Dell XPS 13 (9370)

The Dell XPS 13 Early 2018 (9370) is the fifth-generation model of the XPS 13 line. The laptop was released in January 2018 in both a standard edition with Windows installed as well as a Developer Edition with 16.04 installed, featuring kernel 4.4 as of now. There are only minor hardware differences Device Status Modules between them, mostly in regards to the mainboard microchip manufacturers. According to Dell (https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-Develo Video Working i915 per-Systems/XPS-13-Fingerprint-reader--support/m-p/5090726/highlight/true#M7295) the fingerprint reader is not present on the Wireless Working ath10k Linux variant. Just like the older versions (9333, 9343, 9350, and 9360) it is available in different hardware configurations as well. These fifth gen models Bluetooth Working btusb includes Intel's eighth generation Kaby Lake R processors, and can be configured with up to 16GB LPDDR3 2133 MHz RAM and a 1TB PCI SSD. Unlike Audio Working snd_hda_intel previous iterations, the Wi-Fi/BT module is soldered and cannot be replaced, only the Killer 1435 (QCA6174A) is available for consumers, enterprise versions Touchpad Working hid_multitouch with the Intel 8265 modem also exist. Webcam Working ¹ uvcvideo Infrared Camera Authentication Working ? The installation process for Arch on the XPS 13 does not differ from any other PC. Although you might need to consider upgrading the SSD first if USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 Working intel_wmi_thunderbolt you have a working Windows installation (see section #Storage). For installation help, please see the Installation guide and UEFI. This page covers the Wireless switch Working intel_hid current status of hardware support on Arch, as well as post-installation recommendations. Function/Multimedia Keys Working ? ¹ The webcam works with kernel 4.17.4 or later. For earlier kernels this applies: Some users have experienced webcam firmware issues with recent models Fingerprint sensor Not working ? and there are many reports of non-functional webcams on new laptops (https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Dell-xps-13-9 370-Webcam-support/td-p/6032049). User reports indicate Dell support is responsive to replacing screens to install a webcam that uses linux-compatible UVC 1.0 Related articles rather than 1.5 firmware drivers. Dell XPS 13 (9333) Dell XPS 13 (9343) Dell XPS 13 (9350) Contents Dell XPS 13 (9360) UEFI Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9365) Content Adaptive Brightness Control Video Storage Wifi Bluetooth Keyboard Power Management Firmware Updates Thermal Throttling Thermal Modes / Fan profiles Power Saving Touchpad Cursor Jump Sensitivity

Audio Infrared camera USB Type-C ports Fingerprint reader

UEFI

Before installing it is necessary to modify some UEFI Settings. They can be accessed by pressing the F2 key repeatedly when booting.

Change the SATA Mode from the default "RAID" to "AHCI". This will allow Linux to detect the NVME SSD. If dual booting with an existing Windows installation, Windows will not boot after the change but this can be fixed without a reinstallation (https://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-operation/). Disable secure boot to allow Linux to boot. To boot from a USB device attached via the USB-C to USB-A adapter included in the box, you'll need to enable Thunderbolt boot. Once enabled, F12 on boot will enter the boot menu. It is also possible to use the right USB-C port directly without any UEFI adjustment.

Booting and installing from a microSD card is also possible, as long as SD Card and SD Card Boot are both enabled in the UEFI setup.

Content Adaptive Brightness Control

In the XPS 13 the display panels (both FHD and 4K UHD) come with Content Adaptive Brightness Control (usually referred to as CABC or DBC) enabled by default. While disabling required flashing the display firmware in previous generations, DBC can now be disabled in recent BIOS versions. To test if DBS is enabled, go to this test page (https://tylerwatt12.com/dc/).

Video

The video should work with the i915 driver of the current linux (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=linux) kernel. Consult Intel graphics for a detailed installation and configuration guide as well as for Intel graphics#Troubleshooting.

If you have the 4K (3840x2160) model, also check out HiDPI for UI scaling configurations.

Note that the enable_psr=1 kernel parameter appears not to work properly, at least on the touchscreen model.

Some user support requests indicate that currently-shipping 9370 models may bundle webcams that use UVC 1.5 firmware rather than 1.0 (https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Dell-xps-13- 9370-Webcam-support/td-p/6032049), which was not supported prior to kernel 4.17.4 (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/diff/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_video.c?id= v4.17.4&id2=v4.17.3).

For me the system seems to freeze sometime which is due to enable_psr=1, you can either disable enable_psr=0 where you will loose battery life but get no freezes, or enable_psr=2 where you save battery life like enable_psr=1 but without any freezes. enable_psr=1 maximizes batterylife but for me gives the system freezes, hopefully this will get fixed in the future.

To do so with sudo create a file /etc/modprobe.d/1915.conf:

options i915 enable_psr=2

Some other options that save battery life are:

options i915 enable_psr=2 enable_rc6=7 enable_fbc=1 semaphores=1 lvds_downclock=1 enable_guc_loading=1 enable_guc_submission=1

Storage

The nvme SSD is a Toshiba KXG50ZNV256G, KXG50ZNV512G or KXG50ZNV1T02. The stock firmware version AADA4102 has severe problems when the ssd enters the lowest power state. This results in a unresponsive device (kernel complains about read-only filesystem) The problems can occur any time, but seem to have become way more common on Kernel 4.18 on battery power. Firmware Version AADA4105 (https://www.dell.com/support/home/u s/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=c0pf8) seems to fix the problem. The firmware is available for Windows only but can be updated under Linux at your own risk (https://gist.github.com/klingtnet/22ab0b9 07e2d9d20f98c72c93ea5dd37#gistcomment-2830279).

Note : On some devices, the nvme SSD can be a SK hynix EJ82N00301190264W (1TB) and not a Toshiba one

As the upgrade is only possible under windows and as even with upgraded driver the disk may be completely undetected by the kernel because of the SSD not being responsive in the deepest sleep mode. The following kernel parameter works as a workaround, preventing the disk to enter the problematic sleep mode (see Solid state drive/NVMe):

nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=6000

Note : NVMe SSD should not be issued discards :Solid state drive/NVMe#Discards

Wifi

The Wifi adapter contains a Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 module. It should work out of the box with the ath10k_pci driver in recent linux (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=linux) kernels.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth adapter sometimes becomes unavailable after waking up from suspend and can even stay deactivated and invisible after a warm reboot. End of October 2018 a kernel patch was announced by Dell (https://www.d ell.com/community/Linux-Developer-Systems/XPS-13-9370-no-bluetooth-after-suspend/m-p/6204559#M8744). However the issue appears to remain unresolved for at least some users.

Keyboard

The keyboard backlight has a feature that makes it automatically turn off after a given timeout. This timeout can be adjusted by writing into /sys/class/leds/dell\:\:kbd_backlight/stop_timeout . For example, echo "5m" > /sys/class/leds/dell\:\:kbd_backlight/stop_timeout

This would set the timeout to 5 minutes. Note that different timeouts are maintained when the machine is connected to AC and when it's running from battery. Before BIOS 1.4.0 there was an issue (https://github.com/dell/libs mbios/issues/48) that prevented the user from changing the timeout on AC. A kernel workaround was added in 4.18 and it was eventually fixed by BIOS 1.4.0.

Power Management

If the laptop seems to have an high drain when in sleep mode. As a possible workaround, you can set the machine to enter S3 deep sleep mode. Add quiet mem_sleep_default=deep to the Kernel parameters.

According to the manufacturer (see this upstream kernel bug (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199689)), the machine uses S2 intentionally instead of S3, and they are working towards fixing the power drain on S2.

Note: on older BIOS and/or kernel versions the power button cannot be used to wake the laptop from sleep (https://www.spinics.net/lists/platform-driver-x86/msg15644.html). In this case the Sleep button (Fn + End, or just End if you have Fn lock enabled) can still wake up the machine. This has been fixed by a BIOS update.

Firmware Updates

Dell provides firmware updates via Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). Refer to Flashing BIOS from Linux#fwupd for additional information. A package is readily available at fwupd (https://www.archlinux.org/pack ages/?name=fwupd). Updates are provided for the Thunderbolt controller as well. There is an issue (https://github.com/dell/thunderbolt-nvm-linux/issues/10) where the Thunderbolt version number is detected as 00.00 after reflashing (currently being investigated).

Dell has also released updates to the SSD firmware, but these can only be updated from Windows, not from Linux.

Thermal Throttling

By default thermal throttling activates around 80C resulting in maximum sustained CPU frequency around 2.4Ghz, much lower than in Dell's standard Windows installation.

Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 971)

This can be resolved using -throttling-fix-git (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lenovo-throttling-fix-git/)AUR. Despite originally conceived to resolve the same issue with Lenovo laptops, it works with the XPS 9370 (and should work well with other Skylake or newer laptops).

Thermal Modes / Fan profiles

Just like in Windows by using Dell Power Manager you can set the thermal configuration and behaviour of the fans and CPU of your machine. This is done within a terminal with the commands below, or alternatively via a KDE Plasma widget (https://store.kde.org/p/1282623):

To find out what thermal mode is set type:

# smbios-thermal-ctl -g

To find all available thermal modes type:

# smbios-thermal-ctl -i

And finally to set the desired thermal mode that you identified with the command before type:

# smbios-thermal-ctl --set-thermal-mode=THERMAL_MODE

"Quiet" profile limits CPU power to 11W (18W boost) and thus reduces overall system performance. "Balanced" and "Performance" profiles remove this limit. Thermal profile changes may not reliably alter the CPU power limit. When connected via Thunderbolt dock it appears to be worse. In some circumstances after booting (particularly with "Quiet" profile), power may be limited to 10W. Disconnecting and reconnecting power, changing thermal profile, or simply waiting may resolve these issues.

Power Saving

To save more battery use TLP package AND/OR Powertop.

You can monitor the used power and also the temperature of your machine with the s-tui (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/s-tui/)AUR tool.

Touchpad

Cursor Jump

The touchpad can sometimes produce a "cursor jump". Sometimes this is detected and worked around by libinput, resulting in a similar journal entry: libinput error: event12 - DELL07E6:00 06CB:76AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.

There is a libinput bug about this (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/issues/36) where the conclusion was that this is probably a hardware issue or a bug in the kernel driver.

Sensitivity

By default, the libinput driver might not have the desired sensitivity. The acceleration can be changed via xinput as follows:

xinput --set-prop $(xinput | grep 'DELL.*Touchpad' | awk '{print $6}' | sed 's/id=//g') 'libinput Accel Speed' 0.5

Audio

Works correctly, but the audio controller cannot figure out what kind of device is plugged into the jack on its own. For this reason the desktop environment (eg. Gnome) will pop up a dialog where you can choose if it was a headset, or microphone, etc.

Infrared camera

The infrared camera can be used as an authentication method with howdy (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/howdy/)AUR

Warning: As said in howdy documentation, "DO NOT USE HOWDY AS THE SOLE AUTHENTICATION METHOD FOR YOUR SYSTEM."

After installing howdy, you should edit the configuration file to set the good camera for XPS 13 9370: /dev/video2. The file is located at /lib/security/howdy/config.ini . The device should be configured like this : device_id = 2 .

Note: On the device where I tested this, the infrared camera was /dev/video2. To test if it is the right one for you, just run fswebcam test.png --device /dev/video2 to check if the video source is the infrared one. An output file test.png will be generated. If it looks like an infrared image, you are ready to go.

To check if howdy is correctly reading your camera and detecting your face, just run # howdy test . If your face is detected, just follow the normal setup instructions provided in the wiki page : howdy.

If it is not working, you probably need to apply the fix provided here: GitHub: Error when trying to use IR sensors on Manjaro (Arch-based) (https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/issues/70#issuecomment-4391236 21)

USB Type-C ports

The 9370 has only three Type-C ports (and no other ports, just an audio jack). Two of these (on the left side) support Thunderbolt 3. There is no power jack. A 45 W USB Type-C charger is included in the box. Any of the three Type-C ports can be used for charging. Since the laptop has no USB-A ports, one Dell-branded Type-C to A adapter is included.

Also all three Type-C ports support DisplayPort alternate mode. It is taken care of by the firmware, so it will work even with older kernels that do not otherwise support it. To the it appears as if the laptop had two DisplayPort connectors (in addition to the embedded DP that the internal screen uses). So far I've tested the following adapters. All of these will appear to the operating system as if you plugged something into one of the DP connectors.

Club3D Type-C to DisplayPort 1.2 adapter (https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2350/usb_3.1_type_c_to_displayport_1.2/) (tested with 1080p and 4K, both work at 60 Hz) Dell Type-C to VGA adapter (https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-adapter-usb-c-to-vga/apd/470-abnc/pc-accessories) (tested with 1080p at 60 Hz) Dell Type-C to HDMI adapter (https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-adapter-usb-c-to-hdmi/apd/470-abmz/pc-accessories) (tested with 1080p and 4K, both work at 60 Hz) Moshi USB-C to HDMI Adapter (https://www.moshi.com/en/product/usb-c-to-hdmi-adapter/silver) (tested with 1080p and 4K, both work at 60 Hz) FAILED Cable Matters model 201048 USB-C Multiport (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M0K0DL2) Ethernet, USB, and power delivery work. Video works, if connected at boot or if HDMI is plugged in last. Did not work if HDMI is already plugged into adapter when adapter is plugged into computer. Or, if computer fell asleep, monitor sometimes did not wake up. Both problems are fixable, by unplugging and replugging the HDMI connector. (Dell U2415 monitor at 1920x1200, Antergos 19.1, Linux kernel 4.20, System firmware 0.1.6.3, Thunderbolt Controller 33.00)

Fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader is not supported. There is a libfprint feature request (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint/issues/43).

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This page was last edited on 7 February 2019, at 08:15.

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