No Display on Resume from Suspend on Dell XPS 13 (Tumbleweed was fine)

On a new Dell XPS 13 (7th gen Intel i5), the display is blank on resume from suspend. Keyboard lights are on. Just installed the new Leap 42.2 yesterday, and the problem repeats consistently. Previously, I had Tumbleweed installed and the resume worked fine.

Other issues came up for me, too, on Leap 42.2. Here’s they are, if it’s of interest to anyone. I’m not a programmer, more a tinkerer, and since all these things are fine in Tumbleweed I just reinstalled that, no Leap. Maybe the issues are related, or spring from one underlying issue, since they’re all display-related.

  1. Screen (video initiation) doesn’t work on resume from suspend. Caps lock key works, so machine is responsive otherwise. Typing password doesn’t get it going, as some suggested elsewhere.
  2. Screen brightness function keys don’t work.
  3. When windows are dragged across the screen, the motion is very jerky.

I have this laptop which is supposed to be one of the best machines for Linux. So I was disappointed Leap has these problems when Tumbleweed doesn’t. According to my computer use, and the descriptions of Leap vs Tumbleweed, Leap should be the opensuse for me. I’m not a developer, and I prefer a stable system with less frequent updates. But the overriding consideration is which option works on my machine. I’ve gone through researching fixes for similar hitches with Lubuntu on my old 2010 Toshiba netbook, which this Dell replaced, but with little kids I don’t have the time now.

If anyone has any idea of something simple I’m overlooking with Leap 42.2 on my machine, I’d love to hear it.

My inexpert view after a few years of different distributions is that with Linux the issue of what works with your particular hardware far outweighs any consideration of various distributions based on their targeted niche or usage. Like with this Leap vs Tumbleweed question for me, opensuse’s descriptions of the differences become irrelevant when only one works for me – a non-sophisticated user – out of the box. It’s an obvious point, I guess. Still, there ought to be some Linux principle which prefaces discussions of different distros and flavors, and makes it easier for newcomers to realize this before going through that familiar, tortuous process of getting a distro to work (or not work). It’s educational, that’s for sure.

You switched from tumbleweed, which has cutting edge software packages, drivers, etc., to a stable release 42.2 that does not. There are several fixes and updates necessary for the XPS series in later kernels for instance, so what did you expect was going to happen when switching to 42.2?

Just use tumbleweed.

Thank you for your kind reply.