HCL - Dell XPS 13 (9360)

[Satnam Ram]

I just installed the latest Qubes R4.0 on my XPS 13 FHD-Model (9360). It required some minor tweaking.

1. Preparation

- update your BIOS
    Version: 2.6.2   Release Date: 22 Mar 2018
- replace killer wifi with an Intel 8265 card
- apply Thunderbolt 3 Firmware Update (don't know if this was required)
- apply adaptive brightness display firmware update (only if you want/need it)

2. BIOS Settings

- change SATA Operation from "RAID On" to "AHCI"
- disable secure boot
- disable EFI (the first time the Installer froze while installing the Whonix template)
- disable Intel SpeedStep (!!!)
    If you don't the OS will run a lot slower if you start the device unplugged no matter if you
    plug it in later. I can confirm the "happy" and "unhappy" states described here:
    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/9Hqyepkp8XM
    Booting on battery was about 1min25s for me while booting with AC gave me 55s. After turning
    it off I get about 55s in both situations which is fine.

3. Qubes
- enable trackpad features
    add the Option entries to your /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf touchpad section

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "libinput"
  ->    Option "Tapping" "True"
  ->    Option "PalmDetection" "True"
  ->    Option "TappingDragLock" "True"
EndSection

---

Update:

I use Qubes for about a week now - primarily for go development with Goland, browsing and watching videos. Everything I used worked very well. The battery life is good. Video playback and similar things (using software rendering) heat up the CPU and drain considerably more power (my estimated remaining time is usually halfed). Booting takes about 1 minute (starting net, firewall and whonix qubes). Suspend to RAM works most of the time - once in a while the screen stays black after resume - this is the only bug I encountered so far but its negligible. I managed to install Kali 2018.1 after I set the system volume size to 30GB (default setting caused the kali installer to fail). I was able to expose my Intel 8265 directly to the kali hvm and put it into monitoring mode. Rising initial memory to 1GB lowers boot time for most VMs, setting a high VCPU count for VMs where you cannot afford lag helped transitioning from bare metal. I installed Steam and Factorio in a another VM and I was able to play with minor glitches (v-sync) and major cpu heat.

not tested:
- USB-C
- Webcam
- Mic (but its recognized)

[morlan...@gmail.com]

Have you had any issues with suspending? I've got a brand new XPS 13 9370 and everything is going well but when I suspend it just seems to shut off. But it seems there are a lot of issues with suspending in 4.0 so I don't know if it's the computer or the kernel.

[morlan...@gmail.com]

Oops, I just saw your update. So you're able to suspend most of the time...hm.

[dcoo...@gmail.com]

I also have a XPS 13 9370 and running the latest bios and qubes 4.0 but suspend does not work ...MORLAN, are you saying its now working ? thx

[Andrew Peel]

for those with the XPS 13 9370 do you have the Killer Wireless card - and if so, any driver issues?

[xReducksx]

Hey, wanted to say thanks for the tips. The settings you provided gave me a smooth install.

I wanted to come by and say my webcam, USB-C and MIC worked. The USB-C was a WD19S dock and at first it wasn't working except to charge my laptop. After running updates through Qubes it worked after a few reboots and has been working since. I didn't mess with it too much, it just kind of happened.

My 9360 already had an Intel network card, only has 8gb of RAM but is an i5-7300u.

Again, appreciate the post.