Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3

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Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
GPU
Yes
Wireless
Yes
Bluetooth
Yes
Audio
Yes
Touchpad
Yes
Webcam
Yes
Thunderbolt
Yes
Fingerprint (2018)
Yes
The Mi Notebook Air 13.3 is an aluminium Ultrabook. It is a product by the Chinese Company Xiaomi and is currently only available in China or through import online-shops.
The 2016 and 2018 revisions share enough characteristics to be configured identically.
Installation
Enter the UEFI menu by pressing
F2
during Boot, then do the following:
Security > Set Password
Security > Disable Secure Boot
Reset the password by setting the password again but letting the "New Password" fields blank
Installation can then proceed normally. Refer to the
Installation guide
for more info.
Note
Remember that your SSD is called
nvme0n1
, not
sda
.
GPU
Intel only
If you want to completely disable the NVIDIA GPU and save battery, do the following:
Install the
xf86-video-intel
package
Blacklist
the
NVIDIA
and
Nouveau
kernel modules:
/etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
blacklist nouveau
blacklist nvidia
Install
bbswitch
to
turn off the card
/etc/modprobe.d/bbswitch.conf
options bbswitch load_state=0 unload_state=0
Intel/Nvidia Hybrid Configuration
You can enable hybrid GPUs by either using
Bumblebee
or
NVIDIA Optimus
. Bumblebee is generally better for battery-life and compatibility but not officially supported by NVIDIA.
Refer to the respective articles.
Touchpad
To use the touchpad like a normal one, you have to use
xf86-input-libinput
. If you use
xf86-input-evdev
, your touchpad acts like a touchscreen (e.g it maps your movements directly to your screen).
Synaptics
usage is discourage since it is deprecated and only working sporadically. This configuration of
libinput
using Xorg configuration files enables two finger gestures, tap-to-click and 2-and 3-finger clicks (for right- and middle-click respectively).
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-touchpad.conf
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "libinput touchpad"
        Driver "libinput"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
        Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger"
        Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
EndSection
Function keys
On this notebook the Function keys are enabled as default (e.g. pressing
F1
mutes the sound). If pressing the keys does nothing you are most likely using a
Window manager
and not a
Desktop environment
. Use the respective configuration files to bind the keys to their use. For example
Xbindkeys
or
i3
's
bindsym
.
To reverse to normal
Fn
keys just press:
Fn+Esc
.
Most Fn-keys return the correct keycodes. Here is a table containing that information:
Fn-F-Key
Keycode
F1
XF86AudioMute
F2
XF86AudioLowerVolume
F3
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
F4
XF86MonBrightnessDown
F5
XF86MonBrightnessUp
F6
Super_L + P
F7
Nothing
F8
Super_L + Tab
F9
Nothing
F10
Turns Keyboard backlight on/off
F11
Print
F12
Insert
Display Calibration
Factory display calibration is poor. Try the
ICC profiles
at
https://github.com/tlvince/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-13/tree/master/display-calibration
Troubleshooting
Backlight
If you use a tool like
xorg-xbacklight
in its default configuration, nothing happens, because the path to the backlighting variable is not standard. To fix this issue, you have to use a Xorg configuration file:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-backlight.conf
Section "Device" 
        Identifier "Card0" 
        Driver     "intel" 
        Option     "Backlight"  "intel_backlight" 
        BusID      "PCI:0:2:0" 
EndSection
Audio Jack
If you want to use the microphone from the headset plugged in the combo jack input use
model=dell-headset-multi
as explained in
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture/Troubleshooting#Wrong model autodetection
.