Ubuntu MATE 16.10 on Dell Inspiron 15

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi,

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 3000, which came preinstalled with Ubuntu 14.04.

Initially, the live CD didn’t boot. I then run with the nomodeset option and acpi=off options turned on. I could then run the live environment and install as expected.

I have tried two installations (first not installing updates, and then installing updates.)

Both installations succeeded, but I cannot boot into the system.

When I go into the grub configuration, both options were there are expected.

I am greeted with a white screen with unreadable symbols displayed, rather than anything I’d expect…

Any help would be immensely appreciated.

In the future, I think I’ll stick to either System76 or Entroware.

#2
Previous solution

i915.modeset=0 rather than nomodeset seems to have succeeded in booting for now. I’ll update if the situation changes!

That worked once - but failed after reboot.

i915.modeset=0 and acpi=off worked. However it didn’t work without first going into the grub menu by pressing escape after the dell splash screen (rather than grub being automatically skipped.)

The touchpad doesn’t work at all and isn’t listed when I run xinput. Installing ubuntu-restricted-extras does nothing - the very same touchpad, however, did work during the installation process and has worked using 16.10 previously.

I’ve tried playing Age of Empires III using playonlinux and the speed and graphics quality compared to using elementary OS Loki on the same machine were awful! I assume that’s why I’m having the boot problems with not being able to use Plymouth?

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#3

As I say, any help would be appreciated! :slight_smile:

#4

Hello and welcome, Have you tried booting form a USB instead of a DVD, sometimes DVD’s and be troublesome

Dell’s usually play well with Linux, I have about 6 machines with Ubuntu running and no issues at all

Question how did 14.04 run when you got this machine?

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#5

It was from a USB.

14.04 worked fine. But Loki is asked of 16.04 an that was fine too.

#6

I’m just trying it in uefi mode. Everything seemed a nicer resolution in the Dell boot sequence when I did that…

After installing in uefi mode, i no longer need acpi=off in order to boot.

This is all good, but the graphic are shocking compared with elementary; I’m assuming it’s because of the boot mode (or a missing Integrated graphics driver which make me require the boot mode…)

#7

@n.s.russell
Perhaps try ro i915.modeset=1 ?
best wishes…

#8

Didn’t get anything that time; everything was black - nothing happened.

#9

One more grub test -

set root=(hd0,X)
    linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdaX ro quiet splash
    initrd /initrd.img

I’m assuming that you have only one hard drive, /dev/sda. Replace X with your root partition. My root, for instance, is /dev/sda7 - yours is probably different.

best wishes…

#10

Thanks for the help! Sorry, I don’t quite understand. What is it I’m supposed to do?

#11

Boot your system. Once past the dell splash screen, press escape and edit whatever grub says by replacing it with my code edited to reflect your root partition. I had assumed that you were editing grub by adding such things as i915.modeset=0 at boot time manually.

#12

Yep, i was, but my current stuff is a lot more verbose… I’ll give it a go!

#13

Hey, that leaves me with a blank screen. No joy!

#14

Rats! I’m fresh out of ideas. Sorry to have wasted your time with the grub stuff.

There just has to be a way to get the right graphic driver for your system. When I get a moment, I’ll troll the internets and see what I can find. Like Robgoss, I have 4 dell machines running MATE with little or no issues.

Good luck n.s.russell -

1 Like
#15

Could you please post the output of inxi -b entered in your terminal?

Also, have you seen the thread below in reddit? It could have been written by you.

Also, have you tried any graphic driver ppa’s?

#16

Will do when I get home. No it wasn’t written by me, but it looks particularly relevant. - Also, no I haven’t! I wouldn’t know where to begin. I haven’t added any PPAs, or (as far as I know) any software from Dell.

#17

System: Host: nsrussell-Inspiron-15-3552 Kernel: 4.8.0-41-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: MATE 1.16.0 Distro: Ubuntu 16.10
Machine: System: Dell (portable) product: Inspiron 15-3552 v: 4.0.13
Mobo: Dell model: 079W3P v: A00
UEFI: Dell v: 4.0.13 date: 12/22/2016
Battery BAT0: charge: 19.0 Wh 68.0% condition: 28.0/28.0 Wh (100%)
CPU: Dual core Intel Celeron N3060 (-MCP-) speed/max: 479/2480 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Integrated Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: fbdev (unloaded: vesa)
Resolution: [email protected]
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.8, 128 bits)
GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6
Network: Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter
driver: ath9k
Card-2: Atheros
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (3.6% used)
Info: Processes: 193 Uptime: 4 min Memory: 980.3/3863.3MB
Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.1

#18

Thanks. I’ll see what I can do with this. It may be a couple of days before I report back.

As far as a possible graphics ppa, perhaps this might be of some help.

https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

Read his page, especially the part about how to revert back to the drivers you were using. I like it when people look out for others - you in this case.

Good luck n.s.russell

#19

Hey - thanks for all your help. I don’t know how I’d go about using those drivers though!
The instructions seem to be specific to individual apps, rather than system wide?

#20

I think it’s actually system wide. Let me do some testing and I’ll get back to you.