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DebianOn is an effort to document how to install, configure and use Debian on some specific hardware. Therefore potential buyers would know if that hardware is supported and owners would know how get the best out of that hardware.

The purpose is not to duplicate the Debian Official Documentation, but to document how to install Debian on some specific hardware.

If you need help to get Debian running on your hardware, please have a look at our user support channels where you may find specific channels (mailing list, IRC channel) dedicated to certain types of hardware.

This page describes DebianBullseye on the Dell XPS 15 9510 as of January 2022

Models covered
Dell XPS 15 9510

Options:
- Intel® Core™ i7-11800H
- NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050 Ti 4Go
- Micron 2300 NVMe 512GB

Options:
- Intel® Core™ i9-11900H
- NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050 Ti 4Go
- OLED 3.5K Touch Display

Overall Status

{OK} Works quite well!

Bullseye

Core Components

Boot Standard Kernel:

{OK}

LAN network card:

[?]

Wireless/WiFi        

X-(

Detect hard drives:

{OK}

Secure boot:

{OK}

Extra Features

CPU Frequency Scaling

{OK}

Hibernation

[?]

Sleep / Suspend

{i}

Xorg        

{OK}

 - OpenGL

{OK}

 - Resize-and-Rotate(randr)

{OK}

Switch to External Screen

{OK}

Audio

X-(

Mouse

   

 - Built-in (Touchpad)

{OK}

 - Bluetooth mouse    

{OK}

Touch display

{OK}

Keyboard's Hotkeys

{OK}

Firmware upgrades

{OK}

Legend :
{OK} = OK ; {X} Unsupported(No Driver) ; /!\ = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
{i} = Configuration Required;  X-( = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware

Important Note

To use the Wifi during the installation, you need to download and have the non-free firmware firmware-iwlwifi ready. The only ports in this machine are USB Type-C™, I used 2 USB-A/USB-C adapters to connect 2 USB sticks: one as boot media with the Debian Installer and another one with the downloaded .deb file of the WiFi firmware.

When trying to connect to my WiFi during the install, I was getting the following error after entering the password: Failure of key exchange and association. The solution is to manually enter the SSID instead of selecting it in the list.

Installation procedure

  1. Prepare a USB stick with Debian installer on it. This will be your boot medium. You can consult the manual for more information.

  2. The wifi card is supported but requires non-free firmware. Prepare another USB stick with the .deb file, downloaded from firmware-iwlwifi.

  3. Connect the boot USB stick

  4. Start your Dell notebook and press F12 and choose the USB stick.

  5. Plug the second USB key or later you'll get a message about missing firmware files. If you get them, just plug it in and retry.

Configuration

Display

Default drivers (Nouveau) work fine but consume more power because Optimus is not enabled. The easiest solution is to install Nvidia proprietary drivers.
Secure Boot will prevent them to load (You will see [FAILED] Failed to start Load Kernel Modules in boot logs). To fix that, you need to sign the modules, check out the SecureBoot#Using_your_key_to_sign_modules for detailed instructions.

OLED

A Dell XPS 9510 equipped with an OLED display will default to maximum brightness which can quickly become uncomfortable to look at. Initially, the function keys (F6 and F7) that control the display's brightness will not work; Debian 11.2 ships with kernel 5.10 which does not support these function keys.

Kernel support for adjusting the display brightness using these function keys can be found in kernel 5.15, available from Bullseye backports: 

$ sudo echo deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib non-free >> /etc/apt/sources.list
$ sudo apt-update
$ sudo apt install -t bullseye-backports linux-image-5.15.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 linux-headers-5.15.0-0.bpo.2-amd64

Once installed, reboot to use kernel 5.15 and the brightness of the OLED display should be adjustable from the function keys.

The proprietary Nvidia drivers will keep the system temperature and fans under control automatically when used with X11 instead of Wayland (the default). For Nvidia drivers compatible with kernel 5.15, Bullseye backports once again provides appropriate packages (but see the note above regarding Secure Boot): 

$ sudo apt install -t bullseye-backports nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree

After rebooting and switching to X11 it may take some time for the effect of the Nvidia drivers to become apparent if the system has been running hot.

Audio

Speakers' sound is terrible under Linux, bass are almost not present. Can be improved a bit with PulseEffects or a kernel patch that I haven't tried.

Update: This should be fixed as of this commit. A fix for the XPS 15 9520 has also been added here.

Mouse

Touchpad works out of the box, but tap-to-click is disabled by default. It can be enabled in the mouse settings of the desktop environment.

Power Management

Dell has totally disabled S3 from their laptop, killing the good old Deep sleep 

$ sudo cat /sys/power/mem_sleep
[s2idle]

Additionally, there is a bug in the kernel preventing XPS 9310/9510 to achieve S0ix. This results in a power drain of ~4-5% per hour in suspend mode. The solution is to set the disk mode from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS. Power in s2idle then drops to ~1% per hour.

System Summary

lspci

$ lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a36] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a01] (rev 05)
00:01.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a07] (rev 05)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a60] (rev 01)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a03] (rev 05)
00:07.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #2 [8086:9a2f] (rev 05)
00:07.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #3 [8086:9a31] (rev 05)
00:0a.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a0d] (rev 01)
00:0d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller [8086:9a17] (rev 05)
00:0d.3 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 NHI #1 [8086:9a21] (rev 05)
00:12.0 Serial controller [0700]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43fc] (rev 11)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43ed] (rev 11)
00:14.2 RAM memory [0500]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43ef] (rev 11)
00:14.3 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43f0] (rev 11)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43e8] (rev 11)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43e9] (rev 11)
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43e0] (rev 11)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43be] (rev 11)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:4389] (rev 11)
00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43c8] (rev 11)
00:1f.4 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43a3] (rev 11)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:43a4] (rev 11)
01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:25a0] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Micron Technology Inc Device [1344:5405]
75:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5260 PCI Express Card Reader [10ec:5260] (rev 01)

lsusb

$ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. 
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0c45:672e Microdia Integrated_Webcam_HD
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 27c6:63ac Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co.,Ltd. Goodix USB2.0 MISC
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

$ sudo lsusb -v 2>/dev/null | grep -E '\<(^Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)'
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         3 
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. 
  bDeviceClass          224 Wireless
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Bluetooth
  iProduct                0 
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0c45:672e Microdia Integrated_Webcam_HD
  bDeviceClass          239 Miscellaneous Device
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Interface Association
  iProduct                1 Integrated_Webcam_HD
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 27c6:63ac Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co.,Ltd. Goodix USB2.0 MISC
  bDeviceClass          239 Miscellaneous Device
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  iProduct                2 Goodix USB2.0 MISC
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         3 
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller

Resources

Credits

CategorySound