Ubuntu on Dell XPS 15 7590 OLED 2019

Note: I Recommend System76 PopOS 20.04 which is based on Ubuntu 20.04, you will find my other repo that describe the experience and fix any issues.

How to install Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 15 OLED 7590 model from 2019?

This page will explain how to fix a number of issues with Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10 and Ubuntu 20.04.

Note: the power management for the latest CPU generation works better on Ubuntu 19.10 and Ubuntu 20.04, which means very high power consumption and a CPU permanently at the thermal limit on older Ubuntu versions, but can be controlled with CPU Power Management solution below.

Problems addressed are:

• Killer Wifi driver
• CPU power management
• Changing brightness of OLED screen with brightness keys
• Suspend Draining battery fast

Installing Ubuntu (assuming only Ubuntu not dual boot)

1. Download Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10 or Ubuntu 20.04.

2. Create Bootable usb stick using Rufus on Windows or Startup Disk Creator on Ubuntu

3. Change SATA Mode inside BIOS(UEFI) from RAID on to AHCI, this is done by: Power up your machine then click f12, choice BOIS Configurations.

4. Restart your machine then click f12 again, then choice to boot from the usb stick.

5. Follow Ubuntu installation window.

   Note 1: It is recommended to also install 3rd party software for which your laptop needs to be connected to the internet. Wifi will not be available, Just use your phone tethering for now. will fix this issue later.

   Note 2: After installation, in case of you didn't disable secure boot, the first restart you will see a blue window for MOK Management just choice enroll

6. After the installation is complete, run

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
   

   to update the system to the latest versions.

Fixing all issues:

Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work

1. Open a terminal
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make

Commands Available:

• sudo make + one of the below
  1. all (default). Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work
  2. uninstall Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work
  3. oled_xrandr_install
  4. oled_xrandr_uninstall
  5. oled_icc_install Note: require manual reboot or login again
  6. oled_icc_uninstall
  7. wifi_install Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work
  8. wifi_uninstall Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work
  9. power_management_install
  10. power_management_uninstall
  11. suspend_install
  12. suspend_uninstall

Killer Wifi driver

You can't live with out wifi. but the diver repo is missing so we are going to fix this now.
Note: When useing option install third party on the installation process this solution won't be neccessery. but if you still don't have wifi then continue

Automatic fix:

Just run this commands and the issue will be fixed for you. Note: laptop will reboot at the end. so save your important work

1. Open a terminal
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make wifi_install

Behind the scene:

we are going to add the right repo, so we are able to install the wifi driver. this is based on Killer Wifi Website. again just use your phone tethering for now until we install the driver.

1. Open a terminal
2. Run sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-hwe-team/backport-iwlwifi
3. Run sudo apt-get update
4. Run sudo apt-get install backport-iwlwifi-dkms
5. Run reboot

Commands available:

• sudo make wifi_install
• sudo make wifi_uninstall

CPU power management

Without further configuration the CPU will run quite hot and will quickly drain the battery. We are going to Install:

1. powertop
2. thermald
3. TLP

Automatic Fix:

1. Open a terminal
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make power_management_install

Behind the scene:

1. Open a terminal

2. Run sudo apt install -y powertop thermald tlp

3. Run sudo powertop

4. Click Shift+TAB to navigate to Tunables

5. Click Enter on the Bad to change to Good

   Probably not all of them have a big effect, I have not tried, but the processor related points are absolutely required. However, these changes are not permanent and will be reset at reboot. Instead let us create a service that will change these settings at boot time. The script and setup are taken from here.

6. Run below command to create a service file called powertop.service at /etc/systemd/system/

   cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service
   [Unit]
   Description=PowerTOP auto tune
   
   [Service]
   Type=idle
   Environment="TERM=dumb"
   ExecStart=/usr/sbin/powertop --auto-tune
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   EOF
   

7. Run below command to enable the service at boot time

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo systemctl enable powertop.service
   

8. Run sudo tlp start

Commands available:

• sudo make power_management_install
• sudo make power_management_uninstall

Screen Brightness (OLED)

When pressing the function keys to change the screen brightness, you will see the Ubuntu brightness icon and its brightness bar changing. However, the brightness of the screen will not change. Apparently, Ubuntu tries to change the background brightness of the screen. Since OLED screens do not have a background illumination, nothing happens. This is undesirable. Not only will the screen often be too bright, it will also age the display faster.

Note: That OLED displays only consume energy and age when the individual pixels are emitting light. Hence, it is advisable to choose dark background colors and install a dark scheme in your browser.

1. FIX USING XRANDR:

Automatic Fix:

1. Open a terminal
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make oled_xrandr_install

One time fix

It is possible to change the brightness of the screen from the command line via.

xrandr --output $(xrandr --listmonitors | awk '$1 == "0:" {print $4}') --brightness 0.6

But you will need to change it from the command line every time.
Note: brightness range is between 0 and 1.
Careful: 0 is black and black on OLED displays is really all black.

Behind the scene:

The function keys can be used to change brightness. (Idea Taking from Lenovo Thinkpad), then the script is tweaked a little bit.

1. We are going to create 2 listeners for function keys brightness up and down.

   1. Open a terminal window
   2. Run below command to create a file (brightness up listener) called dell-oled-brightness-up inside /etc/acpi/events/

      cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/events/dell-oled-brightness-up
      event=video/brightnessup BRTUP 00000086 00000000
      action=/etc/acpi/dell-oled-brightness.sh up
      EOF
      

   3. Run below command to create a file (brightness down listener) called dell-oled-brightness-down inside /etc/acpi/events/.

      cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/events/dell-oled-brightness-down
      event=video/brightnessdown BRTDN 00000087 00000000
      action=/etc/acpi/dell-oled-brightness.sh down
      EOF
      

2. We are going to create an event handler.

   1. Open a terminal window
   2. Run below command to create a file called dell-oled-brightness.sh inside /etc/acpi/.

      cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/dell-oled-brightness.sh
      #!/bin/bash
      DISPLAYNAME=`xrandr --listmonitors | awk '$1 == "0:" {print $4}'`
      MIN=0
      MAX=1
      CURRENT_OLED_BRIGHTNESS=`xrandr --verbose | grep -m 1 -i brightness | cut -f2 -d ' '`
      CURRENT_INTEL_BRIGHTNESS=`cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/actual_brightness`
      MAX_INTEL_BRIGHTNESS=`cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness`
      CURR_INTEL=`LC_ALL=C /usr/bin/printf "%.*f" 1 $CURRENT_INTEL_BRIGHTNESS`
      MAX_INTEL=`LC_ALL=C /usr/bin/printf "%.*f" 1 $MAX_INTEL_BRIGHTNESS`
      
      VAL=`echo "scale=2; $CURR_INTEL/$MAX_INTEL" | bc`
      
      if (( `echo "$VAL < $MIN" | bc -l` )); then
          VAL=$MIN
      elif (( `echo "$VAL > $MAX" | bc -l` )); then
          VAL=$MAX
      fi
      
      
      #set oled brightness to the caluclated value
      `xrandr --output $DISPLAYNAME --brightness $VAL` 2>&1 >/dev/null | logger -t oled-brightness
      logger -t OLED_XRANDR_BRIGHTNESS "CURRENT BRIGHTNESS: $VAL"
      
      EOF
      

   3. Give the file excute permission via. sudo chmod u+x /etc/acpi/dell-oled-brightness.sh

Commands available:

• sudo make oled_xrandr_install
• sudo make oled_xrandr_uninstall

2. FIX USING ICC color profiles:

script is taking from a different project just merged his code to this project to make it easy to use either ways

Automatic Fix:

1. Open a terminal
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make oled_icc_install
4. Reboot your machine or Login again

Commands available:

• sudo make oled_icc_install
• sudo make oled_icc_uninstall

Suspend Draining battery fast

By default, the very inefficient s2idle suspend variant is incorrectly selected. This is probably due to the BIOS. The much more efficient deep variant should be selected instead.

Automatic Fix:

1. Open a terminal window
2. Run cd /path/to/repo/dir/
3. Run sudo make suspend_install

One time fix

It is possible to change the suspend mode from the command line via.

echo deep| tee /sys/power/mem_sleep

Behind the scene:

1. Open a terminal window
2. Run sed -i 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="[^"]*/& mem_sleep_default=deep/' /etc/default/grub
3. Run update-grub

Commands available:

• sudo make suspend_install
• sudo make suspend_uninstall

Useful Packages:

1. system-monitor (gnome extention)
2. CPU Power Manager (gnome extention)