Main:Dell Precision 5530 Dual Boot Setup

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The Dell Precision 5530 is a powerful laptop adopted by many corporations. Dell sells this machine either with Windows 10 Professional or Ubuntu.

If your laptop came with Windows 10 Professional and you want to install openSUSE Leap in a dual boot configuration, read on. This page describes how to do that. If you are interested in an openSUSE-only configuration, then use the Main:Dell_Precision_5530_Setup page (which this page is based on).

Installing Leap 15.1/15.2 is impossible by just doing it the traditional way with booting from a stick using F12. Also, without extra steps, the built-in SSD might not be detected at all. In summary, installing openSUSE feels somewhat brittle on these laptops - which is weird, as Dell offers options to ship it with Ubuntu.

These steps worked for installing Leap 15.1/15.2 on a Dell Mobile Precision 5530.

Prerequisites

openSUSE

Download openSUSE Leap 15.1/15.2 and prepare a USB USB drive with the openSUSE 15.1/15.2 image.

Windows

  1. Fully update Windows by using Windows Update
  2. Install all the Dell updates by using the Dell Command|Update tool
  3. Install the Dell OS Recovery tool and prepare a Dell Recovery USB drive in case things go wrong. If you have another Windows machine, you can also prepare the USB drive later (when things go wrong :-)) by downloading the ISO image and the Dell OS Recovery tool from [1]
  4. Create a local user account with administrator permissions. It is better if it has a different username as your Windows domain user (e. g. if your domain user is CORPDOMAIN\josmith, use "joesmith" instead of "josmith" as your local user account).
  5. Enable the local Administrator account (it is disabled by default) and set a password
    • Some organizations set Windows GPOs that disallow other users (even if local administrators) from using the Windows Recovery Console.
    • If you forgot to enable the local Administrator account but remembered to suspend BitLocker, you will still be able to enable it later but it will be more complex
    • If you forgot to enable the local Administrator account and forgot to suspend BitLocker, depending on your corporate Windows GPOs (namely, if they force Windows Hello login, i. e. PIN instead of password), you may need to reinstall Windows because there might be no way to login to Windows again.


Partitioning

Still on Windows:

  1. Disable Windows 'fast startup'
    • If 'fast startup' is enabled in Windows in the worst case this might result in data loss, so better turn it off.
    • Open the "Control Panel" and click on "Power Options".
    • Click on "Choose what the power buttons do".
    • Click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable".
    • Click "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" so that the checkmark disappears.
    • Click "Save changes".
  2. Shrink the C: Windows partition. I left mine with only 120 GB because I will have little use for it.
    • As the Windows installation occupies the complete space on the disk you need to shrink the Windows partition to create free space for openSUSE.
    • Open the "Control Panel" and type 'partition' in the search box. You'll see a link to the "Administrative Tools" (Create and format hard disk partitions).
    • In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on the partition that you want to shrink, and select “Shrink Volume” from the menu.
    • In the Shrink dialog, you will want to enter the amount you want to shrink by, not the new size. For example, if you want to shrink your 512GB partition by 390gb so that it will now be roughly 120GB, enter 409600 into the box and click on the "Shrink" button.
  3. If this is a new computer, completely disable Bitlocker on the D: drive (the 2 TB drive). It will save you entering a few BitLocker codes later and you can still renable it later.
  4. When you are done rebooting, back up your BitLocker codes and suspend BitLocker on C:
    • Even if you backed up your BitLocker codes to your cloud account, save them in another location or even print them.
    • Always verify you can read the codes before you start modifying BIOS settings.
    • Please note BitLocker goes back to enabled after rebooting, so you may need to suspend it several times.
    • You can also completely disable BitLocker on C: but it will take some time.

BIOS Settings

Secure Boot

The Dell Precision 5530 uses UEFI and checks for boot image signatures

  1. Press F2
  2. Secure Boot > Secure Boot Enable, choose Disabled


SATA Mode

The Dell Precision 5530 ships with Intel Rapid Storage Technology enabled and set to RAID Mode. We will need to change from RAID Mode to AHCI Mode or openSUSE Leap 15.1 will not recognize the NVME SSD drive. There is no performance penalty by enabling AHCI instead of RAID.

Icon-warning.png
Warning: This is a critical step. If you don't follow these steps to the letter, you may find yourself reinstalling Windows

On Windows

  1. Download and install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver (you need the SetupRST.exe file)
  2. Reboot
  3. Suspend BitLocker
  4. Run MSConfig and tell Windows to boot in Safe Mode next time.
    If you don't boot in Safe Mode next time, you will get a blue screen and "inaccessible boot device" error. Go back to RAID and start from step 1 in this section.
  5. Reboot and press F2 when the Dell logo shows
  6. System Configuration > SATA Operation > AHCI > Confirm
  7. Log into Windows in safe mode
    If your organization forces Windows Hello, PIN login or alike, you may find yourself with a Windows login screen where you are asked for a login + password instead of login + PIN. If that's the case, click on Other users on the bottom left side of the screen and log in as Administrator
  8. Run a Command Prompt in administrator mode and execute this:
    bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
  9. Reboot

Now you have a working Windows system with an SSD drive working in AHCI mode.

Install openSUSE

Installation

  • Turn off the laptop and insert the prepared USB drive
  • Press F12 when booting
  • In the Select USB drive (it will probably say also `Partition x` or alike). Make sure you boot from the USB drive in the UEFI section, not Legacy.
  • Install your Leap as you desire. While necessary in previous versions of openSUSE, Leap 15.1/15.2 do not need special kernel parameters.
  • It is possible to set up full-disk encryption, as required by corporations, from the openSUSE installer.
  • The key step is to create a separate 1 GB /boot partition
  • In the other partitions, click "Encrypt partition".
  • I ended with with these partitions
    /boot/efi - 760 MB in SSD. No new partition but mounting (without formatting) the existing Windows EFI partition.
    /boot - 1 GB in SSD
    / - 370 GB in SSD. You'll need to click Encrypt partition.
    swap - 12 GB in SSD
    /home - 1.8 TB in HD. You'll need to click Encrypt partition.
  • Check SDB:Encrypted_root_file_system for more details.

Post-Install notes

Networking

  • Wifi did not work when I first booted. This looked very odd given the Intel Wireless AC8260 chip included in this laptop is supported by the kernel.
  • After changing the networking management framework from wicked to NetworkManager in YaST, and rebooting, it worked flawlessly.

Graphics

  • You can install the NVIDIA propietary drivers by following SDB:NVIDIA_drivers. The Dell Precision 5530 runs an NVIDIA Quadro P1000, which is supported by the `x11-video-nvidiaG05` package.
  • You can install the SDB:NVIDIA_SUSE_Prime tool to switch between Intel and NVIDIA graphics. Just remember to run it after installing or it may have no effect:
# prime-select nvidia
  • With the NVIDIA propietary driver G05 version 430.26 (available from SDB:NVIDIA_drivers), suspending/closing the laptop and waking up the machine again works perfectly.

References

openSUSE Leap 15.1/15.2 on the Dell Precision 5530 Main:Dell_Precision_5530_Setup

Encrypted root filesystem SDB:Encrypted_root_file_system

Installing LinuxMint or Ubuntu on a Dell Precision 5530

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