15z

Revision 9 as of 2011-06-21 08:11:19

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Introduction

This page should give you all the information you need about running Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 15z laptop.

Installation gotcha's

  • Boot installer with acpi=off

  • Start installer directly, not through 'Try Ubuntu without installing'

Hardware Support Matrix

Hardware

Ubuntu Release

Status

Keyboard

Natty (11.04)

Works

Oneiric (11.10)

???

Screen

Natty (11.04)

Works

Wireless ethernet

Natty (11.04)

Works

Trackpad

Natty (11.04)

Does not work

Wired ethernet

Natty (11.04)

Works

Sound

Natty (11.04)

Works

Optimus

Natty (11.04)

Does not work

Hardware

Optimus / Graphics cards

Switch off NVIDIA card

# echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Switch on NVIDIA card

# echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Using the following command before and after the switch, you should see a drop/rise in mW being used:

# grep rate /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

You can also completely disable the NVIDIA card and only use the Intel onboard graphics card ( which has more than enough performance for day-to-day work:

# echo "blacklist nouveau" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf # update-initramfs -c -k all # reboot

Trackpad

Cypress trackpad. Does not seem to work on Ubuntu. However it was reported to work on a stock 2.6.39 kernel on Gentoo, so must be a module/flag/option somewhere.. Adding i8024.nomux etc ( as seen on several forums for other laptops ) does not enable the trackpad on the 15z.

Trackpad

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1108661