User:Ctag/Dell Precision 7710

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I've stopped using this laptop, this page may not be up to date.

Power Management

Status: works

I have yet to get over 2 hours on a fully charged battery.

Audio

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf
options snd-hda-intel power_save=1

Video

Enabling switchable graphics and installing bumblebee had a huge impact on battery life.

Backlight

Function keys aren't automatically recognized. The xf86 keypresses are recognized by i3-wm which runs corresponding xbacklight commands.

$ cat ~/.i3/config
# Backlight
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec xbacklight -inc 10
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec xbacklight -dec 10

NMI Watchdog

$ cat /etc/sysctl.d/disable_watchdog.conf
kernel.nmi_watchdog = 0

Dirty Writeback

$ cat /etc/sysctl.d/dirty_writeback.conf
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 6000

Laptop config

$ cat /etc/sysctl.d/laptop.conf
vm.laptop_mode = 5

iwlwifi

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
options iwlwifi power_save=1 d0i3_disable=0 uapsd_disable=0

Trackpoint

Status: Works

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=221570

It looks like as of libinput 1.6.0 the trackpoint and touchpad are recognized separately. Unfortunately, the trackpoint is nearly unusable due to sensitivity issues.

External Screens

Enabling an external monitor causes trouble because Xorg can only handle one DPI, and right now that's set to work with the hiDPI internal screen.

Activate the external monitor with arandr, if the gui is too large:

xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --output HDMI-2 --auto --panning 3840x2160+3840+0 --scale 1.5x1.5 --right-of eDP-1

HiDPI / High DPI / Retina / 4k

The nitpicky details are on User:ctag/HiDPI.

I have bumblebee set up. The NVIDIA video driver is installed, but the intel graphics driver is not. This is because recent versions of xorg server can get by without i915 or whatever.

I'm using i3 with no DE.

General X info

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 2160, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 380mm x 210mm
   3840x2160     60.02*+  48.02  
   3200x1800     60.00  
   2880x1620     60.00  
   2560x1440     60.00  
   2048x1536     60.00  
   1920x1440     60.00  
   1856x1392     60.01  
   1792x1344     60.01  
   2048x1152     60.00  
   1920x1080     60.00  
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1400x1050     59.98  
   1600x900      60.00  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1368x768      60.00  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   1024x576      60.00  
   960x540       60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   864x486       60.00  
   640x480       59.94  
   720x405       60.00  
   640x360       60.00  
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
$ lspci | grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 530 (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM204GLM [Quadro M3000M] (rev ff)

Troubleshooting

Sound card

Sometimes the sound card cuts out (usually after a suspend/resume cycle) and only a dummy device is listed in the pulseaudio mixer.

Here's one workaround: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1201242#p1201242