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Comment by ganeshkrishnan | Hacker News Reader

A really bad combination. I had more success with Asus machines than these xps. Few of the issues that you notice after regular use:

The fingerprint reader is not supported on Linux.

GPU is worse off than windows. Nvidia has horrible support, there is no auto mode to dynamically switch

Keyboard typing is laggy

Touchpad does not support Palm detection for accidental swiping while typing

Overall not satisfied with Linux on xps for such a premium price

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> Touchpad does not support Palm detection for accidental swiping while typing

All large touchpads suffer from this under X11 / synaptics.

Synaptics has a PalmDetect setting, but I find it absolutely terrible.

The way I configure mine (XPS 15 9550) is by using the X11 config, which allows setting areas of the touchpad where you can't initiate a click or drag.

Here is my config for the XPS 15:

    Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Option "AreaLeftEdge" "1700"
        Option "AreaRightEdge" "5100"
        Option "MaxDoubleTapTime" "130"
        Option "SingleTapTimeout" "130"
    EndSection

Any DragStart / MouseDown where (absolute X < AreaLeftEdge) or (absolute X > AreaRightEdge) will be ignored.

To figure out the min / max coordinates of your touchpad, and where you want the zones to start / end, run "sudo evtest | grep ABS_X", select your touchpad device number and tap along the X axis.

You can do the same with AreaTopEdge and Y coordinates if your palm is hitting the top of the touchpad.

I thought pretty much everyone used syndaemon for disabling the touchpad while typing. Does your OS not install that by default?

I find it horrendous.

Setting a static delay means that either you set it high and it'll feel incredibly sluggish when trying to move the cursor right after you type, and setting it low means that any pause while typing will cause palm interference.

My solution doesn't have any arbitrary delay, and I haven't fat-palmed at all since I've found the right settings.

>GPU is worse off than windows. Nvidia has horrible support, there is no auto mode to dynamically switch

XPS 13 has no NVidia GPU's, and never has. I believe it has had upgraded Intel GPU, but never anything from NVidia.

>Keyboard typing is laggy

No issues here. I do live chat on it for my job on a daily basis.

>Touchpad does not support Palm detection for accidental swiping while typing

I haven't had a single laptop from multiple brands that worked with palm detection in Linux, they're all really bad.

>Overall not satisfied with Linux on xps for such a premium price

I run encrypted uefi Arch Linux and straight out of the box wireless works, all media keys work, audio works, keyboard backlight works, touchpad works great, touchscreen is accurate and I draw with a stylus in GIMP, nvme is just as fast as Windows, with tlp I achieve nearly 10 hours battery life on moderate brightness with 6-7 on full brightness. I can't really complain much. It's the best Linux laptop I've ever owned.

>XPS 13 has no NVidia GPU's, and never has. I believe it has had upgraded Intel GPU, but never anything from NVidia.

I have an XPS 15 with Nvidia GPU and I assumed XPS 13 is just the smaller screen version.

Nvidia driver versions are a hit and miss on XPS 15. The latest 396 version doesn't even startup and I had to do a clean reinstall of mint.

And Gnome is a resource hog. I loved it but my XPS couldn't keep up with it's demands

Ubuntu 18.04 is pretty buggy on my Thinkpad P50, too (graphics problems, trackpad issues, poor battery life, no backlight adjustment, etc). And Gnome is just ridiculously slow compared to Windows and macOS. I’m still not sure there is a Linux laptop out there that just works.

That is unfortunate to hear :/

I was seriously considering ditching MacOS on my next laptop and pick up a thinkpad carbon x1 with Ubuntu 18.04. Really hoping this improves.

Be aware that Lenovo has removed an ACPI sleep state from the 6th generation Carbon X1 that is causing sleep issues on Linux. There is a workaround but it looks pretty gnarly.

AFAIK this is mandated by Microsoft for Windows compatibility. To support the latest s0i3 (hybrid sleep, like a smartphone) the machine is not allowed to support S3 (normal sleep)

TBF Linux does support s0i3,but not as well as Windows. On my X1 Carbon (2018) I had to disable a whole lot of stuff as well as do some kernel command-line fiddling. Once I did this, however, it was better than Windows.

I do boot into Windows on this laptop every month or so 'cos Windows Update. Each time the fans go crazy - I will say I never see the fans go like this in Linux. It's unbelievable that in 2018 just logging into a Windows box will make it go batshit insane and require multiple reboots before it settles down. It's these times I really appreciate apt/dnf/yum etc.

It's a standard ACPI feature to provide different tables for different operating systems. Computer makers could have enabled S3 for anything not microsoft.

Yeah agreed it's a weak excuse, but from memory it's the one Lenovo used on their forum when asked about the issue.

I think that the 18.04 release (being a Long-Term Support release) might have more conservative drivers than 17.10 has or 18.10 will have. So if you're on a laptop, you might get a better experience with one of the more "unstable" releases. At least this has been what I've observed for Dell XPS 15 support.

Exactly. Newer processors require stuff that isn't generally backported quickly.

I'm running Fedora 28, Rawhide kernel and a couple of tweaks on my X1 Carbon 2018 and it is awesome.

If buying a ThinkPad, definitely consider Fedora Workstation. I used Ubuntu for a few years before getting frustrated with some hardware+docking wake up issues, switched to Fedora and have not looked back.

Also I hear a lot of the Fedora devs themselves use ThinkPads, so there's that too.

Using Debian Mate on a T460 and I have to say I'm quite pleased. Sure Debian is stale, but as long as I can get a recent Firefox and Emacs, that's all the bleeding edge that I want.

If I had a new Thinkpad T480, I would probably choose Fedora. Unfortunately, as a home Linux user, I find that the best strategy is to avoid new hardware.

This is my current setup. Thinkpad T580 With Fedora Workstation.

It is the most flawless and "just works" experience I've ever had (yes, more than my macbook(s) which had annoying problems such as crashing when plugging in external monitors (even tho the monitors were made by Apple as well), crazy backlight bugs that would cause the laptop screen to suddenly go full brightness, which was physically painful when the room was pitch black, and many more).

I wish people wouldn't just default to Ubuntu 18.04. Fedora Workstation (28) runs laps around Ubuntu in terms of features and divers.

Been using Pop_OS on a T480S for a few months now and its been flawless.

I think that Ubuntu switching from the Unity Desktop to the Gnome Desktop in 17.10 is a real set back to its quality as a desktop and especially laptop OS and it will probably take until 20.04 at a minimum to really resolve this.

I won't argue about whether the change was right or wrong. What I will argue is that is was a poor choice to make the change so close to a new LTS release and they should have made the change over the first release after an LTS instead of last release before the LTS.

You can install tlp[1] to improve battery life significantly. It even supports setting the battery charge threshold on thinkpads.

[1] https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-ma...

The battery charge threshold is in the kernel now as of 4.17. TLP is still very much worth it though

>The battery charge threshold is in the kernel now as of 4.17

Interesting. I missed reading about this in the change log. I have 4.17 on Linux Mint and it's doing a pretty decent job (minus nvidia GPU)

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