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).