HCL - Dell XPS 15 9560

[Stefan Schlott]

Hi,

installed Qubes 3.2 on my new laptop. After some initial problems, it
seems to be working great!

After installing from the ISO image, the graphics driver was working
fine (at least I remember it this way), only suspend to RAM crashed the
machine. I updated all packages (fedora template and dom0), and after a
reboot, X used the framebuffer driver and did not detect the Intel
graphics chip :-(

Both problems were solved by enabling the qubes-dom0-unstable repo and
updating the dom0 kernel to the version provided there. Intel VGA and
Suspend to RAM are working fine now.


The nvidia chip (GTX 1050) is not supported by the nouveau driver, and I
didn't go through the pain (not to speak of the security concerns) of
manually installing the latest proprietary driver from nVidia on dom0.


Suspend to RAM seems to have some problem with the WLAN driver, though.
After some suspend cycles, WLAN won't come up again. I put the driver
ath10k_pci to the suspend-module-blacklist, I think this did the trick.


Stefan.

[Mike Keehan]

Hi Stefan,

I too have a new XPS-15 9560, but I can't install Qubes. The laptop
boots the installer into terminal mode - the graphics installer does
not come up at all.

Did you have to do anything special to get the graphical installer
running?

Cheers,

Mike.

[Stefan Schlott]

On 02/20/2017 12:35 PM, Mike Keehan wrote:

> I too have a new XPS-15 9560, but I can't install Qubes. The laptop
> boots the installer into terminal mode - the graphics installer does
> not come up at all.
>
> Did you have to do anything special to get the graphical installer
> running?

Hmm, obviously I've been lucky - I just put the Qubes 3.2 ISO on a USB
stick, booted it, and everything worked fine.

I remember making one modification in the BIOS settings: I set the HD
mode to AHCI (default was set to RAID), I thought something more
standard-esqe might be of advantage ;-)


Stefan.

[Alchemist]

Were you able to disable the Nvidia in BIOS?

[Stefan Schlott]

On 02/20/2017 06:18 PM, Alchemist wrote:

> Were you able to disable the Nvidia in BIOS?

I didn't try to. Is there a BIOS option? If so, I missed it.


Stefan.

[Alchemist]

There used to be (in previous models), sadly if you couldn't find it I suspect Dell may have removed it.

[Mystic Buyer]

Hey Stefan,

I recently installed qubes 3.2 on my xps 15. Did almost similar things in bios before booting off of the usb. Installed perfectly and everything worked fine.

However, after updating dom0 things seem to have turned to worse. The graphics have taken a hit and I can observe serious lag. Did you face similar glitches?
Could find any solutions to it? Please do share your solutions if you happened to have solved the issue. Thanks

Shashank

[3...@arctop.co]

> However, after updating dom0 things seem to have turned to worse. The graphics have taken a hit and I can observe serious lag. Did you face similar glitches?

I think you should upgrade the kernel to 4.8, use:
sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-unstable kernel kernel-qubes-vm --best --allowerasing
(source: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/software-update-dom0/)

[Stefan Schlott]

On 04/30/2017 06:19 AM, Mystic Buyer wrote:

> I recently installed qubes 3.2 on my xps 15. Did almost similar things in bios before booting off of the usb. Installed perfectly and everything worked fine.
>
> However, after updating dom0 things seem to have turned to worse. The graphics have taken a hit and I can observe serious lag. Did you face similar glitches?
> Could find any solutions to it? Please do share your solutions if you happened to have solved the issue.

Sorry to hear that. No, I cant' provide any hints - I did the above
mentioned and it's working fine.

The only update I have is that WLAN and Suspend to RAM is still
unstable, after something between 10 to 20 suspends I'll have to reboot
to get my WLAN back.


Stefan.

[Alchemist]

I just grabbed a new xps15 and the installer is falling back to text mode. I'm not sure why we're getting different results on the same computers. Anyone have any ideas?

[Slideshowbob]

Try to add
nouveau.modeset=0
to the kernel options. That's just a wild guess but worth a try (worked for me when the installer kept failing).

ssb

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[Mike Keehan]

Use EFI boot with the usb install stick, not legacy bios.

[Alchemist]

... I know I should know better, but how do I do that on this installer?

[cooloutac]

after it installs already and if you can get grub press e button and put nomodeset in kernel line to see if it boot.

[David Nogueira]

Thanks for the work Stefan.

- Any chance anyone has the 4k screen? I am having issues setting a lower resolution than 4k or working with HiDPI overall, what were your approaches?

- Also any luck in being able to set brightness levels?

thanks,
David

[Eric]

On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 12:16:35 AM UTC-8, Stefan wrote:

Thanks for the info! I've been eyeing this hardware as Qubes 4 becomes visible on the horizon - ordering through Dell allows for customizing things to a great degree. I was able to spec out a 1TB SSD, i7 processor, and no fingerprint reader or QHD screen, to save battery and power options! pretty cheap, too - just under 2K with 16GB of RAM.

For future reference, because I couldn't find the info anywhere, this machine supposedly has a TPM 2.0 chip (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/Dell-XPS-15-9560-Laptop/91076TJJ2WFB/FD4C).

Have you been able to get AEM working? And, how is your battery life? It sounds like the Killer AC chip is working ok, since it's just a rebranded Atheros chipset, other than the standby issue - can you confirm?

[Eric]

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017 at 5:16:52 AM UTC-7, Eric wrote:
> Thanks for the info! I've been eyeing this hardware as Qubes 4 becomes visible on the horizon - ordering through Dell allows for customizing things to a great degree. I was able to spec out a 1TB SSD, i7 processor, and no fingerprint reader or QHD screen, to save battery and power options! pretty cheap, too - just under 2K with 16GB of RAM.
>
> For future reference, because I couldn't find the info anywhere, this machine supposedly has a TPM 2.0 chip (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/Dell-XPS-15-9560-Laptop/91076TJJ2WFB/FD4C).
>
> Have you been able to get AEM working? And, how is your battery life? It sounds like the Killer AC chip is working ok, since it's just a rebranded Atheros chipset, other than the standby issue - can you confirm?

Some follow up, since I've been attempting to ascertain whether or not the discrete GPU can be disabled completely: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_15_9560

Does not appear so, which is a shame - significant power draw from that even when idle, and according to everything I can find, there are NO options to disable the discrete GPU in BIOS.

However, if you're comfortable with dumping and rewriting the BIOS slightly, it seems like there might be a way to disable it. This guy's trying to disable the *integrated* graphics, but he claims that tweaking a certain bit completely removes the ability for windows to see the card.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-9560-disabling-integrated-graphics.806855/#post-10563153

probably no easy way to check, but, does blacklisting the noveau driver prevent the GPU from coming online *at all* ??

[Stefan Schlott]

On 08/02/2017 02:16 PM, Eric wrote:

> Have you been able to get AEM working?

Haven't tried.

> And, how is your battery life?

Never used a stopwatch ;-) A little less than 4 hrs, I guess.

> It sounds like the Killer AC chip is working ok, since it's just a rebranded Atheros chipset, other than the standby issue - can you confirm?

WLAN ist working fine, and since the last kernel updates the problems
seem to have gone almost completely away. I'm fully rebooting the laptop
perhaps every 2 weeks, and most of the time due to a kernel update (or
running out of battery).


Stefan.

[rahimda...@gmail.com]

How do update kernel someone please help me. Installer has finished but it won't load up qubeos it's giving me failed to start load kernel modules. Has big red failed next to it. No idea what to do.

[eriked...@gmail.com]

Hi!

I also have a Dell XPS 15 9560, and I had the same issue with WLAN and Suspend to RAM. I updated to the unstable kernel, as suggested. Since the last update I made I haven't experienced this problem (for a few weeks now). Unless there's some other reason the issue was resolved, it seems like the latest kernel update fixed it.

My kernel is 4.9.56-21.pvops.qubes.x86_64, date Oct 17.

Erik

[placehol...@gmail.com]

Hey Mike,

I am having the same issue as you described. Attempting to install 3.2 or 4.0 on a usb and it fails to start X. On 3.2 it just straight fails to start, on 4.0 it starts but then goes into a 'soft lockup' and then crashes. Anything you specifically did to resolve the issue? My bios is the latest available from Dell (1.6.2 I believe).If i choose to 'test this install' I can get to the sceeen where i see the qubes logo and the loading bar at the bottom but it just stays there forever and never does anything?

[Mike Keehan]

I had to add the option "modprobe.blacklist=nouveau" to the kernel
boot line in xen.cfg.

(I ended up binary editing the iso file before writing it to a usb
stick. I think there is an easier way, but I couldn't figure it out).

Mike.

[placehol...@gmail.com]

Alright, I'll test that option out and see if I can get it running. Thanks for the info!

[placehol...@gmail.com]

Upadte: Started 4.0 installation via USB and pressed tab and then typed the above cmd and enter > Everything went smooth! Thanks for help!

[Bill Carter]

Hi David,

Not sure if you still have this question, but I'll put the answer in anyway. To fix this for the 9560 UHD, put on your reading glasses and open up the Terminal Emulator for dom0. In your home directory, edit your .bash_profile and add the following three lines at the end of the file:

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode eDP-1 1920x1080_60.00
xrandr --output eDP-1 --mode 1920x1080_60.00

Finish with a "sudo reboot" and enjoy!