Asus Z13 flow Strix Halo Arch Linux Set-up (Fall 2025)

Level1Techs L1 Articles & Video-related
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**note: being my first forum post, please feel free to correct me incase i have posted in the wrong category or disregarded any rules. I opted for the current catagory because I extended work done on Wendell’s video **

**note: The code/docs provided were written with the assistance of Claude/Cursor. The contents of this post are all authentic and written by me but please still i would explicitly like to declare how i built the repo. Be mindful of errors and hallucinations. I am manually sifting through the repo and have combed through it a few times but i am human so i will make mistakes and take time to correct them **

Background information: I am a mastering engineer and metal artist; i studied computer science and mathematics however i decided to pursue a career in music after school. I am no software engineer nor am i a pro developer however in the past year i have been coding for fun in my free time! LOL i suppose now that music is work: coding became fun!

After following the release of the Asus z13 Flow and the AMD Strix halo AI Max+ processors, i found myself absolutely fascinated by this chip and the form factor. The Nvidia AI cards are totally out of my reach financially hence I caved and purchased the device after watching and reading all the content on the internet about it, seemingly all the videos at least!

I am very happy with the device however windows is absolutely a miserable experience and i can tell that the co-pilot, overlays, background processes are eating up the performance.

In such a specialized device, i believe we must squeeze every drop of performance out and really gaming on the device in its stock/updated state is nothing exceptional at all. it can play games but it is begging to run linux with steam/proton.

This Forum thread is continuation of Wendell’s efforts; while he made an excellent video and certainly inspired me to make this repo and post: i would like to continue and iterate on an arch gaming setup for the z13 flow.

Considering that I am a rusty, inexperienced dev and I have zero experience with Arch, other than small exposures at uni, I have made the repo open source and would very much appreciate inputs from the wonderful members of this community.

Please lets work on the z13 ecosystem together and streamline the switch to arch from windows for all users who wish to experience the First Class Linux experienced mentioned by Wendell that the device genuinely has the potential to offer.

here is the link to the repo:

If you are interested, i am very eager and open to collaborate and I intended to work on this project in my free time for the foreseeable ownership of the z13 flow.

!! upon consulting a friend whom i respect, i will be added X11/Awesome, Wayland and Omarchy support in the script.
I personally am coming from a Macbook pro so i am experimenting with desktops for arch. I3 is in the lead for me but X11/Wayland/Omarchy have caught my eye!

!! the repo contains a script that I am working on. While the script is provided; Please thoroughly read Docs/My_Instructions.
If i understand: the whole arch ethos is to avoid these scripts and be aware of the system setup steps and configuration. I am personally reading the wiki myself and understanding the system, as i am new to it all, but i do not want to instill bad habits in others and i am genuinely happy with the values of the Arch Community so far.
!! the repo contains “Instructions.md” which contains steps from Wendell’s forum post and is there purely for reference.
!! I very much subscribe to open-source development and principles and would be happy to listen to constructive feedback and tips

Thank you and love to the L1 team and community!!
I realized that this little tablet is practically as powerful as my first full tower system with an overclock. There are wonderful tools and software popping up everyday day and I am so grateful that with a peaceful blue sky above me: i can compute with joy on the Z13 flow.

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Thanks for the post. Recently got the Z13 and have installed Linux, but been having quite a few niggles.

Have you managed to fix the low volume sound issue? (Apparently only 2/4 of speakers are working on most kernels). Bazzite has fixed this, but I had a lot of crashing with Bazzite. So back to arch (CachyOS).

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Bazzite includes Antheas Kapenekakis’ hardware enablement patches, which are crucial for sound, Bluetooth, keyboard brightness adjustments, and WiFi to work out of the box on the Asus ROG Flow Z13.

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Can you dig into the Antheas Kapenakis’ hardware enablement patches?

I’ve been working on an Ubuntu set up guide for the z13, and yeah. I have not been able to overcome the sometimes shockingly inconsistent/ unreliable wifi issues.

The reason I’m trying to build with ubuntu is specifically so I an take advanatage of TheRock ROCm builds and I’ve got almost everything tied together. I just can’t seem to get the wifi to work consistently.

Honestly its the most struggle i’ve had with any linux variant in ages. But at least at this point I have everything working in terms of machine learning (able to do some EXTREME parellism with this much vram… choooo chooooooooooo!!!).

Any starting point you could offer on the hardware issues?

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i will research bazzite and Antheas Kapenekaki’s patches. I am not happy with my forum post’s formatting so i plan to deprecate this post and update the repo with a stable download link.

i will also ensure there is a stable script on windows as well as arch/bazzite/ubuntu.

thanks for the recomendation!

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i had no plans to try ubuntu but upon helping a friend make an AMD machine, i am intrigued too and will add Ubuntu and ROCm support and investigate wifi issues.

this forum post will soon be depricated and i will remake a better formatted post with a working script.

i will also ensure there is a stable script on windows as well as arch/bazzite/ubuntu.

thanks for the recommendation!

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Well contact me for ubuntu because i’ve got it 85%-95% of the way there and I have all my notes on what its taken to get it to a fully functional configuration for both running ollama and tensorflow/ pytorch with ROCm support. I just have it as a text file though not a script. Maybe you could turn it into a script.

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will do! im absolutely down to do a unified system for everyone: Bazzite, Windows, Ubuntu and Arch.

I finally got arch running properly for the first time!!

I plan to create TDP, Gaming, Ui, productivity enhancements for myself tailored to this device. with so much ram onboard, i can totally justify writing an ai agent to run locally on system, optimizing and learning the user’s need and perhaps even helping them game

I will absolutely share everything including source code via github.

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even for windows:

it took me hours to debloat, prep for dualboot, optimize using chris titus’ windows utility, etc.

id be happy to save other users the miserable experience of configuring windows, creating a backup media and preparing for linux.

it absolutely should not take hours to configure windows. its absurd. i built my friend a pc recently and it genuinely took hours to get the system to 100%.

im hoping a linux script saves everyone time and we can game within minutes of plugging in an arch iso installer

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upon investigating Antheas Kapenakis, i believe that i do not need to install anything because i am focusing on installing the zen kernel at the moment. I am learning as i go but the zen kernel should run games possibly better.

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Hey! Coming back to this and considering installing but I haven’t done an arch install before. Maybe a bit more of a noob and stick to more fully cooked variants.

But on Ubuntu I’ve been having bluetooth issues I simply can’t overcome.

Have you had any bluetooth issues on this?

I’ll install if you haven’t.

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FYI - I just put the “stock” Omarchy ISO on my Flow Z13 and it was pretty seamless. I did try the method described in the repo above and it didn’t work for me. So I took a chance on the stock ISO and then do the Omarchy update. It pretty much is everything I’m looking for except for some tooling that folks mention. I’m more interested in development than being a gamer so my needs are not quite the same.

I did find some weirdness getting the stock keyboard to work - and FWIW this was also the case when I was running the initial WinOS install. The trick I found was that after making a change in Armoury Crate (or rog-control-center) that you have to completely detach the keyboard and hold it out for 5-10 seconds, and then re-attach it and it seems to pretty consistently re-initialize the keyboard firmware and the backlight syncs up with the changed settings.

I think this means that the fancy Armoury Crate behavior of sync’ing your LED backlighting to match the game you’re playing won’t necessarily work (until they put out a firmware updgrade that fixes the sync between the keyboard and whatever companion is on the system to manage the backlight)

Anyway - thanks for the work put in to track this. At least to a first approximation it seems that most of what I’m expecting to work has been upstreamed by now.