# Dell XPS 13

This page is a work in progress.

# Installation

Installation largely runs smoothly. See below for potential problems.

## Booting the install media

Booting from the install media runs with almost no issues. If the screen corrupts, append nomodeset to the kernel parameters. I had some issues with the cord of my external optical drive functioning weirdly, but I suspect it's specific to my device.

## Partitioning

By default, this computer comes with an MBR with all four partitions already used. Additionally, I have read that if you delete any of the partitions, the boot process will break. (I can confirm this, although for obvious reasons, I only tested it once.) Therefore, a dual-boot with Windows is impossible on this machine, although just Arch would probably be fine. One solution could be booting from a permanent USB installation. However, that has its caveats too. See the next section.

## BIOS and USB keys

Unfortunately, if you install to a USB key and select GPT instead of an MBR, the BIOS will fail to boot with "operation system not found", even of you use the hack where you set the boot flag in the protective MBR.

So far I have tried upgrading the BIOS, which did nothing. I still have more experiments to run before I conclude that this configuration is impossible.

# Post-installation

## Screen brightness

On a stock install, the screen brightness does not work. When you use the function keys, the change is recognized by the system (if you have an indicator or something for brightness it will change), but this will have zero effect on the actual screen brightness.

Try adding the following udev rule.

     /etc/udev/rules.d/40-brightness.rules

    ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="intel_backlight", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", ATTR{brightness}="0"

This should make your brightness controllable via ACPI through `/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness` If the function keys or echoing brightness values into the above continue to do nothing or cause uncontrolled screen flickering or pulsing, try adding following kernel parameter in your bootloader, and removing the above udev rule.

    i915.invert_brightness=1

This should make your brightness controllable via ACPI through `/sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness` and the function keys should work as well.

## Trackpad

There were issues with the trackpad which were originally solved with the hardware enablement (Sputnik) kernel, however as of Linux 3.9 it appears that the trackpad fixes have been merged into the mainline kernel, and the hardware enablement kernel linux-mainline-dellxps has since been removed.

Category:

- Dell