ISO for Ubuntu 14.04 (and 16.04) for Linux-based Dell laptops

I would just like to add that I would be interested in this. I am just starting to research here whether I can move my fairly recent XPS 13 9343 burdened with an MS OS over to a fresh and clean Dell Developers Linux configuration. A fresh ISO would be nice so I do not have to search for, and decide whether or not I have been successful in installing, all of the Dell drivers and applications. I would rather invest my time in moving to the Linux world.

Looks like Dell share recovery ISO's only for Windows-based notebooks for now: Dell Recovery Image Download. The rest of images is device-specific (but why???) and are created only via Dell Recovery utility.

Also such images can provide a customer support service in your country.

P.S. If somebody will need recovery image for Vostro 5459 - I can create one for you. Just send me a message.

I'd be interested in some ISOs or instructions as well.

I have upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04.

I have updated my sources.list to include the dell repositories:
dell.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial

and

dell.archive.canonical.com/updates xenial-dell-ford-constantine and xenial-dell

The problem is that I cannot boot the machine with any 4.4 kernel. I've tried multiple, including dell.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/uefi/linux-amd64/current (4.4.0.21).

The machine will boot and mostly run fine with kernel 3.19.0-59.

When installing a 4.4 kernel I do get BUILD_EXCLUSIVE errors from these dkms modules:
/usr/src/realtek-rts-cr-1.4.3oem2
/usr/src/oem-audio-hda-daily-lts-vivid-0.201512022217~ubuntu14.04.1
/usr/src/synaptic-i2c-hid-3.13.0-32-backport-1.6.4
/usr/src/btusb-iwlwifi-intel8260-1.7

I have found some of these in the trusty repositories but not in any xenial repository yet.

Currently the system is mostly stable but I'd be interested in any experience you guys might have with running the precision 5510 with the current ubuntu LTS version?

But is customized ISO actually needed? I tested 16.04 without installing from my USB stick. And all seem to work out of the box (except Nvidia card and fingerprint scanner, I just didn't tested them). All tests passing (from built-in test utility), WiFi works, touchpad works and so on. Nothing was failed or broken while this test.

In the end of this month I'll also try to install 16.04 on the HDD and will write results of this experiment in this thread.

I tried the officel 16.04 release as live system on my 7710 - main issue that the INTEL RAID is not recognized - anyone any idea to solve that? May I include the obovementioned dell sources?

Hi,

Dell has Ubuntu Recovery Images on their site. Just go to the download / drivers section. Type in your service tag... voilá

I got a 2,2gb ISO named "dell-bto-trusty-berlinetta-p-dino2-A00-iso-20160224.iso"

Cerberus, you are right. But image is available not for all systems and service tags. For example for my Vostro 5449 I get an error "Recovery image not available for your Service Tag." instead of image.

I had the 4.4 kernel problems too. With some fiddling I now boot with kernel 4.2.0.30 and that works fine so far (couple of days now).

There was a build error for that kernel too, caused by the caspar system. I removed the caspar packages (intended to run ubuntu from a read-only device, I'm not doing that) and then the 4.2 kernel installed ok.

I put in my service tag (originall installed with Windows 10 Home), but only got a download link for a Windows 10 image. Did you put in a service tag for a Linux machine?

Hi,

I have the same machine and now I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 (downloaded directly from Ubuntu's site). The issue is that I'm not happy at all with this installation. Everything works slowly and I don't know the cause (you can check this thread).

Can you tell me about your experience with 14.04? Also, do you have this boot problem?

Thanks,

Mihai

My experience is the same. Contrary to what they have advertised, this laptop is not compatible with Ubuntu. 14.04 is even worse. Support for Skylake CPUs does not exist in 14.04's default kernel.

What kind of slowness are you experiencing? GUI? That's because the nVidia M1000M GPU uses the open source Nouveau drivers out of the box. Installing the proprietary driver is also a hit and miss. Most of the time it breaks the system and you cannot even login to X.

In short, this laptop does not worth a penny as a Linux workstation.

Cheers.

Kernel 4.5 and 4.6 are considered deprecated. Use either 4.4 or 4.7.

Your boot time seems normal. If you are concerned about the BIOS boot time (Preboot as you call it) then I'm afraid you aren't the only one. I too find the BIOS boot a little slow. I have informed Dell to do something about it. Having said that there is an option in the BIOS to alter the BIOS delay and another option to set a Minimal hardware check. Once you have the system correctly set up then you can live with the delay.

Under Linux if you can set the system up to use EFI then Linux will reach the Grub screen faster.

As I said, I'm using 4.7.5-040705. The boot process is by far very slow. On my old laptop (L702x, i7, 12 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) I need to wait ~10 seconds until the Ubuntu (16.04) is up and running.

I would suspect that the delays maybe UEFI boot related