Ubuntu 20.24 Guide for ASUS Zephyrus G14 Ryzen 9
When I found out how powerful AMD’s new mobile processor was compared with its competitor, I knew I had to upgrade to this as my work laptop. Time being the limitation, I didn’t research much and ordered the Asus Zephyrus G14 as it’s already widely available in Jakarta. Some other variants from Dell might be better suited for work, but I need work laptop ASAP, so I’ll settle on this. The newest 2060 puts icing on the cake.
I bought an Eclipse Grey, G14 GA401I, with 60Hz 1080p screen and 16GB dual channel memory. Unfortunately there is no 32GB model available.
Online searches shows that it’s difficult to get Linux running properly on this machine, but at the time of writing, I was able to get Ubuntu running dual boot with the onboard AMD graphics. I ran Unigine Heaven benchmark and got 17–30 FPS as evidence (it was running at 1 FPS before when graphics was software emulated). As I’m just going to use Ubuntu for work, this is fine for me. I’ll just game on Windows.
Edit: I found a much better guide from Reddit, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/id4e2d/asus_g14_ubuntu_2004_setup/ — The steps below for historical purposes only :p
These are the steps I took to get Ubuntu dual boot running with AMD onboard graphics:
- Read this excellent guide by It’s FOSS to familiarize yourself with normal dual-boot procedure. We’ll be having some problems along the way, but the process is the same. I’ll be referring to this guide as FOSS Guide from now on.
- (Optional) Read this effort by Ars Technica to get Ubuntu running. We’re not going to follow his steps, but it’s a good read. Give the writer some views!
- Go through Step 1 to Step 5 in the FOSS Guide.
- Restart your laptop, press F2 repeatedly to get to BIOS, and then change the boot order so you boot from the USB stick.
- When first booting off the USB stick, choose to run Ubuntu on Safe Mode. This is to prevent hangs and hiccups along the way. Make sure to plug your laptop as well. Follow the rest of the FOSS Guide (Step 6).
- After installation is done, go to BIOS again to make sure that Ubuntu is prioritized in boot order. Then restart.
- When GRUB loads, make sure “Ubuntu” is selected, then press E to modify the configuration. Search for the text “quiet splash” (without quotes), and then replace it with “nouveau.modeset=0” (no quotes). This will allow you to start Ubuntu with software emulation for graphics. I got this trick from this thread in ASUS forums.
- Log in to Ubuntu. Touchpad should work but you have to use the physical click. Now let’s install NVIDIA drivers. Follow this excellent guide from linuxconfig. What I did was run “ubuntu-drivers devices” and then running “sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall” as the recommended drivers are proprietary from NVIDIA. After installation restart your laptop.
- You should be able to get into Ubuntu without manually turning off nouveau now. Go to Settings → About, it should show graphics as “NVIDIA Corporation” or something similar. However, we’re still using software emulation for graphics.
- (Optional) I ran Unigine Heaven benchmark at this stage to figure out if we’re already using the discrete graphics, but no dice. If you run benchmark at this stage, you should get 1–2 FPS.
- Next step is to install AMD drivers, following the steps of this helpful stranger, got to AMD website and search for Ubuntu drivers for AMD GPU. After downloading, extract and run the “amdgpu-install” command. You can read the docs if you want.
- After installation, restart. Go to Settings → About. It should show something like “AMD Renoir”. Go run some benchmarks. Use the laptop as usual but pay attention to the power consumption (use “powertop”), and take note of fan noise. You should be getting some nice numbers in the estimates for battery life as well.
Note that a lot of features does not work yet. Things like Airplane Mode button, and keyboard light settings. There does seem to be a way to make it run, but I haven’t the time to test them (need to go to work!), if you do, please try these out and let us know in the comments:
- https://github.com/flukejones/rog-core → currently deprecated, and it links to some promising repositories:
- https://gitlab.com/asus-linux/hid-asus-rog
- https://gitlab.com/asus-linux/asus-nb-ctrl/-/tree/next
- https://gitlab.com/asus-linux/asus-nb-ctrl
After the twelfth step I noticed that I got an extra option to “Run this application with discrete graphics” whenever I right click on an application, but as I don’t have time to further tinker, I’m not sure whether it works or not.