Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zaskoda | Hacker News Reader

I've been running Ubuntu on a Dell XPS at work since 2016. I had problems using a docking station from the start so I removed it from the equation and haven't had any significant other issues since. Battery life is good, no significant networking problems, etc. I've very much enjoyed the experience.

I just assumed that life would only be better on a System 76 machine. I was very surprised by this post.

View on HN

I have similarly been running Ubuntu on an XPS15 mostly without any issues. Networking has been fine, standby, battery life, all that has been fine.

Takes a little bit of research and tweaking to get it into a good state, but once one has the right kernel opts and GPU power management stuff worked out, it's a breeze. Not everyone wants to do that, but that's the cost of running Linux.

From that point, I found it to be more reliable and pleasant than Windows 10 or Mac, all of which I use on a regular basis.

I think it really depends on what you're trying to do. I'm the only person at my company running linux and I still can't really do things like seamlessly plug/unplug from an external monitor because while some apps scale correctly from HiDPI to normal resolution, the UI doesn't really. There are thankfully linux version of things like Zoom and Slack, and they work, mostly, but for instance I can't use zoom without headphones because pulseaudio is too problematic, whereas it works fine on a mac.

I have the same problem on a 2017 XPS 13 running Windows 10. When I unplug from the Dell D6000 docking station it's a crapshoot whether or not the apps I had running on the external monitors will scale correctly when they get moved to the internal screen. I also run into problems if I plug into the docking station after booting, it frequently doesn't recognize the external monitors (also Dell branded). In order to get everything to work correctly every time I need to shutdown before connecting to or disconnecting from the docking station, and also make sure the monitors are turned on before booting while connected to the docking station.

I have similar problems with the XPS15 and Windows 10.

I had several critical issues with a 2018 Dell XPS 13 w/Ubuntu 18.10 preloaded; namely the wifi would frequently not return after hibernation (needed reboot) and sometimes the entire system wouldn't come back after hibernation.

I tried many fixes, including new kernels, to no avail. Finally I upgraded to 19.04 and everything has worked flawlessly for the past 6 months.

Atheros WiFi? I have the same problem with XPS 15, and it seems a Qualcomm firmware bug[1], not a Linux fault.

[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196649

Reply on news.ycombinator.com