USB boot in XPS13 7390

Question

Our organization bought several XPS preloaded with windows, but we have to make them dual-boot with Linux.

Following suggestions found on the board here and elsewhere, I followed these steps:

- in windows, disable fastboot
- in the BIOS:
- Enable booting from Thunderbolt
- Disable Secure Boot
- Enable Legacy Options ROMs
- POST behaviour item: set the Thorough option

I only failed to "Enable Legacy Options ROMs" since apparently is not present in the 7390 BIOS...

At the moment in any case, the USB stick with the Linux live distro is not visible as a boot device.

Any ideas?

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@alzyx Building on the correct answer above:

You should not enable "Boot from Thunderbolt" unless you have an actual Thunderbolt dock or device that you need to boot from. A regular USB flash drive is not a Thunderbolt device, even if you connect it to a USB-C port. Keeping that option enabled when it isn't needed decreases your security because of the fact that Thunderbolt allows access to PCIe.
Most Linux distros do indeed need Secure Boot disabled, but I believe Ubuntu supports it now. I'm not sure.
If you can't find Legacy Option ROMs on that system, it's because the system doesn't support Legacy BIOS booting. It will only boot in UEFI mode. But honestly even if that option was available, you'd really want to use a Linux distro that supported UEFI booting and actually boot it that way anyway. Legacy Option ROMs is used for booting ancient environments that might not have newer versions available.
The POST behavior option won't change anything here, so you can set that back to Minimal or Auto and avoid wasting time on every single boot.

In order to get Linux booting on that system, you need to be using a Linux distro that supports UEFI booting and your boot device itself needs to be prepped to support UEFI booting, which means having an EFI partition that uses the FAT32 format. I don't use Linux enough to know what tools are available for prepping flash drives appropriately, but hopefully you can find some resources that will help you determine whether your Linux distro supports UEFI booting in the first place and then how to prepare a flash drive appropriately to support being booted in UEFI mode.

ejn63 · Answer

You will need a Linux distribution that supports UEFI, since there is no way to boot this system in legacy mode from the internal SSD.

Many Linux distributions still do not support UEFI, either at all or completely. Ubuntu is probably the distribution with the most robust UEFI support, and they have an extensive wiki on setting up a dual boot:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

J-aesoCietahWix7 · Answer

I just posted this. It might be your issue if you were using the right-hand-side USB port.

venik212 · Answer

I created a snapshot of my MX linux 19.3 (XFCE) system (running on a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro), and managed to get my XPS 13 7390 to boot from it. However, the touchpad and keyboard, both of which worked during the boot process (I used the touchpad and keyboard to type in my password), once the boot sequence finished and the window manager took over, neither the keyboard nor the touchpad were working. Obviously, without them this XPS laptop is just an expensive paperweight. Can anyone help?

XPS

USB boot in XPS13 7390

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