Dual boot Arch on Dell XPS 7590

This is a guide on how to run Arch Linux (encrypted) next to pre-installed Windows on your Dell XPS 7590. My XPS version is an Intel i9 CPU, 32gig of memory, 1TB disk and an OLED screen. The tutorial should work for all other hardware but you might need to adjust certain steps.

You can of course always look at the official Arch install guide for the XPS 7590 and the Arch Installation.

Preparing Windows

I encourage you to update your Windows and your BIOS but it is optional.

Step 1 Turn off the SSD (BitLocker) hardware encryption if it is "ON". It depends on what you have specified during Windows pre-installation if full BitLocker is "ON" or only the "Used Space Only Encrypted". You can read more from Microsoft. You can verify the status of your disk encryption by running the following command manage-bde -status. Be aware this needs to be run as Administrator in cmd.

If BitLocker is enabled please turn it off before continuing, you can enable BitLocker back again after you installed Arch Linux. If this is a brand new Dell and you only see "Used Space Only Encrypted" you can choose to continue without disabling BitLocker.

Step 2 Shrink the C drive to make space for Arch Linux. You can follow the steps in this guide. When you look with "Disk Management" you will see the following partitions:

• EFI -> 680mb
• OS Windows -> 935gb
• Winretools -> 990mb
• Recovery Image -> 15gb
• Dell Support -> 1.3gb

I have resized my OS Windows partition with 500000 bytes, which leaves 447gb for Windows and 488gb for Arch Linux.

Step 3 Turn off the Fast Start-Up by following this guide

Step 4 Change Windows to use UTC time following this guide

Step 5 Turn off UEFI secure boot and change "Fastboot" to "Thorough". While booting your machine press F2 when you see the Dell logo. When the BIOS loads up select "Secure Boot" -> "Secure Boot Enable" and untick the box on that screen. Then select "POST Behaviour" -> "Fastboot" and change from "Minimal" to "Thorough".

Step 6 Change SATA mode to "AHCI" in BIOS by following this guide

Pre-install verification

Step 1 Please download the Arch Linux iso and put it on a USB stick using Rufus

Step 2 Use the USB disk to boot into Arch to see if it works. Start your Dell and press F12 to get the boot menu and select the USB stick from there.

Step 3 Verify partitions on your disk. Running the fdisk -l command will show you all the partitions on the SSD, it should be something as following:

• /dev/nvme0n1p1 -> EFI
• /dev/nvme0n1p2 -> Microsoft reserved (128mb)
• /dev/nvme0n1p3 -> Windows
• /dev/nvme0n1p4 -> Winretools
• /dev/nvme0n1p5 -> Recovery Image
• /dev/nvme0n1p6 -> Dell Support

Notice how you don't see the free space of 488gb for Arch. You can execute cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1 to visually see if there is free space left on the disk, in my case I can see Free space of 488gb.

Installing Arch

We will reuse the existing EFI volume, create an unencrypted /boot volume and an encrypted LVM with Swap space and /root in it. We need /boot outside of the encrypted partition because it simplifies the boot process. It isn't that big of a security issue because it's only the kernel which is the /boot.

Step 1 Connect to the internet through WiFi, any ISO with kernel 5.2.2 and above already has support for the WiFi card. To check your kernel execute uname -r.

You can use the wifi-menu command to connect to your WiFi. After entering the password you will get a black screen for a couple of seconds, just wait a bit.

Verify you have internet by ping google.com. (Note, you might need to retry if you are too quick)

Step 2 Partition the free space on the disk for Arch Linux. Use cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1 to start cfdisk and then create the following two partitions:

• 1gb -> which is going to be used for /boot. I am using 1gb because I might want to use multiple kernels, it can be smaller
• 487gb -> which is to be used for encrypted LVM

Execute blkid and remember the UUID's you need them later on.

Step 3 Format the 1gb partition with the command mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p7. Be sure that nvme0n1p7 is actually the Arch /boot partition.

Step 4 Encrypt the disk by executing cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p8 Be sure that nvme0n1p8 is actually the Arch partition (the 487gb one). The default settings from cryptsetup are good enough

After the encryption, we need to decrypt the disk with the following command cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p8 Arch. The "Arch" can be anything you wish, it is the name you will use to reference the volume after it is decrypted.

Step 5 Format the encrypted partition in the correct format. I am creating a swap space of 32gb because I want to be able to hibernate if needed. If you don't want that you can create a small swap space. Execute the following commands:

• pvcreate /dev/mapper/Arch
• vgcreate Arch /dev/mapper/Arch
• lvcreate -L +32G Arch -n swap
• lvcreate -l +100%FREE Arch -n root

Now we need to create filesystems on the encrypted partitions:

• mkswap /dev/mapper/Arch-swap
• mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/Arch-root

Step 6 Mount all the partitions:

• mount /dev/mapper/Arch-root /mnt -> Mount root
• swapon /dev/mapper/Arch-swap -> Enable swap
• mkdir /mnt/boot -> Create boot dir
• mount /dev/nvme0n1p7 /mnt/boot -> Make sure nvme0n1p7 is Arch /boot of 1gb
• mkdir /mnt/boot/efi -> Create efi dir
• mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi -> Make sure nvme0n1p1 is EFI partition

Step 7 Before installing Arch you can specify which mirrors you want to use but I leave that for later. To install Arch execute the following command pacstrap /mnt base base-devel refind dialog wpa_supplicant.

You need "dialog wpa_supplicant" to be able to access wifi again with wifi-menu when you are done with the installation.

Step 8 We need to generate fstab with genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab. Now verify /de/mapper/Arch-root, /dev/nvme0n1p7 and /dev/nvme0n1p1 are in fstab with cat /mnt/etc/fstab.

Step 9 Chroot into your Arch arch-chroot /mnt

Step 10 Set the timezone, see official guide on how to do it.

Step 11 Set the locale, see official guide on how to do it.

Step 12 Set your network preferences, see official guide on how to do it.

Step 13 Set your root password with the passwd command

Step 14 Generate mkinitcpio by first editing nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf with the following HOOK -> (base udev autodetect modconf block keymap encrypt lvm2 resume filesystems keyboard fsck). The hooks are explained here

Now generate mkinitcpio with the following command mkinitcpio -p linux

Step 15 To be able to run Arch we need REFInd boot manager. First execute refind-install to install REFInd to EFI. Because we use encrypted volume we need to edit it: nano /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf. Enable the "scanfor" option and then find the "menuentry Arch Linux" and change it to the following:

menuentry "Arch Linux" { icon /EFI/refind/icons/os_arch.png volume USE_THE_PARTUUID_OF_THE_BOOT_PARTITION loader /vmlinuz-linux initrd /initramfs-linux.img options "rw cryptdevice=/dev/nvme0n1p8:Arch root=/dev/mapper/Arch-root resume=/dev/mapper/Arch-swap" submenuentry "Boot using fallback initramfs" { initrd /initramfs-linux-fallback.img } submenuentry "Boot to terminal" { add_options "systemd.unit=multi-user.target" } }

Make sure you remove the word "disabled" which is by default there.

Done It's time to reboot and see if you can start Windows and Arch. Please exit chroot and execute umount -R /mnt then swapoff -av and then reboot now.