xserver-xorg-core_1.15.1-0ubuntu2.2~ppa2_amd64.deb
debs/nvidia-libopencl1-340_340.46-0somerville1_amd64.deb          debs/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.99.910-0ubuntu1.2~ppa5_amd64.deb

debs/main:
dell-e-star_0.03_all.deb  dell-my-linux_3.2_all.deb

You're right, no "somerville" packages in the default ubuntu OS.  Sorry, I don't know what they are.  Jared or Barton would know.

I'm impressed that your HDD swap worked so well!

Regarding "bumblebee", as I understand it, that package has been deprecated in favor of Nvidia Optimus.  Optimus allows easy switching between gpu profiles, e.g. "normal/intel" or "nvidia" graphics.  The Nvidia driver supplies this functionality.

I believe the 14.04 OS is plain vanilla, i.e. no PPA's.

Thanks, I hope they'll give us a clue...

Forgot to mention that there are some files in a "kernel" folder too:

ale@darkstar:/media/ale/OS$ ls kernel/
linux-generic_3.13.0.38.45_amd64.deb                               linux-headers-generic_3.13.0.38.45_amd64.deb                           linux-image-generic_3.13.0.38.45_amd64.deb
linux-headers-3.13.0-38_3.13.0-38.65somerville1_all.deb            linux-image-3.13.0-38-generic_3.13.0-38.65somerville1_amd64.deb        linux-libc-dev_3.13.0-38.65somerville1_amd64.deb
linux-headers-3.13.0-38-generic_3.13.0-38.65somerville1_amd64.deb  linux-image-extra-3.13.0-38-generic_3.13.0-38.65somerville1_amd64.deb

Yes, Canonical hosts separate archives for updating these (again, until the changes get folded into stock Ubuntu). You can find them under /etc/apt/sources.list.d on a factory installed system.

Honestly, my suggestion is if you want Kubuntu, use the factory image and then install the Kubuntu meta packages.

Hi,

In the mean time I got most of the problems above sorted out and "the costumer" (my son) is very happy with the laptop.

I had a question about the SSD on mincard not being compatible (at least one cannot select that option when choosing Ubuntu as OS). Will that be resolved (when ? as in :  there are substantial (-28%) promotions going for the moment until end of April).

Thanks.

I had a question about the SSD on mincard not being compatible (at least one cannot select that option when choosing Ubuntu as OS). Will that be resolved (when ? as in :  there are substantial (-28%) promotions going for the moment until end of April).

Yes. My understanding is that the fix should go into the factory soon. The problem actually had to do with installation with more than one drive, but somehow that go turned into restricting against having a minicard.