NVIDIA - eGPU - Linux Proprietary Driver - BIOS Bug

Hey all,

Not really sure if this is the best place for my post, but it seems like it might be, so here it goes.

I have a Dell XPS 13 Plus that I loaded Arch onto as soon as it arrived. It's actually worked quite well -- even got the dreaded camera to work reliably -- except for one thing.

I have an NVIDIA GPU that connects to the laptop via thunderbolt (it's in an eGPU enclosure). And, when I try to use the 'normal' proprietary Linux driver that NVIDIA provider, I get the following errors on boot:

• [drm:nv_drm_load [nvidia_drm]] *ERROR* [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00004300] Failed to allocate NvKmsKapiDevice
• [drm:nv_drm_probe_devices [nvidia_drm]] *ERROR* [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00004300] Failed to register device

According to my post on the NVIDIA forums, this isn't an NVIDIA problem, but instead a BIOS problem that's a known issue. Now, I certainly don't 100% accept that this is the case just because someone told me so on an NVIDIA community forum, but if this is a BIOS problem that affects Linux only (and it seems to only affect Linux), is there even a way to report the issue for diagnosis?

If a post here is indeed that way, happy to provide whatever information is needed to help remediate the issue. 

I recognize (now) that NVIDIA and Linux was a bad idea (at best), and that installing Linux on the Windows version of the XPS 13 Plus doesn't entitle me to service or support from Dell, but now that I'm here, I'm trying to see what I can salvage of the hardware that doesn't require me to boot into Windows.

So, thanks for any advice/insight!