Translation(s): none

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.

Models covered
Dell Pro Max 16 Premium MA16250

Sub-models options:
- Intel Core Ultra 7 265H (Arrow Lake-H), 16 cores
- Intel Arc Pro 140T integrated GPU + NVIDIA RTX PRO 1000 Blackwell (GB207GLM) discrete GPU
- 32 GB LPDDR5X (soldered)
- SanDisk PC SN8000S SED 1TB NVMe
- 16" 1920x1200 eDP display
- Intel BE201 WiFi 7 / Bluetooth
- SoundWire audio (Cirrus Logic CS42L43 + CS35L56)
- OmniVision OV08F4 webcam via Intel IPU6
- Goodix MOC fingerprint reader
- Intel JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 (Barlow Ridge)
- Realtek RTS5264 SD card reader
- Intel Meteor Lake NPU
- 86 Wh battery

Overall Status

Core Components

Boot Standard Kernel:

{i} Secure Boot must be set to Audit Mode for install

LAN network card:

[-] (no built-in Ethernet)

Detect CD/DVD:

[-]

Detect hard drives:

{i} BIOS must be changed from RAID/VMD to AHCI/NVMe

Extra Features

CPU Frequency Scaling

{OK}

Hibernation

[?]

Sleep / Suspend

{OK}

Xorg / Wayland

{OK}

- !OpenGL

{OK}

- Resize-and-Rotate(randr)

{OK}

Switch to External Screen

{i} BIOS setting required for dock power save

Mouse

- Built-in (Touchpad)

{OK}

Modem

[-]

Wireless/Wifi

X-( {i} requires backports kernel 6.17+ and firmware-iwlwifi

Bluetooth

X-( {i} requires backports kernel 6.17+ and firmware-iwlwifi

Webcam

{i} works with kernel 6.18+, 3 DKMS modules, and Intel Camera HAL (see Configuration section)

Fingerprint reader

{OK} (fprintd + libpam-fprintd)

Thunderbolt 5

{OK}

SD Card Reader

X-( firmware-realtek required

NPU

X-( {i} works with Intel userspace and OpenVINO (see Configuration section)

Battery life

{OK} (excellent in balanced mode)

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 Notes

Installation

Use the full DVD ISO (not netinst) since WiFi is not available during installation.

The default trixie kernel (6.12) will boot and give you a working desktop. Here is what works on the stock kernel vs. the backports kernel:

Component

Stock kernel (6.12)

Backports kernel (7.0.x)

WiFi

Not working

Works

Bluetooth

Not working

Works (6.17+)

Audio (SoundWire)

May not work

Works

Intel GPU

Works (i915)

Works (i915 or xe with force_probe)

NVMe

Works (with BIOS fix)

Works (with BIOS fix)

Fingerprint

Works

Works

Thunderbolt 5

Works

Works

Your first priority after install is getting network access (ethernet via dock or USB adapter) to enable backports and upgrade the kernel.

Configuration

Backports and Non-Free Firmware

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources to include contrib non-free non-free-firmware components and trixie-backports:

Types: deb deb-src
URIs: http://deb.debian.org/debian/
Suites: trixie trixie-updates trixie-backports
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb deb-src
URIs: http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/
Suites: trixie-security
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg

Optionally pin backports to a lower priority so packages only upgrade when explicitly requested. Create /etc/apt/preferences.d/backports-pin:

Package: *
Pin: release a=trixie-backports
Pin-Priority: 450

Then:

apt update

Firmware

Install firmware before the kernel upgrade so the new kernel picks it all up on first boot:

apt install -t trixie-backports firmware-iwlwifi firmware-misc-nonfree firmware-realtek

Kernel

apt install -t trixie-backports linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64

The linux-image-amd64 metapackage now tracks the 7.0.x series, so this installs a 7.0.x kernel (earlier backports uploads provided 6.18/6.19). It works on this hardware, but read the kernel 7.0.x display caveat under Important Notes first: until the fix lands it affects everyone after a long suspend. Reboot into the new kernel before proceeding.

To stay on the conservative 6.19 kernel instead (avoiding that caveat), install it by explicit version, since the metapackage no longer selects it. The 6.19 series is still in backports (latest 6.19.14 at time of writing):

apt install -t trixie-backports linux-image-6.19.14+deb13-amd64 linux-headers-6.19.14+deb13-amd64

Intel GPU

The Intel Arc Pro 140T works out of the box with the i915 driver on any kernel.

Optionally, to use the newer xe driver instead, create /etc/modprobe.d/xe-driver.conf:

options i915 force_probe=!7d51
options xe force_probe=7d51

The i915 force_probe=!7d51 line excludes the Arrow Lake iGPU from i915, which would otherwise win the modprobe alias race and prevent xe from binding the device. Then run update-initramfs -u and reboot.

For hardware video acceleration:

apt install -t trixie-backports intel-media-va-driver-non-free mesa-va-drivers

NVIDIA GPU

Add the NVIDIA CUDA repository (see official guide):

wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian13/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
apt update

Install the open kernel module driver:

apt install nvidia-driver nvidia-kernel-open-dkms

Create /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf:

blacklist nouveau
options nvidia NVreg_TemporaryFilePath=/var/tmp
options nvidia NVreg_EnableS0ixPowerManagement=1
options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1
options nvidia NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x00

The last line, NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x00, disables GPU runtime power management (the dGPU stays powered while the module is loaded, instead of entering GC6). This is a partial mitigation for the GSP-heartbeat / GC6-exit freezes described under Quirks below. It costs some idle battery life. If you do not see those freezes you can leave it out; on this hardware it is recommended.

Create /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-modeset.conf:

options nvidia-drm modeset=1

Enable suspend/resume services:

systemctl enable nvidia-suspend nvidia-resume nvidia-hibernate
update-initramfs -u

Re-enabling Secure Boot

After installation and NVIDIA driver setup, you can re-enable Secure Boot in Deployed Mode. Debian ships with a Microsoft-signed shim bootloader, so the boot chain is already trusted. The only extra step is enrolling the DKMS module signing key (used to sign out-of-tree modules like the NVIDIA driver):

sudo mokutil --import /var/lib/dkms/mok.pub

This prompts for a one-time password. On the next reboot, the MokManager (blue screen before GRUB) will ask you to confirm the enrollment. After that, reboot into BIOS and switch Boot Configuration > Secure Boot > Secure Boot Mode back to Deployed Mode.

Verify with:

mokutil --sb-state

Audio

SoundWire audio (CS42L43 headphone codec + CS35L56 speaker amplifiers) works through the SOF driver stack with kernel 6.18. Speakers, headphones, and microphone all work. PipeWire is used as the audio server with the GNOME desktop.

WiFi

Works out of the box with kernel 6.18 and firmware-iwlwifi from backports. Uses the iwlmld driver.

Bluetooth

Works out of the box with kernel 6.18 and firmware-iwlwifi. Uses btusb/btintel drivers. Requires kernel 6.17 or later — does not work on the stock trixie kernel (6.12).

Fingerprint Reader

apt install fprintd libpam-fprintd
fprintd-enroll

Integrates with PAM for sudo, GDM login, and GNOME authentication prompts.

Thunderbolt 5

Works out of the box. GNOME handles device authorization automatically.

Backlight

Works via nvidia_wmi_ec_backlight. Brightness keys work in GNOME.

External Displays and Docking

Tested with Dell Performance Dock WD19DC (USB-C, dual-cable variant) and two external 1920x1080 monitors via DP-MST. GNOME on Wayland handles the hybrid multi-GPU setup (Intel iGPU for internal display, NVIDIA for external).

The Discrete Graphics Controller Direct Output Mode BIOS setting (see Important Notes) is required for monitors to wake from power saving mode reliably.

Known issue: two distinct dock-related display glitches: (1) brief sub-second flickers on external monitors that leave no trace in kernel logs (root cause unconfirmed); (2) an external monitor goes fully black and stays black until manually recovered via a Mutter DPMS off/on cycle, or by physically reconnecting the dock cable (fingerprint matches a DP-MST stream drop, but root cause unconfirmed).

Power Management

Suspend works well with NVIDIA power management services enabled. Hibernation not tested (requires swap >= RAM). Battery life is excellent in balanced mode via GNOME power profiles.

Webcam

{i} Works with manual setup on kernel 6.18+. The OmniVision OV08F4 sensor is connected through Intel IPU6 via a USB-to-I2C bridge (Synaptics SVP7500/USBIO). The camera requires Intel's proprietary Camera HAL userspace (libcamera has no IPU6 pipeline handler) plus a set of DKMS kernel modules: three on a 7.0.10+ backports kernel, or four on earlier kernels (6.18/6.19) where Debian has not enabled the in-tree USB-to-I2C bridge driver.

The usbio USB-to-I2C/GPIO bridge driver (modules usbio, gpio-usbio, i2c-usbio) has been in the mainline kernel since 6.18, but Debian did not enable it in their kernel configuration until the 7.0.10 backports kernel (see bug 1130114). On a 7.0.10+ backports kernel it is built and shipped, so no action is needed. On Debian's earlier kernels (6.18/6.19) the code is present in mainline but disabled in their config, so build it as a fourth DKMS module from intel/usbio-drivers.

Required DKMS modules (on a 7.0.10+ kernel):

  1. vision-driver — Intel CVS (Computer Vision Subsystem) driver from intel/vision-drivers. Transfers sensor ownership from the CVS chip to IPU6; without this, the USB bridge crashes on first stream attempt.

  2. ipu6-drivers — Intel IPU6 PSYS (Processing System) module from intel/ipu6-drivers. Provides /dev/ipu-psys0 needed by the Camera HAL.

  3. ipu6-isys-phy-fix — Patched intel-ipu6-isys.ko that fixes a CSI-2 PHY bug causing CRC errors at 1498 Mbps. The stock kernel's DWC PHY driver selects the wrong HSFREQRANGE band (with osc_freq_target=208 instead of 335) for this data rate due to overlapping frequency ranges and a backward search. The fix has been accepted by the linux-media maintainer and is expected to land in mainline kernel 7.2; once it reaches Debian backports, this DKMS will no longer be needed. See ipu6-drivers#417 for the full setup guide.

The IR flood LED on the camera assembly (used by some Windows Hello-style biometric workflows) is supported in the upstream kernel from version 7.1 onward (merged during the 7.1 merge window; available in kernels built from v7.1-rc1 or later). Earlier kernels print a "GPIO type 0x02 unknown" warning but the camera itself still works.

Userspace: Build from source: ipu6-camera-bins (ISP firmware/libraries), ipu6-camera-hal (Camera HAL, ipu6epmtl variant), and icamerasrc (GStreamer plugin).

?V4L2 bridge (for Zoom, Cheese, etc.): The camera only works through icamerasrc (GStreamer), not standard ?V4L2. To make it visible to video call apps, install v4l2loopback and v4l2-relayd:

SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux", ATTR{name}=="Intel IPU6*", RUN+="/usr/bin/setfacl -b $env{DEVNAME}"

Test:

gst-launch-1.0 icamerasrc ! "video/x-raw,format=NV12,width=1920,height=1080" ! videoconvert ! autovideosink

NPU

{i} Works as an OpenVINO inference accelerator for local LLMs. The Intel Meteor Lake NPU (Neural Processing Unit, listed as "Processing accelerators / Intel Corporation Meteor Lake NPU [8086:7d1d]" in lspci) is supported by the in-tree intel_vpu kernel driver (since kernel 6.5), which exposes /dev/accel/accel0. The device is owned by the render group, so the user account must be a member:

sudo usermod -aG render $USER

(Re-login or reboot for the group change to take effect.)

Userspace requires the Level Zero loader (libze1, in Debian) plus three Intel packages that are not in Debian: the driver compiler, the Level Zero NPU plugin, and the NPU firmware. Intel ships them as Ubuntu 24.04 .deb packages on the linux-npu-driver releases page, and they install cleanly on Debian 13:

apt install libze1
# Download matching versions of intel-driver-compiler-npu, intel-level-zero-npu,
# and intel-fw-npu from https://github.com/intel/linux-npu-driver/releases
sudo dpkg -i intel-driver-compiler-npu_*.deb intel-level-zero-npu_*.deb intel-fw-npu_*.deb

Verify the NPU is exposed to the kernel:

lsmod | grep intel_vpu
ls -l /dev/accel/accel0

Verify OpenVINO sees the NPU. From a Python environment with openvino installed (the easiest is a venv with pip install openvino):

python -c "from openvino import Core; print(Core().available_devices)"

Expected output (NPU listed alongside CPU and GPU):

['CPU', 'GPU', 'NPU']

For actually running a model on the NPU (e.g. a local LLM via OpenVINO !GenAI with a pre-converted INT4 model), see the Medium writeup "How to Use Your Intel NPU to Run Local LLMs".


System Summary

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-H 6p+8e cores Host Bridge/DRAM Controller [8086:7d06] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-H PCIe Root Port #12 [8086:7ecc] (rev 10)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-P [Arc Pro 140T] [8086:7d51] (rev 03)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Dynamic Tuning Technology [8086:7d03] (rev 05)
00:05.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake IPU [8086:7d19] (rev 05)
00:06.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:774d]
00:07.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #1 [8086:7ec5] (rev 10)
00:08.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake Gaussian & Neural Accelerator [8086:774c]
00:0a.0 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Platform Monitoring Technology [8086:7d0d] (rev 01)
00:0b.0 Processing accelerators [1200]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake NPU [8086:7d1d] (rev 05)
00:0d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller [8086:7ec0] (rev 10)
00:0d.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 [8086:7ec2] (rev 10)
00:12.0 Serial controller [0700]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake Integrated Sensor Hub [8086:7745]
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake USB 3.2 xHCI Controller [8086:777d]
00:14.2 RAM memory [0500]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake Shared SRAM [8086:777f]
00:14.3 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake CNVi WiFi [8086:7740]
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-H [Serial IO I2C Host Controller] [8086:7778]
00:15.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-H [Serial IO I2C Host Controller] [8086:777b]
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake HECI Controller #1 [8086:7770]
00:16.3 Serial controller [0700]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake Keyboard and Text (KT) Redirection [8086:7773]
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:7738]
00:1c.6 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:773e]
00:1e.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-H [PCH Serial IO UART Host Controller] [8086:7725]
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:7702]
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake cAVS [8086:7728]
00:1f.4 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake SMBus Controller [8086:7722]
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake SPI Controller [8086:7723]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GB207GLM [RTX PRO 1000 Blackwell Generation Laptop GPU] [10de:2db8] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GB207 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:22ec] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Sandisk Corp SN8000S NVMe SSD [15b7:5049] (rev 01)
3b:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G Bridge [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5780] (rev 84)
3c:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G Bridge [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5780] (rev 84)
3c:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G Bridge [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5780] (rev 84)
3c:02.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G Bridge [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5780] (rev 84)
3c:03.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G Bridge [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5780] (rev 84)
3d:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G NHI [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5781] (rev 84)
52:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 80/120G USB Controller [Barlow Ridge Host 80G 2023] [8086:5782]
68:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5264 PCIe SD UHS-II & SD Express Card Reader controller [10ec:5264] (rev 01)

lsusb

Bus 001 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 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 06cb:0701 Synaptics, Inc. SVP7500
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 27c6:634c Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co.,Ltd. Goodix Fingerprint USB Device
Bus 003 Device 008: ID 8087:0037 Intel Corp.
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

dmidecode

System Information
        Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
        Product Name: Dell Pro Max 16 Premium MA16250
        Version: Not Specified
        Wake-up Type: Other
        SKU Number: 0D33
        Family: Dell Pro Max Laptops

Base Board Information
        Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
        Product Name: 055KWN
        Version: A00
        Type: Motherboard

Quirks

OS

Released

Status

Test Date

BIOS

Debian 13 (trixie) + backports kernel 6.18

2025

Working

2026-03

1.7.1

Debian 13 (trixie) + backports kernel 6.19

2025

Working

2026-04

1.7.1

Debian 13 (trixie) + backports kernel 6.19

2025

Working

2026-05

1.8.1

Debian 13 (trixie) + backports kernel 7.0.4

2025

{i} cx0 PHY stall on resume (internal panel + native HDMI); recovers, can take >2 min

2026-05

1.8.1

Debian 13 (trixie) + backports kernel 7.0.12

2025

{i} cx0 PHY stall on resume (internal panel + native HDMI); recovers, can take >2 min

2026-06

1.9.0

Resources


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