Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 10:25:55 BST Ralph Corderoy wrote: > On your laptop at the pub last night I edited /etc/default/grub to > change true to false for GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER. And then run > `update-grub'. All sudo'd. > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup#line-237 And there hangs a tale ;-( In the stock Kubuntu installation (and I assume on Ubuntu as well), that line doesn't even exist, let alone be set to true. Last evening and this morning, I've been pondering why Dell set that flag at all. I'm assuming that this was to protect their support staff from people ringing them up and trying to get problems solved when the default shipped version had been upgraded or superseded with a dual-boot, as I had done. However, there are two arguments against that. First, anyone who installs an extra distro will find it working perfectly at first because update-grub will have been run by the new distro's installer not by the shipped distro. That all works fine until the shipped distro has another kernel update, as happened a week or so ago. Now grub-update ignores the new distro's partition and the user is left wondering why it has broken. As with myself, this might only be discovered weeks after the kernel update that triggered the problem. The second argument against that is that Dell are not supporting Ubuntu on this machine anyway; only W10, so they created a problem for their users for absolutely no purpose whatsoever. So the message here is, no matter how good the reviews are (and they are good), don't be tempted into buying a Linux Laptop from Dell. They are not providing anything like the same level of support that a Windows user gets, but they charge a premium price. It is a nice laptop, but I'd have been better off by the Windows one and dual-booting that. Anyway, thanks Ralph for sorting it out for me. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, On your laptop at the pub last night I edited /etc/default/grub to change true to false for GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER. And then run `update-grub'. All sudo'd. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup#line-237 -- Cheers, Ralph. https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Tuesday, 4 October 2016 19:22:04 BST Tim wrote: > I downloaded this boot dvd the last time I had an issue with grub > > http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/ > > It scanned the disk found the two disk with the two distro on, offered > me a solution and when I agreed it wrote me a new grub, worked > perfectly. Don't know if it will work for your or not terry. Thanks for the link Tim, I had actually tried that (it is included on the Parted Magic live disc). It allowed me to boot into the lost partition, but didn't seem to offer a repair tool. Maybe that wasn't included in the Parted Magic version of the tool, because the full PM toolset includes a boot repair tool (which didn't work for me). Ralph sorted it out for me last night at the Meeting. I'm glad he did (more about that later), because if I had fixed it with a tool such as Super Grub2, I would never have known *why* it broke in the first place. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 15:06:34 BST John Carlyle-Clarke wrote: > This thread is a little depressing because at work I was given a brand new > 15" MacBook Pro on arrival which is very lovely I suppose, but I hate it. > It seems that installing Linux on it (other than in a VM) is not allowed, > and besides I get the impression it won't work very well. It seems that > many people have Dell's with Linux, usually self installed over Windows. I > was thinking of asking if I could swap for a Dell, and the > developer edition ones are the obvious choices. However, the more you look > at them the more you see the potential problems. I hate the idea of buying > a Windows one and taking pot luck on Linux to run well on it but that may > be no worse. I think things will gradually become less depressing. Kernel version 4.8 (released at the weekend )and notwithstanding the bug that was only noticed by Linus afterwards)), together with versions 4.4, 4.5 etc bring more support for the Touchscreen and the Skylake processor. Out of the box the XPS-13 Developer Edition gave appalling benchmark results compared to an ancient laptop that Paul brought to a Meeting a few months ago. The kernel version in Ubuntu 14.04 is 3.19, which has zero Skylake support. When I installed Kubuntu 16.04, the benchmark results shot up (that has kernel Version 4.4). When I booted into the latest version of Parted Magic the benchmark results were even better (kernel Version 4.5). In addition, Dell include about half a dozen proprietary drivers that provide Touchscreen support (you can use it as a graphics tablet of a sort). With the standard Ubuntu 14.04 (from the Ubuntu website), the Touchscreen hardly worked at all. In Kubuntu 16.04, the Touchscreen works pretty well but the graphics tablet functionality is still missing. I'm hoping that the kernel will eventually support all of the Touchscreen functionality and that the graphics subsystem (whatever it ends up being) will support automatic display scaling, (like Win 10 does) because text is unreadable on a 13" screen at 3200x1800 resolution unless the fonts are all scaled up (which only works for some things). In the end I have to run the screen at 1920x1400 to make it usable, which kind of defeats the object of having a high-res display. So. As I said in my earlier post, the XPS-13 is a really nice machine, but it is let down by the total lack of support from Dell. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
Hi Terry, > This one (designated 9350) has none of that and the Restore to Factory > Defaults hot-key is not active, even though the recovery image occupies a > partition on the machine. Are you aware of Ubuntu on Dell XPS 13 9350 http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201507-18777/ If there is an issue with the information for this system, please let us know. Perhaps others have clicked that link and put up questions in the past with interesting answers. Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
Re: [Dorset] Restoring Grub on an EFI Machine
On Wednesday, 5 October 2016 17:19:54 BST Patrick Wigmore wrote: > That would fit with my experience buying a laptop from Dell, > with Ubuntu installed, in 2008. > > A year or two passed before everything in the laptop was > supported by standard Linux distributions, without Dell's > customisations. I suspect that some of the people who had > bought one ended up contributing the support for it into the > kernel (or elsewhere), to scratch their own itches. It was always this way, especially before PC vendors started supporting Linux Back in 2008 (AFAIR), Dell were only just starting to support Linux, so were probably at the other end of the process that they appear to be ending this year. My main gripe with Dell in this instance is that they actually charged more for this machine than its Windows counterpart, but provided less support. Windows customers get access to downloads of the driver, utilities and an image of the factory installation for recovery purposes. If you drill down into the Support pages for recent versions of the XPS-13 Developer Edition and other Linux laptops, they *used to* provide support. I don't recall the specific product numbers, but several have support for not one, but several versions of Ubuntu, eg 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and you can download Factory images from their website. This one (designated 9350) has none of that and the Restore to Factory Defaults hot-key is not active, even though the recovery image occupies a partition on the machine. When I naively upgraded my machine to 15.10 and thereby lost all the Dell Drivers, they were unable to tell me how to get at that recovery image or provide me with a copy of the image, even though the factory must have one. Initially, I was told that they couldn't help me because this Operating System was unsupported. In the end I took legal advice and they gave me a new machine, but they still don't support it. How not to keep your customers happy. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2016-11-01 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING Reporting bugs well: http://goo.gl/4Xue / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
