- Table of contents
- Arch Linux on Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (G401II)
- Basic Install
- Prepare and Booting ISO
- Networking
- Format Disk
- Create encrypted filesystem
- Create and Mount btrfs Subvolumes
- Create a btrfs swapfile and remount subvols
- Install the system using pacstrap
- Chroot into the new system and change language settings
- Add btrfs and encrypt to Initramfs
- Install Systemd Bootloader
- Blacklist Nouveau
- Leave Chroot and Reboot
- Finetuning after first Reboot
- Install Desktop Environment
- Customizations
- Fixing Audio on Linux
- Setup Automatic Snapshots for pacman
- Install an AUR Helper
- Installing Waydroid
- Gamma Correction and Color profile
- Miscellaneous
Guide to install Arch Linux with btrfs, disc encryption, auto-snapshots, no-noise fan-curves on Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. Credits to Unim8rix, this guide is a fork of their guide.
Boot Arch Linux using a prepared USB stick. Rufus can be used on windows, Etcher can be used on Windows or Linux.
For Network i use wireless, if you need wired please check the Arch WiKi.
Launch iwctl and connect to your AP like this:
station wlan0 scanstation wlan0 get-networksstation wlan0 connect YOURSSID
Type exit to leave.
Update System clock with timedatectl set-ntp true
-
My Disk is
nvme0n1, check withlsblk -
Format Disk using
gdisk /dev/nvme0n1with this simple layout:ofor new partition tablen,1,<ENTER>,+1024M,ef00for EFI Bootn,2,<ENTER>,<ENTER>,8300for the linux partitionwto save layout
Format the EFI Partition
mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n EFI /dev/nvme0n1p1
cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2
cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 luks
Create btrfs filesystem for root partition
mkfs.btrfs -f -L ROOTFS /dev/mapper/luks
Mount Partitions und create Subvol for btrfs. I dont want home, etc in my snapshots, so create subvol for them.
mount -t btrfs LABEL=ROOTFS /mnt
btrfs sub create /mnt/@
btrfs sub create /mnt/@home
btrfs sub create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs sub create /mnt/@swap
btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size ${SWAP_SIZE} /mnt/@swap/swapfile
Replace ${SWAP_SIZE} with the amount of swap space you want. Typically you should have the same amount of swap as RAM. So if you have 16GB of ram, you should have 16GB of swap space. Note that the size in GB is denoted with a G as a suffix and NOT GB.
(Source)
After that, just unmount with umount /mnt/ and remount with subvolumes
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,subvol=@ /dev/mapper/luks /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mkdir -p /mnt/home
mkdir -p /mnt/.snapshots
mkdir -p /mnt/btrfs
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,subvol=@home /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/home/
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,subvol=@snapshots /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/.snapshots/
mount -o noatime,space_cache=v2,commit=120,subvol=@swap /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/swap/
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd,space_cache=v2,commit=120,subvolid=5 /dev/mapper/luks /mnt/btrfs/
Check mountpoints with df -Th and enable swap file
swapon swapfile
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware btrfs-progs nano networkmanager amd-ucode
After this, generate the filesystem table using
genfstab -Lp /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Add swapfile
echo "/swap/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
You can use a hostname of your choice, I have gone with zephyrus-g14.
arch-chroot /mnt
echo zephyrus-g14 > /etc/hostname
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
echo LANGUAGE=en_US >> /etc/locale.conf
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
Modify /etc/hosts and add these entries. For static IPs, remove 127.0.1.1. Replace zephyrus-g14 with your hostname.
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 zephyrus-g14.localdomain zephyrus-g14
Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment the following line
en_US.UTF-8
Execute locale-gen to create the locales now
Add a password for root using passwd root
Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and add encrypt btrfs to hooks between block/filesystems.
HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block encrypt btrfs filesystems keyboard fsck
Also include amdgpu in the MODULES section and run mkinitcpio -P
bootctl --path=/boot install installs bootloader
Edit the bootloader config using nano
nano /boot/loader/loader.conf
Replace the existing text with the following lines.
default arch.conf
timeout 3
editor 0
Then, replace the contents of /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf with the following
title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /amd-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
Finally, copy boot-options with
echo "options cryptdevice=UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/nvme0n1p2):luks root=/dev/mapper/luks rootflags=subvol=@ rw" >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia-nouveau.conf using nano and add the following lines to it
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
Type exit to exit chroot and unmount all the volumes using
umount -R /mnt/
and reboot the system.
After a successful reboot, we will perform some necessary initial setup.
To connect to WiFi using nmcli, enable the network manager
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl start NetworkManager
nmcli device wifi connect YOURSSID password SSIDPASSWORD
I prefer zsh as my default shell. Install it with pacman if not already installed
sudo pacman -S zsh zsh-completions
Create a new local user, add it to relevant groups and point it to zsh.
useradd -m -g users -G wheel,power,audio -s /usr/bin/zsh MYUSERNAME
passwd MYUSERNAME
Now enable root access for the user by adding it to sudoers. Edit /etc/sudoers and uncomment
`%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL`
Now exit and relogin as the newly created user.
Ensure that the system is up to date by running
sudo pacman -Syu
Install acpid and dbus and reboot the system.
sudo pacman -S acpid dbus
sudo systemctl enable acpid
Install xorg and kde packages. I prefer wayland over X, however, it is a good idea to have X installed as well.
sudo pacman -S xorg plasma plasma-workspace sddm
Enable SDDM login manager
sudo systemctl enable sddm
Reboot and login to your new Desktop.
I like to use zsh with oh-my-zsh with Powerlevel10K theme. To install that, first install the required dependencies.
sudo pacman -S git curl wget
Get the necessary fonts
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
mkdir .local/share/fonts
cd .local/share/fonts
wget https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k-media/raw/master/MesloLGS%20NF%20Regular.ttf
wget https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k-media/raw/master/MesloLGS%20NF%20Bold.ttf
wget https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k-media/raw/master/MesloLGS%20NF%20Italic.ttf
wget https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k-media/raw/master/MesloLGS%20NF%20Bold%20Italic.ttf
fc-cache -v
Clone Powerlevel10K repo
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
Set ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k" in ~/.zshrc
Run zsh and it should prompt you to set up the Powerlevel10k theme. If your prompt configuration includes text on the right side of terminal, disable "Reflow Lines" option in Konsole settings -> edit current profile -> Scrolling to avoid jitter when resizing terminal.
Install plymouth from official repos if not already installed.
Now modify the Hooks for the Initramfs, Plymouth must be right after "base udev".
HOOKS="base udev plymouth autodetect modconf block encrypt btrfs filesystems keyboard fsck
Run mkinitcpio -P
Add some kernel-parameters to make boot smooth. Edit /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf and append to options
...rootflags=subvol=@ quiet splash loglevel=3 rd.systemd.show_status=auto rd.udev.log_priority=3 vt.global_cursor_default=0 rw
For Plymouth Theming and Options, check Plymouth on Arch Wiki. Run the following command to set ROG logo as the plymouth theme.
sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R bgrt
Use these customizations to get the most out of your system.
Add asus-linux repo to pacman as detailed here and install the following tools
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S asusctl
sudo pacman -S supergfxctl
sudo pacman -S rog-control-center
Enable these tools by running
sudo systemctl enable --now power-profiles-daemon.service
systemctl enable --now supergfxd
Run the following commands to set charge limit and enable Quiet, Performance and Balanced Profiles:
asusctl -c 85 # Sets charge limit to 85% if you do not want this, do not execute this line
asusctl fan-curve -m Quiet -f cpu -e true
asusctl fan-curve -m Quiet -f gpu -e true
asusctl fan-curve -m Performance -f cpu -e true
asusctl fan-curve -m Performance -f gpu -e true
asusctl fan-curve -m Balanced -f cpu -e true
asusctl fan-curve -m Balanced -f gpu -e true
For fine-tuning read the Arch Linux Wiki or the Repository from Luke.
After adding the above repo, install the ROG kernel by running
sudo pacman -S linux-g14 linux-g14-headers
#kernel headers are very important otherwise nvidia module will not load, resulting in black screen.
Then edit /boot/loader/loader.conf and add the following to it:
default arch-g14.conf
timeout 3
editor 0
Then run
sudo cp /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf /boot/loader/entries/arch-g14.conf && sudo nano /boot/loader/entries/arch-g14.conf
Replace the lines that start with title, linux, and initrd with this:
title Arch Linux (g14)
linux /vmlinuz-linux-g14
initrd /amd-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-g14.img
and finally do
sudo mkinitcpio -P
Reboot and select the Arch Linux (g14) entry from the boot menu.
Install the following packages
sudo pacman -S nvidia-dkms acpi_call
Plasma now supports various power profiles depending on battery status. Go to
KDE Settings -> Power Management -> Energy Saving
In On AC Power tab, set Power Management Profile to "Performance", in Battery tab, set it to "Balanced" and in On Low Battery set it to "Quiet"
Optional: Enable battery full charge notification. Go to KDE Settings -> Notifications -> Application Settings -> Configure Events. Select Charge Complete and Select Show a message in popup
Go to KDE Settings->Shortcuts. Click Add Application, select ROG Control Center and add it. Select ROG Control Center from Applications list, add custom shortcut, press the ROG key and click Apply.
Go to KDE Settings->Shortcuts. Click Add Command, in the dialogue box, enter asusctl profile -n. Set trigger to fn + f5 and click Apply.
Audio was exceptionally low on linux. To fix, first remove everything pulseaudio related by running:
sudo pacman -Rdd pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-ctl pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa
Most of this may not be installed already so remove it from the command. Then, install pipewire and its related packages.
sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse gst-plugin-pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-media-session plasma pa
Install bluetooth related packages
sudo pacman -S bluez bluez-utils
sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
sudo systemctl start bluetooth.service
Install easyeffects
sudo pacman -S easyeffects
Run easyeffects and close. This will create the necessary directories. Install easyeffects-presets.
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JackHack96/PulseEffects-Presets/master/install.sh)"
Launch easyeffects again, click presets on top left and try the installed presets to find the one that best suits your needs. You can also replace the default laptop config with the one from my repository if you like. Copy ~/.config/easyeffects/output/Laptop.json from the repository to the same path in your laptop. In the top panel in easy effects, click on Pipewire, select presets autoloading and then choose the preset that you want to load automatically on startup. Click the plus button on the right to add it to the list. In the hamburger menu, click preferences and enable Launch Service at startup and close easyeffects. If needed, Easy effects can be run as daemon using
easyeffects --gapplication-service &
It automatically adds itself to autostart, and runs as a service on reboot. No other config needed. Source
Note: Do not set the audio device in system settings to easyeffets source or sink as it will cause problems. Use the default hardware device.
Mic mute key should work out of the box in latest versions of plasma, provided plasma-pa package is installed. If it doesnt work, do the following steps.
Run usb-devices and look for the device that says Product=N-KEY Device. Note the vendor id. For my zephyrus it is 0b05. Run
sudo find /sys -name modalias | xargs grep -i 0b05
Find the line that goes like:
.../input/input18/modalias:input:b0003v0B05p1866e0110-e0...
Copy the part after input:, before the first -e. In my case, it is b0003v0B05p1866e0110. Create a file named /etc/udev/hwdb.d/90-nkey.hwdb and add
/etc/udev/hwdb.d/90-nkey.hwdb
evdev:input:b0003v0B05p1866*
KEYBOARD_KEY_ff31007c=f20 # x11 mic-mute, space in start is important in this line
After that, update hwdb.
sudo systemd-hwdb update
sudo udevadm trigger
At this point, we have installed everything we need. Reboot the system once to make sure everything works fine and set up BTRFS snapshots to ensure we always have a restore point in case something breaks in the future. To do so, first create a snapshot manually as follows
sudo -i
btrfs sub snap / /.snapshots/STABLE
cp /boot/vmlinuz-linux-g14 /boot/vmlinuz-linux-g14-stable
cp /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/amd-ucode-stable.img
cp /boot/initramfs-linux-g14.img /boot/initramfs-linux-g14-stable.img
cp /boot/loader/entries/arch-g14.conf /boot/loader/entries/arch-g14-stable.conf
Edit /boot/loader/entries/arch-g14-stable.conf to boot from STABLE snapshot
title Arch Linux (G14) Stable
linux /vmlinuz-linux-g14-stable
initrd /amd-ucode-stable.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-g14-stable.img
options cryptdevice=UUID=62b5e6e0-6376-46d8-9faf-fe391a58c6b1:luks root=/dev/mapper/luks rootflags=subvol=@snapshots/STABLE quiet splash loglevel=3 rd.systemd.show_status=auto rd.udev.log_priority=3 vt.global_cursor_default=0 rw
Now edit /.snapshots/STABLE/etc/fstab to change the root of the STABLE snapshot.
... LABEL=ROOTFS / btrfs rw,noatime,.....subvol=@snapshots/STABLE ...
Reboot the system, in the boot menu, select Arch Linux (G14) Stable to see if it boots correctly. If it does, boot back into Arch Linux (G14).
Copy the script from repo to /usr/bin/autosnap and make it executable with chmod +x /usr/bin/autosnap. Then copy the pacman hook script from the repo to /etc/pacman.d/hooks/00-autosnap.hook.
Now every time pacman installs or upgrades something, the oldest snapshot would be removed a new one will be created. Let's test everything one more time to ensure nothing breaks. To do so, install any package from pacman, e.g.
sudo pacman -S android-tools
The output should look something like this
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (1) android-tools-34.0.1-1
Total Installed Size: 5.66 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring [####################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity [####################################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files [####################################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts [####################################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space [####################################] 100%
:: Running pre-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Creating btrfs snapshot
Delete subvolume (no-commit): '/.snapshots/STABLE'
Create a snapshot of '/' in '/.snapshots/STABLE'
:: Processing package changes...
(1/1) installing android-tools [####################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
Note that in pre-transaction hooks, it deletes the STABLE snapshot, takes the snapshot of the current system in /.snapshots/STABLE before proceeding to install the package. Boot back into the stable snapshot and run adb in the terminal. It should say command not found. Now boot back into the normal system and try running adb again, it would work without issues.
The script maintains five recent snapshots, allowing you to boot back into an older one if something breaks.
Install pamac to easily manage AUR packages with a GUI. Enable AUR in pamac settings.
Waydroid helps run android apps on Linux. With linux-g14 kernel installed, install the binder_linux-dkms package, which is available through AUR. Run these three commands, if at least one of them executes without any output or error, it means that the module is installed correctly
sudo modprobe -a binder-linux
sudo modprobe -a binder_linux
sudo modprobe -a binder
Now initialize waydroid and reboot (this will probably take a while because downloads from sourceforge are extremely slow)
sudo waydroid init
# OR WITH GAPPS
sudo waydroid init -s GAPPS
Sourceforge tends to selected the slowest possible mirror (I was getting ~45kbps). So alternatively, go to
https://sourceforge.net/projects/waydroid/files/images/vendor/waydroid_x86_64/
and
https://sourceforge.net/projects/waydroid/files/images/system/lineage/waydroid_x86_64/
and download the latest ones. As soon as it starts download, before the redirect, click Problems Downloading? button and select a different mirror (I used one from US and it worked fine). Extract the downloaded files to get system.img and vendor.img. In official docs, these are supposed to be placed in /usr/share/waydroid-extra/images/ but the automatically downloaded ones were located in /var/lib/waydroid/images/, so just copy both extracted files to both of these locations (just in case), run the following command and reboot. I used the GApps image, but the regular one can also be used.
sudo waydroid init -f
After rebooting, verify if binderfs is correctly loaded by running
sudo ls -1 /dev/binderfs
It should return the following output (or something similar)
anbox-binder
anbox-hwbinder
anbox-vndbinder
binder-control
features
Enable waydroid by running
sudo systemctl enable --now waydroid-container
Then launch waydroid from application menu. Networking should work out of the box. To install an application, run
waydroid app install /path/to/apk
To enable windowed mode, run
waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.multi_windows true
To disable on screen keyboard
$ waydroid show-full-ui
Settings > System > Languages & input > Physical keyboard > Use on-screen keyboard
To use GApps, start waydroid, then run
sudo waydroid shell
ANDROID_RUNTIME_ROOT=/apex/com.android.runtime ANDROID_DATA=/data ANDROID_TZDATA_ROOT=/apex/com.android.tzdata ANDROID_I18N_ROOT=/apex/com.android.i18n sqlite3 /data/data/com.google.android.gsf/databases/gservices.db "select * from main where name = \"android_id\";"
Go to Google Device Registration and paste the numbers shown after "android_id|" to register. Wait for a few minutes for Google services to reflect the change and then restart waydroid. Source
On X11, in settings, under display and monitor -> gamma, change gamma to 0.9 for better colors.
Gamma correction is not available on KDE wayland yet. Install and run fastfetch to get the built-in display code. In my case it is CMN14D5. Google search for your code and append notebookcheck, click the first link. It would be for a different laptop that uses the same display. Press Ctrl+F and enter the code to ensure that the laptop uses this display. Download the ICC file and copy it to /usr/share/color/icc/colord. Then run
colormgr get-profiles
Find the profile that contains the filename you just copied. Copy the Profile ID and run
sudo colormgr device-add-profile eDP-1 <Profile ID goes here>
After that, in KDE settings, under color management, select this profile. To make this profile the default, run
sudo colormgr device-make-profile-default eDP-1 <Profile ID goes here>
Install fastfetch
sudo pacman -S fastfetch
Copy the fastfetch config from the repo tothe relevant directory and add fastfetch to the top of your .zshrc file.
This awesome project provides a rust implementation of quickshare for linux. Works great in my testing. Download the latest AppImage, make it executable and move it to ~/.local/bin. On first start, it will add itself to autostart. Includes a tray icon as well.