Trying to install Ubuntu on Dell XPS 15 (9570)

Question

I have been trying to install Ubuntu on my new laptop:

• Dell XPS 15 (9570)
• Windows 10 Home 64bit English
• 8th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H Processor (9M Cache, up to 4.1 GHz, 6 cores)
• 16GB, 2x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz
• 256GB M.2 2280 PCIe Solid State Drive
• NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5

I began by trying to install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS using an 8GB USB drive. The first issue I ran into was getting frozen on the bootup screen on the fourth dot. After a couple tries, I plugged in my monitor (through HDMI) and it stopped getting stuck all of a sudden.

Next, I tried to go through the installation and when I clicked on restart now, my computer froze and I had to shut it down manually and start it back up again. At this point I got to the login screen and logged in but after entering my password it got stuck on a purple screen with my mouse pointer (which was frozen). I was able to get into a shell at this point (with ctrl+alt+f4) and attempted to run sudo apt-get install nvidia-390 but this froze when it reached building initial module for 4.15.0-22-generic and upon reboot I had to run sudo dpkg --remove -a.

I was unable to work around this so I attempted to install Ubuntu 16.04 which I could only do by adding acpi=off to the boot configuration (which by the way, I had a lot of trouble getting to since GRUB usually flashed in and then immediately disappeared and only occasionally would it stick around long enough for me to use). But when I try to boot up now, I never reach the screen with the five dots and instead immediately get stuck on a purple screen (with no mouse pointer).

I reinstalled Ubuntu 18.04 and am back to being stuck on the log-in screen.

What should I do?

Answer 1

I've summarized all of this into a blog post https://medium.com/@pwaterz/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-and-ubuntu-18-04-on-the-15-inch-dell-xps-9570-with-nvidia-1050ti-gpu-4b9a2901493d

I struggled with this as well. What ended up working for me is as follows, note I installed Ubuntu 18.04:

• Follow the first part of this doc - https://github.com/rcasero/doc/wiki/Ubuntu-linux-on-Dell-XPS-15-(9560) in regards to bios settings and changing the windows partition from raid to ahci. This will allow you to boot the live CD. Note, I did end up having to enter my windows key to unlock the drive after I did this to get back into windows.

• Install Ubuntu normally.

• JackJack96 did a fabulous job scripting all setup and package installation steps here https://github.com/JackHack96/dell-xps-9570-ubuntu-respin. The primary purpose of those scripts is to generate an image with the packages already installed, but he does provide a script to set things up on a existing installation. After you boot for the first time, open terminal and run the following:

  sudo apt install curl
  sudo bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JackHack96/dell-xps-9570-ubuntu-respin/master/xps-tweaks.sh)"
  sudo prime-select intel
  

This forces the use of the intel integrated graphics, no need to waste battery. I have not tested running the nvidia card. If you want to, run:

sudo prime-select nvidia

• The last issue I ran into was the screen would start flickering. I solved this by changing the resolution to 2048 x 1152 and setting the refresh rate to 59.91. At first I did have it set at 3840 x 1152, with the lowest refresh rate, but it was still a little unstable, so I dropped the resolution. It's basically the same as running 4k and scaling up to 250% - which is the default. Side note, I owned an XPS 10 years ago, and ran into this same issue...why is it still happening?

I've been running this setup for a couple days and it mostly works. The screen does occasionally freak out when I plug in the power, still need to work that out.

Lastly, one tweak that was icing on the cake was installing https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures.

Last but not least, back up your image so if you break something you can restore it:

sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1p2 conv=sync,noerror bs=64K status=progress |  gzip -c  > backup.img.gz

Make sure to replace nvme0n1p2 with the proper partition. You can check it by running:

df -h  

My advice is to do this on a fresh install. You end up installing and configuring so many different things when trying to get things working, and that will ensure you don't have any issues.

Update 1:

Screen flickering/crashing continues. Did some digging and it appears to be a bug with linux kernel. I updated my kernel to 4.17.12-041712-generic by doing the following:

git clone [email protected]:mtompkins/linux-kernel-utilities.git
cd linux-kernel-utilities
sudo ./update_ubuntu_kernel.sh --latest

Note, when you run this, you might install a newer kernel version than I did. For the moment things seem a little better, only been a couple hours though. Will update later if it stays stable.

Update 2:

Used the computer all day and no flickers. Kernel update seems to have done the trick.

Update 3 No flickering still after kernel update. I did notice an issue when suspending the laptop where it was getting very hot and not fully shutting down. I traced it to what looks to be a bug in nouveau driver:

Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: Hardware name: Dell Inc. XPS 15 
9570/02MJVY, BIOS 1.3.0 07/12/2018
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: Workqueue: events_unbound async_run_entry_fn
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: RIP: 0010:gf100_vmm_flush_+0x15c/0x1a0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: RSP: 0018:ffffa9fc0782f5c8 EFLAGS: 00010282
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff969a575e0050 RCX: ffffffffaf061dc8
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000096 RDI: 0000000000000246
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: RBP: ffffa9fc0782f600 R08: 0000086da855788c R09: 000000000000001d
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: R10: 0000000000000766 R11: 00000000000158a8 R12: ffff969a49d08c00
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: R13: ffff969a2b5d0f00 R14: 000003cbc7bc6800 R15: ffff969a494a5000
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff969a5bcc0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: CR2: 00007f15f4007036 CR3: 00000001b960a004 CR4: 00000000003606e0
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: Call Trace:
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  gp100_vmm_flush+0x17/0x20 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_vmm_iter.constprop.14+0x323/0x810 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? gp100_vmm_pd0_pde+0x1a0/0x1a0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? __switch_to_asm+0x40/0x70
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? __switch_to_asm+0x40/0x70
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? native_sched_clock+0x37/0x90
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_vmm_map+0x148/0x400 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? gp100_vmm_pd0_pde+0x1a0/0x1a0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? __switch_to_asm+0x40/0x70
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? __switch_to_asm+0x34/0x70
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_vram_map+0x57/0x80 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_uvmm_mthd+0x5ff/0x8d0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_object_mthd+0x1a/0x30 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_ioctl_mthd+0x65/0x70 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_ioctl+0xe2/0x180 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvkm_client_ioctl+0x12/0x20 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvif_object_ioctl+0x47/0x50 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvif_object_mthd+0x129/0x150 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? _cond_resched+0x19/0x30
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? __kmalloc+0x19b/0x230
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? nvif_vmm_map+0x3f/0xb0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nvif_vmm_map+0x88/0xb0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nouveau_mem_map+0x82/0xf0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nouveau_vma_map+0x48/0x70 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nouveau_bo_move_ntfy+0x77/0xe0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ttm_bo_handle_move_mem+0x2d2/0x520 [ttm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ttm_bo_evict+0x142/0x1c0 [ttm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? drm_edid_to_sad+0x194/0x1d0 [drm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ttm_mem_evict_first+0x19a/0x220 [ttm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ttm_bo_force_list_clean+0xa1/0x170 [ttm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ttm_bo_evict_mm+0x2e/0x30 [ttm]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nouveau_do_suspend+0x85/0x2d0 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  nouveau_pmops_suspend+0x39/0x80 [nouveau]
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  pci_pm_suspend+0x76/0x130
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? pci_pm_freeze+0xf0/0xf0
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  dpm_run_callback+0x5b/0x130
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  __device_suspend+0x109/0x450
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  async_suspend+0x1f/0x90
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  async_run_entry_fn+0x3c/0x150
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  process_one_work+0x1f5/0x3c0
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  worker_thread+0x32/0x400
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  kthread+0x120/0x140
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? pwq_unbound_release_workfn+0xd0/0xd0
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ? kthread_bind+0x40/0x40
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel:  ret_from_fork+0x35/0x40
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: Code: 41 5e 41 5f 5d c3 49 8b 7c 24 10 48 8b 5f 50 48 85 db 74 4d e8 56 4a 3c ed 48 89 da 48 c7 c7 9c a8 f9 c0 48 89 c6 e8 b6 79 de ec <0f> 0b eb bf 49 8b 7c 24 10 48 8b 5f 50 48 85 db 74 1e e8 2d 4a 
Aug 08 19:20:26 hermes kernel: ---[ end trace ff7d3fd86666433f ]---

To fix it I switched to the nvidia card full time.

sudo prime-select nvidia

It seems to suspend and wake up much smoother now!

Update 4: I fixed the issue with not being able to sleep while using the intel gpu. All I had to do was add nouveau.modeset=0 to my grub and everything works now! I am going to try and write all this up in a medium post soon!

Answer 2

I have got a very similar set-up. XPS 15 9570- i7 w/ 32GB. I have managed to set-up dual boot with Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10.
I installed BIOS update from Dell directly.
And then I followed these instructions provided by Ramón Casero

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I come across the same issue as you with my 9570, what you need to do is to modify the bootup parameters. Being more specific, adding nouveau.modeset=0 to the boot options.

The following 2 links might help you:

• https://github.com/rcasero/doc/wiki/Ubuntu-linux-on-Dell-XPS-15-(9560)
• Ubuntu 16.04 hangs on shutdown/restart (Dell XPS 15 9560)

Answer 4

I also have an XPS 9570 with GTX 1050Ti, latest BIOS, and with Ubuntu 18.04, am only able to boot by adding nomodeset to the kernel config in grub - but this disables backlight control. I have not found an nvidia driver that works. If someone has this laptop and has the nvidia drivers working, please post the specific kernel and nvidia driver package versions!

Answer 5

Booting in recovery mode then installing nvidia drivers worked for me (for now at least ^^).

To install nvidia drivers go to "Software & Updates" -> "Additional Drivers" let it load the list then choose the nvidia drivers and "Apply Changes". You might not need a reboot but I did it anyway.

Answer 6

It took me a week and the help of a more hardware-savvy friend (thanks Martin!) to get my 32Gb/1Tb GeForce 1050Ti to work properly. Now that it does, it works admirably: power management, touchpad, sound etc all work fine. One of the problems was that due to my lack of understanding of UEFI and the fact this was never a problem on my trusty XPS13, I simply erased all traces of W10 off the disk, including the EFI partition. The BIOS parameters are very critical and getting them wrong in combination with the UEFI meant that successfully booting Live USBs was a matter of chance. However, after my friend upgraded the BIOS and managed to re-create an EFI partition, booting from Live USB became possible. These are the BIOS settings: Version: 1.2.2

Boot Sequence:
V ubuntu  Field: ubuntu
Boot list option
X Legacy External Devices
V UEFI

Advanced Boot Options:
All disabled

UEFI Boot Path Security:
Always

System Configuration:
SATA Operation AHCI

Drives:
V SATA-1
V SATA-2 
V M.2 PCIe SSD-0 checked

USB Configuration:
V Enable USB Boot Support
V Enable External USB Port

Secure Boot:
X Secure Boot Enable
Secure Boot Mode (Deployed Mode (greyed)

POST Behavior:
All options greyed

The next problem was that as soon as the login prompt was displayed and I typed in the password, the graphical interface froze solid. At first I thought the whole system was frozen, but I discovered that the Virtual Terminals (accessed through Fn+Alt+F2 till F6 or sometimes Ctrl+Alt+F2 till F6, this seems to vary) could be used to log in. Wifi worked right away so it was easy to install software from the command line.

Once I was able to log in, I installed the following Nvidia drivers and libs:

ii  libcuda1-384                                  390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        Transitional package for nvidia-headless-390
ii  libnvidia-cfg1-390:amd64                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX configuration library
ii  libnvidia-common-390                          390.48-0ubuntu3                     all          Shared files used by the NVIDIA libraries
ii  libnvidia-compute-390:amd64                   390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA libcompute package
ii  libnvidia-compute-390:i386                    390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVIDIA libcompute package
ii  libnvidia-decode-390:amd64                    390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA Video Decoding runtime libraries
ii  libnvidia-decode-390:i386                     390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVIDIA Video Decoding runtime libraries
ii  libnvidia-encode-390:amd64                    390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-encode-390:i386                     390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-fbc1-390:amd64                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture runtime library
ii  libnvidia-fbc1-390:i386                       390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture runtime library
ii  libnvidia-gl-390:amd64                        390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES GLVND libraries and Vulkan ICD
ii  libnvidia-gl-390:i386                         390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVIDIA OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES GLVND libraries and Vulkan ICD
ii  libnvidia-ifr1-390:amd64                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA OpenGL-based Inband Frame Readback runtime library
ii  libnvidia-ifr1-390:i386                       390.48-0ubuntu3                     i386         NVIDIA OpenGL-based Inband Frame Readback runtime library
ii  nvidia-compute-utils-390                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA compute utilities
ii  nvidia-dkms-390                               390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA DKMS package
ii  nvidia-driver-390                             390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA driver metapackage
ii  nvidia-headless-390                           390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA headless metapackage
ii  nvidia-headless-no-dkms-390                   390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA headless metapackage - no DKMS
ii  nvidia-kernel-common-390                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        Shared files used with the kernel module
ii  nvidia-kernel-source-390                      390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA kernel source package
ii  nvidia-libopencl1-384                         390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        Transitional package for nvidia-headless-390
ii  nvidia-opencl-icd-384                         390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        Transitional package for nvidia-headless-390
ii  nvidia-prime                                  0.8.8                               all          Tools to enable NVIDIA's Prime
ii  nvidia-settings                               390.42-0ubuntu1                     amd64        Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ii  nvidia-utils-390                              390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA driver support binaries
ii  xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-390                 390.48-0ubuntu3                     amd64        NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

After this, everything worked!

To do: because I got the system especially for video editing, I still need to find out how to get the best out of both GPUs, the built-in Intel and the Nvidia.