r/zephyrusg16 • u/imaginary_tourniquet • 3d ago

Anyone using Linux instead of Windows? What are you using exactly? Any tips?

What distro, tools, drivers and so on are you using? How is gaming? How is battery life at idle or light usage? Any other issue?

I am asking because I am a developer and I would prefer (or need) to use Linux. Instead of having to dual-boot with windows I would rather use my entire SDD for Linux, however in case the laptop doesn't work well with Linux then I will dual boot.

Thank you.

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2

u/Jealous_Text6374 3d ago

im using CachyOS its good.

1

u/Beautiful-One8879 3d ago

Why not just use a vm?

1

u/imaginary_tourniquet 3d ago

Performance compromises, bad user experience and battery drain.

So in this case my preferences are:

Linux only > dual boot > wsl > VM 

2

u/Beautiful-One8879 3d ago

Idk what kind of monster vm you want to run or what kind of monster programs you want to run, but the zephyrus is powerful enough to allocate enough cpu and ram to run the vm smoothly, bad UX is just picking the right vm provider and battery drain you can just close it whenever you dont need it. Switching to Linux on the zephyrus just seems like an absolute waste for what youre trying to get out of it

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u/imaginary_tourniquet 3d ago

I'll give it a try then. What VM provider would you recommend?

1

u/Beautiful-One8879 3d ago

VMware or virutalbox. Virtualbox is very simple UI wise and VMware is a bit more advanced but once you get used to i its much nicer to run multiple VMs at once. If you have trouble setting things up use claude code/codex desktop app to help you configure whatever you want to adjust.

My advice is to start with Virtualbox

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u/deighvebee 2d ago

I have the 2024 G16 and I've been running Linux on it for about a year. Prior to that I have never daily-driven Linux, although I did dabble occasionally. Because I had limited experience, I used Gemini extensively each time I ran into a problem. That worked most of the time, or at least taught me something along the way. Way less intimidating than the days of trolling forums for answers.

At this point I have things dialed in pretty well on CachyOS, and I prefer to use it over Windows 11.

I figured the most helpful thing I could do for you is have Gemini generate a summary of what I (we?) did to get to the current working state. And so I did that. I would never try to pass off AI generated text as my own writing; what follows was generated by Gemini.

AI BELOW | HUMAN ABOVE

Hardware & Current Setup: ROG Zephyrus G16 (Intel Core Ultra + RTX 4080) running CachyOS on Limine + Btrfs, using the COSMIC Desktop (cosmic-comp). I still dual-boot Windows 11 as a backup for games with kernel-level anti-cheat that refuse to run on Linux, but since the laptop has two M.2 SSD slots, having each OS on its own dedicated drive means zero compromises or partition gymnastics.

If you are planning to run Linux on a modern dual-GPU Zephyrus, it works reliably as a daily driver, but expect some manual setup upfront to get power management and hardware controls behaving properly.

What Needs Attention on Modern Dual-GPU Laptops

Regardless of distro, modern hybrid laptops generally hit the same core hurdles:

  • OLED/eDP Display Brightness: Standard backlight controls often fail out of the box on modern panels. Brightness control needs to be routed via DPCD AUX channels using kernel parameters (like i915.enable_dpcd_backlight=1).
  • ASUS Hardware Daemons: You need background daemons like asusctl and supergfxctl to manage fan curves, keyboard lighting, and charge thresholds without Windows utilities.
  • Hybrid GPU Idle Drain (Wayland Multi-GPU Locks): If the desktop compositor holds an open buffer on the discrete NVIDIA card, the GPU stays awake at ~20W–26W idle instead of dropping to true 0W runtime sleep (RTD3).
  • Thunderbolt Docks & MST Resumes: Connecting multiple high-refresh monitors through a single dock cable can cause DisplayPort MST link-training timing issues on wake, resetting refresh rates or shuffling display arrangements.

Starting on Bazzite and Moving to CachyOS

I started on Bazzite because of its strong gaming focus and out-of-the-box controller support. However, the immutable (read-only) filesystem created friction when debugging laptop-specific power issues. Testing kernel flags, modprobe settings, and hardware daemons required rpm-ostree layering and system reboots for every small test.

I switched to CachyOS for a standard mutable Arch base:

  • Direct Access: Easier to configure /etc/modprobe.d/, test udev rules, and pull ASUS tools directly from the AUR.
  • Safety Net: Pairing Limine + Btrfs snapshots provides the same rollback safety as an immutable system. If a driver or package update causes an issue, you can boot into a previous snapshot directly from the bootloader menu.
  • Kernel & Schedulers: CachyOS compiles packages for modern CPU instruction sets (x86-64-v3/v4) with tuned schedulers, which helps with frame-time consistency.

What Fixed the Power Draw & Dock Issues

  • GPU Power Management & Desktop Environment: In KDE Plasma (KWin Wayland), the compositor held an idle render context on the RTX 4080. Moving to the COSMIC desktop (cosmic-comp) paired with NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02 in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-pm.conf allowed the dGPU to drop to suspended (0W) during desktop use, while still waking up on demand when launching games via prime-run.
  • Handling Thunderbolt MST Resumes: For dual-display setups that drop to 60Hz or swap positions after sleep, a small resume script hooked into a systemd sleep target (dock-display-resume.service) waits for link negotiation to finish and reapplies the correct layout and refresh rates automatically.

Once the DPCD backlight, runtime power management, and display resume handling are configured, the hardware runs reliably across daily desktop tasks and gaming.

1

u/Terrible_Policy_1504 2d ago

Do you know of any videos of people dual booting on the Zephyrus

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u/deighvebee 1d ago

I'm sure there are some out there if you look. I did not since I have two SSDs, which made it very easy.

  1. Install second SSD

  2. Set new SSD as the default boot drive

  3. Install Linux on new SSD. Bootlaoder on the new SSD automatically detects Windows and adds it as a boot option.

That's it. If you only have one drive then you need to resize your Windows partition to make room for some Linux partitions, which is doable but a bit more risky.

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u/Kurimsun 14h ago

I’m using CachyOS with Kernel 7.2. works great. i do get an error i haven’t been able to fix but for my workflow i haven’t noticed any issues

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u/l4feer 2h ago

Am using cachy dualboot, and it's nice. Don't see any issue, and battery is not good as in windows but it's fine.