I have the same laptop! Is there anything that didn’t work with it on Linux like function keys lightening up and doing the right things, webcam/IR camera, sleep/suspend, screen rotating in tablet mode turning of the keyboard, etc.? Did you get the number thing on the trackpad and those gestures working? (I never use that though). Can you change fan profiles? Can you do a “flicker free” dimming of the oled screen? On Windows I have a problem where the laptop will always get stuck in “tablet mode,” so I’ve been thinking to switch it to Linux at some point. I tried a live USB boot once at it seems like some of the function keys were acting strange, so I’m especially interested in what you might have noticed from many hours of use (if anything else other than the trackpad issue). Thanks in advance, and I hope your problem is only a software and not a hardware thing.
Comment on How on earth do I fix my trackpad?
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 9 hours agoIt is an Asus Zenbook Flip UP3404 (thank god it has a touchscreen)
Lemmyme@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
The keyboard lighting up does work for me, IR camera works (with Howdy I can use facial recognition!), sleep/suspend works, tablet mode works. I’m surprised everything did work considering it’s a weird flippy 2-in-1 thing. The numberpad on the trackpad doesn’t work but I never used that anyways. I fixed the issue by restarting (twice, not once for some reason, that didn’t work).
I have had Fedora installed since last year and it’s been great! The amount of Windows-exclusive stuff is shrinking, the only thing now is, ironically, reinstalling Windows lol (though you can use cli magic to write bootable media I think. Installation Assistant won’t work though). The few games I do play all work fine with Wine/Proton. I might remove my Windows dual boot soon…
Lemmyme@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Thank you so much for reporting back that everything works!
And glad to hear that your trackpad issue was fixed! It sounds like it was probably an Asus rather than a Linux issue. For the numberpad on the trackpad did you try using a program like the one below and still not get it working? (Maybe it would be a useful feature if the gesture could be customized, or fun to tinker with):
github.com/iamkroot/asus-numpad?tab=readme-ov-fil…
What I remember from testing Fedora my UP3404 in the summer of 2023 was that there was some strange behavior of the function keys; I remembered that some of the keys which were not brightness keys were changing the brightness too. On Windows I am able to adjust the brightness using both DC dimming (which actually lowers the voltage to the screen to dim it) as well as the standard PWM dimming (which turns the screen off and on fast to make it appear dimmer); is this possible in Linux?
What about the mic off and camera off buttons on the function row? Do even those work? Do they light up? Does the Asus function key do anything or can you make use of it?
I think I will probably switch my laptop over to Linux eventually. The desktop version of Microsoft office is the main Windows app keeping me from switching, as well as a concern that my laptop wouldn’t work with Linux well. I have a older surface pro with debian on it that I just use for browsing the web and doing Linux tinkering (couldn’t setup IR camera Howdy unfortunately). One of my pain points of Linux was removed from Linux now that I found that the Flatpak version of Collabora Office allows for touchscreen scrolling. I just wish that the Gnome desktop would allow for an app to be dragged to a corner to be a quarter of the screen rather than just to the side to be half (but there probably is a good way to do this better than Windows maybe that I need to figure out).
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
All the function buttons work, aside from the MyASUS one (since there is no Linux version of it, but that should be obvious. You are probably able to remap it to do other stuff though). I am able to change the brightness of the screen but not sure if it’s DC or PWM dimming. There is probably a thing you can install to figure that out.
For Howdy, I found that the latest version of Fedora (43) kind of borked it since Python 3.14 isn’t supported (some dependency issue) so I had to install a fork which bundles the dependency, and now it works!
I am using KDE (not GNOME) which does support quarter windows which is pretty neat. I also found that KDE is much more customisable than GNOME (though some might prefer GNOME’s libadwaita aesthetic)
I personally use LibreOffice, which is awesome and works most of the time, but occasionally there’s a weird formatting bug when viewing from MS Office. OnlyOffice is also quite good and apparently has better MS office compatibility, which I can attest to, but unless you’re doing anything super critical, LibreOffice should be fine.
I thoroughly encourage you to dip your toes into the world of penguinland! Fedora is a great starting point, and lets you pick between so many DEs too…(KDE Plasma and GNOME being the main two, but Fedora also offers some different ones too, like Budgie and COSMIC)
just_another_person@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I believe this is a Synaptics. If you’ve ever spilled anything on it, it’s probably toast.
You can try to find a replacement for fairly cheap though.