Anyone got Linux working proper on a Zephyrus G16 (2025) model?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

I’ve heard quite a bit about Level1Techs and usually see Wendell on other things I watch or listen and after hearing him again on Full Nerd I was reminded he’s a full on Linux type too decided to check out the site and join the forum. So yay me :slight_smile:

Anyway I bought a new laptop, 2025 Asus Zephyrus G16 w/5080 and it runs Windows. My old daily driver (and I still have it) is a 2020 HP Envy x360 that I ran Tumbleweed on. Everything worked right on it and I’ve been daily driving it for about 2 years and I don’t want to go back to Windows.

Sadly, I’ve tried several distro’s on this machine and can’t seem to get one that works well enough to make the switch. I may be able to live with one or two quirks but pretty much all the distro’s I’ve tried have pretty much the same issues (ElementryOS - arch based I believe, my beloved Tumbleweed and Fedora 42). Namely:

  • Intel B201 WiFi 7 doesn’t work (it’s in kernel, but there is a known issue being worked on).
  • Sound is horrible, quiet and tinny. On Fedora I installed the ROG-Cachey kernel and that didn’t help.
  • Screen brightness stuck on full (to be honest I’m okay with this, but would be nice to have it work)
  • PC will not shut down or restart, it will log out and go to the shutdown screen but eventually the terminal is spammed with PCIe errors (says they’re correctable) and the hardware ID is for the SD Card reader. This is also spammed in dmesg logs.

I did turn off secure boot for this and I installed a second 2tb NVMe to do the install on so as to not mess with the Windows drive. Ohh, I also turned off Bitlocker since I have to switch secure boot back when going into Windows and that always triggered needing the 40-character bitlocker key on my HP so for now I’m going unencrypted. To be honest if I can get Linux working with everything I might ditch the windows partition.

ANYWAY - sorry I’m a known rambler. I just wanted to say HI, introduce myself, and see if anyone has successfully got the new Zephyrus working on Linux. I do have a USB dongle for WiFi that I can use while the kernel bug is sorted (there is a bug report someone issued that is being worked on).

  • JB
2

Welcome to Level1techs!

Congratulations on your new laptop!

I also applaud the initiative to ditch Windows. I think 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop in my family.

IMHO the only reason from shying away from moving to Linux is lack of driver support. In 2025 there is really no reason why any piece of hw is not properly supported other then lack of focus. Companies like Framework demonstrate that valiantly.

Unfortunately, Asus (and I don’t have hands-on experience) seems to have not committed to Linux support. Over the last years I noticed them adding linux driver support months or years after hw release. That’s certainly better than not providing support altogether, but other manufacturers demonstrate better support.

How about camera support? Most laptops have a webcam built-in and traditionally support for these can be spotty.

Well, unfortunately no helpful tips from me. Just a :100: for your efforts and look for the :rainbow: behind the :cloud:.

4

Hey,

My bad, accidentally deleted my post.

I have almost the exact same laptop, but with the 5070ti.

Instead of disabling secure boot I had to disable the VMD manager in the bios, so i had to install windows again. During which i updated the BIOS to the newest.(306)

I was having the exact same issues. Already installed fedora multiple times, and ubuntu once. But I think I figured out how to get it in a working state now.

I’m on my phone until after the weekend so I can’t find the proper sources. But from what i gather there was a brightness fix for the model from last year, that might also work now. It has to be done in the grub boot loading line(?).

Wifi won’t work (for now?), and asus is already working on a fix for the audio for the BIOS/kernel i believe. Found on arch wiki forum.

For the restart / shutdown problem, it just seems to stall on that one rtspx error indeed. Adding that tot the modprobe.blacklist in the grub command line, if I have the name correct. Stops fedora from turning on correctly for me (the driver isn’t loading then). But you can make it ignore all errors from pci which will fix the shutdown / restart. It’s by adding pci=noaer to the grub cmd line. You’ll have something like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pci=noaer"

I’m not sure if this could have some negative effect on the machine though, so that might be good for someone to confirm/deny. Since it will ignore all error reporting of the pci.

But it worked like a charm for me.

I’d be very happy to know if there’s an actual way to correct, since it says correctable. Or make the ignoring of errors more specific. And if it’s okay to do, the ignorning of errors. But this is where I am at now.

Goodluck

5

Thanks for the replies. I’ve muddled with a bunch of distros since I installed this trying to find one that gets better. Currently I’m on CachyOS though I will confess I’m not an Arch guy and I’m stumbling through like a noob. I’ve been Tumbleweed so long I can get around well on the CLI, but even basic “How do I run updates” takes me a bit to read a man page!

Anyway, back to the Zephyrus G16 (2025)

The Good:

  • CachyOS and the 5080 just work. I did install asusctl and rog-control-center but otherwise it’s all good.
  • My tp-link USB wifi 6 adapter works. It didn’t work in other distro’s (I was using a tp-link 2.4ghz micro USB for those)
  • systemd-boot is nice with respect to LUKS
  • adding i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=1 nvidia.NVreg_EnableBacklighthandler=0 nvidia.NVreg_RegistryDwords=EnableBrightnessControl=0 to the kernel parameters has my brightness control working (this worked in other distros too). I was given all three of these in another thread, and it fixed it, so I ran with it. I did notice in my dmesg log these related errors so maybe the i915 can be removed: [ 22.967912] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* GT1: GSC proxy component didn't bind within the expected timeout and [ 22.967937] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* GT1: GSC proxy handler failed to init
  • Camera works, backlighting controls work, USB works, power profiles appear to work

The Bad:

  • Still getting the correctable pcie errors rtsx_pci 0000:2c:00.0: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Correctable, type=Data Link Layer, (Transmitter ID) and other related notices in logs
  • After initial bootup every app I open comes with a 10-20 second pause before it actually comes up. Not sure why. Bootup seems slow too. I’m looking through dmesg to try and find something but no dice, my log starts at 22.xxxx mark not sure if maybe there’s too many of those pcie errors that it fills up?
  • Sound is tinny, I’ve tried installing some cirrus firmware but that didn’t help. I’ve only just begun trying to solve this
  • Shutdown or reboot results in a screen scrolling those pcie correctable error messages scrolling by fast. I haven’t let it go for 10-minutes, but after about 30-seconds I just hold the power button. I’d like to fix this, so I will try the noaer fix even though that will prevent it from logging all other pcie errors. I’d really like to get reboot / shutdown to work.
  • Internal WiFi still doesn’t work though every now and again it will show up in the network center but never actually connects to the network, and then disappears.

I’ll keep at it, all in all I’d love to get back to Tumbleweed but Cachy does seem to have better driver support. I’ve just not used systemd-boot (took 15 minutes to find where kernel parameters were), and pacman is powerful but foreign and confusing to me. If anyone finds a fix to any of these, or has tips on how to troubleshoot, I’d appreciate it.

JB

6

Adding the pci=noaer to my kernel parameters results in a failed boot. I’m not sure how to change it back. On tumbleweed you could adjust the kernel parameters from grub but with systemd boot I’m not given an option. For now I’m losing my steam and will probably just wait a month or two and try again. I know the WiFi 7 (Intel BE201) is a known bug and kernel team is on it. Sound and inability to reboot or shutdown are only two other things that I really need fixed. Once I have that it works enough to daily drive and sort the other kinks out slowly.

7

Hey, sorry to hear that didn’t work

I have it working now on a fresh install of fedora workstation with this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet pci=noaer rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core modprobe.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core nvidia-drm.modeset=1 i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=1 nvidia.NVreg_EnableBacklightHandler=0 nvidia.NVreg_RegistryDwords=EnableBrightnessControl=0"

Assuming you can still get to the grub menu. In the grub menu you should be able to press e to make changes to your grub command line.

If you’re willing it one more shot. By the best of my memory this is how I did it and the “reason” why it might have worked:

  1. Install fresh fedora workstation (seperate ssd)
  2. Boot up in grub menu pick the top fedora workstation entry and press e
  3. Add pci=noaer to the grub command line
  4. Save and continue
  5. sudo dnf upgrade
  6. Edit grub menu with sudo vim /etc/default/grub
  7. Add pci=noaer
  8. I believe: sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  9. Restart succeeded no issues

No clue why/how it suddenly succeeded this time. I don’t have enough knowledge to say something about how/why. But I now believe I couldn’t get it to work properly after killing the laptop by holding the power button.

I once added this + pci=nomsi + pci=noacpi on an install after already terminating it once by holding the power menu. After I couldn’t start it up anymore. So instead of removing them from grub I went on a fresh install trying only noaer and that time it did work. I believed since the noaer option didn’t give me any problems but the, nomsi / noacpi did. But perhaps it was with the noaer option too. Because of already killing the machine by holding the power while it was in the infinite error loop?

So if you’re willing to try again. This is what I’d recommend. Pretty sure Fedora or CachyOS would react the same to this if indeed killing it is the issue. The goal being just never having to kill it while it’s in the infinite loop. That’s why I added the noaer to the grub command line in the first boot.

Goodluck, I hope it works out JBinFla, it really is a nice machine once it starts working.

8

It’s been a minute but more info to add for those with the CU605 (2025 Zephyrus g16).

The spammed boot logs with correctable pci errors is your SD card reader. Disable it in boot security setting in BIOS and they go away and you get the ability to reboot or shutdown. I also got backlighting to work. I distros hopped back to openSUSE Tumbleweed and using a usb WiFi adapter had most functionality using kernel parameters. When trying to install the nvidia drivers my WiFi (usb!) broke and that complicated life. The be201 would show up after proprietary Nvidia drivers installed and even though the usb WiFi still showed up it quit working. I did not disable the built in WiFi in the bios maybe that would fix it but I’m not sure. Sooo. I never did get NVidia working (tumbleweed struggles) so went back to CachyOS yesterday. I’ll tweak it a bit but sadly mostly running windows for now since everything just works. I’ll wait a couple kernel versions and probably try again. I really have grown fond of my particular setup of plasma and the workflow with all of its features. Windows just feels like it’s lacking but I cannot argue with the fact it just works. I know that’s not Linux’s fault it’s the manufacturers not giving our OS the proper love it deserves.

1 Like
9

So it’s been a minute, I’m still stumbling trying to get it where I want. I went back to CachyOS because I couldn’t get Nvidia drivers to work with Tumbleweed (tried noveau and proprietary). Sad because I feel comfortable on the Tumbleweed CLI and Cachy I’m still figuring out.

So, here’s where everything stands:

  • I got the backlighting working with those three kernel parameters.

  • The pci=noaer wouldn’t boot so since I do not know how to change it when it fails to boot I will not attempt to change it again (note I’m using systemd-boot and there’s no option like on grub to edit the command line prior to boot).

  • I’ve found the WiFi works best if I leave my tp-link dongle unplugged and let it boot up, then insert it and all is well. If I leave it plugged in during boot there’s some issues with the wifi working intermittency. I ran into this on the other distros too so not just a CachyOS thing. What would happen is TWO wifi adapters would show up, one being the built-in Wifi which normally doesn’t even show up. But once they both showed up WiFi would not work for either. So, if I leave WiFi unplugged it boots fine and there’s no WiFi detected, plug in USB adapter and I’ve got WiFi. I could possibly disable the built in BE201 in the BIOS but from what I gather from kernel mailing list is the fix should be in 6.17 so a month or two tops I would think.

  • The correctable PCI errors that spammed the log, and prevented shutdown or reboot were fixed by disabling the SD card in BIOS (under security settings).

  • Sound is crap still. Supposedly the kernel has the fix but there’s a BIOS fix coming. I don’t know but I’m living with crappy audio which is a shame as this laptop has the best audio I’ve ever heard from a laptop and I’ve had Beats and Bang & Olufson branded laptop audio (both were weak sauce compared to this).

I am struggling with some laggy boot issues but I suspect that’s my newness to Cachy and my inability to get it dialed in. I’ll keep working on it and hopefully get my boot to less than a minute (it’s 58-seconds to graphical target now)

10

Systemd-boot should allow you to press E on the entry you want to edit; at least it does on my machine, though, I’m not using Cachy…

11

Well, learn something new… Thanks! I will try it soon. Grub at least said I could do that on the screen, so a tool like myself needs something to say “Hey idiot, here’s your options” otherwise it looks like there’s none :slight_smile:

12

Yeah, systemd-boot is less intuitive than grub, for sure, but it’s simple.

Also, FWIW, I have a G14 (GA402 model) which I’ve been running successfully on Linux since I bought it about 18 months ago.

I got a lot of use out of the information available at this site:

https://asus-linux.org/

They have arch repositories available, and they build a custom kernel for Asus Laptops, which helps handling of the mux and the ROG Control Center stuff, which they also built a custom Linux-native tool for.

Also, if you’re chatroom-inclined, join their discord. I’m sure there are some people that use the G16 on Linux in there!

Another tidbit (sorry, I’m scatterbrained today): Use the Korean mirror if you install the asus-linux repos, because the German mirror is slow. I get about 150kb/s from the German mirror, 12MB/s from Korean one. I’m west coast US though, so that may have something to do with it. :smiley:

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13

Yes! I found that site and I have tried the guides for Tumbleweed, Fedora and instead of Arch I went CachyOS because Cachy includes the Asus stuff in their default kernel (so the rog applet works, and I can verify I’ve played some games the dGPU works as expected). I didn’t bother with supergfxctl but I did install asusctl.

If I could get sound working I would think I’ve won. The WiFi will be fixed soon, and the other nags I can deal with

1 Like
14

Oh, I had no idea they’d done that. Nice!

I wish I could give you some advice on the audio, but unfortunately, audio is one of the great black boxes on Linux, to me. I just install the packages and pray they work :rofl:

15

Hi JBinFla,

I found this post when I started trying to get Linux working on my new-to-me 2025 Asus Zephyrus G16, with the 5070ti. So this thread is what brought me to this forum, and here is my first reply!

I have both CachyOS and Bazzite-DX triple booting with Windows and I’ve got Linux working about 98% perfectly, including Secure Boot on Bazzite. I’m about to delete Cachy in favor of Bazzite; I used Cachy just for additional troubleshooting, since it’s not ostree/bootc based like Bazzite, so it’s easier to tinker with.

The bad:

  • I’ve disabled my SD card reader in the BIOS for now. This is the source of the shutdown problems, as you’ve already figured out. I will tackle this later - I can live with it right now.

The good:

  • Everything else. Literally everything is working very, very well.
  • The wifi firmware issue is only during installation of some, not all, distros and this will eventually be fixed when new ISOs are eventually released.

I’m on Bazzite’s 6.17.7-ba20.fc43.x86_64 kernel. In general, they’ve taken care of the pain of getting Asus-specific tweaks into the kernel, plus they take care of the Nvidia kernel module and all signing necessary for Secure Boot. But if you’re not into Bazzite, the important bit here is kernel 6.17.7, which will get your wifi working. As of writing this, most Fedora/RedHat-lineaged Linux installers don’t install necessary firmware to activate the Intel wifi card. If you see the wifi device and its kernel module is loaded, but you can’t see any wifi networks, then that confirms the problem. You need to do a system update via some other connection (I used a USB-C ethernet adapter) after installation, and then you’ll have the firmware, and then wifi will work properly.

How to get sound working correctly: you need to update your laptop’s BIOS. The update fixes an issue where the kernel was unable to turn on the two speaker amplifiers that the laptop has.

How to fix the inability to shut down properly: disable your SD card reader in the BIOS. For now, this is all I have, but I will work on this in the future.

Here’s how to fix the intermittent freezing/pausing.

Run this immediately after one of those 10-20 second pauses/freezes:

sudo dmesg | grep -i -E 'nvme|timeout|i/o|reset' | tail -50

If you see nvme timeouts, then that confirms the problem: Intel VMD is broken. For most people, Intel VMD is also useless and can be disabled. All it really does is allow you to have hardware RAID across the two NVMe slots in the laptop, a configuration that is mostly useless with modern file systems. So, the solution is to just turn it off!

Disable the Intel VMD controller in your BIOS. Note that you need to do some trickery to avoid a Windows reinstall:

  • Configure Windows to boot to safe mode
  • Shut down
  • Power on, go into bios, turn off Intel VMD
  • Boot back into safe mode Windows, disable safe mode,
  • Reboot back into normal Windows and that’s it.

Hope that helps!

1 Like
16

Hi everyone,

From a fresh install of Cachy in 2026 things are running fairly smoothly.

Disabling VMD and adding

i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=1 nvidia.NVreg_EnableBacklighthandler=0 nvidia.NVreg_RegistryDwords=EnableBrightnessControl=0

to the kernel parameters is still a must.

SD Card error is still a thing but doesn’t seem to be causing any problems.

Two questions for the brains trust:

On Windows I can hotspot the wifi to share the network im connected to. Is this possible on linux too?

Any advice on webcam drivers, getting about 5-10 fps on the webcam currently?

17

I have been useing Fedora 44 on a 2025 Asus Zephyrus G16 w/5070 ti and I have been able to get it working quite well. However It was troubling at first.

I first had to go down to Fedora 43 because of Fedora 44 not showing anything on screen due to a nividia issue or something with nouveau. After that I had 3 main issues.

The first was a black screen if I set the gpu configuration to only use the dgpu, I solved this by only ever going bettween the ingratiated and hybrid modes the Asusctl software works great for that.

The second was a backlight issue where the backlight driver was not working. I fixed this with some help from a LLM and now my grub line looks like (i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=3).

The third is that It will take up to a entire minute to wake from sleep sometime, I don’t know how to fix this.

I have not had any other major problems and the machine is working great.