Thank you so very much for sharing this specific Howdy fork that worked for you! When I do eventually make the Linux switch I am going to try and get this going, and I’ll share if I figure out anything specific to running Linux on our laptop. Until then I am playing around with Linux on an older device which I don’t really mind having break to see what works for me. I guess the orange indicator light for the microphone kill switch for you worked for you and not for me because perhaps there was some update not reflected on the Fedora download I used to boot from the USB. That gives hope that perhaps the camera kill switch might work in the future too with some kernel update. Anyway, amazing and lucky that our laptop model works so well with Linux as is! I think your use of the corner hotspot feature to get to the hotspot feature is better than the four-finger gesture for KDE. I still find a three-finger gesture is preferable for trackpad navigation (trackpad usability being the original subject or discussion). I found two Gnome extensions called “Copyous” and “Tiling Assistent” which solved the two headaches where KDE seemed better to me. I think that Gnome’s gesture swiping into an overview of everything is even better than Windows because it lets you raise the windows up just a little bit to take a peek at what’s going on. I also really like having the time top and center all the time too.

Dear Sbird,

Thank you again for reporting back to me on your experience. I actually ended up testing the Fedora KDE spin just now, but I found that the camera function button didn’t work for me (not so important). The microphone off function button next to it did work, however, but neither of the indicator lights worked. (Again not such a big deal). The Caps Lock key indicator light worked, however.

I looked into it more and I think that what ASUS had marketed as DC dimming is actually just a software trick, so I don’t think your missing anything with that.

I tested the IR camera, and the webcam, and both worked. If I ever switch that laptop to Linux fulltime I will follow your advice about the Howdy fork!

I was actually able to get the numberpad thing on the trackpad to work, and the gesture to open the calculator even worked well. I think the layout for our laptop would be “M433IA.” It was a little buggy for me though. I couldn’t change the brightness level on it, and some other issues like it stop lighting up and needing to restart the service.

I think the KDE desktop was great that it allows for quarter screened windows easily. I also really like that it has a built in clipboard manager using the windows key plus v, but for some reason copy and paste with the clipboard was a little buggy for me as it wouldn’t work unless I pasted in the same window first and then copied it again somehow.

My main pain point of KDE is actually that it has the four finger swipe up to get an overview of all apps though, putting my pinky finger down just makes it a more cumbersome process for me compared to using the three-figured gesture which seems to be the standard everywhere else.

For now I’ll still be going back to Windows. But I imagine I will probably swtich to Linux completely at some point.

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):

https://github.com/iamkroot/asus-numpad?tab=readme-ov-file

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).

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.