Dell XPS 13 Plus (9320)

Kernel

Audio

Audio (both speakers and microphone) works out of the box with Sound Open Firmware.

If you have added the i915 module to your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file as a module to load early, you must also add audio modules and related files to the same configuration file, with the hooks and files section to read as follows:

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES=(snd_soc_rt715_sdca snd_soc_rt1316_sdw snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl snd_hda_intel snd_soc_sof_sdw i915)
FILES=(/lib/firmware/intel/sof/sof-adl.ri /lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg/sof-adl-rt1316-l12-rt714-l0.tplg)

Disks

Disks are recognized in RAID mode and in AHCI mode.

Fingerprint reader

The fingerprint sensor setup and configuration process is identical as that described on Fprint. No special binaries or AUR packages are required to configure the fingerprint sensor.

Webcam

Works, but with proprietary userland, and workarounds needed to make use of it as a webcam in browsers. Some effort to get it working was listed here.

Required drivers can be found under intel-ipu6-dkms-git^AUR and intel-ipu6ep-camera-hal-git^AUR.

Another option would be using a collection of scripts and PKGBUILDs that should install everything needed for the webcam to work, which can be found as here.

Backlight

The backlight level of the touchbar is not controllable from software - it is set by the light sensor hardware built-in to the laptop. If you think the backlight level is too severe, you can force it to stay in the lowest setting by blacklisting the kernel modules responsible for initializing the backlight sensor:

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/touchbar.conf
blacklist intel_ishtp_hid
blacklist intel_ishtp
blacklist intel_ish_ipc

BIOS Settings Overview

The "BIOS Settings" interface can be reached by pressing F2 during POST.

The BIOS settings page itself is GUI based, with black text on a white background. 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 GUI does not have any built-in screen reader or other accessibility settings, but due to its simple colour scheme, and relatively large text size, it should be somewhat accessible for partially sighted people using an external screen reader as an accessibility aid. However, it is a GUI-based interface with lots of available settings, and lots of visual clutter in text form. As such it is likely to be difficult to navigate for people with severe visual impairment or total blindness, who are using an external reader alone. It is possible to enable/disable "Help Text", and "Advanced Setup" using two toggle switches that appear in the top left corner of the screen; disabling them should help reduce this clutter and improve readability (but may also hide useful info/settings!).

There are "Show all" and "Search" functions available towards the top right of the screen, which can ease navigation considerably.

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: