So I have had a lot of trouble getting linux working on this machine. I had never had that issue before with any computer. I did finally get Fedora 41 installed and everything loaded. However, performance was questionable with YouTube stuttering, and such. So I decided I needed to try the Nvidia drivers. I had found a couple places online talking about that. I first started with SecureBoot since I am dual booting on a 2nd drive. It was working, but I followed this Howto/Secure Boot - RPM Fusion guide for secure boot. Then I followed some directions I found for installing the Nvidia drivers. Everything seemed fine until reboot and then it loads shows the splash screen the goes black. I can get to a different TTY and log in. I am using the i3 spin of Fedora as well so this is X11. I also referenced this after the secure boot stuff to handle the Nvidia stuff Reddit - Dive into anything
Anyone else run into issues or have ideas for some help? Thanks!
Also looking in journalctl I have found an error with the backlight which I think is the issue, but not sure how to fix it. Failed to start systemd-backlight@backlight:nvidia_wmi_ec_backlight.service I am assuming this is it since I can enter my password on the black screen and then open a term and then reboot. So I am thinking it is a brightness thing, but cannot find a fix.
It was mostly that 2nd link I posed to reddit there that I followed. I have reinstalled again since it works before installing any drivers. I have looked and actually get the same backlight error in journalctl without a graphics driver installed so maybe that isn’t it. I am typing this from i3 on Fedora now, but inxi shows No drivers for the dGPU or the iGPU. Any time after installing the Nvidia drivers I get a black screen. Going to try one more time from https://asus-linux.org, and just see what happens. Getting really frustrating that I can get it to work, but cannot get any drivers so video and games on the device are unusable.
Which Fedora? Gnome? KDE? I found that installing NVIDIA drivers on Fedora 41 KDE was the easiest ever on any Linux distro I tried before. No need for any of that stuff they’re talking about on Reddit. It literally took three steps:
Disable Secure Boot in BIOS, though this may not even be necessary but I did it because it caused me grief on other distros, so just to be on the safe side.
It is F41 and I am on i3 spin of Fedora. I basically did everything you mentioned there except a few extra steps for SecureBoot because Windows 11 hates no secure boot. I installed some extra Asus libraries as well. However, the one change I made that actually allowed me to have a display with the Nvidia libraries is turning it to Optimized instead of Standard mode on Windows in the Asus ArmoryCrate/Nvidia Settings. So it is working now although I think there are some things I may need to mess with but at least I no longer am getting a black screen.
So this must be something specific to this laptop then. My PC is a pretty standard desktop with a retail NVIDIA GPU. Gaming laptops have custom GPU hardware/firmware.
Yeah it has a mux for like switching between the iGPU and the dGPU. It is really a pain. Didn’t realize it was that bad before buying. Hadn’t used a dGPU on Linux for a long time, and never had issues since it was a desktop machine.