Dell Inspiron 15 (7590)

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Note
This page refers to the 7590 revision of the Inspiron 15. Most of it also applies to the Vostro 7590 and the Inspiron 15 7591
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
GPU
Yes
Wi-Fi
Yes
Bluetooth
Yes
Audio
Yes
Microphone
Yes
Touchpad
Yes
Webcam
Yes
Fingerprint Reader
27c6:538d
No
The Dell Inspiron 15 (7590) was released in May 2019, some country released it called Vostro 7590, and the aluminum alloy body version is Inspiron 7591. They use the same BIOS and Motherboard. The information on this page may also be useful to those with the Dell Inspiron 7391 (13" screen  correspondent model).
The installation process for Arch on the Inspiron 15 does not differ from any other PC. For installation help, please see the
Installation guide
and
UEFI
. This page covers the current status of hardware support on Arch, as well as post-installation recommendations.
Installation
Before installing it is necessary to modify some UEFI Settings. They can be accessed by pressing the
F2
key repeatedly when booting.
Change the SATA Mode from the default "RAID" to "AHCI". This will allow Linux to detect the NVMe SSD. If dual booting with an existing Windows installation, Windows will not boot after the change, but you can do
this
before switching to AHCI.
If you have already changed RAID to AHCI and cannot boot into Windows, just continue booting until showing up WINRE, then enter safe mode for once. Reboot once more and Windows will automatically start with AHCI drivers enabled.
Disable
Secure Boot
to allow Linux to boot. If not, Linux can be booting with secure boot by
rEFInd
Booting and installing from a micro SD card is also possible, as long as SD Card and SD Card Boot are both enabled in the UEFI setup.
Graphics
Display
The video should work with the
i915
driver of the current
linux
kernel. Consult
Intel graphics
for a detailed installation and configuration guide as well as for
Intel graphics#Troubleshooting
.
If you have the 4K (3840x2160) model, also check out
HiDPI
for UI scaling configurations.
DisplayPort connection via the USB C / Thunderbolt port is detected automatically and appears to work flawlessly.
Graphics Configuration
The Dell Inspiron 15 7590 has Intel HD Graphics 630 integrated graphics, and some models have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 dedicated card as well in a hybrid configuration.
Note
The power of the GTX 1650 dedicated card appears to be hardware-limited while the laptop is running on battery power. Regardless of software settings (e.g. nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords module options), the GPU does not go beyond performance level 2 (out of 3) as shown in nvidia-settings. However it will run at full speed even if the laptop is charging via the USB C port, even though the battery will likely continue to deplete.
For computers with only integrated graphics, just install the
xf86-video-intel
driver.
If your Inspiron has a hybrid graphics configuration (GTX1650 + HD Graphics 630) and you want to maximize battery life you can just use the Intel Graphics.
Intel Only
If your model comes with an nVidia card which you do not use then you can try to disable it with an ACPI command. Depending on the model, this can have a small to profound effect on the laptop's temperature and battery life (it can more than double battery life!)
Install the Intel video driver using the
xf86-video-intel
package.
Blacklist the
nvidia
&
nouveau
modules
Kernel modules#Blacklisting
Power down the GPU
with an ACPI command
Optimus Configuration (Hybrid Intel and Nvidia)
PRIME Offload
Follow the instructions for
PRIME
. In the case of this laptop, there are only two required steps:
Once the
NVIDIA
drivers are installed, install the
nvidia-prime
package, and use the
prime-run
command to run applications that should run on the dGPU.
Follow the steps outlined in the "Automated Setup" section on this page:
https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/435.17/README/dynamicpowermanagement.html
Warning
Without the second step above, the dGPU will remain powered, and will drain your battery quicker.
Note
The power-saving features described in the second step are available only for the GTX 1650. If your laptop comes with the older GTX 1050, you may do better to use the older switching method (described below).
Switching graphics card by logout may cause Wi-Fi function in
NetworkManager
stop working, you can
restart
NetworkManager.service
to solve it.
The
Optimus
setup consists of the integrated Intel chip connected to the laptop screen and the Nvidia card runs through this. As such, the Nvidia chip cannot be used without the Intel chip (some other laptops have the option in BIOS to turn Intel off and use just Nvidia, but not this laptop).
Audio
Use the new sof-hda-dsp driver
Note
The internal digital microphone only works with the new driver.
This laptop requires
Sound Open Firmware
in order for the sound card to work.
After reboot, you should see a list of audio devices with names include Cannon Lake PCH cAVS. Also, you should be able to see Digital Microphone appearing in the "Recording Devices". If using the new sof-hda-dsp driver does not solve the problem, you will need to follow instructions below to use the legacy driver.
As of July 2020, there exists a bug that the Master device is automatically muted after rebooting. If you can hear no sound from output, install
alsa-utils
and run
alsamixer -c 0
. Then, switch to "Master" device, press "m" to unmute it so that you see "00" instead of "MM" under it. If it has 0% volume, you should also press up arrow key to increase the volume to 100%. After that, the sound should work.
You can use following command to store your current setting, so you do not need to un-mute the device manually after each reboot.
# alsactl store
Note
There is a bug report against the SOF driver for this laptop:
https://github.com/thesofproject/linux/issues/1917
Automatically un-muting Master device after booting
If entering
alsamixer -c 0
and un-muting the device manually after each reboot seems too laborious, you can also automate this process.
Create an executable script with the following commands and make it autostart depending on your environment (see
Autostarting
for details).
amixer -Dhw:0 cset name='Master Playback Switch' on
amixer -Dhw:0 cset name='Master Playback Volume' 100%
Use legacy HDA-Intel driver
Note
Using the old audio driver means that the internal microphone will not be available.
Create the following file:
/etc/modprobe.d/audio-fix.conf
blacklist snd-sof-pci
options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1
It is also possible to provide this as a kernel parameter in GRUB configuration:
snd-intel-dspcfg.dsp_driver=1
.
You could also try setting the
snd_hda_intel.dmic_detect=0
kernel parameter, although this is due to be deprecated in favour of the above method.
Wi-Fi
The Wi-Fi adapter contains a Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9560 160MHz module. It should work out of the box with the
iwlwifi
driver in recent
linux
kernels.
Keyboard
The keyboard backlight has a feature that makes it automatically turn off after a given timeout. This timeout can be adjusted by writing into
/sys/class/leds/dell\:\:kbd_backlight/stop_timeout
. For example,
echo "5m" > /sys/class/leds/dell\:\:kbd_backlight/stop_timeout
This would set the timeout to 5 minutes.
Power Saving
Enable thermald
Thermald
is a daemon created by Intel to control CPU heat more intelligently than the laptop's firmware is capable of. It
plays nicely
with TLP.
Enable TLP
The
TLP
may increase battery life.
You can monitor the used power and also the temperature of your machine with the
s-tui
tool.
CPU Undervolting
Note
For Bios 1.6.0 0x78C need set to 0x0 so undervolt can be used, if you do not know how to change UEFI var, this may
help
you.
It is possible to undervolt CPU and GPU with intel-undervolt
This is an example of stable values for i7-9750H (depend of your cpu):
CPU (0): -155.27 mV
GPU (1): -110.35 mV
CPU Cache (2): -139.65 mV
System Agent (3): -0.00 mV
Analog I/O (4): -0.00 mV
Edit the config file
/etc/intel-undervolt.conf
.
This is an example for i7-9750H
# CPU Undervolting

undervolt 0 'CPU' -155
undervolt 1 'GPU' -110
undervolt 2 'CPU Cache' -140
undervolt 3 'System Agent' 0
undervolt 4 'Analog I/O' 0

# Daemon Update Interval

interval 5000
then
enable/start
intel-undervolt.service
.
S3 Suspend
See
Power management/Suspend and hibernate#Changing suspend method
.
Note
In
deep
(S3) sleep, it seems that pressing any button on the built-in keyboard will cause the laptop to resume. You will need to be particularly careful about this, as slight pressure on the lid of the laptop can cause keyboard presses.
Firmware
Dell provides firmware updates via Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). Refer to
Flashing BIOS from Linux#fwupd
for additional information. A package is readily available at
fwupd
. Updates are provided for the Thunderbolt controller as well.
There is an issue
where the Thunderbolt version number is detected as
00.00
after re-flashing (currently being investigated).
Dell has also released updates to the SSD firmware, but these can only be updated from Windows, not from Linux.
Thermal Modes / Fan profiles
Just like in Windows by using Dell Power Manager you can set the thermal configuration and behavior of the fans and CPU of your machine. This can be done with
smbios-thermal-ctl(1)
.
The "Quiet" profile limits CPU power to 25W and thus reduces overall system performance, while "Balanced" and "Performance" profiles remove this limit.
Touchpad
By default, the
libinput
driver might not have the desired sensitivity. The acceleration can be changed via
xinput
as follows:
xinput --set-prop $(xinput | grep 'DELL.*Touchpad' | awk '{print $6}' | sed 's/id=//g') 'libinput Accel Speed' 0.5
Troubleshooting
I/O Operating is very slow
While running
sudo
,
htop
,
lspci
and so on, then get freezing or very slow, to fix it below:
If you are running over Linux Kernel 5.2, while staying in
boot loader
, add
kernel parameter
nomodeset
to boot, then add
nouveau
to blacklist (
Kernel module#Blacklisting
)
Suspend
Add these kernel parameters:
acpi_rev_override=1 acpi_osi=Linux mem_sleep_default=deep
S0ix(or S2idle) suspend mode may cause freezing, only S3 can work properly, see
Power management/Suspend and hibernate#Changing suspend method
.
Sound card not detected
This may be caused by newer kernels attempting to load the newer SOF audio driver in preference to the old driver.
You should install the
sof-firmware
package and reboot.
No audio from 3.5mm headphone jack port when using legacy driver
In
pavucontrol
, try changing the
PulseAudio
output profile from
Analog Stereo Output
to
Analog Stereo Duplex
.
Microphone not working
Instruct the kernel to use the new SOF drivers. See
#Use the new sof-hda-dsp driver
Removing HDMI Audio devices when using SOF driver
Note
This disables all HDMI devices and will break audio output with HDMI. Use with caution.
If the three HDMI entries in the Audio Devices bothers you, you can remove ALL of them by the following config file:
/etc/modprobe.d/audio-fix.conf
options snd_sof_intel_hda_common codec_mask=0x1