Hi All,
I have an 2022 Asus Zephyrus g15, I’ve installed EndeavourOS and followed this guide → https://asus-linux.org/wiki/arch-guide/
It’s still not perfect though. I do have sound but I don’t have brightness control on the screen. Feels like the fans are a little more aggressive than Windows and frankly they probably should be even less.
Anyone running the same setup?
I’m not running on this hardware, but in the past I stumbled upon this guide, which contains many generic vanilla Arch things, but also covers a bunch of zephyrus specific stuff. It was written for G14, but perhaps you can adapt this to your G15 setup.
But don’t adapt it blindly, be careful what fits your system.
Thanks that’s very helpful. I’m going to test some of these additional settings which weren’t part of the link I was originally looking at.
I may even try the vanilla arch install they recommend if I’m not seeing the improvements I’m hoping to get.
It’s really unfortunate this laptop is so locked down. Asus really botched things up by being so Windows-centric.
It’s honestly starting to feel like it’d be easier to run Linux off of a VM instead of dual booting. Running on a VM would not be optimal at all, but controlling screen brightness and getting an extra 6+ hours of battery life are not optional concerns either…
I really like the laptop too, it’s well built, has great hardware and is available on ebay for some really good deals compared to other comparable laptops.
What have you tried already? On one of my laptops - I am able to gain backlight control by adding the following kernel boot paramter “acpi_backlight=video” . This may or may not work for you, you can also try “acpi_backlight=video,vendor” .
Also, you can find very good information from searching Asus Laptop Arch, or Asus Zephyrus Laptop Arch… which will bright you to the link below… Also, the Arch Linux wiki is not far from being a one stop reference - you can also search for same thing as above but Gentoo as there is also some indispensable information there.
Check these out:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ASUS_Linux
i hope you make some progress with the information i provided. if you end up finding a solution it would be helpful to others if you posted what steps you took to reach a solution and mark this thread as much. otherwise, after taking a look at that information (if you had not already) report back and provide some steps you took and the results of different commands and things you tried - i may be able to help you further if more information is provided.
i am not expert but I am fairly comfortable with Linux - and it seems like to me that there is not much one cannot do using Linux - however, due to corporate arrangements, mostly involving money, excessively easy simple things become obfuscated. such as a laptop routing commands through a WMI windows management interface that then encrypts the information with proprietary microsoft tech . this is a very simplified and dumbed down explanation . if there is a unique case i am sure someone else has ran into it and made a workaround and provided a solution somewhere. if you take a look at the gentoo for asus laptops you can take note of the specific configuration they recommend for building a kernel and if all else fails it might not be a bad move to make and at the very least you will gain tremendous insight into the OS you want to use - i have a legion laptop and I was able to resolve things like backlight control - sound however, was a larger issue and i have yet to find a linux distro that is providing full suport for the TIA2781 chip that was in my laptop - I had to scour the internet and follow Texas Instruments dev threads as well as Lenovo ones and eventually I found drivers that I was able to copy into my /lib/firmware/ reboot, and the complex 3d sound setup finally worked - prior to I had no sound through spekears, I could get sound on bluetooth headphone but that was irritating me - and it was not a problem to large to deter me from using a linux based distro as my daily driver. a month or two later and I have everything dialed in and I am sitting ontop a newfounded wealth of knowledge. originally started with endeavour, however I am installing without their provided install helper, I still use the endeavourOS live usb as it’s nice to have a a gui - I just take steps to install alot more similar to the arch install wiki
goodluck
Thanks so much @chanabra, I love the journey you took with your Legion laptop. It’s unfortunate that we have to go to those lengths, but you’re absolutely right, at the end of the day we have a huge new found knowledge we gain from it. That definitely makes it a worthwhile quest.
I followed all the steps on https://asus-linux.org/wiki/arch-guide/, which includes compiling the g14 kernel but that did not do much. Audio works fine but no keyboard lighting controls, no screen brightness control and the Linux version of the ASUS “ROG Control Center” doesn’t allow any changes to stick.
That was super frustrating.
I kept searching for other options before your post, and found that site also has a guide for Fedora → https://asus-linux.org/wiki/fedora-guide/
Having worked enterprise linux for a number of years I’m pretty familiar with RHEL based systems so I thought I’d give it a try at least.
Following the steps, everything works now. Keyboard backlight, Screen Brightness, Fan speeds, Audio, et al. So that’s awesome, it’s a pretty simple guide too. The “ROG Control Center” works as well.
I will try to replicate this same setup on Arch though, I’m still not fully happy with Fedora too.
One thing I read which is a juicy tidbit is these laptops don’t do well with X Org, Using Fedora with Gnome + Wayland is the best setup. I haven’t tried that yet, I’m on XFCE - X Org at the moment.
One more thing, check out the performance specs. I previously had the 2021 Asus G14 with the Ryzen 7 5800HS, I only had it for a month and sold it wanting something with the Ryzen 9 6900HS, dual m.2 slots and a much better video card.
Surprised to find that the performance increase is extremely marginal. The Windows to Windows comparison is shocking, the 5800hs is basically equivalent if you factor CPU performance deviation in there. The Linux score on the G15 is better but I don’t have an equivalent G14 score to compare to.
It’s definitely got me thinking of switching back to a G14, and maybe going for the 2022 G14 with Ryzen 9 6900HS and RX6800s graphics.
Lastly I also see a reboot issue on this laptop, whether logged into Windows or Linux, if left running but not actively used after about 10 minutes it reboots itself. So maybe there is a deeper issue with my particular machine, I will see what I can find there.
