I had a really vexing problem with my XPS 13 9370. When I used it with an Apple USB-C to HDMI dongle or a Dell X5 dock (which has HDMI, Ethernet and some other devices), it would randomly lock-up. It wasn’t a hard lock-up (just video I think) as I could ssh to it over the network and do an orderly shutdown, though, I could not kill Xorg.

I headed over to GitHub and cloned the latest Linux 5 source, configured (with the help of /boot/config-4.15.0-1033-oem), built (takes about 15-20 minutes), and installed (you have to compress the initrd,img initially).

It’s fixed, with no side effects (for me)!

I am not a Dell fanboy. …and ordering this thing (w/ Ubuntu pre-installed) was unpleasant. …and I have no illusions of support (from India). …but it continues to be the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

In comparison to my spouse’s Mac Book, yes, it’s a little bulkier, but it’s got 3 USB-C (yes, they will all charge) ports, about the same battery life, and lacks Apple’s dodgy keyboard.

make -j8

make -j8 modules

make modules_install

mkinitramfs -c xz -o initrd.img-5.0.0-rc8+ 5.0.0-rc8+

update-grub