XPS 13 9350 – 16.10 and Broadcom (DW 1820A) woes (with Intel 8260NGW fix!)

After upgrading to 16.10, when I would resume from sleep my xps 13 would reconnect to my network but not have any DNS (it had a connection, but couldn’t navigate to sites by name, IP addresses worked). I was able to issue a

sudo systemctl restart network-manager

And this generally brought the network back online properly .. but I was noticing my speed was TERRIBLE.

I generally had great luck with my xps13 9350 with the broadcom wireless card (DW 1820A), although had read even the great Linus himself said his luck was terrible and he replaced it with an intel card. With 16.10 coming about and causing issues I decided to take the (small – approx $25) plunge and replace the card.

I bought this intel 8260NGW 3rd generation wifi card and hoped everything would work out, it sure has!!

First, taking the screws out of the laptop was a complete PITA. There are VERY small torx screws on the bottom of the laptop, luckily a small flathead jewelers screwdriver did the job … although I’d recommend something to help you grip since you need to torque the screwdriver quite a bit to get the screws to turn.

PLEASE NOTE! Be very careful with your very expensive laptop. There’s nothing COMPLICATED about removing the back of the laptop, but be gentle. When you get the screws out, you’ll want to get something in between the frame and the metal panel, use something plastic (not metal, which will scrape), and once you have some leverage the entire back will pop off with a little pressure. There’s no connections on the back panel that will be pulled.

With my handy rubber grip and screwdriver I removed the back of the laptop and could then remove the broadcom wifi adapter.

I carefully pried the 2 antenna connections off the old card, put in the new card, and carefully applied pressure to the antenna connections to reset them. BE CAREFUL HERE!! You don’t want to ‘pop’ something with such small electronics.

Once I plugged in the new card and snapped the back of the laptop back on … I fired up 16.10 and was greeted with mega fast speed (866 Mb/s)!

Yay intel. 🙂

Add Root CA Trust to Linux

Summary

If you are using linux behind a company proxy/firewall odds are you have issues with accessing ssl resources (i.e. https). The company likely has their own Certificate Authority (CA) that issues private certificates. These certificates are not issued from ‘trusted’ authorities (i.e. verisign et al) and therefore the browser does not ‘trust’ them and will respond with a message like this

In this post I’ll show you how to add your Root CA to the linux certificate store, as well as firefox and chrome.

The Truth

The ‘funny’ thing about corporate proxies is they are essentially man-in-the-middle attacks. I’m not a networking professional, but as I understand things the corporate proxy is decrypting your traffic and then re-encrypting with the private cert on the way in. Since your browser trusts the company root CA it doesn’t question the validity of this. Hence, the company gets access to all your ‘encrypted’ traffic to ensure you aren’t sending anything they don’t want you to send (i.e. company IP etc).

Not judging here, just giving information.

Identify the Certificate of Interest

In order to know what cert to add, we have to first locate the cert that is being used at the proxy. To be safe, if you open a browser and look at the certificates you can just export them ALL and then import them all and that will surely catch the cert of interest …. that said this is how you can inspect things

$ openssl s_client -connect www.wormly.com:443
 
CONNECTED(....)
depth=1.....
verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate
verify return:0
--
Certificate Chain
0 ....
 
1 HERE

In the above example where i have HERE is where my cert was that I needed to add to the linux CA store – YMMV but generally the above will show you what cert is being used at the proxy.

Export the cert(s)

Now that we know the cert (or just want to grab them all) you can export the certs. I used IE in my example but you could export from any browser that has Root CA trust… in IE go to

Internet Explorer->Internet Options->Content->Certificates

Export each cert in X.509 DER format and save to disk.

Import the certs for command line

Copy each cert to your linux machine to the /tmp folder and then run the following to convert and stage and load into ca certificate store

$ sudo openssl x509 -in /tmp/&lt;yourcert&gt;.cer -inform DER -out /tmp/&lt;yourcert&gt;.crt
 
$ sudo cp /tmp/*.crt /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/
$ sudo update-ca-certificates
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
 
N added, 0 remove; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d....
Adding debian:
done.
done.

You will see SOMETHING like the above although I’m obviously trying to keep this generic but you should see a positive number for N added.

At this point linux commandline tools should be aware of the cert and able to now trust the root CA

$ curl https://www.wormly.com/test_ssl
html shown
.....

That’s it! Command-line is done.

Import the certs for Firefox

For firefox, you can use the .crt files generated above. Go to

Firefox->Preferences->Advanced->Certificates->View Certificates->Import

Import each .crt file in /tmp and approve for websites

That’s it! Firefox is done.

Import the certs for Chrome

Unfortunately chrome is different and we need to export the certs differently. In chrome you can export ALL the certificates at once using PKCS #12 (.PFX).

In IE, highlight all the certificates you want to export using the cntrl or shift keys to select multiple entries.

Select a password for these certs, we’ll go with “blah” for our example. Move the resulting .pfx file to your linux machine in /tmp

Now import into Chrome via Settings->Show Advanced Settings->Manage Certificates->Import. Choose the .pfx from from /tmp/<yourcert>.pfx and enter the password you used (in our case, “blah”).

That’s it! Chrome is finished.

Wrap-up

Hopefully the above helped you out. I owe a special thanks to “madvikinggod“ from the coding blocks podcast slack channel who gave me some of the openssl commands to inspect what certificate I needed, it was invaluable in moving me forward.

If you had any issues (or if it worked!), let me know in the comments.

Good luck!

Ubuntu 16.04 Release + Dell XPS 13 9350

UPDATE 5/11/2016 – The flicker is apparently Chrome only and has a report to Google. If you use firefox you won’t see this screen flickering. You can also run Chrome via “google-chrome –disable-gpu-driver-bug-workarounds –enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers” and the flickering will stop. You can also edit the desktop file which will allow you to launch the app as you would normally through the launchers – it lives at “/usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop”.

I’ve blogged before about my experiences with the new skylake XPS 13. I’ve been VERY happy with the laptop and wanted to give a status now that 16.04 is released.

Fn Key Behavior

All Fn keys work as expected. Notable (?) exceptions seem to be FFWD/RWND and the ‘search’ button (F9). The most important ones for me are display brightness and volume … those work perfectly as well as mute/keyboard brightness and wifi on/off. Interesting wifi on/off (which shares space with the PrtScr (print screen) key seems to favor printing the screen FIRST even though I have the Fn keys turned on. I’m actually not upset about this since I rarely need to disconnect wifi and would maybe use the PrtScr function now and again (normally I just use the Screenshot app so I don’t see myself doing either one honestly).

Suspend/Resume

Everything is working perfectly here. Plugged in or not it does what I have specified which is when the lid is closed it suspends.

Battery Life

I haven’t run any specific battery test with details, based on my experience this things is a champ. I get plenty of battery life on it no matter what I’m doing. On my System76 Galago UltraPro when I have it unplugged I can watch the percent indicator tick down on regular intervals. On this thing each tick is given up begrudgingly. I’d estimate easily 7hrs and maybe as high as 9-10. The ‘pro’ reviews peg the battery life in that range I’m definitely inclined to agree.

My usage is web browsing and programming with web editors/languages such as Visual Studio Code/Sublime/Angular2/gulp builds/etc. Not super battery hungry applications but the web includes youtube things now and again – which doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

External Monitor

Saving the best for last… I’ve blogged before about the external monitor via USB-C. I bought a USB-C to Display Port adapter from amazon and when I last tried on a 16.04 Beta1 it didn’t work at all. This time as soon as I plugged it in it worked like a champ! Wanted to see how reliable it was so unplugged and plugged in … didn’t work. Again, didn’t work. Unplugged the power from the laptop and tried again .. WORKED!

So summary here is that it seems to give you an external connection just fine ONCE per power setting. 🙂 This is a completely weird issue … but if plug in your USBC plug and it didn’t work, unplug the laptop (or plug it in depending) and then try again and it should work. This makes me hopeful that it will be resolved in future updates but at least for now there’s a workaround – as goofy as it is.

Monitor ‘Flicker’

It was noted in a previous blog by Luis:

NOTE 4/7/2016: Read the comments for good feedback from others trying. Luis noted: “..before attempting to install one needs to boot and in the BIOS configure SATA-controller to AHCI (or Off).”. He also noted there’s a bug for the screen flicker issue.

The screen flicker issue still seems to be here occasionally. For now it doesn’t really bother me. It’s not constant and during the entirety of typing this blog in I haven’t seen any flicker – I even went to CNN and scrolled around and played a video and didn’t see it. I think it tends to happen when browsing the web and there’s lots of ads on a page or video going on or when scrolling quickly through the browser. I can’t really establish a pattern because it doesn’t happen frequently enough – just putting it in here so that it’s a known issue albeit an infrequent one.

Summary

It’s a shame the laptop isn’t 100% given the external monitor issues but I’m still absolutely thrilled with it. If I’m not sitting at my desk using my System76 Galago UltraPro, I’m using this thing because I don’t have to sweat battery life and the form factor and performance are killer. The trackpad works perfectly (remember to install libinput!), keyboard is great to type on … it’s a dream to have honestly.

Enjoy!

Dell XPS 9350 + Ubuntu 16.04 (beta1, Feb 27th)

Summary

I have been DYING to try Mir every since it was announced. Moving X forward, new libinput integrated for a solid touchpad experience .. the entire thing is very exciting. Since I’m lucky enough to have a System76 Galago Ultrapro AND Dell XPS 13 9350 I figured I’d try to install 16.04beta1 (ubuntu/unity) on my XPS. I figured if it blew the laptop up I have another daily driver I can use.’

EDIT 2/28/2016 – I have the XPS 9350 1080p i5 no touchscreen model with broadcom wifi.

Installation

I downloaded the nightly iso from here and burned it to a thumb drive with the ‘Startup Disk Creator’ app in Ubuntu. Plugged it into the XPS and rebooted, selected the USB drive and off I went.

Wifi

Wifi was detected immediately during the installation, that was a huge sign for me since I have the Broadcom chip in my XPS, which historically has not been supported on linux at all until the 4.3/4.4 kernels. Good news is it’s working like a champ.

Display

The display looks as good as ever, no issues at all during the installation.

Special Keys/Touchpad/Keyboard

Everything “just worked” during installation.

Installation Wrapup

Everything worked flawlessly. I even installed using UEFI (when I was running 15.10 I had turned this off in the BIOS and was using ‘legacy’ mode). Now onto the details of how it’s running after installation.

Post-Installation

Mir

After installation the first thing I wanted to do was install Mir and test it out. I installed it using the following

sudo apt-get -y update &amp;&amp; sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade &amp;&amp; sudo apt-get -y unity8-desktop-session-mir

On reboot I clicked the little ubuntu icon above and to the right of my username and changed it to the mir ‘8’ (looks like an 8-ball to me). I logged in and … nothing. Dunno what happened, I rebooted the laptop and logged in again and this time it logged in! (…..and looked terrible).

The resolution was screwed up, I couldn’t launch anything … to me it looked like it thought it was in some sort of phone or tablet mode. I have no idea and I couldn’t adjust anything so I quickly gave up. Oh well, I’ll keep trying as they get closer to release.

Other Software

The other things I normally do on a new installation are install chrome, dropbox, libinput.

Chrome

You can quickly install chrome using the following

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb &amp;&amp; sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb &amp;&amp; sudo apt-get -f -y install

I ended up needing the ‘apt-get -f install’ to correct dependencies … seemed to work fine and chrome was immediately available from the launcher.

Dropbox

You can quickly install dropbox using the following

cd ~/Downloads
wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb &amp;&amp; sudo apt-get -y install python-gtk2 &amp;&amp; sudo apt-get -f -y install

Libinput

You can use my steps from my StackOverflow post here. Vote my answer up if you used it. 🙂

External Monitor

I was hoping the external monitor worked, and does … sorta.

I bought this cable before and it worked… and still does. But I could only get the monitor to turn on when the laptop was unplugged from the power supply. And I had to unplug the external monitor cable from the laptop a couple times THEN it would come up. Then I could plug in the laptop to the power supply and everything worked fine (I’m using it now to type in this blog post).

So I certainly still recommend the cable, just make sure you unplug the power connector from the laptop, then plug the external monitor cable into the USB-C, then once the monitor is on you can plug the power connector back in.

It’s weird .. but it worked and I’m not complaining too much honestly.

UPDATE: 4/7/2016 – External monitor no longer works. Hoping by release things are back to working.

Wrapup

I’d call this a roaring success honestly. With the very notable exception of Mir, everything else on the laptop works 100% out of the box (including Unity 7). Mir will stabilize … but not having to mess around with wifi drivers or skylake processor issues by installing kernels by hand is a WONDERFUL success for 16.04 for me.

Let me know in the comments if you have good experiences installing 16.04.

EDIT: Well, after I rebooted I can’t get to a login screen. 🙂 I unplugged external monitor … unplugged power cable .. rebooted a couple times. No dice. THAT’S NOT GOOD!! 🙂 Nice thing is I can get to a terminal windows and it has wifi so I can keep updating with ‘apt-get’ and see how things evolve. So for now don’t upgrade if you want a working laptop … YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

LAST EDIT! Everything is good. It was the libinput settings file. I adjusted my stackoverflow post to include a couple more lines and things are booting fine.

HTML5 and Docker

Summary

If you’ve ever messed with UI programming that utilized the ‘hash’ URL technique for invoking UI actions, it’s time to go html5 native!

This blog post will describe how to setup an apache docker container with the pieces enabled for URL Rewriting. This allows html5 ‘pushState’ to be utilized instead of hash operations. Some advantages HTML5 pushState offers over hash:

Cleaner looking for sharing URLs (http://…/#/employees/list vs http://…/employees/list)
Search Engine Optimized (SEO) due to being able to pre-generate/crawl your site and return things server-side whereas hash always needs to process on the client and is not SEO friendly

The major disadvantage is that it requires the server being involved .. that’s where this post comes in.

NOTE: For angular2, there is a debate going on for what the default should be, hash or html5. You can read about it here.

Setup

I have a little toy project I have been using for a few years for Spring Boot and angular to help me prove out concepts. I won’t go into any detail on the UI itself (I recently converted from angular1 -> angular2 and that’s what drove this blog post, but it’s applicable for any UI tech that utilizes hash URLs).

NOTE: All code is in the my git repo.

To try everything out you’ll need a recent version of docker installed. If you are using an ubuntu/debian based distro you can install it with:

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_5.x | sudo -E bash -
$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

From here you need a Dockerfile like-so:

# Pull base apache image
# ---------------
FROM httpd:2.4
 
# Maintainer
# ----------
MAINTAINER Jim Basilio &lt;jim.basilio@gmail.com&gt;
 
# Copy file in as daemon user
USER daemon
 
# httpd.conf turns on rewrite module and rewrites 404 errors to load index.html then redirect client
COPY ./httpd.conf /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
 
USER root
 
# Define default command to start bash. 
CMD [ "httpd-foreground" ]

What this does is build a docker image and copy in httpd.conf that turns on the urlrewrite module and configures the rewrites when a 404 is encountered.

For example, when a user goes to your app at http://awesomeapp.com that allows index.html to load angular (or whatever UI framework you are running) and then angular takes over managing client routing. On a later session when a user ‘direct links’ to your app at http://awesomeapp.com/users/list, this is making a server request to apache (in this case) to serve the ‘users/list’ folder (looking for an index.html normally). However, we don’t have that folder on our server since it really was a UI route so a 404 would be returned from apache.

The urlrewrite rule is

    Options +FollowSymLinks
    IndexIgnore */*
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule (.*) index.html

I didn’t originally write the above, I took it from this SO gist. When the above is read by apache, any 404 errors that are found will rewrite the URL so index.html is served and then angular will perform the routing it needs. From the users perspective all of this is seamless and it just “does the right thing”. Without this in place, the users direct link would result in a “404 not found” and a very confused user. To start the container you can run:

$ sudo docker run -d -v <span class="pl-s"><span class="pl-pds">$(</span><span class="pl-c1">pwd</span><span class="pl-pds">)</span></span>:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs --name=html5-apache -p 8080:80 -t html5-apache

Be sure to customize the ‘$(pwd)’ with whatever the root is for your application.

That’s it! You now have a docker image you can use for any app that requires html5 pushState routing. This is a good alternative to using ‘lightweight’ dev http servers as seen with angular2 development stacks. You can start the container and let it run, adjusting the shared volume with your source code (i.e. delete the files, change the files, whatever) and when you reload your site everything will instantly update.

I’m using this setup for my hiit-frontend project which is working great. I can run an ‘npm run build’ and it’ll recompile all my typescript and move my site to the ‘dist’ folder. The dist folder is my shared volume to docker which I just leave running all the time (I intend on writing more about angular2 and the build stack I’m using there in another blog post).

Dell XPS 9350 (4.4.0 kernel)

The laptop has been running well on 4.4-rc7 but the new 4.4.0 kernel came out and I’d rather be on the newest officially released kernel (until Dell releases the official XPS 13 with an official kernel that is).

So I grabbed the newest kernel and installed it by running

cd /tmp
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-wily/linux-headers-4.4.0-040400_4.4.0-040400.201601101930_all.deb http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-wily/linux-headers-4.4.0-040400-generic_4.4.0-040400.201601101930_amd64.deb http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-wily/linux-image-4.4.0-040400-generic_4.4.0-040400.201601101930_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.4*.deb linux-image-4.4*.deb

Rebooted (remember to hit a key while grub is booting to select the kernel you want). Things are running like a champ so far. Will keep you posted and for anyone that installs please respond in the comments with your experiences.

Also, I wanted to clean up kernels I had installed (not the 4.2.x one that came with ubuntu though) and ran the following (help from this link)

(list kernels)
[jim@xps~]$  dpkg -l | grep linux-image
ri  linux-image-4.2.0-16-generic                  4.2.0-16.19                                amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.2.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
rc  linux-image-4.3.0-wifitest-custom             4.3.0-wifitest-custom-10.00.Custom         amd64        Linux kernel binary image for version 4.3.0-wifitest-custom
ii  linux-image-4.4.0-040400-generic              4.4.0-040400.201601101930                  amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii  linux-image-4.4.0-040400rc7-generic           4.4.0-040400rc7.201512272230               amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii  linux-image-extra-4.2.0-16-generic            4.2.0-16.19                                amd64        Linux kernel extra modules for version 4.2.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii  linux-image-generic                           4.2.0.16.18                                amd64        Generic Linux kernel image
 
(remove version i want)
[jim@xps~]$ sudo dpkg --remove linux-image-4.3.0-wifitest-custom
 
(rinse and repeat, i do not recommend deleting the 4.2.x kernel)
(when you are finished uninstalling kernels run the following)
 
[jim@xps~]$ sudo update-grub

Now that you are done installing the 4.4.0 kernel, make sure you enable libinput 🙂 and if you need to connect to a monitor grab a cable.

Thanks!

Add better git support to your bash shell

Add this to your ~/.bash_rc

if [ -f /usr/lib/git-core/git-sh-prompt ]
then
  source /usr/lib/git-core/git-sh-prompt
  export PS1='[\u@\h\w$(__git_ps1 " (%s)")]\$ '
fi

Then watch your shell go from this

[jim@galago~/projects/HIIT]$

to this

[jim@galago~/projects/HIIT (add-docker)]$

Notice the branch name (add-docker) in the prompt?

You’ll also have command completion for git commands (i.e. git a<tab><tab> will show)

[jim@galago~/projects/HIIT (add-docker)]$ git a
add        am         annotate   apply      archive

And you’ll have command completion for the branches et al (i.e. git checkout <tab><tab> will show)

[jim@galago~/projects/HIIT (add-docker)]$ git checkout 
add-docker          HEAD                ORIG_HEAD           origin/HEAD         reactify 
FETCH_HEAD          master              origin/add-docker   origin/master

Enjoy!

Back to the future – Dell XPS 9350 (4.4-rc7 kernel)

My previous post on this topic talked about a mechanism for installing a custom 4.3 kernel that has the broadcom wireless drivers built in. I found a cleaner way to run a 4.4rc7 kernel from ubuntu that supports wifi, has no audio sizzle/static, and seems to run everything wonderfully.

It’s as simple as the following steps (as detailed on this blog)

cd /tmp
wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-rc7-wily/linux-headers-4.4.0-040400rc7_4.4.0-040400rc7.201512272230_all.deb kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-rc7-wily/linux-headers-4.4.0-040400rc7-generic_4.4.0-040400rc7.201512272230_amd64.deb kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.4-rc7-wily/linux-image-4.4.0-040400rc7-generic_4.4.0-040400rc7.201512272230_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.4*.deb linux-image-4.4*.deb

Once you are done the above, reboot and select the 4.4 kernel (it may go to this by default). For me, everything “just worked”.

Also, whatever you do, don’t forget to install libinput’s X touchpad driver – it’s superior to the synaptic driver in every way.

Can’t wait until an official release from Dell and/or ubuntu 16.04 – until this I’m happy as a clam on this laptop. It’s a dream form factor, battery life, and power combination (assuming you aren’t intending on running games).

Back to the future – Dell XPS 9350 (4.3 kernel – old)

The Present

So my first post on this blog was about the Dell XPS 9333 compared to the System76 Galago UltraPro – I bought the System76 and don’t regret it at all. It’s a beast. The GPU is VERY strong (not as good as a discrete GPU but much better than the normal laptop level embedded GPU), the CPU is a MONSTER quad-core beast. The downside is battery life – it stinks. 3 hrs max .. if you are working it hard much less.

The Future

So with Dell’s new XPS 13 Skylake 9350 AND with a $100 rebate from MS I had to buy-in again. It’s just too nice of a footprint/screen/battery life to pass up. I love my Galago, but I love battery life when I don’t need the horsepower.

The Problem

Only problem is I didn’t want to run windows on it. MS was kind enough to give me $100 discount through a Christmas 2015 promotion, but I’m a linux guy and windows just isn’t as good for me. Problem is Dell’s Sputnik program doesn’t have everything worked out yet since Skylake is still fairly new and the drivers are only now in the 4.4 kernels which, as of this writing, are still in release candidate phase.

But never fear, here’s what I did to get it running!
NOTE: You’ll need a machine that DOES have internet access to do the below steps to copy the file to a thumb drive or other medium to transfer

Put Ubuntu 15.10 on a thumb drive (get it here)

Follow these steps on this wiki to download a custom 4.3 kernel

If you don’t want to go to that link, download the custom 4.3 kernel by clicking this
Go to terminal and change to directory you downloaded the file
Enter the following

tar jxf xps13_9350_kernel.tar.bz2
sudo chown root:root brcmfmac4350-pcie.bin BCM-0a5c-6412.hcd
sudo mv -t /lib/firmware/brcm/ BCM-0a5c-6412.hcd brcmfmac4350-pcie.bin
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.3.0-wifitest-custom_4.3.0-wifitest-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb linux-image-4.3.0-wifitest-custom_4.3.0-wifitest-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

Reboot and enjoy (NOTE: there is an issue with this 4.3 kernel where there is some static that comes from the speaker, this is more noticeable with headphones plugged in.)

I have had great luck with the above. I’m quite positive that I’ll have better luck with an official kernel and especially 4.4, but until then I’m not taking any kernel updates but do take all the other updates that ubuntu pushes.

Alternative

An alternative is to just buy an intel wifi device (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GUNZUG0) and be done with it. 🙂

Also…

No matter what you do above (custom kernel or new wifi device) make sure you update from the X synaptic driver to the libinput X driver – it’s MUCH better.

Use these steps on a previous post.

libinput and ubuntu 15.10 + 16.04

Why is there an issue?

One area that X has really fallen down on is the driver for the touchpad. It’s passable if you tweak it .. but why settle for passable? Shouldn’t the open source world have a KILLER touchpad implementation ala OSX?

For a very brief time I owned a Macbook Air and that’s the single biggest thing I miss about that hardware – Apple completely NAILED their touchpad feel. It feels natural and like an extension of your hand/fingers. You NEVER are frustrated with it.

…in steps libinput

You can read about libinput gory details on the projects wiki page. The long and short of it is that with wayland maturing and with the touchpad driver tightly coupled with xorg (and not very good or modern) there was a need for a better designed driver. Peter Hutterer (who-t) and some others have spearheaded this effort and have something quite polished and ready to show for it. And the best thing is you can run it as the driver within xorg!!!! This means you don’t have to run wayland OR Mir to enjoy your cake NOW!!! CAKE!!!

How do I run it!?

If you are running ubuntu 15.10 or 16.04, I answered the question on askubuntu. I’m not sure the steps on other distributions …

I also imagine this won’t be fully integrated into Ubuntu system configurations until Mir is integrated (i.e. natural scrolling checkbox, increase/decrease double click time/other tweaks via the Control Panel). Canonical has announced that they intend on utilizing libinput, I hope this is still true – it would be lovely if this integrated into the Control Panel in 15.10 if you install libinput – for now follow my directions on askubuntu (link above) and adjust the text file to add PalmDetection and Tapping.

Enjoy!!