Dell Latitude 7440

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.
Reason:
missing some IDs in the hardware table (Discuss in
Talk:Dell Latitude 7440
)
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
0488:104A
Yes
Keyboard
0001:0001
Yes
GPU
8086:46a6
Yes
Webcam
Partially
Bluetooth
8087:0033
Yes
Audio
8086:51c8
Yes
Wi-Fi
8086:51f0
Yes
Fingerprint reader
0a5c:5843
Yes
TPM
untested
Touchscreen
Yes
Fn Keys
Yes
Suspend to RAM
Yes
Suspend to disk
untested
Installation
As of mid 2023, installation from USB medium is relatively smooth except for the webcam driver, which is currently barely supported and only works through a workaround that is extremely tedious to install. It does work though, see below.
Graphics
Do
not
install the
xf86-video-intel
package: it makes things worse, as you can verify using
glxgears
from the
mesa-demos
package.
Audio
Audio (both speakers and microphone) works out of the box. You might have to unmute the speakers and/or the microphone using e.g.
pavucontrol
.
Disks
Disks are recognized in AHCI mode. RAID mode untested.
Touchpad
Works out of the box, but without some essential gestures (e.g. paste from primary clipboard with three-finger tap). In
Xorg
, you can use
libinput
to activate the tap paste, and then create an Xorg configuration file to save the setting across reboots, e.g.:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-enable-touchpad-tapping.conf
Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "VEN_0488:00 0488:104A Touchpad"
	MatchIsTouchpad "on"
	MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
	MatchDriver "libinput"
	Option "Tapping" "1"
EndSection
Webcam
Works but requires tedious installation of drivers, firmware and other software. To make a long story short, Intel decided to ship IPU6/MIPI webcams including the one on this laptop without first upstreaming drivers into the linux kernel. It then turned out that the camera requires not just a driver, but a whole separate substack because certain operations that are typically performed within the camera silicon are now delegated to the CPU/GPU. Dell ships Ubuntu "certified" laptops with this camera using a workaround that creates a "virtual camera", but the code is scattered across multiple packages, several of which require custom PKGBUILDs. A recipe to get it working as of kernel 6.4.2 is listed
here
.
Efforts are under way by Intel and the Linux kernel community to support this webcam out of the box, but it might take a year or two (i.e. 2024-2025).
Fingerprint reader
libfprint-2-tod1-broadcom
AUR
is required for the fingerprint reader to be working. The package
fprintd
needs to be installed as well, as described in
Fprint
.
Firmware
Dell provides firmware updates that can be installed automatically using
fwupd
.
It is possible to install custom
Secure Boot
root keys in the BIOS and use them for Secure Boot with Linux.
Function keys
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn+Esc
No
Yes
Toggles Fn lock
Fn+F1
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
3
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
3
Fn+F4
Yes
Yes
F20
4
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
Toggle Keyboard Backlight Brightness 0%/50%/100%
Fn+F6
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
3
Fn+F7
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
3
Fn+F8
Yes
Wrong marking
It appears to be
SuperL
Fn+F9
No
No
None
Fn+F10
Yes
Yes
PrintScreen
Fn+F11
Yes
Yes
Home
Fn+F12
Yes
Yes
End
Fn+Up
Yes
Yes
PageUp
Fn+Down
Yes
Yes
PageDown
Fn+Left
Yes
No
Home
Fn+Right
Yes
No
End
Fn+Ctrl
Yes
Yes
XF86MenuKB
Fn+B
Yes
No
Pause
Fn+S
Yes
No
Scroll Lock
Fn+R
Yes
No
SysRq
Fn+Ctrl+B
Yes
No
Break
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
Keypress is best handled via ACPI events, e.g. the
acpid
package/service.
Keypress is only recognized via ACPI (e.g.
acpi_listen
as
button/f20 F20
. User reports it used to be recognized as
X86MicrophoneMute
on a fresh installation, but it somehow does not work anymore.
Accessibility
Note
Blind users should request the help of a sighted person to change firmware settings.
BIOS Settings overview
The "BIOS Settings" interface can be reached by pressing
F2
during POST.
The BIOS settings page itself is GUI based. There is a panel taking approximately 20% of the screen on the left, containing various sub-categories of settings. The main panel takes 80% of the screen to the right, and contains the settings associated with each sub-category. The font is relatively large, and toggle switches will appear as light grey if set to 'off', and turn light blue if set to 'on'.
The BIOS can be updated through the "One-Time Boot Menu" (press
F12
during POST).
BIOS Settings navigation
The "BIOS Settings" interface can be navigated using a keyboard, or mouse - with mouse being the preferred mode. Keyboard navigation keys are as follows:
Key
Effect
Up
Moves to the previous field.
Down
Moves to the next field.
Enter
Selects a value in the selected field (if applicable) or follow the link in the field.
Space
Expands or collapses a drop-down list, if applicable.
Tab
Moves to the next focus area
PageUp
Scrolls the currently selected view up.
PageDown
Scrolls the currently selected view down.
Esc
Moves to the previous page until you view the main screen. Pressing Esc in the main screen displays a message that prompts you to save any unsaved changes and restarts the system.
Diagnostics
Pressing
F12
during POST starts the "One-Time Boot Menu" (if enabled in BIOS). There the diagnostic option can be found, which offers various thorough on-board tests.
If
d
is held while powering on, the "Display panel built-in self-test" (LCD-BIST) is initiated. The screen will cycle three times through solid colors before powering off again. This can be used to make sure all colors are displayed correctly without distortions and no dead pixels are present.
See also
Setup and specifications guide:
https://dl.dell.com/content/manual64458532-latitude-7440-setup-and-specifications.pdf?language=en-us
Official service manual:
https://dl.dell.com/content/manual32605743-latitude-7440-service-manual.pdf?language=en-us