Dell Inspiron 13 (5378)

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Reason: Misses one last ID in the hardware table. (Discuss in Talk:Dell Inspiron 13 (5378))
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
GPU 8086:5916 Yes
Wireless 0cf3:e007 Yes
Bluetooth 0cf3:e007 Yes
Audio 8086:9d71 Yes
Touchpad 0740:0006CB Yes
Touchscreen 04f3:2494 Yes
Webcam 0bda:58c2 Yes
Infrared Camera Unknown No

Installation

Nearly everything works out of the box when the Installation guide is followed.

If the laptop cannot boot the Arch Linux installation medium, USB boot could be disabled; this can be fixed using the Enable Boot Support option under System Configuration/USB Configuration in the firmware. See #Firmware.

Graphics

The Intel integrated graphics work well with the mesa OpenGL driver. Install mesa and, if desired, mesa-utils.

The i915 driver built into the kernel is reliable. The i915 kernel module should be loaded automatically as long as nomodeset is not set as a kernel parameter. See Intel graphics#Loading.

The Intel Vulkan drivers may cause issues with display managers such as lightdm or sddm if these are running in X: sometimes the machine will boot to a black screen with magenta stripes. These issues can be fixed by reverting to the i915 driver.

Touchscreen

The touchscreen works out of the box. See Tablet PC and Touchscreen for information on getting the most from your touchscreen.

Tip: If you use Firefox, you may want to enable touchscreen scrolling, zooming, and long-press gestures. See Firefox/Tweaks#Enable touchscreen gestures.

Infrared camera

The Realtek infrared camera is optional and is not present in all Inspiron 13 (5378) models. It can be used for facial recognition software such as howdyAUR.

Howdy has been tested and works on the Dell Inspiron 5379, which has the same IR camera model as the 5378.

Accessibility

The firmware is graphical and has a tightly-packed simple text menu (with expandable categories) on the left, with fairly small text. All the settable options are in a large pane on the right, again. Apply must be clicked to make any changes. Note that the touch screen and the touchpad work in the firmware, and the tabulation and arrow keys also allow cursoring around the different options and buttons. The Tab key alternates between three zones: the menu at the left, the settings pane at the right, and the Apply, Restore Settings, and Exit buttons. The arrow keys must then be used to cursor around the items within each of those zones.

The firmware contains many radio buttons and check boxes, but these are only in the right pane.

As of version 371, the UEFI firmware does not have a "simple" or "classic" switch that can be turned on.

The boot menu is simple text (not graphical) against a black background.

See the #Firmware section below for instructions to access the firmware.

Firmware

UEFI firmware and other device firmware is available through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), and can be installed using fwupd.

The boot menu can be accessed by pressing (spamming) F12 at boot, when the Dell logo first appears. This will bring up a text-only boot menu which will contains two headings (unless legacy/BIOS boot devices are available): UEFI Boot and Other Options. No keys need to be pressed to switch between headings. The BIOS Setup entry at the bottom. Cursor to this using the arrow keys and hit Enter to select it.

The firmware can be accessed directly by pressing (spamming) F2 at boot, when the Dell logo first appears. A message, Entering Setup, should appear when the system acknowledges the F2 keypress.

Note: The Fn lock is on by default. The keystroke is Fn+F2 instead of F2 if Fn lock is enabled. See #Function keys.

Function keys

Key Visible? Marked? Effect
Fn+Esc No Yes Toggles Fn lock
Fn+F1 Yes Yes XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2 Yes Yes XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F3 Yes Yes XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+F4 Yes Yes XF86AudioPrev
Fn+F5 Yes Yes XF86AudioPlay
Fn+F6 Yes Yes XF86AudioNext
Fn+F7 No No None
Fn+F8 Yes Yes Presses Super+P
Fn+F9 Yes Yes XF86Search
Fn+F10 No Yes Toggles keyboard backlight
Fn+F11 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F12 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+PrtScr Yes Yes XF86RFKill
Fn+Up No Yes PgUp
Fn+Down No Yes PgDn
Fn+Left No Yes Home
Fn+Right No Yes End
Fn+Ctrl (Right) No Yes Menu

Fan control

The default fan settings allow the CPU to reach 70-85 °C before the fan speeds up. To make the laptop to run cooler, use i8kutilsAUR to manually set the fan start temperature. The BIOS seems to override fan control by default, so install dell-bios-fan-control-gitAUR to give control of the fan to the OS. Note that manually setting the fan profile has a drawback of not letting the fan reach full speed (6000 RPM BIOS control, 5000 RPM manual) since Dell did not publish documentation for the fan.

This model only has one fan, and it is identified as the right fan. Setting the left fan speed has no effect. A working fan profile using dell-bios-fan-control-gitAUR will look something like this:

set config(0)   {{- 0}  -1  50  -1  50}
set config(1)   {{- 1}  45  65  45  65}
set config(2)   {{- 2}  60  75  60  75}
set config(3)   {{- 2}  70 128  70 128}

See Fan speed control#Dell laptops for more information.