I tried Linux for real as my main computer.
I tried Linux for real as my main computer.
Distros I initially installed Debian 12 on both my Clevo and Z13 (this is before I got the Zenbook) and was honestly not that impressed with the preinstalled 'bloatware'. Even without the system utilities I still had to remove probably 3 dozen or so packages (why does gnome come with SO MANY preinstalled games...) but at least it was as easy as just uninstalling them from the Software menu I would like to not have to put in my password EVERY SINGLE TIME I uninstall one though (yes, I know you can remove them through the terminal, I did that later on). Also not impressed that parental controls and help can't be removed from the menu, requiring you to use the command line, it feels very windows like IMO. I did try out Arch (mainly to try and see if it helped with the issues on the Z13) and I very much see why it's for advanced users. Archinstall makes it quite easy to get setup honestly, just customize everything through the prompts and run a few commands to get a desktop environment installed and you're good* *except you aren't I never did resolve this weird fullscreen issue and a lot of characters were missing, basically anything not ASCII. Didn't really try to resolve the characters as it was low on the priority list compared to the fullscreen issue. I'm positive that with some tinkering and more knowledge someone could fix these issues but I ended up just jumping ship back to Debian. Desktop Environments I chose GNOME because of it's design and extension support, I am really not a fan of KDE Plasma's design. I'm sure it would be possible to theme it enough that I wouldn't mind it but I didn't bother. Basic theming on Linux is quite the endeavor (at least on GNOME). Something as simple as changing the accent colour of the Apps/UI requires modifying SVGs, finding and replacing half a dozen values in a CSS file, creating 2 other css override files and placing the theme is 3 separate places as well as running multiple terminal commands just to make sure it applies to native GTK3/4 + flatpak GTK3/4 apps as well as the shell. I did figure it out but it's a lot more complex than I was expecting. To be clear, I had to do a VERY similar thing on windows, requiring modification of the proprietary msstyles file and all the images within for the global dark theme as well as having services running that constantly applied the accent to other elements. I use quite a few GNOME extensions as well, some standouts are: App Hider (to hide a lot of the apps I keep installed but don't launch ever like Characters and Fonts) Notification Filter (to add a filter of .* regex, I HATE desktop notifications, killed the service on windows and disabling them in GNOME doesn't block the stupid 'x is ready' or screenshot notifications....) App Icons Taskbar (Basically moves the dock to the bar at the top all the time, I am not a fan of the amount of screen taken up by both the top bar and bottom dock nor do I like auto-hiding it so this is a perfect solution for me.) Software Most of the apps I used on windows are available on Linux as well: Librewolf (Firefox fork) - Native Linux version Vesktop (Vencord (Modified Discord) Desktop Client) - Native Linux version Freetube - Native Linux version KeepassXC - Native Linux version For the stuff that doesn't have a native Linux version: Winamp - Switched to Amberol which is FINALLY a basic music player that just works and actually looks good \
RDP client - Using Remmina currently but looking for something less cluttered/complicated. GNOME's app has terrible colours which is a problem because I work through RDP VSCode - Honestly, I didn't even install the native linux version. GNOME's built in text editor + nano is good enough to not need it. Synctrayzor (Syncthing GUI) - Switched to Syncthing-GTK, pretty much the same functionality. Soulseek - Nicotine+ works well, I rarely use it. Just if I can't find the flac for a song via other means . Paint.net - I've been using GIMP but there's quite the learning curve, if anyone knows alternatives feel free to suggest them Video Trimming - I used the built in Photos app for this on Windows but I found this app on the GNOME Software store which is just a basic video trimmer and works great. I don't really use much software, some stuff I didn't mention because it's either such a basic app that GNOME has a version of it or it's popular enough that I didn't feel like it needed to be mentioned (i.e. Steam) Q & A Q: Why only Debian and Arch, why not Manjaro or Pop!_OS or even Ubuntu? A: Manjaro wasn't recommended by the asus-linux team and the main reason I tried Arch was because of their recommendation for the Z13. Plus I don't like pacman, the syntax is extremely convoluted. I use Ubuntu server and was already used to/like apt. Plus a lot of the software mentioned above is distributed as .deb files which makes it easier. As for Pop!_OS and Ubuntu, I don't really have a good reason. I tried Pop!_OS and used it for a short while but didn't really like they're spin on GNOME (and I think I had other issues but I don't remember) and for Ubuntu I didn't want to deal with native, flatpak, and snap. Plus again, I didn't really like their spin on GNOME either. Q: If you have so many issues with the Z13 on Linux why not just go back to windows on the Z13 and use Linux on everything else? A: I can't stand the idea of mixing Linux + windows on my daily systems, having to deal with that sounds like a headache trying to manage different software for each OS, hell I don't even want to run different distros on my systems because of having to remember which package manager/format to get on each machine... Q: Are you going back to windows? A: Hell no, I'm done with windows. It's to the point now where I'm happy with the experience and I have no real reason to switch back. I still use windows on a handful of machines (I have a tablet PC just for discord calls which runs a super stripped down version of windows, same with a PC that I use for playing YouTube videos via Freetube on my 'TV' (it's my old Acer Predator 43" monitor that got repurposed), both of these will probably run linux at some point when I get bored. I also have an old Precision M6700 running windows 7 (mainly for phone tinkering, all it really needs to do is run Odin/Some ancient leaked Qualcomm tools) as well as a VM on my main server for hosting game servers/discord bots/etc. that probably won't change too soon (I have a separate Linux VM which hosts the docker containers for most services). At some point I want to move that VM to Linux and merge it with the docker host but rn that's too much work. At work I still use windows as well as the VM I remote into runs windows because it needs to run the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect to our cloud PCs for work. This likely won't change.
psych0builder
09-11-2020, 03:25 PM #1Some Backstory Over a month ago (I believe around Dec 1st) I was finally so fed up with Windows I forced myself to give Linux a proper try. I've been slowly customizing my Windows experience for years, starting with basic stuff and eventually creating full custom images with custom scripts, tools, even a hacked together updater. The problem with all of these is that it's a constant uphill battle. Between Edge being so deeply rooted in the OS to the point that certain programs/games will not work without Edge & it's webview and the constantly changing of basic elements like the inexplicable removal of the user folders from the This PC menu I finally just got fed up. Every Windows update feels like 1 step forward 3 steps back, that 1 step forward is what stopped me from just grabbing LTSC 2019 and calling it a day for another few years until Nvidia decides to stop letting their drivers work on 1809 (like they did with <1803). Anyway onto the actual experiences, enough hating on windows. The hardware I use a very weird selection of hardware. My main system is a few year old watercooled desktop-replacement style laptop (Clevo X170SM-G) while my main portable system is a 2022 Z13 (the 'surface for gamers') which I disable the dGPU in and don't really use for gaming xD I recently picked up a Zenbook Duo (basically the lowest spec one, 10510U, MX250) for cheap and have been using it more and more as my portable system because I really don't need the power of the Z13 all the time... The Clevo Because the Clevo is basically a desktop z490 system crammed into a laptop chassis it just work s out of the box on Linux. The only real issue I had was I needed a way to control my radiator fan speed, this is handled by a micro-controller that sends a PWM signal based on the value passed to it over serial, fortunately this is a very similar process on Linux as it is with windows and after figuring out how to make a systemd service it works flawlessly, even better than windows which it tends to randomly stop working requiring me to open task scheduler and restart it. The fingerprint sensor on the Clevo is not supported under Linux. But that's pretty much the only piece of hardware that I have that flat out doesn't work. Having 3 monitors hooked up to a laptop only seems a little more buggy on Linux compared to windows, I do like how on Linux there is actually an option to align monitors by manually entering positions in the Nvidia X Server config panel as well as the ability to save display layouts. Compared to windows where I have to try and pixel perfect drag the preview around to make it mostly line up. I used FancyZones for window management on Windows and switched to using gSnap which took some getting used to (mainly the fact you can't rebind it to shift and you have to use ctrl (+alt to span multiple zones) but the functionality is very similar to FancyZones for my use. The Z13 Compared to the Clevo this is very much NOT a plug and play experience... Lets just get it out of the way, the fingerprint sensor is 'supported' but it functions as a swipe reader and is so inconsistent/slow it's basically useless. Suspend doesn't work. the SD reader is questionable (tbf it's also questionable on windows) and the XGm is it's own can of worms. But everything else just works on Debian/older linux kernels, the trackpad/keyboard have weird issues on anything 6.5+ The XGm is EXTREMELY finicky, I almost want to try the AMD based one and see if it's any better. There's a tool called supergfxctl by the asus-linux team that does allow it to work however it requires logging out and has a 50/50 chance of just not working from my experience, usually a reboot solves it but not always. Many hours have been wasted trying to change the hotplug mode, timeouts, etc to try and get it to work more reliably but nothing seems to help much. Back to the suspend issue, I've tried a bunch of stuff but ended up just giving up and using Hibernate or just shutting down entirely. Suspend just causes the screen to stay off or sometimes turn on but stay at just a black screen. The window changing lighting modes from the blinking red sleep thing to the solid colour so it does know it's supposed to wake up but something is broken with it. Now the biggest annoyance, the 10W power limit... So from my testing on any newer BIOS (>310 I believe) the cpu is stuck at <10W because of something to do with Intel DPTF/DTT. This is a firmware bug that I've reported to ASUS but they have 0 interest in fixing it because 'if the drivers [Intel DPTF/DTT] are working there is no issue'. Even after I explained that it was caused by a BIOS update.... After literal days of testing stuff the fix is just simply use BIOS 310. That fixes the issue entirely. Zenbook Duo Funny enough the Zenbook Duo I bought on a whim because it was cheap seems to be the best supported device, the only things that don't seem to work are NVMe and the SD reader, NVMe drives randomly disconnect after waking from sleep or unplugging/plugging in the charger and the microSD reader randomly stops working. Everything else works pretty much out of the box (you do need to install the asus-wmi-screenpad module to get brightness control for the second screen (which you want because by default it's quite dim) as well as a systemd service to set it to max brightness on boot). Suspend works fine, CPU turbos fine, touch between both screens does sometimes get confused for a sec when touching one screen, then jumping to the other but it's pretty quick to figure it out. I have my eyes on another cheap broken Zenbook Duo but this one is an OLED model, if I can snag it for cheap I'll try it out. If not I'll probably pick up a 1TB SATA M.2 SSD for ~$50 to use this one. I'm actually writing this on the Zenbook Duo \ Distros I initially installed Debian 12 on both my Clevo and Z13 (this is before I got the Zenbook) and was honestly not that impressed with the preinstalled 'bloatware'. Even without the system utilities I still had to remove probably 3 dozen or so packages (why does gnome come with SO MANY preinstalled games...) but at least it was as easy as just uninstalling them from the Software menu I would like to not have to put in my password EVERY SINGLE TIME I uninstall one though (yes, I know you can remove them through the terminal, I did that later on). Also not impressed that parental controls and help can't be removed from the menu, requiring you to use the command line, it feels very windows like IMO. I did try out Arch (mainly to try and see if it helped with the issues on the Z13) and I very much see why it's for advanced users. Archinstall makes it quite easy to get setup honestly, just customize everything through the prompts and run a few commands to get a desktop environment installed and you're good* *except you aren't I never did resolve this weird fullscreen issue and a lot of characters were missing, basically anything not ASCII. Didn't really try to resolve the characters as it was low on the priority list compared to the fullscreen issue. I'm positive that with some tinkering and more knowledge someone could fix these issues but I ended up just jumping ship back to Debian. Desktop Environments I chose GNOME because of it's design and extension support, I am really not a fan of KDE Plasma's design. I'm sure it would be possible to theme it enough that I wouldn't mind it but I didn't bother. Basic theming on Linux is quite the endeavor (at least on GNOME). Something as simple as changing the accent colour of the Apps/UI requires modifying SVGs, finding and replacing half a dozen values in a CSS file, creating 2 other css override files and placing the theme is 3 separate places as well as running multiple terminal commands just to make sure it applies to native GTK3/4 + flatpak GTK3/4 apps as well as the shell. I did figure it out but it's a lot more complex than I was expecting. To be clear, I had to do a VERY similar thing on windows, requiring modification of the proprietary msstyles file and all the images within for the global dark theme as well as having services running that constantly applied the accent to other elements. I use quite a few GNOME extensions as well, some standouts are: App Hider (to hide a lot of the apps I keep installed but don't launch ever like Characters and Fonts) Notification Filter (to add a filter of .* regex, I HATE desktop notifications, killed the service on windows and disabling them in GNOME doesn't block the stupid 'x is ready' or screenshot notifications....) App Icons Taskbar (Basically moves the dock to the bar at the top all the time, I am not a fan of the amount of screen taken up by both the top bar and bottom dock nor do I like auto-hiding it so this is a perfect solution for me.) Software Most of the apps I used on windows are available on Linux as well: Librewolf (Firefox fork) - Native Linux version Vesktop (Vencord (Modified Discord) Desktop Client) - Native Linux version Freetube - Native Linux version KeepassXC - Native Linux version For the stuff that doesn't have a native Linux version: Winamp - Switched to Amberol which is FINALLY a basic music player that just works and actually looks good \ RDP client - Using Remmina currently but looking for something less cluttered/complicated. GNOME's app has terrible colours which is a problem because I work through RDP VSCode - Honestly, I didn't even install the native linux version. GNOME's built in text editor + nano is good enough to not need it. Synctrayzor (Syncthing GUI) - Switched to Syncthing-GTK, pretty much the same functionality. Soulseek - Nicotine+ works well, I rarely use it. Just if I can't find the flac for a song via other means . Paint.net - I've been using GIMP but there's quite the learning curve, if anyone knows alternatives feel free to suggest them Video Trimming - I used the built in Photos app for this on Windows but I found this app on the GNOME Software store which is just a basic video trimmer and works great. I don't really use much software, some stuff I didn't mention because it's either such a basic app that GNOME has a version of it or it's popular enough that I didn't feel like it needed to be mentioned (i.e. Steam) Q & A Q: Why only Debian and Arch, why not Manjaro or Pop!_OS or even Ubuntu? A: Manjaro wasn't recommended by the asus-linux team and the main reason I tried Arch was because of their recommendation for the Z13. Plus I don't like pacman, the syntax is extremely convoluted. I use Ubuntu server and was already used to/like apt. Plus a lot of the software mentioned above is distributed as .deb files which makes it easier. As for Pop!_OS and Ubuntu, I don't really have a good reason. I tried Pop!_OS and used it for a short while but didn't really like they're spin on GNOME (and I think I had other issues but I don't remember) and for Ubuntu I didn't want to deal with native, flatpak, and snap. Plus again, I didn't really like their spin on GNOME either. Q: If you have so many issues with the Z13 on Linux why not just go back to windows on the Z13 and use Linux on everything else? A: I can't stand the idea of mixing Linux + windows on my daily systems, having to deal with that sounds like a headache trying to manage different software for each OS, hell I don't even want to run different distros on my systems because of having to remember which package manager/format to get on each machine... Q: Are you going back to windows? A: Hell no, I'm done with windows. It's to the point now where I'm happy with the experience and I have no real reason to switch back. I still use windows on a handful of machines (I have a tablet PC just for discord calls which runs a super stripped down version of windows, same with a PC that I use for playing YouTube videos via Freetube on my 'TV' (it's my old Acer Predator 43" monitor that got repurposed), both of these will probably run linux at some point when I get bored. I also have an old Precision M6700 running windows 7 (mainly for phone tinkering, all it really needs to do is run Odin/Some ancient leaked Qualcomm tools) as well as a VM on my main server for hosting game servers/discord bots/etc. that probably won't change too soon (I have a separate Linux VM which hosts the docker containers for most services). At some point I want to move that VM to Linux and merge it with the docker host but rn that's too much work. At work I still use windows as well as the VM I remote into runs windows because it needs to run the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect to our cloud PCs for work. This likely won't change.
Smart_man_0709
09-11-2020, 08:45 PM #2It's good to hear you're on Linux. One thing to note is that multi-monitor setups with X server can often cause issues. I’d suggest considering Wayland instead—it tends to run smoother and is more stable, though it might not be ideal with your NVIDIA GPU. For GPUs, Team AMD seems to have better driver support compared to NVIDIA. Regarding desktop environments, GNOME is generally bloated but offers flexibility; XFCE is a cleaner option if you want to customize. On modern distros like Arch or Fedora, avoid partial updates and don’t expect daily patches—breakdowns are normal, especially on Arch-based systems. This is why I recommend Debian for beginners.
ML_Covannal_
09-16-2020, 07:47 AM #3I'm having trouble getting Wayland to function consistently on my Clevo setup, especially on the Z13 and Zenbook Duo models. On the other devices it works smoothly. I also encountered significant lag and stuttering when connecting the Z13 to two monitors, even though I managed to run it without issues. Moving windows seemed to cause constant refresh rate fluctuations. It appears the high-resolution 4K monitor might be contributing to the problem. The other two displays ran at 120Hz, so it's not just about forcing the lowest refresh. Although I'm aware AMD is generally a better choice, my system consists mostly of laptops, limiting options. If I were replacing everything, I'd likely opt for all-AMD hardware. I haven't used multiple desktop environments before; once I simplified things, XFCE felt more stable and the extensions worked well. I'm used to reinstalling OSes regularly, so frequent glitches make sense.
The issue with reinstalling a distribution after it fails is that you miss out on learning how to repair a malfunctioning system or acquire valuable skills. Make sure you’re ready for a broken setup and know how to seek help by asking plenty of questions online—everyone begins learning somewhere.
BlueStar_LH
09-16-2020, 10:21 PM #5Krita offers advanced tools, while KolourPaint provides straightforward options.
ShinyKirby
09-17-2020, 05:21 PM #6You can use Adobe Photoshop on Linux, but it may not run as smoothly as on Windows. Try it out if you want.
Wayland isn’t suitable because there’s no clear way to remap touch input for multi-monitor configurations, so X11 remains my only option. However, fractional scaling in X11 is problematic—remapping the display every time I wake up from sleep breaks things. Other than resolution, the OLED look on a laptop is impressive. I wouldn’t use it as my primary machine due to burn-in worries, but for a secondary setup I’m hopeful it’ll work. (It freaks me out when I think the screen goes dark, but it’s just black.) Also, the secondary display isn’t OLED, contrary to what I thought based on Asus’ specs. I’m sure there’s a way to automate this and keep exploring, though it’s still frustrating.
The keyboard backlighting is perfect, suspend with NVMe works flawlessly, and touch input across both screens functions smoothly after remapping. Even the microSD reader operates well—something that didn’t perform well on either the Z13 or the old Zenbook Duo.
I acquired another Zenbook Duo, specifically a Pro Duo 14 OLED, at a great price and switched over. It offers a much smoother experience compared to the other Zenbook Duo running Linux, though it has one major annoyance. The panels are higher resolution (2880x1800 and 2880x864), which means I have to rely on scaling. As expected, it’s very poor—scaling feels terrible. To make it usable, I’m forced to use fractional scaling, but 200% is excessive and 100% is too dim. <rant> Why do we insist on using scaling for such high-res displays? I believed scaling was bad, especially since the extra screen space doesn’t actually help if you scale it down. It just drains battery and hurts performance in games unless you lower the resolution, which makes it look worse because it’s not native. I’ve raised concerns before about a 1600p panel in the new Z13; I’ll do the same with this 14" model too. For a 13-14" screen, going above 1080p/1200p seems pointless. </rant>
Wayland isn’t suitable because there’s no clear way to remap touch input for multi-monitor configurations, so X11 remains my only option. However, fractional scaling in X11 is problematic—remapping the display every time I wake up from sleep breaks things. Other than resolution, the OLED look on a laptop is impressive. I wouldn’t use it as my primary machine due to burn-in worries, but for a secondary setup I’m hopeful it’ll work. (It freaks me out when I think the screen goes dark, but it’s just black.) Also, the secondary display isn’t OLED, contrary to what I thought based on Asus’ specs. I’m sure there’s a way to automate this and keep exploring, though it’s still frustrating.
The keyboard backlighting is perfect, suspend with NVMe works flawlessly, and touch input across both screens functions smoothly after remapping. Even the microSD reader operates well—something that didn’t perform well on either the Z13 or the old Zenbook Duo.