There are other questions about the XPS 15 (such as this one) but they all seem to be several years old and relate to an older XPS model. This question is specifically about the XPS 15 9560 released in 2017.
I am considering buying this laptop and I am, as always, concerned about dual boot support and lack of driver functionality in Linux. I would appreciate if someone who has this laptop and runs both Windows and Linux (or has run both at some point) comment on the following:
- Driver support, both audio/video, in terms of things like multiple monitors, GPU performance etc.
- Battery life — is Ubuntu a drain compared to Windows, or maybe vice versa?
- Any additional comments? Was anything "functional" but very annoying to set up?
I've seen plenty of reviews about the laptop itself, but I'd like to get some comments purely from an Ubuntu dual boot perspective.
Best Answer
I have been using the Dell XPS 15 9560 in a dual boot configuration for a few weeks now. I am running Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04. It all works fine, except the finger print reader under Ubuntu, which I didn't manage to have detected.
I mainly use it for programming, and for machine learning I use Tensorflow and the laptop GPU. I haven't yet run battery intensive applications (e.g. games) while under battery, but I can say that, under Ubuntu, switching from NVIDIA to the integrated graphics (under NVIDIA X Server Settings) and lowering the display brightness, I would get an estimated battery life of 6-8 hours. With NVIDIA GPU and display brightness maxed out, 2-3 hours.
Installing Ubuntu Desktop from USB was quite easy, just had to disable the RAID support under BIOS (the provided SSD is anyway not a RAID). I had tried installing Ubuntu Server, that usually detects and handles RAID at installation time, but with this laptop it didn't.
Under Ubuntu I am running the latest NVIDIA drivers automatically installed by Ubuntu updates, 375-51; under Windows, the latest NVIDIA drivers available.