My NL i7/16GB XPS 9310 has a Killer AX1650s WiFi chip, which eventually worked. Other Killer chips may not work.
I ordered the Windows Home edition, because developer edition with Linux was not available in my country. Apparently you can reclaim €100 from Dell if you don't use Windows.
- Bios:
- Change the SATA Mode from the default "RAID" to "AHCI"
- Disable Secure Boot
- Disable both Sign of Life features
- Boot & install from USB stick with default Xubuntu 20.04
- After reboot, no wifi. Connect ethernet using USB-C hub.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install oem-somerville-bulbasaur-meta oem-somerville-metawhich will install Dell's Linux APT repo and kernel5.6.0-1034-oem- Wifi now works
- Firmware: default Bios was 1.0.1, update with
fwupdmgr get-upgrades && fwupdmgr upgrade, reboot
- Suspend/resume
- xfce4-screensaver blocked the screen after suspend. Had disabled and re-enabled it, not seen again.
- Audio sometimes crashes after resume (stuck in "firmware loaded" loop). Similar to this bug report. Have tried latest 1.6-stable SOF firmware but this results in other crashes. Have reverted to default fw for now.
- The Dell XPS 13 only supports S2 sleep (
cat /sys/power/mem_sleep), despite mentioning S3 sleep in the BIOS. Many people not happy about battery drain in S2. Dell hasn't responded yet. this and this.
- Fingerprint scanner: driver works technically, but UX is absolutely horrible in Xubuntu. No retry, wrong focus, still need to click a lot of buttons to login. Main turn-off: it seems impossible to use libpam-fprintd to unlock your keyring.
For the rest, it works quite well. Display, special function keys, hooking up external display & hub via TB cable.
I have not tried it yet but supposedly it is now possible to use the fingerprint reader under ubuntu --> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/sp3iky/how_to_enable_fingerprint_login_in_ubuntu_on_dell/