Q4OS Debian 12 on Alienware M18 R2 Nvidia 4080
See the previous articles on getting Debian and Q4OS working on my Alienware M18 R1 Nvidia 4080, and M16 with Nvidia 4070.
Now, thanks to Jake at Practicing Musician, I have the R2 with the Nvidia 4090.
It appears there are a number of hardware differences compared to the R1.
Most notably the Wifi doesn't want to work at all with either the Live or installed OS.
Getting Wifi Working
6d:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 7(802.11be) AX1775/AX1790/BE20/BE401/BE1750 2x2 (rev 1a)
[ 3.136637] iwlwifi: No config found for PCI dev 272b/1774, rev=0x472, rfid=0x112200 [ 3.136648] iwlwifi: probe of 0000:6d:00.0 failed with error -22
I have updated/upgraded everything currently installed for the latest apt-based kernel available, etc.
Linux m18b 6.1.0-34-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.135-1 (2025-04-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@m18b:/home/bofh# lsmod | grep iw iwlwifi 360448 0 cfg80211 1146880 1 iwlwifi
Check if backports is installed:
cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep backports
If not installed, then install it:
echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt update
Install the backported kernel and firmware:
sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-amd64 firmware-iwlwifi
The newer Intel Wi-Fi 7 cards often need firmware that's not yet packaged. So, to get it directly from Intel (install git if not installed: sudo apt install git ):
cd /tmp git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git sudo cp linux-firmware/iwlwifi-* /lib/firmware/
Update the initramfs to include the new firmware:
sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot the system
After rebooting can verify if detected:
lspci -k | grep -A 3 Network
ip a
Enable Touchpad Multitouch
apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics # older approach
Newer, edit libinput settings:
etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf
and modify the section "InputClass" like this:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "libinput"
Option "Tapping" "true"
Option "ScrollMethod" "two-finger"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
#Option "AccelSpeed" "0"
#for other options see 'man libinput'
EndSection
This should enable 2 fingers scroll
Matrix Element Desktop Client
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https curl -y
curl -fSsL https://packages.element.io/debian/element-io-archive-keyring.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/element-io-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/element-io-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.element.io/debian/ default main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/element-io.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install element-desktop
References