Will Ubuntu 13.04 run well on my Dell XPS 12?
Basically, I want the most up to date Ubuntu software working on my computer and with touch support.
01 Answer
Your problem will be answered, for the most part, by downloading Ubuntu and use the "try Ubuntu". As you can tell from these 2 links there are mixed results ...
From the 2nd link:
It is definitely not perfect overall, but Ubuntu 12.10 works very well for me. I got over 4 hours use last night, on wireless, two-thirds brightness, streaming music continuously, browsing the web, occasional flash video clip; and it said I still had over 120 minutes of battery left.
Things I find do work perfectly:
- display port (I use a mini display port -> hdmi cable to monitors and tvs and it just works)
- wifi
- bluetooth
- usb
- display
- audio
- keyboard shortcuts under F keys (except for the monitor switch under F1 doesn't seem to do anything)
- install via usb; use the usb creator tools to turn the ubuntu cd iso into usb boot images; you can even use it for a while this way since it will write your changes/data back to the usb and not mess with the ssd until you say "install"
- the virtual keyboard "onboard"; for desktop use, and for logging back in after the screenlock activates
Things to tweak:
- go into bios and disable the security and enable booting legacy devices so you can boot off usb
- touchpad is currently just the basic one; no multitouch, etc; but this works fine for me; I'm sure there will be a driver update "soon"
- change the suspend mode to pm-suspend-hybrid; it seems to work perfectly then when you close the lid, choose sleep, battery runs low, etc
- as you noticed, there is a bug in the touchscreen driver that it doesn't send TOUCH_END events (at least I think that is the problem) so some programs in unity, like nautilus, don't work completely until they update the driver, or nautilus, or you disable the touchscreen; I almost didn't notice it since I don't use nautilus much
- you have to invert the brightness settings with a boot option or the internal display backlight is off at boot; luckily I had the external monitor connected when I installed; I think it is "i915.invert_brightness=1" acpi_osi=linux acpi_backlight=vendor" in /etc/default/grub
- tie a shortcut to the side button so you can use it to rotate the display (optional)
Hopefully 13.04 will have all these fixes; and maybe 12.10 updates.
But it should all be fixable (in some sort of way). If there are problems asking the right question and giving the correct information here will get those issues diagnosed and/or fixed.
