Is anyone successfully running CentOS 7 on a Dell XPS15? If so, which model? If not, what was the problem?
Thank you!
13 thoughts on - CentOS On Dell XPS15
—–Original message—
Hello,
Dell XPS15 9590 here running for one year, CentOS7 but running kernel
4.9.75-204.el7.CentOS.x86_64 specifically. I also use an external DELL dock adapter WD15 to get eth0 plug and more (this model really lacks plugs, you could also use a DAx00, WD15 or TB15/16).
Everything works fine but:
– frequent wifi disconnections (this can be a problem when running
vmwares or during downloads), you might need to search about this (I
didn’t yet),
– the main fan becomes a bit noisy w/ time (one year old),
– the missing pageup/pagedown keys, mentioned by Patrick: I mapped my
own keys to get them (fn+pageup/down), but this keyboard is really
not done for devs or keyboard-intensive tasks even if the touch is
nice (the arrow keys are too small, real pageup/down missing),
– the trackpad is very big, forcing you to raise the hands when you
type and even when you don’t type. Gnome Mate settings set to
disable it when typing but this doesn’t work. Tried disabling the
trackpad when a mouse is plugged in, doesn’t work yet (I need to dig
on this). Trackpad totally disabled for now.
Regards,
I have a Dell Inspiron 13 (8th generation) that I bought from Costco. I
am running CentOS 7 on it. I was told that it has the same hardware of XPS 13.
Most things work well out of the box: wifi, suspend-to-ram, HDMI output, Audio over HDMI, touchscreen, etc. I don’t remember tweaking anything.
The only thing not working perfectly I could find: the screen doesn’t automatically rotate when being folded into tablet mode, but I just go into GNOME settings and rotate the screen myself. Not a big deal. Then I
can watch Twitch using it like a tablet.
I’d check the XPS 15’s wifi module before buying it. The Inspiron 13 I
have has Atheros, which doesn’t require a proprietary binary driver. Intel’s are even better. I know sometimes Dell throws in Broadcomm wifi modules, which require the proprietary wl driver.
I have a Dell XPS 13 9360, though I am running ubuntu 18.04 on it. I
remember there being a patch to the mainline kernel which addressed many of the wireless problems. I’m not sure if those changes ever made it into the CentOS kernels.
Some of the Dell XPS 13’s had removable ethernet interfaces while most of the more recent ones had the killer interfaces on the motherboard.
I’m not sure about the 15 inch models. Mine had a removable interface and I replaced the killer card with an intel card and that helped quite a bit.
Regarding the CPU throttleing issue, there are a bunch of posts out there that claimed that the thermal pasted was not well applied to the CPU heatsink and some people had success with carefully removing the heatsink and applying a good quality thermal paste and then reinstalling the heat sink.
Would be much better if Dell support would address these issues properly, but the response from Dell on these issues have been very hit or miss. Some people have had them fixed by Dell and others, including myself never reached a customer support person willing to address them.
Nataraj
Very interesting, thank you!
Is anyone running CentOS on the Inspiron 15 7000 mentioned?
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
I just looked at a Dell Inspiron 15 7570 that is refurbished and available at $850. Anyone running CentOS 7 on this machine?
I bought this machine and am now installing CentOS 7 on it. It has a 4K screen and the text on the installation screens is miniscule. Has anyone else seen this and can it be changed when installing from DVD?
After installing CentOS 7 on this machine – and the MATE desktop – I have the following issues:
– When the machine boots and asks for the password to decrypt the password, the text is minuscule, really minuscule… Can this be changed somewhere?
– When it continues booting, the CentOS boot animation is displayed in roughly the top-left 1/8 of the screen. Can this be changed somewhere so it uses the entire screen as is customary?
– I see no option to hibernate the machine, only to suspend. Did I have to do anything special to make hibernation possible when installing CentOS 7? The machine has 16 Gb of memory and the swap space was automatically set to 8 Gb.
– The 4K desktop is unusable because the font, icons etc. are too small. Since I have not yet figured out how to increase font size etc. when in 4K mode, I changed display resolution to 1600 x 1200. This is only a stop-gap measure though and I hope there is a better solution.
– The trackpad is obnoxious to use and it is very hard to use it to maneuver around the screen. Should I disable it and simply rely on the mouse?
– I do like the fact that the touchscreen can actually be used to select windows in CentOS, move them around etc.
– When I have the Dell extension dock connected at startup, the OS crashes and gives me a stack dump. Disconnecting it and rebooting solves the problem but it really should not be like this…
– Connecting the Dell extension dock after booting the computer results in some kind of crash every so often but the OS stays up.
– Even with the dock not connected I have found the OS suddenly crashes and two seconds later you are back at a desktop with absolutely no running apps no matter what you had running. I also get crash messages from xorg.
Clearly the current release of CentOS 7 is not ready for prime-time on this laptop but I have yet to try a later kernel, 4.x, to see if that makes any difference.
Anyone else have had similar experiences?
OK, should I have made some special selection when installing CentOS 7 to make sure that I would be able to hibernate? I went with the default partition which apparently did not allow me to configure it for hibernation…
I have a page on the yoga2, with a hi-res screen that has some possible solutions. You might be able to add nomodeset to the kernel line to better view font in console. You can pick a font in /etc/vconsole.conf.
13 thoughts on - CentOS On Dell XPS15
—–Original message—
Hello,
Dell XPS15 9590 here running for one year, CentOS7 but running kernel
4.9.75-204.el7.CentOS.x86_64 specifically. I also use an external DELL dock adapter WD15 to get eth0 plug and more (this model really lacks plugs, you could also use a DAx00, WD15 or TB15/16).
Everything works fine but:
– frequent wifi disconnections (this can be a problem when running
vmwares or during downloads), you might need to search about this (I
didn’t yet),
– the main fan becomes a bit noisy w/ time (one year old),
– the missing pageup/pagedown keys, mentioned by Patrick: I mapped my
own keys to get them (fn+pageup/down), but this keyboard is really
not done for devs or keyboard-intensive tasks even if the touch is
nice (the arrow keys are too small, real pageup/down missing),
– the trackpad is very big, forcing you to raise the hands when you
type and even when you don’t type. Gnome Mate settings set to
disable it when typing but this doesn’t work. Tried disabling the
trackpad when a mouse is plugged in, doesn’t work yet (I need to dig
on this). Trackpad totally disabled for now.
Regards,
I have a Dell Inspiron 13 (8th generation) that I bought from Costco. I
am running CentOS 7 on it. I was told that it has the same hardware of XPS 13.
Most things work well out of the box: wifi, suspend-to-ram, HDMI output, Audio over HDMI, touchscreen, etc. I don’t remember tweaking anything.
The only thing not working perfectly I could find: the screen doesn’t automatically rotate when being folded into tablet mode, but I just go into GNOME settings and rotate the screen myself. Not a big deal. Then I
can watch Twitch using it like a tablet.
I’d check the XPS 15’s wifi module before buying it. The Inspiron 13 I
have has Atheros, which doesn’t require a proprietary binary driver. Intel’s are even better. I know sometimes Dell throws in Broadcomm wifi modules, which require the proprietary wl driver.
I have a Dell XPS 13 9360, though I am running ubuntu 18.04 on it. I
remember there being a patch to the mainline kernel which addressed many of the wireless problems. I’m not sure if those changes ever made it into the CentOS kernels.
Some of the Dell XPS 13’s had removable ethernet interfaces while most of the more recent ones had the killer interfaces on the motherboard.
I’m not sure about the 15 inch models. Mine had a removable interface and I replaced the killer card with an intel card and that helped quite a bit.
Regarding the CPU throttleing issue, there are a bunch of posts out there that claimed that the thermal pasted was not well applied to the CPU heatsink and some people had success with carefully removing the heatsink and applying a good quality thermal paste and then reinstalling the heat sink.
Would be much better if Dell support would address these issues properly, but the response from Dell on these issues have been very hit or miss. Some people have had them fixed by Dell and others, including myself never reached a customer support person willing to address them.
Nataraj
Very interesting, thank you!
Is anyone running CentOS on the Inspiron 15 7000 mentioned?
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
I just looked at a Dell Inspiron 15 7570 that is refurbished and available at $850. Anyone running CentOS 7 on this machine?
I bought this machine and am now installing CentOS 7 on it. It has a 4K screen and the text on the installation screens is miniscule. Has anyone else seen this and can it be changed when installing from DVD?
After installing CentOS 7 on this machine – and the MATE desktop – I have the following issues:
– When the machine boots and asks for the password to decrypt the password, the text is minuscule, really minuscule… Can this be changed somewhere?
– When it continues booting, the CentOS boot animation is displayed in roughly the top-left 1/8 of the screen. Can this be changed somewhere so it uses the entire screen as is customary?
– I see no option to hibernate the machine, only to suspend. Did I have to do anything special to make hibernation possible when installing CentOS 7? The machine has 16 Gb of memory and the swap space was automatically set to 8 Gb.
– The 4K desktop is unusable because the font, icons etc. are too small. Since I have not yet figured out how to increase font size etc. when in 4K mode, I changed display resolution to 1600 x 1200. This is only a stop-gap measure though and I hope there is a better solution.
– The trackpad is obnoxious to use and it is very hard to use it to maneuver around the screen. Should I disable it and simply rely on the mouse?
– I do like the fact that the touchscreen can actually be used to select windows in CentOS, move them around etc.
– When I have the Dell extension dock connected at startup, the OS crashes and gives me a stack dump. Disconnecting it and rebooting solves the problem but it really should not be like this…
– Connecting the Dell extension dock after booting the computer results in some kind of crash every so often but the OS stays up.
– Even with the dock not connected I have found the OS suddenly crashes and two seconds later you are back at a desktop with absolutely no running apps no matter what you had running. I also get crash messages from xorg.
Clearly the current release of CentOS 7 is not ready for prime-time on this laptop but I have yet to try a later kernel, 4.x, to see if that makes any difference.
Anyone else have had similar experiences?
OK, should I have made some special selection when installing CentOS 7 to make sure that I would be able to hibernate? I went with the default partition which apparently did not allow me to configure it for hibernation…
I have a page on the yoga2, with a hi-res screen that has some possible solutions. You might be able to add nomodeset to the kernel line to better view font in console. You can pick a font in /etc/vconsole.conf.
If it helps it’s at http://srobb.net/yoga2.html. In addition, the Arch wiki has pages about using a hires screen. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI
Perhaps either my page, or more likely. the Arch Wiki article may help.