Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

Xabre · 2015-11-26 17:10:18

Thanks for the answer. 70°C on a heavier load sounds reasonable, and 30°C while idle is 10 to 15 degrees better than what I have on my current laptop. I think I'll definitely treat myself for New Year.

dalexandre · 2015-11-27 18:33:59

Thanks a lot for the insights given in this topic. I successfully installed my first ArchLinux on a DELL 9550 thanks to you all.

As I was getting lots of NOUVEAU errors at boot time, I installed Bumblebee to manage Optimus,
it's kind of working...

But I have huge issues with Chromium:

- rendering is very slow, a 20 pixels scroll take 2 seconds to display;
- I tried disabling the GPU accel, no differences;
- I tried running it with "optirun", not better;
- sometimes, it crash my host system: this is very bad
- chromium://gpu tells me Optimus GPU are blacklisted.

Basically the software is not usable and I'm looking for insights / similar experiences. I do not know if it's on me, or if it's Chromium. Does anyone here got Chromium working and a proper double GPU setup?

Thank you.

EDIT: Running Chromium with this command fix all my issues:

chromium --ignore-gpu-blacklist --disable-gpu-sandbox

Last edited by dalexandre (2015-11-30 10:24:09)

OdinEidolon · 2015-12-02 09:18:37

Xabre wrote:

No, you can't, Windows won't let you do it without recovery partition.
Question for owners. it's very tightly packaged, so what are your experiences with system temperatures? I know it has two fans, that should help a lot, but am curious if it's actually enough.

Thanks. According to most reviews it's very quiet and stays pretty cool under Windows.

vollekannehoschi · 2015-12-12 11:15:01

Thanks for your insights of quirks with this notebook! When it comes to battery and performance, has Arch/Linux the same problems as windows with forced downclocking of the CPUs? In all tests I read they say it clocks it down to 1.6 GHz when you unplugg the notebook and you must *reboot* to get back the full performance.

quickdry21 · 2015-12-20 07:27:52

Hi, I apologize if this is not the proper place as I'm using Ubuntu Gnome, but I'm seriously considering switching to Arch. I was wondering what you Arch users experience had been with external displays. I've been trying to get an external display working using HDMI -> HDMI and the USB-C -> DisplayPort cable from Monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=12908).

I've tried kernels: 4.2, 4.3 Ubuntu mainline, 4.3 from Ubuntu's drm-intel-nightly, 4.4 Ubuntu mainline, nvidia drivers 352, 355, 358, nvidia-prime to switch between nvidia and intel gpus, and pretty much all combinations of mentioned components. Always the same problems - on nvidia, plugging in HDMI and USB-C->DisplayPort results in x server crashing, intel results in corruption on the internal monitor usually leading to a hard lock.

If I can get external displays going on the XPS 9550 with Gnome in Arch I'm going to jump ship immediately.

yet_another_martin · 2015-12-23 13:08:26

quickdry21 wrote:

...
If I can get external displays going on the XPS 9550 with Gnome in Arch I'm going to jump ship immediately.

I'm running arch linux on my XPS15 (i7, model 2013) with my 27'' external monitor connected via display port without any problems.

I haven't been able to get bumblebee working properly, but using the intel card, everything works fine (MATE desktop).

Last edited by yet_another_martin (2015-12-23 13:09:08)

spheenik · 2015-12-23 23:41:23

Does anyone have problems with sound / headphones?
I am running linux-mainline 4.4.0-rc6 and after booting, the sound is fine. After plugging headphones however, both the speakers and the headphones go silent, and unplugging does not bring the sound back.
Only a reboot helps.

OdinEidolon · 2015-12-24 08:57:54

yet_another_martin wrote:

quickdry21 wrote:
...
If I can get external displays going on the XPS 9550 with Gnome in Arch I'm going to jump ship immediately.
I'm running arch linux on my XPS15 (i7, model 2013) with my 27'' external monitor connected via display port without any problems.
I haven't been able to get bumblebee working properly, but using the intel card, everything works fine (MATE desktop).

Mind that's the older XPS machine, which bears no resemblance to the new 9550.

spheenik · 2015-12-24 10:24:45

@ZombiMeat: Your sound is working even after plugging headphones?

ZombieMeat · 2015-12-28 21:26:39

spheenik wrote:

@ZombiMeat: Your sound is working even after plugging headphones?

I used the stable kernel version(4.2.5-1) which doesn't have a problem, but it doesn't work with the mic on my machine though. The kernel in testing(4.3.3-2), which is what I'm using right now, is also fine, and mic is also working just fine (even for headphone mic).

I am using a pulseaudio setup with pavucontrol installed.

BTW, the kernel in testing have troubles with the touchpad: It may not recognize it on startup; rebooting helps.

ZombieMeat · 2015-12-28 21:33:27

quickdry21 wrote:

...
I've been trying to get an external display working using HDMI -> HDMI and the USB-C -> DisplayPort cable from Monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=12908).
...
If I can get external displays going on the XPS 9550 with Gnome in Arch I'm going to jump ship immediately.

I don't know about the USB-C -> DP cable as I don't have one to test, but I can guarantee you that the HDMI cable will work like a charm. I'm using it on a daily basis without any problem.

ZombieMeat · 2015-12-28 21:41:31

vollekannehoschi wrote:

Thanks for your insights of quirks with this notebook! When it comes to battery and performance, has Arch/Linux the same problems as windows with forced downclocking of the CPUs? In all tests I read they say it clocks it down to 1.6 GHz when you unplugg the notebook and you must *reboot* to get back the full performance.

On mine, running on battery have no effect on the frequency scheduling and can still give me ~3GHz on all cores. If it is a BIOS problem, as what people in reddit are suggesting, it is likely that linux doesn't communicate with BIOS in the way windows does to enter a more conservative mode of operation, so that this bug is not triggered.

stephane · 2015-12-29 17:19:11

With kernel 4.3.3, most problems with touchpad seems to be gone after adding

blacklist i2c_hid

in /etc/modprobe.d/

Also, in my case the kernel command line option
acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux i915.preliminary_hw_support=1
does not seems to be needed to get brigtness keyboard buttons working.

However system hang for several seconds at boot and dmesg show the following trace error : http://pastebin.com/hmRy1WWB

Last edited by stephane (2015-12-29 18:22:09)

moesi · 2016-01-08 13:04:36

I never used Bumblebee, so is the switching betweeen the GPUs working on the XPS?

ZombieMeat wrote:

My new xps just got in two days ago, and I've immediately started putting Arch dual booting with windows on this nice machine. Arch rocks! Most issues are resolved!
The spec I have is: New XPS 15, i7, 16GB, 84WHr, FHD.

Oh my god, in Austria i can't find this setup. We get FHD only with the i5.
Where did you buy yours? (Are they shipping to europe?)

ZombieMeat · 2016-01-13 22:59:44

moesi wrote:

I never used Bumblebee, so is the switching betweeen the GPUs working on the XPS?
Oh my god, in Austria i can't find this setup. We get FHD only with the i5.
Where did you buy yours? (Are they shipping to europe?)

Switching is definitely working, Just somehow using discrete graphic sometimes performs worse than integrated. I only tried using wine to play heroes of the storm though.

Aw, that is too bad. I brought it from Dell US and I don't think they will ship to Europe.

NonErucaSciencie · 2016-01-14 02:20:10

Hi, I'm running a similar setup on an Asus k501UX with a skylake cpu (i7 6500U) and HD 520 graphics. I can't even get the laptop to output onto the screen after GRUB unless I put:

i915.modeset=0

Did you experience similar blank screen issues with the integrated graphics on kernel 4.3.3 with your Dell? If so, how did you fix them? Any help is greatly appreciated.

moesi · 2016-01-14 08:03:17

Thx, i ordered already the i5-FHD version. Should arrive the next 2 weekes. It seamed that they would have shipped from US, but if theres any trouble i think i go better with "local" support.

NonErucaSciencie wrote:

Hi, I'm running a similar setup on an Asus k501UX with a skylake cpu (i7 6500U) and HD 520 graphics. I can't even get the laptop to output onto the screen after GRUB unless I put:
i915.modeset=0
Did you experience similar blank screen issues with the integrated graphics on kernel 4.3.3 with your Dell? If so, how did you fix them? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Maybe the XPS13 is more similar to your speccs: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=205147

OdinEidolon · 2016-01-14 08:19:32

ZombieMeat wrote:

Switching is definitely working, Just somehow using discrete graphic sometimes performs worse than integrated. I only tried using wine to play heroes of the storm though.

That's weird. This is with the open driver, right?

OdinEidolon · 2016-01-20 10:22:12

It occurred to me that the default "RAID" setting the the BIOS may be connected to Intel RST. Does the Dell XPS 15 9550 use Intel RST to couple the HDD and the small SSD cache? If so, it should be accessible with CTRL+I at boot. Can anyone check this? I still didn't get my XPS, despite ordering it in november with the promise of a christmas delivery...

ZombieMeat · 2016-01-20 18:56:13

OdinEidolon wrote:

That's weird. This is with the open driver, right?

Ha! The game automatically changed the graphics setting when I use the discrete card. However optirun do seem to have problems, I'm using primusrun right now.

vise890 · 2016-01-22 23:27:27

Just a heads up, I found that setting the kernel parameter

acpi_backlight=vendor

was causing the brightness to "wrap around" (i.e., screen was brightest at ~60% and then it got dimmer). I changed the kernel param to

acpi_backlight=native

and it's working much better for me...

Last edited by vise890 (2016-01-22 23:53:58)

SmailkO · 2016-01-29 21:32:32

If you have problems with Bumblebee and graphics
1. Install linux-mainline
2. Install nvidia-beta-dkms
3. Install bbswitch-dkms
4. 1) Upgrade to testing (selectively downloading the new linux, bbswitch and nvidia packages might work as well).
2) In /etc/mkinitcpio.conf I changed the MODULES var to:
MODULES="i915 bbswitch"
and did the usual
# mkinitcpio -p linux-mainline
3) In /etc/default/grub I added:
rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1
to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. My guess is that this one is crucial to get it running, as it was suggested by bumblebee devs.
And of course:
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
4) In my /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf under [optirun] I changed the bridge method to:
Bridge=virtualgl
and of course the usual things like setting the Driver under [bumblebeed] to nvidia.
Manually overriding the bridge method on demand via "optirun -b primus" still works of course.
5) In /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia i set the BusID of my NVIDIA card (lspci | grep VGA | grep NVIDIA):
BusID "PCI:01:00:0"
Aaaaand it's working nicely. smile

Last edited by SmailkO (2016-01-29 23:56:39)

vise890 · 2016-01-29 22:10:11

SmailkO wrote:

If you have problems with Bumblebee and graphics
1. Install linux-mainline

.. as in 4.5rc1?

SmailkO · 2016-01-29 23:57:26

vise890 wrote:

SmailkO wrote:
If you have problems with Bumblebee and graphics
1. Install linux-mainline
.. as in 4.5rc1?

I installed the latest one, it solved problems with nvme and crypt, and works fine on skylake

vise890 · 2016-02-02 22:57:16

Hmm.. so I've installed 4.4 from testing, added the modules to the initramfs but still no luck.

Using glmark2-git to benchmark the cards, i still get a lower score for nvidia than that of the integrated intel...

Arch Linux

#26 2015-11-26 17:10:18

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#27 2015-11-27 18:33:59

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#28 2015-12-02 09:18:37

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#29 2015-12-12 11:15:01

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#30 2015-12-20 07:27:52

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#31 2015-12-23 13:08:26

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#32 2015-12-23 23:41:23

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#33 2015-12-24 08:57:54

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#34 2015-12-24 10:24:45

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#35 2015-12-28 21:26:39

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#36 2015-12-28 21:33:27

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#37 2015-12-28 21:41:31

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#38 2015-12-29 17:19:11

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#39 2016-01-08 13:04:36

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#40 2016-01-13 22:59:44

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#41 2016-01-14 02:20:10

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#42 2016-01-14 08:03:17

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#43 2016-01-14 08:19:32

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#44 2016-01-20 10:22:12

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#45 2016-01-20 18:56:13

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#46 2016-01-22 23:27:27

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#47 2016-01-29 21:32:32

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#48 2016-01-29 22:10:11

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#49 2016-01-29 23:57:26

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

#50 2016-02-02 22:57:16

Re: Arch on New XPS 15(Late 2015)

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