I have two ASUS motherboards (A520M-PLUS and B450M-A II) that seem to be incompatible with most USB keyboards when used in Arch and EndeavourOS. Some keyboards just don’t work. Some type random keys constantly while plugged in. Some type normally for a while then stop working. A few (1 in 10 I’ve tried, mostly the most expensive ones from name brands) work correctly. They all work fine with a Steam Deck running its default distro, and with a laptop running Arch and a laptop running Windows 10. I am not clever enough to figure out the problem. Is there somewhere I might correspond with people developing keyboard / usb controller / motherboard / etc drivers to attempt to provide info about the failures to help effect a fix to whatever is causing the problem?
I’m glad you made this post. I recently bought an expensive (for me) mechanical keyboard that just loves typing multiple keystrokes on a select view keys (Asus Prime B760), which makes it unusable for most tasks. Since the keyboard was shipped with some of the keys loose/removed during shipping, I’d assumed that the keyboard was just faulty.
The keyboard that came with the system (CyberPowerPC) works great. Both are USB. I don’t have a Windows machine that I can test this on.
Now, my previous Asus motherboard did not suffer this condition (x470), not sure why.
Welcome back @sparr 
There’s a couple of things you might try.
- Check the keymap is correct:
localectl -l - Try a different USB port, specifically a different type (eg: different colour).
- Ensure your motherboards are using their latest BIOS updates.
% localectl -l
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: us
X11 Layout: us
I have used every USB port on the computer, including multiple different types/colors/locations/headers.
The BIOS on both boards were updated within weeks of when I most recently reproduced the problem.
If you have KDE installed, you can check the keyboard being selected by going to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard.
Since I am using a US keyboard I get a Model Generic | Generic 105-key PC. Change this value and see if it helps.
Although there can be issues sometimes with usb keyboards i find this hard to beleive that it is a compatibility issue. Are you plugging into the black usb 2.0 ports. Also in the Bios enable legacy usb support in advanced settings and enable XHCI Hand-off is enabled. Also try different usb ports but specifically usb 2.0 Also update the Bios if therer are any Bios updates.