ASUS ROG G73 and Ubuntu

I just pre-ordered one of the ASUS G73 laptops, and I intend to put Ubuntu on it, but of course since it has not been released it is hard to find information on how well the hardware is supported by Linux. I believe the wireless is the Intel Pro/Wireless 5100 minipci card.. Aware that 802.11n wireless chipset support for Linux isn't wonderful yet..

Any thoughts, tips?

 

the 5100 on my G51 worked OOB on both 9.04 and 9.10 so it shouldn't be a problem. IIRC tho, the ATI drivers are lagging a bit behind in linux.

 

Just a follow up. I got my G73JH-A2 and booted it with Ubuntu 8.10 Live 64bit and ran some commands which others who intend to run Linux on this laptop useful.

/proc/cpu

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/cpu.txt

dmesg

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/dmesg.txt

free

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/free.txt

lsmod

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/lsmod.txt

lspci -vv

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/lspci.txt

/proc/scsi/scsi

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~zjohnson/g73jh-a2/scsi.txt

 

Hi xucchini.

Apparently all components are recognized perfectly.
Have you noticed any problem under GNU/Linux?

Another question:

Does the G73jh support "Dolby Home Theater" and "Dolby Digital Live" under Windows?

​

Thank you.

 

I can confirm that the intel 5100 is also supported under 10.04 alpha 3.

 

The tricky Linux driver support is for the G73Jh's ATI 5870 GPU. ATI Linux driver support is available through two driver programs. ATI's, closed source, proprietary driver, and an ATI supported, open source driver. ATI's recent proprietary Linux driver releases have included support for the ATI HD5800 series Desktop GPUs. While the current driver release notes don't specifically state support for the Radeon Mobility HD5800 series, you can read that several posters to this thread over at the Phoronix forums, mention Linux support of the G73Jh's HD5870 GPU working with the ATI Catalyst driver since version 9.10, particularly on page 5, and page 6.

If you happen to get the correct driver installed and running under Linux, please feel free to come back here and post your experiences, including driver type and version, xorg.conf tips, etc. If your Linux distro doesn't provide good instructions for installing the ATI driver, you can visit the unofficial ATI Linux driver Wiki here, and you will see there dedicated pages for installing either version of the Linux driver, for different distros. (The wiki appears to be down at the moment).

Good Luck..

 

Following up on this thread. I just installed Linux on my new G73Jh, and was able to install an ATI Linux driver that supports the 5870 Mobility GPU. Unfortunately it's currently only supported using the proprietary Catalyst driver, (fglrx which stands for "FireGL and Radeon for X"). I installed the driver under Gentoo Linux and it required a bit of tweaking to get everything working correctly, including 3d effects. However, when the 10.4 Linux drivers are generally released, the installation process will be similar to current fglrx installation and configuration.

For Ubuntu users, this post, (over at the Gentoo Forums of all places), described how Ubuntu devs have put the 10.4 beta driver together with daily builds of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), here. So if you don't mind installing a beta version of your Linux distro, along with a beta version of the ATI Linux driver, you should be able to get it to work, by simply installing Ubuntu from one of those daily builds.

I'm happy to get the GPU working under Linux, although the performance isn't nearly as good as it is under Windows, yet. The driver performance should improve with subsequent releases, and I'm looking forward to trying out the open source, (radeon), driver as soon as it provides support for this GPU. (I've currently got the radeon driver installed on my N81Vp, and it works very nicely)

Good Luck..

 

Sweet system, if Steam for Linux comes out as rumored it will be party time...!

Is the light at the bottom of the screen always on/can it be controlled?

 

There is a row of 3 button on the far left, at the top of the laptop, of which the far left button, controls the blue leds on the bottom of the screen, and the blue light that lights up the buttons themselves. I just tried it, and it seems that under Linux, it works just like under Windows. Pressing it successively will turn on both lights, pressing it again then turns off just the blue led under the screen, and then again, turns them both off. The funny thing is that the keyboard backlight was on when I first hit the button, and hitting the button turned the keyboard backlight off as well. However, it hasn't turned back on yet. (Not even with the keyboard backlight key combo, Fn-F3) I don't care as I don't use the laptop keyboard, but it was interesting.

Good Luck..

 

With a newish kernel you can toggle the keyboard backlight on ASUS models with:

Code:

sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness"

The values are 0 thru 3. There isn't any handler for the hotkeys yet.

 

Thanks again ALLurGroceries. That did it.

On my system I have the following directory;

Code:

/sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/

which is a symlink to

Code:

/sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/

so if, as root, I issue a;

Code:

echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness

it's the same as

Code:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness

and it turns off the keyboard backlighting. As you pointed out, echoing a 1 turns the backlight on at the lowest brightness, 2 turns it higher, with 3 being the brightest.

Good Luck..

 

Yes 'tis quicker your way, I pasted that long line in from a script in my /home, I try to not have to type that very often...

 

No, I don't think so. Asus used RealTek's ALC269, which seems to only support stereo out (but it does DD/DTS passthrough so movies are OK if you have a receiver). There is no DD live/DTS connect option in the RealTek audio manager.

Basically this means you can't get surround in games that use EAX instead of DD or DTS, which is completely unacceptable for a "gaming" laptop. Judging from this boneheaded decision, who knows, maybe Asus will try to get away with an intel integrated graphics chipset instead of a real video card in their next "gaming" laptop. I only got the g73 because all the other companies made even dumber design decisions (i.e. pairing i7s and blu-ray with low-res screens and mid-range graphics cards) or charged $1000 more.

Ranting aside, I'm going to try a $60 USB "x-fi" to plug in 5.1 analog speakers. It's not really an x-fi because it makes the software do all the work, but it will let me plug in analog 5.1. Hopefully it solves the problem.

 

@jas or whoever

so if i were to install ubuntu 10.04 when it comes out the drivers should work on the g73jh? it sounds like your saying that the opensource drivers will work better, how will i know when these drivers are released and will they be easy to install if i already have the proprietary drivers installed? will ubuntu alert me?

i'm kind of a linux noob but after all these years its finally starting to be user friendly, as in never having to open the terminal or anything.

EDIT: oh and define "tweaking" please, was that hard for you to do and how did you do it?

thanks

 

For Ubuntu, this Gentoo Forum post describes how the Ubuntu devs have included the 10.4 beta driver with daily builds of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), here. I would think that the final release would include if not the 10.4 beta driver, then the 10.4 release driver from ATI. If anyone is curious there's a long howto for installing both open source, as well as proprietary ATI drivers under Ubuntu at the Unofficial ATI Driver Wiki, here.

In this Gentoo forum thread, the subject of installing the 10.4 beta fglrx driver is discussed, and in my post here, I described in detail how I configured my kernel, xorg.conf, and installed both the 10.4 beta driver, as well as a patched xorg-server 1.8.0, (in order to work with the driver). That's what I meant by tweaking.

Actually the reason I'm looking forward to using the open source "radeon" driver on this laptop, has nothing to do with any perceived functionality, but rather that it's truly an open source driver, (unlike the ATI fglrx, or nVidia Linux driver). The reason that I went with ATI equipped laptops, is because ATI has an open source driver initiative, which has nothing to do with driver functionality, but everything to do with support of open source values. The downside is that the closed source, or proprietary, drivers usually provides better performance and/or more functionality, so those choosing the open source driver, tend to have to wait longer to get the same features. So for many, the "better" driver is the closed source one.

However, for the 5000 series GPUs, today there's no choice. You need to use either the ATI fglrx driver, or a standard vesa driver, until the radeon driver development, catches up. When that driver is released, it will be combined with an Linux kernel update , and with Ubuntu, it will probably be released as a new version of Ubuntu.

Good Luck..

 

thank you for the great response. i am looking forward to thursday when i can finally ditch windows 7! i used to have an imac and i was looking for an apple laptop but the performance to price ratio has gone down even more this past year or so with apple... you can buy a laptop for half the price with the same specs! a couple of years ago the macbook pro was the fastest WINDOWS laptop available, apple has clearly stopped caring about its computer division.

i still have to use windows 7 for games, which has been terribly annoying this past week because of how flashy and crowded the OS feels. microsoft really needs to steal some more stuff from mac and linux! after getting everything installed and after a week of owning it the startup time has already gotten worse... windows has got to be the ONLY os that does that!

/vent

 

Over this past weekend I wrote a handler for the keyboard backlight hotkeys. It's called asuskledd (ASUS KLED Daemon). All it does is run in the background and let you change the keyboard brightness with Fn+F3 and Fn+F4.

 

I compiled from source on my system, and it works perfectly on my G73Jh with;

Gentoo 64bit 2.6.33-r1 Kernel
glib-2.22.5
dbus-1.2.24
dbus-glib-0.86

It's strange to have perfectly working keyboard illumination under Linux, when so many are having problems with it under Windows...

Thanks Allur!!

 

Thanks, but we already have a daemon to handle ACPI events: acpid

For Ubuntu users, just extract attached file in /etc/acpi and then:

Code:

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/asus-kb-*
sudo restart acpid

Edit: NotifyOSD version added

​

 

That's cool, but your scripts only work when I add this to line 4 of -up and -down:

Code:

STATUS=$(($STATUS % 128))

Edit: This is why:

Code:

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
129
echo 2 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
130
echo 3 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
131
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness
0

Here are the scripts with that modification, posted plaintext so that you don't have to register to download an attachment:

/etc/acpi/asus-kb-brightness-up.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash

STATUS="`cat /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness`"

STATUS=$(($STATUS % 128))

if [ $STATUS -lt 3 ] ; then
	((STATUS++))
	echo $STATUS > /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness
fi

exit 0

/etc/acpi/asus-kb-brightness-down.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash

STATUS="`cat /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness`"

STATUS=$(($STATUS % 128))

if [ $STATUS -gt 0 ]; then
	((STATUS--))
	echo $STATUS > /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness
fi

exit 0

/etc/acpi/events/asus-kb-brightness-down

Code:

event=hotkey (ATKD|HOTK) 000000c5
action=/etc/acpi/asus-kb-brightness-down.sh

/etc/acpi/events/asus-kb-brightness-up

Code:

event=hotkey (ATKD|HOTK) 000000c4
action=/etc/acpi/asus-kb-brightness-up.sh

Take care.

 

Mmmm... my G73Jh values (Ubuntu 10.04):

Code:

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
[B]1[/B]
echo 2 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
[B]2[/B]
echo 3 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
[B]3[/B]
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
cat  /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness 
[B]0[/B]

Anyway, thank you!

 

I couldn't get the acpi scripts to work correctly under Gentoo on my G73Jh either, and I didn't want to bother editing them. These Ubuntu developed scripts are actually available in the Sunrise overlay in Gentoo, and the maintainer seems to be suggesting in this bug report, that in the future the functionality of these scripts may be moved elsewhere, so I'll skip them for now.

Good Luck..

 

Wow - thank you very much - i love free software (you 've released it as gpl you are very great.

you are allready use linux on your g73 , right?
what is with the 3d performance is it still ok?
the g73 have an overclock button - does it works with linux, too?


thanks in advance

oskar from germany!
(hopefully have an asus g73 with linux soon )

i will hope your asuskledd will find in the official repositorys !

 

Sorry I didn't mean to derail this thread with keyboard lights

Just wanted to share my findings with G73 owners, I have a G51J.

_WiLloW_'s scripts are the better way, I just got deep into dbus and started haxing on a program.

 

Also works with G60JX-JX022X on Ubuntu 10.04.

Thanks a lot.

 

I installed the 32 bit version of 10.04 Ubuntu on my G73jh-a3 and everything appears to be working fine. The sound however is much louder w/Ubuntu than Windows 7. Go figure...

 

HI,

just put Ubuntu 10.04 x64 on it as dual boot and everything seems fine.
Activate the ATI driver and run update.

But I get in Ubuntu after using for example firefox a GSOD or so.
Screen goes complete gray with some lines, then black, or direct black.

Any thoughts. Windows was so far was very stable include the ATI (test few hours BF2BC gaming)

EDIT: also the 32bit Ubuntu 10.04 has the same problem. must be the ATI drivers.

 

Any one could share the xorg.conf file? I thought ATI does not make good temperature control in linux driver. Is there any trick in xorg.conf file?

 

this is a big problem in windows as well. It's actually the vbios, not the drivers. I flashed my bios with the MSI vbios and it makes the system totally stable, but there is no HDMI or vga output.

 

Great job on the scripts
i own a G51jx. I hated the backlit in the class .

 

Hi folks,

I thought I would add to this thread that out-of-the-box, Ubuntu Lucid x64 was freezing upon attempting to suspend or hibernate my G73.

The issue was fixed by following the instructions in post #7 of:
[SOLVED] Cannot suspend or hibernate Asus N61J Laptop - Ubuntu Forums

Now I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly.


However, there is just one strange thing about suspend and hibernate...

I am disabling my touchpad in the BIOS to work around keyboard lag/dropped keys. When I first boot Ubuntu, the touchpad is disabled. After a sleep-resume cycle, it comes back (along with the dropped keystrokes).

What's even more interesting, is that the Fn-F9 key still does not work. (It does work when the touchpad is enabled in the BIOS.)

All this makes me think that the BIOS option is a really cheap hack.

Do any Ubuntu G73 users suffer from dropped keystrokes? If so, have you found any other workarounds?

 

The rumor about the dropped keystrokes is that it's an EC firmware problem, the same type of EC FW bug that affected the keyboard backlights disappearing after a BIOS flash, for no apparent reason. Hopefully a fix is forthcoming, but it's all rumors right now...

 

Hi, the NotifyOSD version doesn't display the notification picture. anyone have a solution ?

thank's

 

I was hoping someone could help me out here. I'm running ubuntu 10.10 off a thumbdrive. But i'm having trouble getting my wifi working. Its an intel 6200. The system test says its detected but i can't seem to get it on. Is there like a key combination or something i have to use? Fn + F2 turns on and off bluetooth but does nothing for my wifi. Under aditional drivers only the ati appeared. Also my mouse doesn't seem to work. I don't get it...

edit:
i swapped the cards with the athros card and it worked. I guess ubuntu has issues with the intel 6200.

 

I'm running the same thumb drive as you are and i also have intel 6200n with out any problem's.

Maybe the download you have is corrupted?

 

Hmmm... Maybe, are u also running on 10.10? I'm thinking it has to be a driver issue since it does detect the card in the system tests. But what about your mouse? Its the first time i've came across an installation that the mouse was completely useless. I'll download again and see how it goes.

 

I bought a used G73Jh off of the NBR marketplace which I received today, I'm running Debian Sid on it with 2.6.36. Everything is great, but there are a few things bugging me:
-Subwoofer doesn't work
-Mic doesn't work (edit: figured it out, I was using the wrong input - mic on capture instead of digital)
-Webcam doesn't work in latest Skype beta, but works fine in other apps
-Touchpad is ridiculously sensitive and due to its size, ends up driving me nuts (edit 2: figured it out, see below)*
-radeon driver is broken in 2.6.37-rc2 but works in 2.6.37-rc1, however input is totally broken for some reason (haven't investigated yet) so I'm on 2.6.36 for now. (edit 3: got rc2 working finally, had to tweak my kernel config and redo patches)

For the touchpad problem I turned on palm detection and tweaked it until it stopped freaking out, and lowered the sensitivity, it's much better now but not perfect.*

For the audio problems, I'm sure there's a way to get around it, but I've used all the ALC269 options without success: http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt. I think it's going to take a custom .asoundrc or a new model option for ALSA.

Suspend and resume work fine, the keyboard backlight scripts work fine, and I'm running the radeon driver since I can't stand fglrx, but I get no compiz goodness; I can deal. I'm happy to have this machine.

I haven't noticed any dropped keys or keyboard lag, knock on wood, and I'm a fast typist.


*EDIT: yay! There are some multitouch touchpad patches on linux-input:
https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/241481/
https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/241491/

In combination with setting the synaptics_multitouch parameter and enabling two-finger scrolling, the mouse cursor stops jumping around like mad.

I'm using these on a custom 2.6.36 kernel, but you can probably apply them to earlier kernels. In order to use these patches, you can follow the directions I've posted here up until step 4. Skip step 4.

For step 5, substitute this (see note at bottom for 2.6.37-rc2):

Code:

wget -O patch1 https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/241481/raw/
wget -O patch2 https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/241491/raw/
patch -p1 < patch1
patch -p1 < patch2

Then continue to step 6, but in step 7 add the synaptics_multitouch parameter:

Code:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo insmod drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko synaptics_multitouch

You can continue on if you want to make the change permanent... you'll have to make an /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf file with synaptics_multitouch:

Code:

options psmouse synaptics_multitouch=1

With the permanent change, I also had to add a sleep.d rule in /etc/pm/sleep.d/22_psmouse for this to work out of resume (make sure to chmod +x):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

case "${1}" in
        hibernate|suspend)
                modprobe -r psmouse
        ;;
        resume|thaw)
                modprobe psmouse synaptics_multitouch=1
        ;;
esac

I also made a startup script to change the scroll sensitivity:

Code:

synclient VertScrollDelta=100

Note: for 2.6.37-rc2 I had to manually apply these two lines @ L114 (right after int scroll;):

Code:

 	int multitouch;				/* Whether device provides MT */
	unsigned int num_fingers;		/* Number of fingers touching */

 

Has anyone benched to see if Ubuntu or W7 is more battery efficient?

This is something I'd be willing to install Ubuntu for just for note taking in class activities.

 

W7 would be more efficient for the sole reason of powerplay; there isn't really a powerplay option/program that I've found for linux. The 5870 can really eat up juice at full power.

 

The 5870 downclocks fine with the radeon driver on a recent kernel. I get an hour and a half to two hours of battery life.

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo#Troubleshootingradeonpower-management

 

Hi!
I have an Asus G73JwA1.
I have two big problems:

• my screen flickers every time the GPU change performace. To avoid this behaviour I have to set PowerMizer to Prefer Maximum Performance, but I don't like this solution.

• The usb 3.0 port doesn't work very well. The external hd works only if I connect it to the port before I switch the pc on. If I connect the hd when the pc is already on, system doesn't seen it.

Can you help me?

 

This thread has been covering the G73Jh version not the Jw version, the difference is ATI vs NVIDIA, USB3 and a 720 vs 740 i7. There's some overlap but it's really a different model.

Your problem with USB3 can be fixed by going to a newer kernel, the early xhci-hcd versions had a bug with port reset.

The NVIDIA 460M clock/flicker issue is mentioned here: 460M: Clock changes make screen flicker & performance - nV News Forums. NVNews is the place to go for problems with the proprietary NVIDIA driver on Linux - if there's a problem or a fix, 99% of the time it's on that forum.

 

Ok!
Thank you very much and sorry for my mistake.
The last question: do you think your workaround for touchpad is ok for my pc?

 

It's not your mistake - the thread was made before the other model variants existed, I just wanted you to know there probably aren't many Jw owners here.

The touchpad fix *should* work, but the Jw has 2 separate buttons instead of one button-bar thing in the Jh. The actual touchpad itself could be the same, I'm not positive. Give it a try, and don't make the permanent change until you've tested it out. I tried to make the directions on the ubuntu forum post pretty clear on how to avoid problems. Feel free to reply here if you have problems with the touchpad, since the other thread is for a different brand of touchpad (with different patches) but the procedure is pretty much the same so I didn't bother writing it out again here except for the differences.

 

Ok!
Thank you very much again!

 

If you can't turn up anything more on that 460M problem on nvnews you might just want to register and post on that thread to bump it, maybe it'll get someone's attention. I've had luck there but the attitude from some people can be less than nice, eventually you may get help though.

Edit: Not linux specific but see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/522408-g73jw-usb-3-0-issues.html

 

Thank you very much again!
Now it works!

 

Followed the procedure and I have the same problem... extracted both zip in etc/acpi/, made the asus-kb files executable, restarted acpi.d fn+f3 and fn+f4 work but not the notify...

 

Hello!

I am likely to buy an Asus G73, JH or JW, and I will use it primarily with Linux.

I would "need" to have Compiz running smoothly, possibly with hardware accelerated GL apps playing nice with the composition manager (I know the nvidia driver does it), and would like to play simple Linux 3d games (let's say until Doom3) with decent performance.


I have been "out of the loop" for a few years, and at this point it is not clear to me if there is any free software driver that is able to support my "needs" or if I would have to resort to the proprietary drivers (fglrx for the JH or the nvidia one for the JW).

And, about proprietary drivers (fglrx vs nvidia), is their performance difference still very high (with nvidia on par with Windows and ATI very poor)?

If I need to use proprietary drivers I would choose the JW, but if I could have decent free software drivers that support my needs the choice could be different.

What's your advice?

Thanks!
Massimiliano

 

Neither nouveau nor radeon (for evergreen) drivers will do 3D and run compiz. You need proprietary drivers.

I'm no expert on it, but fglrx still lags nvidia's proprietary driver in most ways. I'm not sure it's as significant as it used to be. Their latest releases this year have brought the driver up to speed in a lot of ways.

AFAIK the G73Jh is discontinued, so you'll likely be looking at the G73Jw unless you're getting a closeout, refurb, or used machine.