Kubuntu Linux on the G752VY-RH71

[tripinva]

I just bought a new G752VY-RH71 to replace my G74SX. It was definitely showing its age, and I'd been running Aptosid Linux on it. When I first started out, I had a lot more free time, so it was time to switch back to something a little more... managed. Thus, I've installed Kubuntu 16.10 on my new computer after disabling Secure Boot, Fast Boot, and switching the disks from RAID to AHCI. (I also replaced the 128GB SSD with a pair of 256GB SSDs.)

I'm pleasantly surprised to note that almost everything worked right out of the box. Sound, networks, Bluetooth, suspend, etc. The Nouveau driver had graphics corruption issues, but it was painless to replace with the nVidia driver. It was light-years ahead of the process last time, when even getting the CD to boot was a problem, let alone everything else.

My outstanding problems are mostly minor, with one exception.

First, I've had issues with the fan speed. At first, it was constantly running. I installed sensors and a few other things and now it seems to be working okay, but I haven't been using it enough to know for sure.

Second, and this one's very minor, but I can make the computer suspend from the menu, but I can't get it to suspend just by closing the lid. I must be missing something obvious, but I don't know what it is.

Third, many of the special keys don't work. The M1 through M5 keys, the key where Num Lock is normally found, most of the Fn key combos, all don't work. xev reports the camera key, but with a code that doesn't map to anything traditional and the one key by itself isn't terribly helpful anyway. Here's some links I found.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150811

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112531

Finally, and here's the big one. The touchpad is incorrectly detected as a click pad. Part of the reason I bought this machine was because it has physical buttons. But, because of this incorrect detection, the right mouse button doesn't work. I can set "ClickPad" to "false" and that makes the left button work properly, but without a right button, it's not really working properly. Here are some links, starting with my own Ubuntu Launchpad question.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/408059

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1038814-start-0.html
(The third to last post about the Synaptics Capabilities showing a 0 for the right button? That's exactly what I'm seeing.)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1526393
(The Elantech discussion comes up later in the comments.)

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=235409&sid=248107427d1f80f2647214e0dc2bbb89

(I know I found another one that I'm not coming up with at the moment; just another unanswered question.)

This link does NOT seem to be relevant, unfortunately.

http://superuser.com/questions/619582/right-elantech-touchpad-button-not-working-in-linux

The touchpad gets loaded with the elan_i2c driver, which is different from the psmouse driver that I see in a lot of links, like the one above. I first tried to rmmod elan_i2c and modprobe psmouse, but that left me with a non-functional touchpad, so I undid that. Then I downloaded the source and thought I might be able to modify it based on what I saw in posts about some of the psmouse drivers, but from what I can tell, the source assumes it's a clickpad no matter what and appears to only support the left mouse button.

I may file a bug report. I do work on code as part of my day job, but nothing like a driver, so I don't know what else to do unless someone here has an idea. Hint hint. 😉

If there are any questions, output files, etc. that I can answer, provide, etc., please let me know. Whether it's a question I can answer for someone else or information needed to try and solve my problem, I'll try to help.

- Trip

[Korth]

I had these sorts of issues running linux Mint on a different laptop (not a ROG G752) - broken driver dependencies, driver version conflicts, malfunctioning hardware, etc.

ASUS doesn't provide linux drivers. But linux drivers can be obtained directly from the sites of each hardware ODM/manufacturer - I had to get LAN stuff from Intel, WLAN and BT stuff from Atheros, storage stuff from ASMedia, audio stuff from Realtek, etc. You need to identify the actual manufacturer and actual part number of each troublesome component, possibly including the motherboard itself, and wherever things are not made by ASUS (or are made to conform to somebody else's standards) they can be fixed by obtaining the correct firmware/software components.

Or you could try other linux distros. Don't even bother getting burned by all the "experts" and "authorities" flaming each other in this-distro-vs-that-distro arguments, just keep downloading and running different ones off a Live USB (or whatever) to find which will work better than others with your particular hardware. If you know your linux then you can even hack and copy whatever code/files you need out of the "working" distros and into your preferred (Kubuntu?) distro.

I would suggest a Mandrake as a natural next choice after Ubuntu. I currently prefer Arch (as an operating system and as a community), although I'm still forced to use some Gentoo-exclusive objects (and some yucky Windows stuff) at work. I found Mint wasn't any easier to use than Bang, I'd no longer recommend Mint for linux novices. The trick, when searching for working driver code, is to hunt through the project codebases within the most popular and most actively supported distros first - sometimes that oddball touchpad driver (or whatever it is you need) is sitting right there, slick and polished and refined, but it hasn't been formally adopted because it has some inconsequentially specialized conflict or trivial bug or it's just too small a niche to justify including within an already-bloated main distro package.

You might have to consign yourself to adapting an imperfect keyboard driver, preferably one intended for a device with a nearly-identical keyboard layout, remapping things as needed. Unless somebody else has already done the work for you - but, sadly, there isn't a huge overlap between linux code gurus and ROG-buying gamers, so good luck. 😉

[tripinva]

Korth wrote:
I had these sorts of issues running linux Mint on a different laptop (not a ROG G752) - broken driver dependencies, driver version conflicts, malfunctioning hardware, etc.

ASUS doesn't provide linux drivers. But linux drivers can be obtained directly from the sites of each hardware ODM/manufacturer - I had to get LAN stuff from Intel, WLAN and BT stuff from Atheros, storage stuff from ASMedia, audio stuff from Realtek, etc. You need to identify the actual manufacturer and actual part number of each troublesome component, possibly including the motherboard itself, and wherever things are not made by ASUS (or are made to conform to somebody else's standards) they can be fixed by obtaining the correct firmware/software components.

Or you could try other linux distros. Don't even bother getting burned by all the "experts" and "authorities" flaming each other in this-distro-vs-that-distro arguments, just keep downloading and running different ones off a Live USB (or whatever) to find which will work better than others with your particular hardware. If you know your linux then you can even hack and copy whatever code/files you need out of the "working" distros and into your preferred (Kubuntu?) distro.

I would suggest a Mandrake as a natural next choice after Ubuntu. I currently prefer Arch (as an operating system and as a community), although I'm still forced to use some Gentoo-exclusive objects (and some yucky Windows stuff) at work. I found Mint wasn't any easier to use than Bang, I'd no longer recommend Mint for linux novices. The trick, when searching for working driver code, is to hunt through the project codebases within the most popular and most actively supported distros first - sometimes that oddball touchpad driver (or whatever it is you need) is sitting right there, slick and polished and refined, but it hasn't been formally adopted because it has some inconsequentially specialized conflict or trivial bug or it's just too small a niche to justify including within an already-bloated main distro package.

You might have to consign yourself to adapting an imperfect keyboard driver, preferably one intended for a device with a nearly-identical keyboard layout, remapping things as needed. Unless somebody else has already done the work for you - but, sadly, there isn't a huge overlap between linux code gurus and ROG-buying gamers, so good luck. 😉

Mandrake? Didn't Mandrake cease to exist like a decade ago? And then didn't its successor Mandriva die like five years ago?

In any case, if it works in one, it should be possible to make work in another. If there's someone here who has both buttons working, I'd love to know what operating system that is so I can try it and see if I can make it work.

I'm a Debian guy and don't really enjoy other distros. I moved away from pure Debian after having a lot of problems keeping Aptosid stable, thus why I'm back on Kubuntu again after more than 5 years away from it. Does Elantech provide a driver? I couldn't find one; if they do, that would help a lot, as what's included in the kernel doesn't seem to do me much good.

- Trip

[k4ever07]

I'm running Linux Mint 18 KDE, which is based on Kubuntu, on my ROG Strix GL702VM. I have just about everything working with the exception of the left function keys (F1-F6). The right mouse button on my touchpad is working fine. I can't find the name of the driver to help you out.

I can probably help you with the suspend issue. I had a similar problem and it stems from two things:

1) The default kernel (4.4.x) has a bug that won't allow suspend/hibernate
2) KDE thinks there is an external monitor attached (even if there isn't one)

To fix the first issue, make sure you have a newer version of the kernel (4.5 or greater). This thread might help: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/296423/linux-mint-18-suspend-issue

To fix the second issue, go into KDE's Power Manager (System Settings -- Power Management) and select "Even when external monitor is connected -- When power button pressed -- Suspend."

Go into the System Settings -- Display and Monitor -- Compositor and set the Rendering Backend to XRender. This will disable some desktop effects (like wobbly windows and the cube), but it will prevent your system from locking up or having screen tears every time it comes out of suspend mode.

I also learned that after you install Linux to your laptop and the bootloader is working fine, if you have an EFI bootloader to disable "Launch CSM" in the bios to ensure that the Linux boot splash is displayed correctly.

Hope this helps!

Also, would love to know how to get all of the functions keys to work on my laptop if anyone has figured that out.

[tripinva]

k4ever07 wrote:
I'm running Linux Mint 18 KDE, which is based on Kubuntu, on my ROG Strix GL702VM. I have just about everything working with the exception of the left function keys (F1-F6). The right mouse button on my touchpad is working fine. I can't find the name of the driver to help you out.

Would you be willing to post the output of these commands for me?

xinput
lsmod

I may ask for more depending on what you post. You may simply have a different touch pad.

k4ever07 wrote:
I can probably help you with the suspend issue.

Kubuntu 16.10 has the 4.8 kernel. I just tried it again and now the system suspends when I close the lid. I'm not sure what, if anything, I did to fix that, it's just fixed now.

k4ever07 wrote:
Also, would love to know how to get all of the functions keys to work on my laptop if anyone has figured that out.

I've yet to find anything helpful on this, sorry.

- Trip

[tripinva]

k4ever07 wrote:
I'm running Linux Mint 18 KDE, which is based on Kubuntu, on my ROG Strix GL702VM. I have just about everything working with the exception of the left function keys (F1-F6). The right mouse button on my touchpad is working fine. I can't find the name of the driver to help you out.

I just downloaded and booted Linux Mint 18 KDE and still had the same touchpad issue.

- Trip

[pigulici]

I use Mageia on my g752vy, and work ok...

[tripinva]

pigulici wrote:
I use Mageia on my g752vy, and work ok...

I tried Mageia this morning, and it does the same thing Ubuntu does, treats it like a Clickpad and ignores my right button.

- Trip

[tripinva]

I've filed a ticket on the Kernel Bug Tracker. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=191651

- Trip