nixos-hardware/dell/xps/15-7590

Dell XPS 15 7590

• Mostly copied from 15-9550

Tested Hardware

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9980HK
• RAM: 32 GB
• HDD: 1 TiB SSD
• Screen: 15" 4k (3840✕2160)
• Input: Touchscreen and trackpad.

Firmware Configuration

Not much tweaking of NixOS itself was needed. But we currently cannot automate the firmware setup, so this must be done by hand.

Before installation

These settings are needed both for booting the final install, and installer itself. Therefore, they must be done first.

• Disable Secure Boot (but keep UEFI Boot). Thankfully doing so is as easy as changing any other simple setting.

• Disable Intel hardware RAID and use AHCI instead. Intel doesn't seem to provide a working linux driver for this. (If you just have SSD it's pointless and just slows things down needlessly anyways.)

Wifi

Wifi does not work with kernels older than 5.1 (firmware not present) or newer (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=247705)

Update: The 48.ucode causes the Killer wifi card to crash. The iwlfwifi-cc-a0-46.ucode works perfectly. default.nix contains an overlay that removes the offending ucode from the linux-firmware bundle.

  # Use the systemd-boot EFI boot loader.
  boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;
  boot.loader.grub = {
    device = "nodev";
    efiSupport = true;
    efiInstallAsRemovable = true;
  };
  boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
  boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_5_1;

Disable the canTouchEfiVariables after a boot or two to prevent NVRAM wearout.

After installation

• Add systemd-boot to UEFI boot list. The (uneditable anyways) settings mapping drive UUIDs to HD* work fine.

Optional

• Update BIOS. According to Reddit, this helps with battery life.