XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 Driver/setup help

[organist1958]

Hello All,
First post here...I have wanted to start using Linux for a long time, but I am unfortunately constrained to Windows by software requirements. I recently set up a dual boot with Parrot Security and Windows 11 on my XPS 13 9310 2-in-1, and I am very impressed thus far. However I have had some issues with drivers that I have not been able to resolve despite quite a bit of time spent searching online:

the touchpad: aside from 2 finger tap and scroll, there is no multi-touch gesture support at all.

Keyboard: for some reason the backlight thinks it should be on all the time. The button assigned to it in the function row works just fine to turn it off, but it turns itself back on in very short order.

Fingerprint reader/IR camera: I have read that people have had mixed luck with the Goodix fingerprint readers on the XPS line. I have tried everything I could find with no luck. I presume support for the IR camera is nonexistent.

Any help/suggestions much appreciated.

 

[organist1958]

anyone? nothing?

 

[dos2unix]

I have that exact model laptop. I don't use the fingerprint reader, I have it disabled in the BIOS.
I leave the keyboard back-light enabled, I turn to work in the dark a lot, so it helps.
I see no disadvantage to leaving it on.

The touchscreen works fine for me. I can scroll, zoom in/out and click buttons, that's usually
all I ever need to do.

I have read that there are some issues with the fingerprint scanner. It depends on your distro
and which DE you are using. For example a friend of mine ( he doesn't have an XPS, but he
does have a fingerprint scanner ) can get it to work in KDE, but not in Gnome.

He can get it to work in Arch and Fedora, but not in Alma or SuSE.

 

[organist1958]

The keyboard backlight is not the end of the world, it is just that I find it can suck the battery.

It seems to be treating the touchscreen as a mouse. It works, but when I go to touch, it only moves the mouse. I can click things, but I can't scroll or zoom.

I am using MATE (which I really like).

Yes, I have read of people having mixed luck with the fingerprint scanners on Dell laptops.

 

[Brickwizard]

This is a common problem found by people buying cutting edge [latest] kit, as most required drivers have to be back engineered, it could take up to a year for new drivers to become available.

From Debian wiki.
this model can be shipped with a Linux Ubuntu installed by the manufacturer, it comes with a customised (OEM) kernel and set up to get packages from specialised Canonical/DELL repositories in that case, so it shouldn't be expected that a Debian - or even a "stock" Ubuntu - will work as smooth out of the box here.

I have also seen that the latest edition of Debian dose work but still with some work required,

 

[organist1958]

That is interesting that Dell uses a customized kernel and special repositories. I suppose it makes sense though.

I suppose there isn't too much I can do at the moment, but I will continue doing some research to see if I can find anything else.