Qubes on DELL XPS 15 9520

User Support Hardware Issues
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Hello everybody,

I am using Qubes on DELL XPS 15 9520 for my private laptop and I enjoy it, however it is clear that I am not using either the laptop or the qubes at they true potential.

I am curious if there are other users (I know of @yerill) that are using DELL XPS 15 9520, therefore I started this Topic.

I also attached an HCL export for reference.

Currently I use the standard qubes and Kali and a Windows 11. No big complains, but few topics are annoying:

  • unless fully powered (and plugged) the laptop does not perform at its peak
  • I can not hibernate in windows
  • attaching a headset and the laptop camera to the windows qube is not stable and I can not have video confs in windows, therefore I need to change to personal/firefox (which works better but not ideal either)

Anybody any ideas how to fix those?
Are you having different issues?
Is it anywhere a list with the test cases that I can perform and check the functionalities?
How can I make a LOCAL qube to observe the performance of Qubes in general and look for bottlenecks?

Qubes-HCL-Dell-XPS-15-9520…20241117-123700.yml (904 Bytes)

All the best,
FN

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unless fully powered (and plugged) the laptop does not perform at its peak

I’m not sure the different cpu models that are available with an XPS 15 9520, but I have this:
12th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7-12700H

So without hyper-threading enabled that gives me 14 cores, (6 power cores, and 8 efficiency cores)

This forum post helped a lot: CPU Pinning Alder Lake

  • So I configured dom0 to use 4 ecores
  • My service VM’s (sys-usb, sys-net, sys-firewall) to use the other 4 ecores
  • That left the remaining 6 pcores to be configured for use by other VM’s

You may find a completely different arrangement to your liking. But tuning how pcores and ecores are used was helpful to me.

Also, I increased ram to 64G.

I’ve not run any specific tests, but I don’t sense much performance difference between being on AC power, v.s. on battery power.

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Related:

https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/dell-xps-9520-4-2/27111/2