Yesterday i finally got around to watching the rest of Wimpy’s interview on youtube, and decided maybe it’s time to try 17.04.
It looks to me as though the 17.04 iso is missing the broadcom device drivers, maybe the intel-5500 (?) graphics drivers, needed for the xps13. The xps13 has a screen resolution of 3200x1800 and at that resolution the letters are microscopic to my eyes. There was no wifi capabililty at all, so basically i was able to install it and do nothing much with it in the time available. I suspect the absence of graphics drivers because 16.04 display configuration lists a 1600x900 mode and 17.04 does not. I suspect the absence of broadcom drivers because of no wifi access. I haven’t tried bluetooth but as i recall that’s broadcom proprietary stuff too.
This is just FWIW. I’m able to get things done with 16.04 well enough to continue forward. I’m willing to play with 17.04 as time permits, but until there’s a new iso that seems pointless.
If anyone else has installed 17.04 on an xps13 maybe they’ll tell me i’m all wet and need my eyes examined (which of course i do, but that’s beside the point).
Thanks @mdooley. I’m good here. I can use 16.04 and it supports both wifi and the hi-res monitor quite nicely, the reason i wanted to install 17.04 was because 16.04 has boot issues. It came up nicely first time this morning, but often it takes 3 or 4 boots for the thing to bring up the login screen. I figure it’s systemd, and it seems better with the rev-75 kernel, but it’s nowhere near as solid on the boot as debian-jessie (which i froze some time ago). I can always just suspend it overnight, as i was having to do with earlier kernel updates, and eventually it’ll get better. I’ve gone through the whole rancid install-the-drivers-manually schtick before a few times installing various distros on various boxes, and i don’t have time to mess with it again. Once systemd stumbles out of the way and the login screen appears, i’m off to the races.
