Re: no graphics for Debian buster on Dell Inspiron

On 11/20/19 3:42 AM, Matteo Semplice wrote:
> On 16/11/19 23:08, eric wrote:
>> On 11/16/19 9:22 AM, Matteo Semplice wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> after nearly 20 years of happiness with Debian distros I am 
>>> struggling to get Debian buster working on a Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1.
>>>
>>> The installer completes, but I have no working wifi and no working 
>>> graphics.
>>>
>>> Let's concentrate on the graphics for now, since it is more urgent. 
>>> The laptop has an i7-10510U which should come with an embedded UHD 
>>> 620 graphics and also a discrete nVidia MX230 GPU. I have tried 
>>> following different ideas found on the web but with no luck. My guess 
>>> is that the embedded graphics is not recognized by the driver and 
>>> that MX230 does not work with nouveau, but here are some details. The 
>>> following tests have been done on a fresh install (kde task selected 
>>> in the installer with only firmware-nonfree, firmware-iwlwifi added 
>>> afterwards).
>>>
>>> [...]
> On a side note, I have tried to upgrade the kernel to the 5.2 in 
> buster-backports but both bop.2 and bop.3 packages result in unbootable 
> kernels: the boot process just hangs somewhere. I have uninstalled them, 
> but if you think that a newer kernel may help I can try to reinstall and 
> boot it without the quiet option to see what goes wrong.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for any suggestion.
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> ?????? Matteo
>>>
>>
>> I have little experience in this regard but do have a cybertron laptop 
>> with the hybrid intel/nvidia graphics.
>>
>> There is a lot of confusing information on the web.?? I would start 
>> with blacklisting the nouveau driver and removing all the nvidia 
>> drivers to see if you can get just the intel graphics to work.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Eric
>>
> Hi,
> 
> ??thanks for the tip! You've put me in the right direction and I've also 
> done further research: in the end it seems that it is the i7-10510U cpu 
> that is not yet fully supported.
> 
> At present, I can boot 5.2 and 5.3 kernels from buster-backports and sid 
> provided that I blacklist the intel_lpss_pci and the nouveau module. 
> (After boot I have tried to modprobe nouveau and it seems ok, but I have 
> not tested much as for now I just need to have the machine up and 
> running with just any graphics user interface).
> 
> It's not clear to me if better support for my Comet Lake i7-10510U will 
> be granted by the same Ice Lake patches expected in kernel 5.4 or not, 
> but I guess that I just need to wait few more days.
> 
> For reference, I just report here the link to this reddit about 
> installing on XPS 13 (which has an Ice Lake cpu)
> 
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/cx0fkc/xps_13_2_in_1_7390_linux_boot_attempt/ 
> 
> 
> I have taken from there the idea to blacklist the lpss driver; I'll test 
> some of the other tips given there and report back.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> ?????? Matteo
> 

Glad to hear you are making progress. I never would of thought about the 
cpu not being fully supported.

I hope you get your machine working soon.

Regards,

Eric