Dell XPS 9310 Setup With Pop!_OS

Overview

I decided to give Pop!_OS 20.10 a try on the new Dell XPS 9310 laptop.

Normally I go with the most recent Ubuntu LTS which is what gets the stamp of approval from Dell and Canonical.

I don't live in a country that has the Developer edition of the XPS pre-loaded with Ubuntu so I have to buy the Windows Home version and install Linux myself.

Here is how I have setup my machine.

Buying Decision

When you do a search online for Linux on the XPS 9310 you will find a mixed bag of people who have a fully working setup and people who haven't been so lucky.

My Specs:

Reasons I made these choices:

1. Some of the 32gb RAM configurations will give you the AX500-DBS wireless card. That is the card that most of the people online seem to have problems with. From what I read, this should be resolved in future kernel releases and might be fine by 21.04 releases of Ubuntu
2. I always choose 1080p for longer battery life. I also don't think a screen that small needs the upgrade.

BIOS Options

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version

Shows me that I am currently running BIOS version 1.1.1

There is a newer version of the BIOS 1.1.4 that was released on December 10 2020 but I haven't tried to download/install it yet. You still get firmware and system updates in Pop!_OS just like Ubuntu so there is still no need to dual boot.

These are only the options that I have changed.

Pop!_OS Install 20.10

Get your base OS installed.

1. Download the .iso from System76
2. Create a bootable USB-c stick(or normal USB if you want to use the adapter)
3. Boot from the USB stick
4. Choose erase everything install + encrypt option
5. Get the Dell repos added to your apt sources. This gets fingerprint and facial login working. Source link: Post By DanielNTX. This also allows you to pull updates from Dell. I haven't tested using howdy and facial login because i don't have a need for it.
6. Settings > User > Add Fingerprint. The new fingerprint you setup wont work for login and sudo until you run the below command. 8. sudo pam-auth-update space-bar to add fingerprint option. Now you should be able to use fingerprint to login as well as sudo.
7. Settings > Power > Turn off automatic brightness. I find this really annoying so I turn it off

OS Extras

These are some of the other things I installed and configured on my machine that are part of my workflow.

• Settings > Power > Show Battery %

• Keyboard Shortcut > Change Window Launcher to Super + space-bar

• Add my SSH keys and config file from my old laptop and chmod 400 them

Start ssh-agent:

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" 

Add SSH key to agent:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa 

• Config Git:

git config --global user.name "DevOpsEnv"
git config --global user.email email@example.com
git config --list --show-origin

• Install openvpn and configure my VPN:

sudo apt install network-manager-openvpn-gnome

###Open network manager and create VPN connection from .ovpn script###  

• Install VSCode - Login to github to sync settings and extensions

• Install Google Chrome - Login to sync extensions

• Install Zoom

• Install Slack

• Install DBeaver(Flatpak) - Add Db connections

• Install FileZilla - Add SFTP connections

• Install Spotify

• Install Alacritty - Pull down my config file

• Install Remmina - Setup RDP connections

• Install Postman(Flatpak)

• Install Password Manager Of Choice

• Install Authy - No .deb or flatpak and I don't want any snaps or snapd running on my machine so I will have to find an alternative to authy :(

• Install Stacer

• Install Docker:

Add repo:

sudo apt-get install \
    apt-transport-https \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg-agent \
    software-properties-common 

Add Docker GPG key:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Setup stable repository:

sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

Install Docker Engine:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
sudo docker run hello-world

Run Docker as non-root user:

sudo usermod -aG docker <your-user>

Reboot your machine to make this take effect

• Install Docker Compose

pip install docker-compose

• Install cfn-flip - Allows you to convert cloudformation templates from JSON <> YAML and convert join to sub functions

pip install cfn-flip

• Install cfn-lint - Linter for cloudformation templates

pip install cfn-lint

• Install cfn-guard and cfn-nag (not yet complete)

• Install aws-cli and add my config

• Install awsume - Allows role switching between aws accounts under the same organisation
  

pip3 install awsume

###Add alias awsume=". awsume" to ~/.bashrc###

• Install htop

• Install fd - find replacement written in rust

• Install figlet

• Install tldr - quick easy manpage examples

• clone cheatsheets repo - community driven cheatsheets for linux commands

• Install Node.js - From Nodesource
  

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_15.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Hardware Peripherals Compatibility

The XPS 9310 running Pop!_OS works with the following hardware

1. Blue Yeti Nano
2. Logitech MX Master3 Mouse
3. Tethering to Samsung Galaxy S10+
4. Cable Matters 10Gbps USB C Dock (USB Docking Station). I plug 2 external displays into the dock with the other peripherals mentioned and it has 1 cable that plugs into the XPS. Charging pass-through works so it is just the 1 cable required.

Problems

1. No Authy deb or flatpak which is a disappointing
2. If i want to close my laptop there is no way to authenticate with sudo as I need the fingerprint scanner. I haven't really tried to troubleshoot this one yet

That is everything that I can think of for now