ASUS Zenbook UX430/UX530
Device | Status |
Intel | Working |
Nvidia | Working |
HDMI (USB cable) | Working |
Ethernet (USB cable) | Working |
Wireless | Working |
Audio | Working |
Touchpad | Working |
Camera | Working |
Card Reader | Working |
Bluetooth | Working |
Function keys | Working |
Ambient Light Sensor | Not working |
Fingerprint Sensor | Not working |
ASUS announced UX430 and UX530 models. Since these models share almost the same hardware (the only difference is screen size and discrete NVidia graphics card), this article covers hardware specific configuration for all UX430UA/UQ and UX530UQ/UX models.
Configuration
Secure Boot (option)
In order to boot any Linux operating system, navigate to BIOS, then hit F7 or click on "Advanced Menu", then the "Security" tab and set "Secure Boot" to Off
.
If the aforementioned "Secure Boot" option is a menu rather than an on-or-off option, click on "Secure Boot", "Key Management", then "Reset to Setup Mode" and confirm in the dialog.
Video
See Intel Graphics and Hardware Acceleration. For models with discrete NVidia graphics card, also see Bumblebee.
Audio
See PulseAudio.
Touchpad
See Libinput.
Troubleshooting
Linux kernel 4.13 issues
Bug references: 197469 and 197449
Description: Unstable CPU frequencies staying at minimum of 800Mhz-1600Mhz instead of 400-700Mhz. This wastes battery and generates heat, causing fan to spin more aggressively. Also KVM crashes running Windows 10 VM with all available VirtIO features.
Fix: Use kernel version 4.12.* (or earlier) or 4.14.4 (or further). Avoid any 4.13.* versions.
Headphones audio is too low
You may notice that the audio through the headphones is too low (upstream bug).
In order to fix it, install alsa-tools or hda-verbAUR and create the file:
/usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh
#!/bin/bash while true; do DEVICE=`ls /dev/snd/hwC[[:print:]]*D0 | head -n 1` if [ ! -z "$DEVICE" ]; then hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_COEF_INDEX 0x67 hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_PROC_COEF 0x3000 break fi sleep 1 done
Then create a systemd script with the following content:
/etc/systemd/system/fix_headphones_audio.service
[Unit] Description=Fix headphones audio after boot & resume. After=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/bin/sh '/usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh' [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target
And finally, start and enable fix_headphones_audio.service
.
Fan spins all the time
See Fan speed control#NBFC. Also see #Linux kernel 4.13 issues
Microcode
During boot you might get the message [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x52 (or later)
. See Microcode to resolve it.
Nvidia issues with Bumblebee
It is likely that it's one of these issues:
- You used a power management application (especially Powertop). See bumblebee#Broken power management with kernel 4.8 for more information.
- You suspended your laptop and resumed, and are now unable to start your GPU. This can be fixed by rebooting the system, or by using
lspci
to find your NVIDIA card's bus id (usually01:00.0
), then executing the following commands (with the driver unloaded) to remove and rescan the graphics card:sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:<busid>/remove <<<1; sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/rescan <<<1
, replacing<busid>
with the bus id from earlier.
Headset Microphone
You may encounter an issue in which your headset microphone is not detected. The solution is to append
options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi
to a file in /etc/modprobe.d/
.
Tips and tricks
Power saving and performance
As advertised by ASUS, both laptops are capable to last up to 9 hours on battery. In order to achieve this, see:
- BIOS update - It is generally recommended to update BIOS, as it usually brings performance, power-saving and security features.
- Power Saving - List of general recommendations to increase battery life.
- Improving performance - List of general recommendations to increase performance.
- SSD - Tips and tricks for Solid State Drives. Both laptops ship M.2 SSD by default.
Extract Windows 10 license key
The laptop comes with Windows 10 preinstalled and the activation key is hardcoded into the firmware. If you replace Windows with Linux, then hardcoded activation key is useless. You might want to extract it and use somewhere else (e.g. virtualized Windows 10):
# grep -aPo '[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}' /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM