Some useful tips and tricks

Thanks to sjabasti for the tips.

Thermal Modes

On Windows there exist a Dell Power Manager to set some hidden bios thermal settings, a similar tool exists for Linux. Install it with:

sudo apt install smbios-utils
sudo smbios-thermal-ctl --set-thermal-mode balanced

The supported thermal modes are:

• balanced
• cool-bottom
• quiet
• performance

And the default one is balanced. For more info, see Arch wiki page about the XPS 13 (valid for XPS 15 also): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9370)#Thermal_Modes_.2F_Fan_profiles

Undervolting tool

Use on own risk https://github.com/georgewhewell/undervolt

Fans on while charging but not on battery

Set the mode of TLP to battery while on AC to see if this fixes it

sudo tlp bat

Gnome extension for CPU management

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/945/cpu-power-manager/

Firefox performance tuning

By default Firefox hardware acceleration is disabled on Linux. I noticed that on this system it works ok, so if you want to enjoy faster rendering just edit the .profile file in the home directory and add the following line: export MOZ_ACCELERATED=1 MOZ_WEBRENDER=1. You can also do this at once by running the following command in a terminal:

echo "export MOZ_ACCELERATED=1 MOZ_WEBRENDER=1" >> ~/.profile

If you're experiencing troubles then just delete the line. If you're having speed troubles, try disabling multi-process by opening about:config and editing browser.tabs.remote, selecting false as a value.