Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Manjaro Linux Guide for ASUS TUF FX505DY / FX705DY
Please note: This guide applies to the Ryzen CPU / Radeon RX 560X GPU versions of this device. While there may be some overlap with other versions hardware-wise, I can’t say what will and won’t work for them.
1.0: Installation
First things first, you need to get the most recent version of Manjaro and write it to a USB. I won’t cover that here. You will then need to shut down your laptop and power it up whilst mashing the Esc key. Select Enter Setup and then press F7 for Advanced settings. Navigate to Security and disable Secure Boot. Hit F10 to save and exit, and mash Esc again. Select your Manjaro USB and boot up. The defaults are fine so long as you are on a Manjaro image that is current or newer than the writing date of this guide (Nov 6, 2019).
Hardware Note: If you have the model with the WD Black Nvme SSD, you will need to add the following to your grub boot line: nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500
Note 2: I have had odd graphical corruption issues with Manjaro XFCE on this device. It works just fine on Majaro KDE. I have not done any troubleshooting to determine exactly why this is, so YMMV if you use the XFCE ISO.
Okay, so now we are booted into the Manjaro live environment. Just do the installation as normal with whatever options work best for you, and reboot into your new OS. If you are using Ethernet for your network access you will be online already and can skip to part 2.2, otherwise please go on to part 2.1.
2.0: Configuration
2.1: Getting online to get online
If you are not using Ethernet for network access, you will notice that you have no Network access. Unfortunately the Wifi drivers for these laptops is a Realtek 8821CE that is not included in the Linux kernel by default, so you will need to find some way to get network access to install the driver. I recommend just tethering via USB to your phone, as it is the most simple method.
2.2: Getting Wifi Working
You will need to install rtl8821ce-dkms-git from the AUR in order to get the Wifi going. It uses DKMS, so it will automatically get re-set up each time you upgrade your kernel in the future. I will explain how I did it, but feel free to use whatever AUR helper you feel like - you don’t need to copy my method if you prefer another program.
$ sudo pacman -S yay $ yay rtl8821ce-dkms-git
After the installation finishes you can reboot, and your Wifi should be up and running. Don’t forget to turn off your phone USB tethering if you used it.
2.3: Fixing the Kernel
NOTE: this section on manually patching the Linux kernel will be out of date once Kernel 5.6 is released, as fixes for this issue have been upstreamed in that Kernel version.
As of the writing of this guide (Nov 6, 2019) the Linux kernel included with Manjaro has a bug with the ASUS WMI that throttles the CPU badly to 399Mhz when the CPU temp hits 70c, even though the fans spin up properly. This results in huge FPS drops and performance issues with gaming or any other intensive workloads. Fortunately @leonmaxx developed a patch for this issue that works with Kernel 5.3. To apply it, do the following:
2.4 Manually Patching the Linux Kernel
For now, manual patching of the kernel is required. First, we will pull down the Manjaro kernel by running:
$ git clone https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/core/linux53
and then you will want to grab the 3 diff files from @leonmaxx 's post to the LKML at LKML: Leonid Maksymchuk: [PATCH v4 0/3] asus_wmi: Support of ASUS TUF laptops on Ryzen CPUs . Save each diff into the linux53 directory as something like “asus_wmi1.patch”, “asus_wmi2.patch”, “asus_wmi3.patch”. You will see a bunch of other .patch files as well in the same directory, by the way, so don’t worry about that.
You then open up the file PKGBUILD in your editor of choice and add the lines
'asus_wmi1.patch'
'asus_wmi2.patch'
'asus_wmi3.patch'
in the area where the other patches are listed. You then go find the next section where patches are listed and add
patch -Np1 -i "${srcdir}/asus_wmi1.patch"
patch -Np1 -i "${srcdir}/asus_wmi2.patch"
patch -Np1 -i "${srcdir}/asus_wmi3.patch"
to the section where the other patches are similarly listed. Then save and exit. Run the command:
$ updpkgsums && makepkg -si
You then sit back, relax, and wait for the compiling and installation. Reboot, and you should be good to go. Optionally, if you want a faster compile you can do:
$ updpkgsums && MAKEFLAGS=-jX makepkg -si
Where X is the number of CPU cores to use on the compile (I personally use 4 or 6)
3.0: Gaming Configuration
As these laptops have two GPUs, the Radeon Vega iGPU and the RX 560X dGPU, you have to sometimes let games know which GPU to use. For OpenGL games, this can be done with the environment variable DRI_PRIME=1 - so to launch an OpenGL game you run it as follows: DRI_PRIME=1 ./Game . For Vulkan games, technically games using Vulkan ought to implement a method for you to select the GPU, but unfortunately this does not always occur. The problem here is that because BOTH of our GPUs are Radeon devices, many games that default to selecting the GPU they determine to be best pick the Vega iGPU. Luckily someone has developed a tool to force a specific GPU, vkdevicechooser. You can install it from the AUR with following command:
$ yay -S vkdevicechooser
Or if you want to install it manually, do the following:
$ git clone https://github.com/aejsmith/vkdevicechooser.git $ cd vkdevicechooser $ make install
To use vkdevicechooser, you launch it with these environment variables: ENABLE_DEVICE_CHOOSER_LAYER=1 VULKAN_DEVICE_INDEX=X where X is the desired device index reported by vulkaninfo . For this laptop, it is Device index 1, so you would launch a Vulkan game like this: ENABLE_DEVICE_CHOOSER_LAYER=1 VULKAN_DEVICE_INDEX=1 ./Game
For Steam games, you need to edit the launch options, and for OpenGL Games you use DRI_PRIME=1 %command% . For Vulkan Steam games that do not properly implement GPU selection, you use ENABLE_DEVICE_CHOOSER_LAYER=1 VULKAN_DEVICE_INDEX=1 %command%
3.1 Improving Performance
We can get a bit of extra Gaming performance by using Feral Interactive’s Game Mode, which is “a daemon/lib combo for Linux that allows games to request a set of optimisations be temporarily applied to the host OS and/or a game process.”. It can be easily installed easily from the repos:
$ sudo pacman -S gamemode lib32-gamemode
Game Mode is automatically used by several Feral Interactive games, and any game run with Lutris by default. For other games, you can use gamemoderun ./Game to run them with Game Mode. If you need to use the RX 560X, you can run them with GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env DRI_PRIME=1" gamemoderun ./Game for OpenGL games, or GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env ENABLE_DEVICE_CHOOSER_LAYER=1 VULKAN_DEVICE_INDEX=1" gamemoderun ./Game . For Steam games, you can modify the launchers accordingly following these same methods (Ex. GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env DRI_PRIME=1" gamemoderun %command% for OpenGL or GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env ENABLE_DEVICE_CHOOSER_LAYER=1 VULKAN_DEVICE_INDEX=1" gamemoderun %command% for Vulkan games).
4.0 Suspend Issues
By default, Suspend works, but the laptop display would just be blank upon trying to resume. However thanks to this forum post I was able to determine that disabling the Kwin compositor with Shift+Alt+F12 makes Suspend work properly. So we just have to automate that process in order to have a smooth suspend/resume process. In order to do this, we must do the following -
Create /etc/systemd/system/suspend@.service , which contains:
[Unit] Description=User suspend actions Before=sleep.target
[Service] User=%I Type=forking Environment=DISPLAY=:0 ExecStart=/usr/bin/qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/sleep 1
[Install] WantedBy=sleep.target
as well as /etc/systemd/system/resume@.service which contains:
[Unit] Description=User resume actions After=suspend.target
[Service] User=%I Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/bin/xrandr --output eDP --auto ; /usr/bin/qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor resume
[Install] WantedBy=suspend.target
and then enable both services via
$ sudo systemctl enable suspend@username
$ sudo systemctl enable resume@username
Alternatively, if you regularly use one or more external monitors with your laptop you could replace /usr/bin/xrandr --output eDP --auto from the resume configuration with /usr/bin/autorandr --change in order to have your display settings automatically adjust based on what monitors are plugged in. However you will need to install and configure autorandr in order to do so, and it is not needed if you only use your built-in display.
One note is that as I use Manjaro KDE, the program controlling desktop compositing for me is Kwin. So this specific solution only works for KDE, and the exact method to disable the compositor would vary for Gnome, XFCE, etc, but the principle is the same.
5.0 Fan Control
While the Fn+F5 key does work to control the fan mode (Silent, Normal, Overboost), by default it simply runs on Normal mode all of the time. Fortuantely, @leonmaxx has written a Daemon that monitors system temps and automatically adjusts the fans at whatever temperatures the user specifies. To install it, do the following:
$ mkdir asus_fanmode $ cd asus_fanmode $ wget https://github.com/leonmaxx/asus_fanmode-pkg/blob/master/PKGBUILD $ makepkg
$ sudo pacman -U asus_fanmode-0.1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz $ sudo systemctl enable asus_fanmode $ sudo systemctl start asus_fanmode
You can check to make sure the Daemon is running via:
$ systemctl status asus_fanmode
And the temperature settings can be changed in /etc/asus_fanmode.conf
6.0: Upgrades
I have recently (Nov 20, 2019) upgraded my device from the Realtek RTL8821CE WiFi/Bluetooth card to an Intel AX200 WiFi 6 / Bluetooth 5.0 Card. The upgrade was quite simple, taking no more than 5 minutes to perform. The only mild annoyance was that the WiFi card installs under the NVMe SSD, so I had to remove that, switch the cards, connect the antennae, and then re-install the SSD. Afterwards I closed my system, booted up, and the Intel WiFi and Bluetooth worked with zero issues or configuration. I would heavily recommend this upgrade, as I get far better Network speeds now, and for only $24 it was a very good deal. If you do this upgrade don’t forget to
$ yay -R rtl8821ce-dkms-git
to remove the Realtek drivers. You will also need to re-pair any Bluetooth devices with the new Bluetooth adapter.
7.0: Fix screen tearing, enable FreeSync
To fix any screen tearing and enable FreeSync on the Laptop display, do the following:
$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf
and in that file, add the following:
Section "Device" Identifier "AMD" Driver "amdgpu" Option "VariableRefresh" "true" EndSection
Save and exit, and restart your system.
8.0: Conclusion
At this point everything ought to be working and Gaming performance ought to be decent. I have tested the following titles on my system and they all work very well:
- World of Warcraft (WINE/DXVK via Lutris)
- Hitman (Linux Native, via Steam)
- Mad Max (Linux Native, via Steam)
- Civilization 5 (Linux Native, via Steam)
- Civilization 6 (Linux Native, via Steam)
- Pillars of Eternity 2 (Linux Native, GOG version)
- Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Linux Native, via Steam)
- Dead Cells (Linux Native, via Steam)
- The Witcher 3 (WINE/DXVK via Proton in Steam)
- Grand Theft Auto 5 (WINE/DXVK via Proton in Steam)
If there are any questions / issues, please feel free to reply below and I will do my best to answer them, and hopefully this guide is of help to some people!
Special thanks to @leonmaxx for making the patch that enables Fan Boost to function correctly, without his work none of the rest of this would really matter, and to djip.perois@free.fr / Djip007 · GitHub for providing the needed information about ACPI internals of FX705DY/FX505DY which enabled all of this.
I made a pastebin, hope you can open it: 