Dell XPS 15z

This guide will lead you to the most important configuration to have a working box on your Dell XPS 15z. This article was highly based on Alienware M11xR3, thanks to Philipp Leonhardt.

Analyzing CLFAGS
GCC Versions before 4.6 will not detect the right CFLAGS for a new Core i7 2nd Gen (Sandy Bridge) CPU with.

Upgrading GCC
There is no stable version of GCC 4.6, so hopefully soon you will have full core i7 support in your CFLAGS.

Processor Settings
This changes was made under Linux/x86 3.3.3-gentoo-sources, using Genkernel.

Card Reader
Not functional iet. I'm still looking for a good solution for it.

Webcam
Test it using mplayer:

GRUB Bootloader Config
For GRUB the Sandy Bridge needs some more special kernel parameters to reach the optimal performance and save some battery power. Add this to your kernel command line:

If you enabled Intel IOMMU support in your kernel config you also need to add this to your kernel command line:

Otherwise bumblebee produces IOMMU Errors on loading the nvidia driver.

PCI/USB Autosuspend, CPU Scheduler, Intel HDA Powersave
Create in local initscript to turn on all available powersaving options. Edit it to your preferences.

After adding the script don't forget to make it executable to run on boot.

Bumblebeed and Nvidia Card
Needed things for bumblebeed to run properly:
 * Nvidia graphics driver (alternatively the nouveau driver, but this hasn't much more performance than the Intel driver so forget about it)
 * bbswitch module to disable/enable the Nvidia graphics card
 * nasm to properly compile VirtualGL
 * VirtualGL to stream the window running on nvidia driver to the actual X Session
 * bumblebeed itself for controlling the bbswitch and nvidia module

For further information about Bumblebee Project, visit The Bumblebee Project page.

Nvidia Graphics Driver
The Nvidia graphics driver should already be installed after setting }} in make.conf. Just be sure to setup the OpenGL extension to work with the Intel driver:

Take the correct option for Intel driver

Installing bbswitch module
After that you can test the module by loading it and look into your syslog

Get the status of the nvidia card

Turn the card off, respectively on:

You can put this on the initial script created before, to make this change on every bootup.

Running Optimus
Optimus still give us headakes to configure. I'm still working out to make a fully working box, and Optimus is one of my threads. I know that Asus UL30Jt also has support for Optmus, but I have to make some testes before post it here. I've aready followed the nVidia Optimus guide, but it seems that still there is a missing part of the puzzle.

VGA Switching
I have being trying a lot of solutions to make this thing work on Dell XPS 15z, but none of then was successfuly. There is a guide to VGA Switchroo, but it seems that I can't do this or the hardware of Dell XPS 15z does not suport this resource. But I will keep lookint and updating this article as soon as possible. Every time I enable the VGA Switch, my kernel complains about that on boot.