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by ippa 3279 days ago
I've had Dell XPS 13 DE for about a month now. Overall I'm very happy with it. It's great to have the power of linux right on the computer, not a SSH-session away. I got the 1080p version cause the battery will last longer. Too bad it also ment I only got 8 gigs or ram.

There's also some rough edges, some of them I could solve.

Touchpad is supersensitive. If you're typing a longer sentence suddenly you could jump out of the input/text-field cause your thumbs touched it. Tweakable, got better with "syndaemon -t -k -i 1.0 -d".

I think the keyboard backlight turned off too quick, tweakable with "echo 5m > /sys/class/leds/dell::kbd_backlight/stop_timeout"

The WLAN doesn't come online as fast as I would like it to after closed screen and sleepmode. Way quicker on my MacBook Pro (2015). Also feels like I have more net-problems when the WLAN-signal is weak when compared to my MacBook Pro. Mosh in a terminal is great for keeping connections from a laptop to servers though.

Bluetooth syncing to wireless speakers and similar isn't as fluid and automatic as from Win 10.

The worst part is a constant lowlevel hissing when using headphones. I haven't been able to solve that yet :/.

But overall I really like the keyboard, the screen, the formfactor and Ubuntu 16.

2 comments

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9360)

Continuous hissing sound with headphones

Open alsamixer and set "Headphone Mic Boost" gain to 10 dB (See discussion on reddit). Note that this does reduce the volume slightly.

You may also run the equivalent command:

   $ amixer -c PCH cset 'name=Headphone Mic Boost Volume' 1
Worked! Thanks man :).

Still have odd random crackles and noise when I for example stop/start a youtubevideo. Not a showstopper as the hissing though. Tried some tips on URL you pasted but no deal.

It's a problem for me on the 9343 model as well. Loud pops and cracks when the audio driver turns on/off.

Fortunately, I've found this only happens on the headphone jack itself. Since I'm an audiophile, when I know I'll be using the laptop for several hours, I tend to plug in a USB-powered DAC instead and route all audio through that. It sidesteps the problem.