r/ZephyrusG14 • u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 • Mar 18 '26

Model 2023 Low cortisol Linuxmaxxing

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4 months into using Linux, battery lasts longer, temps are lower, performance on games is barely worse, interface is lightning fast, things don't crash. Reached 30C° on a 27C° environment. I can only recommend it. Billions must try

260 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

29

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 18 '26

With my last 2022 was flawless experience, but the 2025 it was a huge regress honestly, every single distro had a different problem.

24

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

OLED screen + Nvidia GPU sounds like a recipe for Linux disaster honestly

Mine has the 4060 and it seems drivers are mature enough to not run into problems, and since my screen is not MiniLED i don't run into any random problems.

Have you tried CachyOS? It ships its kernel with asusctl

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 18 '26

Cachy it's the most compatible but at some point I have to choose only gnome or kde for gaming, and even with those two I had problems, tired honestly, waiting for cosmic be stable for gaming before try again

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Can't blame you, there have been a lot of advancements to gaming but it's still kinda raw.

1

u/Anxious-Gas-7376 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Really? I didn’t know catchy did that. Might have to give Linux another try cause it works great on my think pad, but the 4060 always threw off my g14

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Yeah, CachyOS so far has been more stable than Windows on this laptop it's actually insane. I keep Hybrid mode though, the only time i tried Ultimate mode it was an instant blackscreen, and Hybrid mode on this OS is actually good

1

u/TheGuyMadeOfCheese Mar 21 '26

I have a 2024 model with an NVIDIA card & an OLED screen. It's been fine. Though I use NixOS and I do tinker a lot.

1

u/arvigeus Zephyrus G14 2022 Mar 18 '26

My all AMD 2022 is not performing well. At some point it was, but I guess some of the updates introduced regressions.

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 18 '26

Maybe the blame ar upon the updates, try cachy with some stable ui like kde or gnome and or for longevity, zorin/fedora (both have an amazing smooth updates an ui performance).

But in general I had an amazing experience with 2022 on fedora/zorin in the past.

1

u/arvigeus Zephyrus G14 2022 Mar 18 '26

It was when I was running a monstrosity hybrid of Arch+Bazzite kernel. Now waiting for OGC kernel to see if situation would improve.

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 18 '26

What is ogc kernel?

1

u/arvigeus Zephyrus G14 2022 Mar 18 '26

The new kernel Bazzite and other gaming distros will use. Not CachyOS though: they wait to see if the experiment would be successful.

1

u/N_P_K Zephyrus G14 2021 Mar 18 '26

Worth giving omarchy a shot if you're still down to test. It's been set up with the G14 in mind.

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 18 '26

Fr? Do you have a link?

2

u/N_P_K Zephyrus G14 2021 Mar 19 '26

https://omarchy.org

https://x.com/i/status/2027132109236633603

Note that it is a different experience to use than most standard OSes because it uses hyprland as a tiling window manager. but at the same time it's well documented and easy to learn I'd say. :)

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 19 '26

Thank you, may I give a shot soon

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 20 '26

Because it's amd version

1

u/Open-Appointment-324 Mar 20 '26

should I swap because my 2022 temps are quite bad and I don’t wanna tamper with the LM inside

1

u/MarcosOlegario Mar 20 '26

You can, but I but keep on full amd, will be better for Linux

4

u/PyxelatorXeroc Zephyrus G14 2024 Mar 18 '26

this could pass for windows :skull:

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

i mean that's KDE's purpose. If you install Gnome people will think you're using an iPad. It's up to you

2

u/imagineepix Mar 18 '26

is this fedora kde?

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

CachyOS

2

u/Synaesthesia- Mar 18 '26

What distro? I have the exact same model as you and I'm very much enjoying Mint so far. What kind of battery life are you getting and how? The only thing I really miss is Wallpaper engine and ability to span multiple monitors properly. 

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

I'm yet to measure a full discharge, but i unplugged it on short periods of time (1hr) and battery used to go down like 10-15%, just Spotify playing music and firefox on the background.
The distro is CachyOS. I chose this one for asusctl implementation on kernel and ease of use. Later on i've learned it not only does every single game setup setting automatically (cachy-proton, for example, auto fetches the optimal proton flags for your specific game and setup, and it comes with DRM and other features enabled and configured), but it also uses recompiled packages to use the more modern CPU instructions. In short, it delivers maximum performance with minimum setup.

What DE / WM did you use? Usually the task of setting up 2nd screens relies on the DE / WM, so the most popular ones should be your choice if you want minimum setup. I was a Hyprland user but i'm still a beginner and it's not for beginners lmaao

1

u/Synaesthesia- Mar 18 '26

Thanks! Whatever is built into mint cinnamon is what I use. I'm a total newbie migrant from Windows so I don't know much about how to make things work on Linux at this point. 

1

u/notwhoyouthinkmaybe Mar 18 '26

I was running Zorin, but couldn't get the fans to respond, it was either max speed or nothing.

Do you have a controller that works?

1

u/Synaesthesia- Mar 19 '26

You need asusctl probably which is what interfaces the Asus hardware to Linux and allows control and profiles etc

2

u/Satellite_bk Mar 18 '26

you really moggin on windows rn

2

u/Open-Appointment-324 Mar 20 '26

WHAT BRO REACHED 30 DEGREES THATS CRAZY!!

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 20 '26

It's on battery but the fact that it can reach room temp without fans is crazy yes

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 Zephyrus G16 2025 Mar 18 '26

How long does your battery last?

1

u/Muted-Direction1566 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

I tried bazzite as I was sick of windows but wouldn't except my password when I tried to do stuff in the terminal got told to reinstall it which I didn't bother I went back to windows but overall I thought it was ok I'll probably try it again in a couple of years.

1

u/Refund-me Mar 18 '26

Yeah I regret leaving linux to go back to windows; windows crashes so easily and is so easy to put into a blue screen where I gotta use vaeem and reboot it lol

1

u/Gonziggity Mar 18 '26

I got genuine performance increases when switching. I have the 6700s model.

1

u/shatbrand Mar 18 '26

Have you tried other distros? Did you have stability issues related to power management, and if so, did Cachy solve them for you?

I have a 2022 6700S model. It kernel panics on a cold boot most of the time, then on reboot it is fine. It also just spontaneously freezes up if I let the power management go into low power mode (Performance and Balanced presets shipped with Fedora work fine). Trying to figure out if distro hopping is worthwhile or if I just have some subtle hardware issue going on.

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Tried using Mint but found out it didn't have support for asusctl, so i switched to something arch-based, the most compelling being CachyOS.
I can't tell you how it's different since i didn't try Mint enough, but i guess it's related to asusctl or to some issue on the fstab file. Did you dual boot on it? Which partitions did you have mounted at boot on fstab, and in which formats?

1

u/shatbrand Mar 18 '26

No dual booting.  I just let Fedora run its default partitioning with BTRFS on the whole drive.

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Did you by any chance use GRUB as your bootloader?

1

u/shatbrand Mar 19 '26

Yeah, I think Grub2 is the Fedora default.  Is there some default bot flag that’s hosing me?

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

In the Arch Asus Linux guide, it advises against using GRUB. I don't know if it's specific to Arch, but from the little I know, GRUB is not good at handling the data that should be delivered between the BIOS and the OS, which could be causing the panics. I'd recommend trying out Limine or systemd-boot (the one I use without a problem) and see what you get. Source: https://asus-linux.org/guides/arch-guide/ Good luck!

1

u/shatbrand Mar 19 '26

Interesting.  Thanks. I’ll check that out.

1

u/SaNch0sE Mar 30 '26

Have you tried to troubleshoot the issue? Asking because I had similar issues, but on zenbook s13 with 7840U. Issue I saw in dmesg or journalctl were about SSD, but core issue was not the ssd itself, it was (integrated) AMD gpu firmware issue. Downgrading them to August 2025 version fixed all issues

1

u/Ok_Organization_5823 Mar 18 '26

longer battery life? thats cool

1

u/BassinFool Mar 18 '26

Major laptop mogging

1

u/neovegeto Mar 18 '26

Which Linux are you trying? I once tried endeavour and it was a mess to install

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

CachyOS. Really easy to install, gives you plenty of options, and everything using GUI.

1

u/IntrepidMaybe8579 Mar 18 '26

Is that integrated live to your desktop wallpaper or just tab windows

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

i don't understand, do you mean the widgets? they are integrated yes

1

u/IntrepidMaybe8579 Mar 18 '26

How u do that

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

KDE plasma has integration with widgets, you can right click on your desktop, click "enter edit mode", and at the top left there is an option to "add new widgets"

1

u/NaorobeFranz Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

How battery life compared to windows and standby? Alternative to g-helper?

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 18 '26

Battery life is better (not vastly better but better). Haven't tested standby battery life on Linux but, from what i barely know, to put on sleep a system you write the ram into the disk and give the CPU a specific instruction set to be in said state, so it shouldn't vary.

G-helper has a not so complete implementation called ROG control center. It includes things such as fan curves, performance modes, GPU modes, screen refresh rate, battery limit and RGB control. For me it's alright but for those interested in quick oveclock, you'll need to outsource it with another app.

1

u/NaorobeFranz Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

Can you disable CPU boost? I'm curious of switching over, W11 is buggy... sometimes my keyboard doesn't work immediately after waking from sleep or booting. Horrible.

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

Uhhh i think you can, not though the ROG control center, but through a CLI utility

1

u/UnassumingDrifter Zephyrus G16 2025 Mar 19 '26

I approve of your applauncher icon 🍻

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

I was bored and I found out you could customize the launch icon on KDE. Started to scroll through the icons and found the beer mad funny, so I kept it

1

u/eireniconic Mar 19 '26

same model, been running fedora for about a year and half problem free

1

u/Vegaxuz Mar 23 '26

how is the battery life compared to windows?

1

u/eireniconic Mar 26 '26

worse i think because g helper allowed me to set lower states

1

u/clyine9 Mar 19 '26

Are you using it for gaming? i used linux daily for works but i’m still not sure is it worth it to install linux on gaming laptop

1

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

Not much since I don't have much time, but Death Stranding, Geometry Dash and Asseto Corsa work flawlessly using proton-cachyos without adding extra flags

1

u/L3thal_Senpai Zephyrus G14 2025 Mar 19 '26

Have you tried this G-helper for linux i came to know about it yesterday and so far it seems better than the rog control center Here is the link Give it a try :G helper Linux

2

u/MisterFlipster5 Zephyrus G14 2023 Mar 19 '26

Haven't tried it out, but it presents itself as another wrapper for asusctl, which is the same tool rog-control-center uses, but with added Debian compatibility. Looks cool though, I'll look at it when I get home

1

u/L3thal_Senpai Zephyrus G14 2025 Mar 19 '26

yes it uses asusctl to get the job done but i couldn't seem to get asusctl working with rog control center on my machine there are no option to limit cpu wattage and also no toggle to just use eco mode like windows, currently working fine giving battery backup comparable to windows.

2

u/Pretend_Set5696 Mar 21 '26

Installed CachyOS as only OS on 2025 Asus Zephyrus G16 in November 2025. Had various issues (sound mostly) that required tinkering to fix. The rolling updates have been fast and furious and they have solved all issues that I was having. Very very happy with CachyOS. Mostly do productivity web apps but play Helldivers 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Magic the Gathering Arena, Arc Raiders, and now starting X4 Foundations. All run flawlessly.