This repository provides a basic overview of the steps required for dual-booting Arch Linux and Windows 10 on Dell XPS 13 (9380) laptops. This is primarily intended to be a supplement to the more complete Arch Installation Guide and focuses on steps which require additional attention when installing Arch Linux on Dell XPS 13 (9380) model laptops.
The Fast Startup option should be disabled in Windows prior to installing Linux; this can be done relatively easily by following the steps outlined here.
Secure boot should also be disabled before attempting to install Linux; this is a slightly more involved process, but the steps are outlined here.
This is a very important step which I missed initially; Arch will not be able to access the laptop's hard drive without disabling Microsoft's "BitLocker" encryption on the drive. The relevant steps are provided here.
Warning: I am not sure if this step is entirely necessary, and I definitely came close to completely breaking Windows the first time I attempted it.
By following the instructions provided here, I was able to safely switch the operating mode the second time around.
Reference: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=245335
Once the steps above have been completed, we just need to free up space on the hard drive for Linux. On a fresh install, this can easily be done using Windows Disk Management application by following the steps here.
Follow standard installation procedures using the newly allocated block of memory:
- DistroTube - Installation Video [English] following the Arch Installation Guide
- GTRONICK - Installation Video [Spanish] for dual-booting with the installation instructions provided here
Since the Dell XPS 13 laptops do not have standard USB ports, the ouput of commands such as df -h will not follow the conventional /dev/sda* format. Instead the laptop's hard drive will likely have entries listed in the form /dev/nvme0n1p*, with the final digit specifying a partition number on the drive. New partitions can be created using standard tools such as fdisk or cfdisk, as described in the installation videos.
Note: The Arch USB was not able to detect the laptop's hard drive on my first installation attempt. This issue was resolved by disabling the "BitLocker" Encryption on Windows and changing the SATA operating mode to AHCI in my case.
Reference: https://askubuntu.com/questions/932331/filesystem-shows-dev-nvme0n1p1-instead-of-dev-sda
For the choice of boot loader, I personally followed GTRONICK and used systemd-boot which worked well without much effort and correctly identified/included the Windows 10 boot option. This method can be carried out using the following commands:
$ pacman -S systemd-boot
$ bootctl --path=/boot installThe configuration settings should be specified in the /boot/loader/loader.conf file, with something along the lines of:
default arch
timeout 3
console-mode 1
editor 0
Reference: systemd/systemd#8086
GTRONICK also provides an easy way of retrieving the hard drive's UUID which starts by issuing the command:
echo $(blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/nvme0n1p*) > /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
# (where '*' is the partition number)
and is completed by editing the /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf file to include the loader specifications:
title ArchLinux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=PARTUUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-Mxxx-Nxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx rw
where xxxxxxxx-xxxx-Mxxx-Nxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx denotes the UUID written to the file in the previous step.
Also be sure to install the networking and wireless packages (e.g. wpa_supplicant) so that you will have an internet connection after rebooting the machine.
DistroTube provides an overview of a minmal, yet practical, user administration configuration which can be used to create a user named <USER_NAME> as follows:
$ pacman -S sudo
$ useradd -m <USER_NAME>
$ passwd <USER_NAME>
$ usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage <USER_NAME>To grant the user sudo privileges, run the commands:
$ pacman -S vim
$ visudoand uncomment the second line listed below:
## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
in the file opened by the visudo command in the previous step.
The graphical environment which I personally installed comprised the following packages:
- LightDM - Lightweight display manager
- Xorg - Open source implementation of X window system
- Qtile - Tiling window manager
The Xorg window system and LightDM desktop manager can be installed from the Arch repositories via:
$ sudo pacman -S xorg lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter and the associated systemd services can be enabled as follows:
$ sudo systemctl enable lightdm.serviceI also installed the compton compositor for Xorg, which may or may not be necessary for the steps below to work correctly:
$ sudo pacman -S comptonThe Qtile window manager can be installed from the Arch repositories via:
$ sudo pacman -S qtileAt the time of this writing, the default configuration file is not placed correctly (or at all) and must be pulled from the project's GitHub repository:
$ sudo pacman -S wget
$ mkdir ~/.config
$ mkdir ~/.config/qtile
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qtile/qtile/master/libqtile/resources/default_config.py ./
$ chmod 755 default_config.py
$ mv default_config.py ~/.config/qtile/config.pyI was not able to find a definitive guide to working with the 4K display in Xorg without relying on a larger desktop environment such as Gnome or KDE. However, I was able to achieve the desired effect by creating/modifying the following configuration files:
.xinitrc
xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 1x1 --mode 3840x2160
sleep 2
compton
exec qtile
.Xresources
! Fonts {{{
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
Xft.dpi: 150
! }}}
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-monitor.conf
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "eDP1"
DisplaySize 294.4 165.6 # In millimeters
Option "DPI" "312"
EndSection
The values for these configuration files are simply my best guess as to what the true values should be; in particular, the DisplaySize values are just rough estimates I made using a tape measure. I am sure there is a more precise way to do this, but it seems to work for now at least...
With these settings, Arch correctly(ish?) determines the display size and uses the high DPI configuration. This can be verified using the xdpyinfo command:
$ sudo pacman -S xdpyinfo
$ xdpyinfo | grep -B 2 resolution
screen #0:
dimensions: 3840x2160 pixels (294x165 millimeters)
resolution: 332x333 dots per inchwhich is significantly better than the 95x95 dpi setting that was used by the default configuration.
The lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings and lxappearance packages provide simple graphical interfaces for adjusting display settinggs.
$ sudo pacman -S lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings lxappearance In my case, setting the font size to 16 in lxappearance and changing the DPI to 150 in lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings produced the desired results.
The simplest way to correct for the high resolution display on applications such as Google Chrome or Spotify is to use the command line argument --force-device-scale-factor.
In Qtile, it suffices to modify the launch commands for each application accordingly; for example, the following lines can be included in the keys list of Qtile's ~/.config/qtile/config.py configuration file:
keys = [
...
Key(["control", "shift"], "s",
lazy.spawn("/usr/bin/spotify --force-device-scale-factor=2.25 %U")),
Key(["control", "shift"], "w",
lazy.spawn("/usr/bin/google-chrome-beta --force-device-scale-factor=2.0 %U"))
...
] where the %U option is passed to accept URL lists as command-line arguments.
Reference: https://askubuntu.com/questions/30210/what-does-u-mean-when-calling-a-command
The font size of the teletype/TTY terminals (i.e. the terminals accessed using commands such as Ctrl + Alt + F2) can be changed by switching the default virtual console font. In particular, after installing the kbd and terminus-font packages and verifying that the ter-132n.psf.gz file exists in the /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ directory, the default font can be changed by adding the following line to the /etc/vconsole.conf file:
FONT=ter-132n