Dell XPS 15 9550

General
This laptop is Dell's flagship on the market with 32GB RAM is really beast and ready for any type of development where one requires to run multiple virtual machines at once. I got working all the non-standard hardware including keyboard special Dell keys, 4k touchscreen. But there remain still few minor issues described in specific chapter.

Laptop Specification

 * Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) (One of many CPU models offered)
 * Up to 1TB Solid State hard drive (NVMe)
 * Up to 32GB (2x16GB) 2133MHz DDR4
 * 15.6" 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge touch Corning® Gorilla® Glass or 15.6" HD (1920 x 1080) without touch
 * Dedicated NVIDIA GTX960M 2GB DDR5
 * Dell 56 WHr 3-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery
 * Integrated WiFi DW1830 3x3 802.11ac 2.4/5GHz
 * Precision touchpad, seamless glass integrated button
 * Integrated Widescreen HD (720p) webcam with dual array digital microphones
 * Dell™ TrueMobile internal 4.1 Bluetooth Module - European
 * Ports: HDMI, USB 3.0 (x2) with PowerShare; Headset Jack (1); SD card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC); Kensington Lock slot; Thunderbolt™ 3 (1)
 * Thunderbolt™ 3 supports: Power in / charging, PowerShare, Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps bi-directional), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps), VGA, HDMI

Hardware List
NOTE: I am in RAID mode instead of AHCI on SATA controller, but that shouldn't make big difference.

Kernel
List of Kernel Configs
 * 1) linux-4.10.3-gentoo.config
 * 2) linux-4.8.6-gentoo.config


 * This kernel works is configured with packed firmware and initramfs inside, so able to boot on its own within UEFI. I use rEFInd as it detects and shows on boot all available operating systems/kernel versions. I don't use standard kind of loader like Grub or LiLo. I think that this kernel image is bootable directly from EFI bios itself without anything else needed.
 * I am still working on proper KVM configuration for PCI Passtrough on QEMU.

Portage and GCC
NOTE: I use latest GCC 6.2.0-r1. Tha

Audio
Audio basically works, but when the headphones are plugged in, it suddenly stops working. Neither reboot or disable->re-enable of audio in BIOS helped. I resolved by flashing the BIOS again :-) and the sound is back:

ALSA Detail Report

Update: It's also reported working if you make i915 a built-in kernel driver and not a module, but keep the sound driver as a module. It seems that some power setup that i915 does has to run before the sound stuff gets set up. When you do this, it seems to work. Remember to build-in all the required firmware for i915 (dmesg will tell you what you need).

There are multiple bugs reported in Arch and Ubuntu with this ALC3266 sound chip: Ubuntu bug

Arch wiki refer to some workarounds: Arch Wiki related resource

Hardware workaround: I have USB wireless headset and switching between internal and USB based headphones works like charm.

Wireless
There is some serious issue with the driver which works with some networks, but when connecting to others it causes kernel panic even on latest kernel (only seen on certain WPA2 network, maybe you are lucky with your wifi router):

brcmfmac issue report bug report at kernel.org