Small, quick guide to set up Manjaro on the XPS 15 9560

Dell XPS 15 9560 Manjaro Setup instructions

# 1. First of all of course get Manjaro:
https://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/

# I recommend using Etcher to copy the image to your USB:
https://etcher.io/

# 2. Before installing make sure:
# - Secure boot is disabled in BIOS
# - Your SSD, HDD or NVME drive is set to AHCI instead of RAID
# - Fastboot should be on Auto or minimal, but this shouldn't matter to much

# 3. Once at the GRUB menu do the following (these steps are important, Manjaro won't even boot otherwise):
# - For drivers select the nonfree option instead of free, there is no support for Pascal GPUs yet (is planned for 4.12)
# - Hover over the option 'From stick/hdd' and press 'e' to edit the boot entry
# - Look for 'quiet' in the boot entry, after quiet you should type the following:
nouveau.modeset=0 nogpumanager pcie_aspm=off acpi_backlight=none acpi_osi=Linux acpi_osi=!

# It should now look something like this: 
quiet nouvea.modeset=0 nogpumanager pcie_aspm=off acpi_backlight=none acpi_osi=Linux acpi_osi=!

# 4. Now just install Manjaro like you normally would.
# After install repeat step 3 as Manjaro will still not be bootable without

# 5. Once Manjaro is installed pretty much everything is set up already.
# Manjaro handles things like installing Bumblebee beautifully, but there is one more thing we should do.
# We need to add the boot arguments given in step 3.
# I recommend using something like grub-customizer (available from AUR or https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer)
# This is an UI for making Grub customizations

##### Using grub-customizer #####
# - Open up grub-customizer
# - Go to the 'General settings' tab
# - and add the following after quiet: 
quiet pcie_port_pm=off acpi_backlight=none acpi_osi=Linux acpi_osi=! acpi_osi='Windows 2009'
# Press 'ctrl + s' or click save and we are done. Your installation should be fully working now.

##### Using terminal #####
# sudo nano /etc/default/grub
# Find this line and make sure it looks like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nouvea.modeset=0 nogpumanager pcie_aspm=off acpi_backlight=none acpi_osi=Linux acpi_osi=!"
# run 
sudo update-grub2 # (or update-grub if update-grub2 is not symlinked)
# to update your Grub config and we are done.

# Some last notes
# I get around 5 to 8 hours of battery life on a i7, 16GB, 512GB 4k model 9560. 
# Stay on kernel 4.9 (standard on Manjaro right now). 
# I have tried 4.11, but it was hard-locking/freezing my XPS 15 every few minutes or wouldn't even boot up.
# 4.11 only adds NVME power management so we aren't missing out on anything.
# Once 4.12 hits I will test and update this guide, hoping there is better support for Pascal as well.

# Update as of May 2018
# Latest install of Manjaro is possible using the exact same instructions.
# The current kernel version used by Manjaro is 4.14 and it seems to run fine.

# Update November 2018
# I've updated the boot parameters as I found the originals didn't work for me anymore

# Additional notes
# (Thanks @Cznielsen) For the XPS 9570 it seems this flag is necessary 'systemd.mask=mhwd-live.service'
# (Thanks @Jonathancollinet) Some people needed this flag to boot Manjaro: 'acpi_rev_override=1'
# (Thanks @stucash) For fixing power management of the intel graphics use these parameters: 'i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.i915_psr=1 drm.vblankoffdelay=1'