Friday, September 17, 2021

Fedora 34 Linux and ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition

 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

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