Thought I’d create a report on installing the newest Endeavor OS as of January 2 202 onto a Dell XPS 7590 (15"). This is the 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H w/ six cores, 16g ram, 500g ssd (I replaced w/ 1T Samsung 9?0 ssd), and importantly comes with the 4k oled screen. An ebay purchase, paid about $320 not counting minimal shipping plus tax.
I did not erase the original 500g ssd; hold onto Winduhs 10 for Dell-related emergencies. Had an old MacBook Air 2017 w/ a 1t ssd and yanked that one - a newer one anyway. This led to me deciding to go 100% linux with it.
Initially I installed Ubuntu. Nice becuase it had driver and so on from Dell, but not nice because I strongly dislike gnome graphical desktop. A KDE man. I tried installing KDE, which of course one can do, alongside gnome. In the end, it wasn’t always restoring the screen on wake-up. So… what the heck, let’s install my favorite distro these days anyway, EndeavorOS.
Yep, up it comes. (One does in bios [F2] have to enable USB boot to install any linux.) Whoa, boot up screen is tiny. Maybe sddm isn’t quite sorting that 4k screen right. Once I am into the desktop I just resize to 200% - not messing with resolution settings. No messing about trying to find a wifi driver (as sometimes happens with my venerable and beloved MacBook Pro 2012 15"). It’s just there. I run the installer, choose erase entire disk and install, choose default (no swap), and go.
And all is good.
Oh, I did have to scramble when it at first appeared the function row wouldn’t do brightness, volume, or keyboard illumination. Simply striking FN-ESC combination and suddenly it all works fine. That, and it appears once one has unlocked it that way, it remains unlocked. (I guess someone could lock it again with the same key combo; I won’t.)
Fan? I early on installed (via yay) i8kutils. Frankly, I’m not sure I needed to do that as the fans may have been working before I did so. Jumped the gun a little. However, i8kutils does have tweakable settings, which I’ve not yet looked into. I’m moderately happy w/ the system’s heat output as is (gets mildly warm in lap but not burning me like my old MacBook).
Color calibration on the oled (Samsung, I think?) screen? I have no idea if such an option exists in EndeavorOS or any other linux flavor. If someone else knows, please advise. I’ve had this rig about five days. Really enjoying my linux machine!
