Testing out a new laptop
I'm recently trying out Fedora 34 on this pretty new laptop. It's specific module number is: G513QY-212.SG15
Should you get this for Linux use?
Probably not yet. My initial experience is encouraging performance wise in a couple games, but you're gonna need to be pretty motivated to install Linux on system with workarounds. that won't have all the features actually working
Some Problems And Workaround/Solutions and Random other Notes (not in order that I faced them)
More confusion
I'm not seeing the same wifi problem after downgrading the linux-firmware rpm back to normal and booting back to 5.13 like I expected while trying to test something else. UPDATE! I forgot to remove nomodeset from /etc/defaults/grub and so the grub entries regenerated including that... disabling the normal amd driver. Might need to reevaluate everything again.
The WiFi wasn't working
I got by that by rebuilding the linux-firmware srpm with a version tag of 20210917 and tar.xz'ing up the latest copy off the main branch up at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=198ac651f46b7d4efd660a1f5ab4f93ca422947d
Last tagged release was about a month ago and I couldn't figure out what the release criteria is but didn't worry about it anyways. Thanks to Level1Linux's video for making me aware of a similar issue over in https://youtu.be/VSXftsxBpi0?t=186 though in that video he didn't rebuild a package, just extracted on the required firmware directly into the target system's firmware directory (the easier way I expect) https://youtu.be/VSXftsxBpi0?t=268
The graphical installer didn't just work
Same video let me know I'd end up needing to try nomodeset
I used the everything netinstall iso so first boot already ended up with the latest fedora 34 kernel.
The keyboard didn't work
I mean it sort of worked, but if I pressed a key during the installer, it would shutdown the system. I knew that was coming since I had watched this Jarrod'sTech video:
I got around it by using an external USB keyboard.
Annoying Startup Sound
Not Linux specific but this laptop plays a tune when you turn it on. I didn't like so I turned it off. I ended up going to the advanced settings section of the BIOS to toggle that off and later I found out the Windows ASUS software probably can toggle that setting too.
CPU/GPU Temps won't appear in KDE's system monitor
I tried adding a custom sensor to log these. It didn't work. Somewhere I heard I shouldn't expect it to work until Kernel 5.15. I did end up trying the 5.14 Kernel since Fedora is having a test week.
I got the latest 5.14 for Fedora 34 out of Koji but it didn't help. Actually, it's worse off. The laptop's RGB effects ended up turning off where they'd just stay on for 5.13. I don't know if that's a real problem or if it now means if I found the right program I could control them. But the laptop panel lost brightness control, and KDE keeps prompting me about what I should do for a plugged in external monitor... but there's not one. I wonder if it's switching between discrete graphics and the integrated graphics? I dunno the exact cause but it's a little annoying.
Anyways this Phoronix page is where I read to expect it in 5.15: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen9-5900hx-linux&num=2 and maybe I'll try out a release candidate since It looks like it's in 5.15-rc1 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/drivers/hwmon/k10temp.c?h=v5.15-rc1
Games
Starcraft 2 when installed via Lutris which in turn was installed via the RPM Fusion repos was apparently working well. Not exactly a great choice to test graphics but I was curious.
Kerbal Space Program seemed alright via Steam with plenty high FPS.
asusctl
I haven't tried it yet but I'm aware of: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/lukenukem/asus-linux/
Over in Windows...
Games work really well. I've only used systems with 60Hz screens before so I spent some time having fun testing that out with things like moving the mouse cursor a lot (I think it has some ghosting?), playing some Portal 2 (and finding out I had fps_max set too low by default), and playing with the display tests over at https://www.testufo.com/
I ended up shrinking the main Windows partition to leave about 256GB free on disk for the Linux partitions I ended up creating as part of the that install.
Using a Dell USB Dock
I've got a USB-C dock that seems to work alright in Windows. On Linux the graphics out aren't working but the usb ports and ethernet are working. lshw isn't giving me the dock's model number and I don't feel like untangling it enough to turn it over. I'm pretty sure after looking at the picture it's the Dell Dock WD15. Also, it's able to charge the laptop. Not likely as fast as the normal adapter but good to have as an option.
Battery
Didn't even try it off A/C power yet.
Other
Here's some stuff out of lshw:
description: Notebook
product: ROG Strix G513QY_G513QY
vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
version: 1.0
width: 64 bits
capabilities: smbios-3.3.0 dmi-3.3.0 smp vsyscall32
configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook family=ROG Strix uuid=
*-firmware
description: BIOS
vendor: American Megatrends International, LLC.
physical id: 0
version: G513QY.311
date: 06/30/2021
size: 64KiB
capacity: 16MiB
capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd acpi biosbootspecification uefi
*-cpu
description: CPU
product: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with Radeon Graphics
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
physical id: 10
bus info: cpu@0
version: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with Radeon Graphics
serial: Unknown
slot: FP6
size: 4357MHz
capacity: 4888MHz
width: 64 bits
clock: 100MHz
capabilities: lm fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf rapl pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt tce topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext perfctr_llc mwaitx cpb cat_l3 cdp_l3 hw_pstate ssbd mba ibrs ibpb stibp vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid cqm rdt_a rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local clzero irperf xsaveerptr rdpru wbnoinvd arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif v_spec_ctrl umip pku ospke vaes vpclmulqdq rdpid overflow_recov succor smca fsrm cpufreq
configuration: cores=8 enabledcores=8 threads=16
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: Display controller
product: Navi 22 [Radeon RX 6700/6700 XT / 6800M]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: c3
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: iomemory:f80-f7f iomemory:fc0-fbf memory:f800000000-fbffffffff memory:fc00000000-fc0fffffff memory:fcb00000-fcbfffff memory:fcc00000-fcc1ffff
