ASUS Zenbook UM5606

This page is for the ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606/UM5606WA), although this may help for other 2024 ASUS laptops with the Ryzen 9 AI chips (HX 365/370) such as the ASUS Vivobook S 16 (M5606) and the ProArt P16 (H7606/H7606WV).

Installation

When booting into the Arch Linux ISO, press the e key to edit the chosen boot option and add the amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x600 kernel parameter to prevent freezing during installation. A similar setting may or may not be needed after installation, see the Power Management section.

If you're using KDE, you need to run systemctl edit --user plasma-kwin_wayland.service and add this to the configuration:

~/.config/systemd/user/plasma-kwin_wayland.service.d/override.conf

[Service]
Environment="KWIN_DRM_DISABLE_TRIPLE_BUFFERING=1"

Accessibility

The UEFI may be difficult to navigate using screen readers, and it may be difficult to see the boot menu edit options when inputting the temporary kernel parameter. If necessary, you should proceed with the assistance of a sighted person.

Firmware

fwupd shows the CPU/GPU, TPM, SMU, UEFI firmware, NVMe, System firmware (which can have an attestation added), and the webcam. Most of them show as updatable, but no OTA updates have been released as of the time of writing.

There is an important UEFI update that has been posted on ASUS's website -- to apply it, download the "BIOS for ASUS EZ Flash Utility" (not "for Windows") file, extract the contents to a FAT32 formatted USB drive, reboot and go into the firmware setup, and then go into the "EZ Flash" menu. The update can be found here:

Power management

Linux ≥6.14rc1 is needed to alleviate most power management problems, including high power usage during suspend and random freezing/hanging.

# cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/1/eDP-1/psr_state

6

unbind-wifi-before-suspend.service

[Unit]
Description=Unbind Wi-Fi PCI device before suspend
Before=suspend.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "echo "0000:c3:00.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/mt7925e/unbind"
RemainAfterExit=false

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target

bind-wifi-after-resume.service

[Unit]
Description=Bind Wi-Fi PCI device after resume
After=suspend.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "echo "0000:c3:00.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/mt7925e/bind"
RemainAfterExit=false

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

Audio

Linux ≥6.13 is needed to get audio fully working without sounding tinny.

Bluetooth

Linux ≥6.12 is needed to get Bluetooth working. The aptX HD, LDAC, SBC-XQ codecs over Bluetooth have been tested for and work for wireless headphones.

NPU

Currently Linux ≥6.14rc1, xrt-npu-git^AUR, and amdxdna-driver-bin^AUR are all needed to get the NPU to work. Tested against the AMD XDNA Linux driver's provided example on the arch-linux branch of ThatOneCalculator's fork.

GPU

The GPU pretty much all works as expected.

However, GPU screen recording with tools like wl-screenrec^AUR and gpu-screen-recorder^AUR don't work with mesa 24.2 or 24.3, but does work with mesa-git^AUR (as of 8 December 2024). This will be backported to 24.3 with mesa MR !32542.

ALS

The Ambient Light Sensor (ALS) works out of the box on GNOME, and on wlroots/smithay compositors with wluma^AUR and this configuration:

~/.config/wluma/config.toml

[als.iio]
path = "/sys/bus/iio/devices"
thresholds = { 0 = "night", 2 = "dark", 5 = "dim", 8 = "normal", 13 = "bright", 15 = "outdoors" }

[[output.backlight]]
name = "eDP-1"
path = "/sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl1"
capturer = "none"

Keyboard

signal time=XXXXXXXXX.XXXXXX sender=:1.44 -> destination=(null destination)    serial=XXX path=/org/freedesktop/UPower/KbdBacklight; interface=org.freedesktop.UPower.KbdBacklight; member=BrightnessChanged
   int32 3

See also

• Official tech specs
• HW Probe
• DSDT dump
• BNieuwenhuizen's ongoing research
• Bug report for PSR2-SU on Strix Point APUs