Dell Latitude E7470

This article contains information to assist when installing Gentoo on a Dell Latitude E7470

Hardware

lspci

root #lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 520 (rev 07)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 08)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d3d (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d1a (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I219-LM (rev 21)
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)
02:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS525A PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)

Troubleshooting

Note
Keep in mind that issues below could be limited to a specific unit of Dell Latitude E7470 as well as depends on BIOS version that has been used."

Hotkeys (Volume, Mute, Brightness) as well as LID close/open events

Once loaded the Linux kernel, hotkeys for brightness as well as volume control will not change anything on their own. Same goes for closing the LID, the screen will be not turned off automatically. The keys (and lid) do send an acpi events that can be acted upon with sys-power/acpid. One may use ready scripts to control volume, brightness (hotkeys as well as disable screen on LID closed) from acpid-scripts repository.

Lack of other 16:9 resolutions than 1980x1080

Not every environment handles HiDPI displays good thus one may wish to scale down the resolution. The E7470 does not support out of the box any other 16:9 resolutions than 1980x1080. One may manually add it to Xorg with parameters generated by `cvt`. An example for 1368x786:

root #cvt 1368 768 60

# 1368x768 59.88 Hz (CVT) hsync: 47.79 kHz; pclk: 85.25 MHz
Modeline "1368x768_60.00"   85.25  1368 1440 1576 1784  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsync

root #cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-screen_1368x768_mode.conf

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "eDP-1"
    Modeline "1368x768_60.00"   85.25  1368 1440 1576 1784  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsync
    Option "PreferredMode" "1368x768_60.00"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
    SubSection "Display"
        Modes "1368x768_60.00"
    EndSubSection
EndSection