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Screen flickering - kernel panic - uncontrollable touchscreen - tiny letters
HI,
First off... thank you for providing this support forum. I know the hardware seems to clash a bit with linux, I hope we can provide a working system very soon.
I normally use OpenSuse, been super happy with it for over 10 years. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work as I wanted, the touchpad was pretty terrible, so many repeated keystrokes... that I opted to install kubuntu 15.04, to get more support.
I keep having some issues, I thought it would be useful to tell them here:
- I work with an external screen in the office and on laptop at home. The laptop letters are TINY due to the excellent resolution. So I change the dpi settings to make things readable. So in the morning when I connect my external screen, things are HUGE. Because, as everybody, I'm lazy, I just constantly "zoom" scroll my browser... it's not the nicest experience. But ok... that's not my main concern.
- After opening certain software: synaptics center, installing tlp, musescore,... my screen starts to flicker uncontrollably. The mouse cursor doesn't work at all anymore too. This usually ends with a kernel panic (blinking caps lock). I have to reboot a few times before this goes away and I usually also type this:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-hwe-team/sputnik-kernel sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install linux
(is this the right command btw to activate the latest sputnik kernel? How do I make this stick?)
- Battery life: I usually get 3-4 hours with a dimmed screen. (??)
- a few times, after closing the lid of my laptop, the processor got locked into max mode. I didn't notice and put the laptop in my bag. After 2 hours it was so hot I couldn't touch it anymore. Scary!
Positively: my mic works fine (which is great, because I am a music technology researcher and I skype all the time).
Is there anything that will make my life easier?
DELL-Jared D
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Posted September 11th, 2015 10:00
- After opening certain software: synaptics center, installing tlp, musescore,... my screen starts to flicker uncontrollably. The mouse cursor doesn't work at all anymore too. This usually ends with a kernel panic (blinking caps lock). I have to reboot a few times before this goes away and I usually also type this:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-hwe-team/sputnik-kernel sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install linux
(is this the right command btw to activate the latest sputnik kernel? How do I make this stick?)This was a PPA for the XPS 13 two generations ago. You can use either the Ubuntu 14.04 factory image (assuming you purchased the Developer Edition) or the kernel in Ubuntu 15.04. There's also a test kernel mentioned in this PPA for a bug in the Broadcom wl driver, though the fix from that is in the process of being integrated into the standard Ubuntu kernel: bugs.launchpad.net/.../1415880
Great! I think there were indeed some important fixes. I don't remember reading about fixes for battery life though. Another thing you can try with battery life is to use cpufreq an put the setting on 'powersave'. For me this actually happens automatically (I've never set it myself). I'm not sure if that's good or not, but it does lead to very nice battery life.
DELL-Jared D
2 Intern
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Posted September 11th, 2015 11:00
Great! I think there were indeed some important fixes. I don't remember reading about fixes for battery life though. Another thing you can try with battery life is to use cpufreq an put the setting on 'powersave'. For me this actually happens automatically (I've never set it myself). I'm not sure if that's good or not, but it does lead to very nice battery life. Up until recently, I used laptop-mode-tools. I've been trying tlp more recently since it's in Ubuntu 15.10. I typically get 7-10 hours of battery life with the display at about half brightness, which is honestly bright enough for most of my uses. The only other thing I do is blacklist intel_powerclamp because honestly it's a misguided driver.
Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town without wifi access for a week.
I'm trying to flash the bios, but I haven't succeeded yet. I made a freedos usb with unetbooten. When I copy the file
9343_BIOS_Rev_A05.exe on it and boot the usb stick, the file does not show. Any ideas? I've read on some forums that I need to extract the exe file first? I've been searching this forum for a how to, but no luck yet. Thanks for any pointers.
Would the following work as well?
sudo wget -q -O - linux.dell.com/.../bootstrap.cgi | bash sudo apt-get install firmware-addon-dell sudo apt-get install $(bootstrap_firmware -a) sudo update_firmwareDELL-Jared D
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Posted September 21st, 2015 09:00
Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town without wifi access for a week.
I'm trying to flash the bios, but I haven't succeeded yet. I made a freedos usb with unetbooten. When I copy the file
9343_BIOS_Rev_A05.exe on it and boot the usb stick, the file does not show. Any ideas? I've read on some forums that I need to extract the exe file first? I've been searching this forum for a how to, but no luck yet. Thanks for any pointers.
It sounds like you have the 2015 XPS 13 model (if not, you're using the wrong BIOS update). You don't need FreeDOS or Windows at all. Put the 9343_BIOS_Rev_A05.exe file on a FAT32 formatted USB stick and boot into the BIOS update boot option (press F12 during POST to get the BIOS boot menu and then select the BIOS update option).
I managed to upgrade the firmware, using systemrescue usb stick. The process is described here. I also did a fresh install of kubuntu. The flickering and crashing every 5 minutes reappeared after installing oracle 8 sdk and chrome. I isntalled openjdk 1.8 and removed chrome. Will keep you updated.
More info here; dorienherremans.blogspot.co.uk/.../dell-xps13-2015-updates-and-bios.html
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Posted September 11th, 2015 07:00
Hi Dorienh,
Did you upgrade your BIOS to A05?
When you say 3-4 hours with a dimmed screen, what kind of work are you doing? I get much more than that.