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I recently got the new 2019 XPS 13 dev edition. the Only "issue" I have is that it comes with ubuntu 18.04. before moving to ubuntu 19.10 (or Kubuntu) I was wondering if there is anything specific on the ubuntu version Dell is using. So Far everything is working like a charm, and I wouldn't want to break things while upgrading ;)

Thanks for your help.

NoLoop
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  • I am also interested in this question. Soon I will receive my XPS 13 7390 dev edition with Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed, and I might want to upgrade to 19.10. Please let me know if you find anything. – a06e Oct 12 '19 at 06:48
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    didn't find anything, I did the upgrade to 19.04 (almost) no issues just add to munually add the wifi driver. asite from that little niggle all great, super happy. I was thinking to move back to arch, but I am now concidering staying on the ubutu. pondering a move to KDE though :) – NoLoop Oct 12 '19 at 12:27
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    Same question but 18.04 on XPS 13 9370. I ended using Kubuntu, very happy indeed. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1042108/is-dell-pre-installed-ubuntu-the-same-as-the-general-release – B.Tanner Oct 12 '19 at 19:37
  • Note that it needs several settings changed: Ubuntu 19.10 Provides Good Out-Of-The-Box Support For The Dell XPS 7390 Icelake Laptop https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=dell-xps7390-ubuntu1910&num=1 Typically it is best to use LTS version of Ubuntu until next LTS version 20.04 comes out. And if you want to test a non-LTS version, just create a 25 or 30GB / (root) partition and install it as dual boot. I would not share /home, but you can share a data partition or two. – oldfred Oct 18 '19 at 14:54

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I tried updating my XPS 7390 last night. The process is not ideal and I ended up reverting to 18.04 (for now). The primary issues were:

  1. Wifi driver isn't present so you have no internet. You can overcome this by downloading the driver and installing it manually. I used the instructions here.

  2. The display looks like it needs a driver because the screen quality wasn't as good. I gave up while investigating so I didn't full track that down.

  3. The Dell apt repos won't work any more. I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that because of that that all this custom stuff will now have to be manually updated for a while. I'd love to know if I'm wrong there and it can just be re-enabled.

  4. After all that I got worried that I'd have to fish to see if other bits and pieces were missing and, as this is my daily driver, I was worried something wouldn't work at a critical moment so I reverted.

I really hope someone can publish a full accounting of what's missing and how to do it properly one day (maybe Dell). I'd love to but I just don't know exactly what the steps are.

If you update, let us know somehow!

Luke
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  • How exactly did you "revert" to 18.04? You did a clean install of 18.04 and it worked fine? – a06e Oct 18 '19 at 15:00
  • Yeah. I backed up and used the recovery from the GRUB menu. – Luke Oct 18 '19 at 15:21
  • Ah so you used a backup from the pre-installed distro from Dell, right? Haven't tried a real clean install of 18.04. – a06e Oct 18 '19 at 20:06
  • Yep. Dell makes it pretty easy. You can also use a recovery USB drive. The GRUB one is easy enough assuming you haven't blown away the partition. – Luke Oct 18 '19 at 22:00