Linux on Asus Strix g513qy Advantage Edition - Debian Q4OS and Trinity

My Dell XPS 2-in-1 has been nothing but problems. I have had warranty replacements of the motherboard, daughterboards, keyboards, and other separate warranty services calls half a dozen times. Now ever time I move it powers off. I'm going to call and demand they replace the lemon. Meanwhile, i needed a replacement. So I quickly picked up an Asus Strix Advtanage Edition, model g513qy...

I upgraded the default 512 GB SSD it came with, and there is wonderfully a SECOND NvMe slot, so I slapped in an additional 2 TB 980 Pro to setup Linux on. Had to remove the entire bottom cover to do so.

I installed Q4OS (Debian based) and switched from Default KDE Plasma to Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE), which is very easy to do with Q4OS.

Audio worked out of the box, and continued to work after upgrade from kernel 5.10 to 5.15. No immediately obvious issues.

Issues during setup:

Multifinger /gestures touchpad mouse not working out of the box, will need to investigate that later. Regular touchpad works fine though.

Screen blanks out at 300 Hz default setting need to drop to 60 hz

No wifi support out of box, need to connect LAN cable.

Getting Wifi Working for MediaTek Debian Linux

https://miloserdov.org/?p=6899

Best solution, upgrade kernel to 5.12 or higher.

On Q4OS do this:

in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory

edit 30_debian_backports.list and unrem backports so it can get the latest updates:

cat 30_debian_backports.list
# Q4OS essential repository

#bullseye-backports, previously on backports.debian.org
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-backports main contrib non-free
##deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-backports main contrib non-free

and save it.

Then in /usr/bin

backup the qinst-kernel-bpo

Then edit the file and replace about the third line down the listing for "buster" with "bullseye" and save.

Then run the script to update the kernel.

Reboot when prompted.

Now I have easily updated kernel from 5.10 to 5.15, and upon the reboot, the wifi "just works"!

References:

https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=22523

Upgrading the kernel killed of the previously working keyboard backlight, so needed to reinstall asusctl and run it. For debian this has to be done from tarball, no packages currently available.

Must have minimum kernel 5.15 for some of these features to work. Will also need to add patch for additional more advanced features until running kernel 5.17 which includes the patch. I am just running on 5.15 for now.

https://asus-linux.org/asusctl/

Specs (from Windows side):

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with Radeon Graphics 3.30 GH

RAM: 16 GB

Windows 10 Home 20H2 OS Build 19042.1526 Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4170.0

Display: AMD Radeon RX 6800M

Wireless Wifi 6 LAN Card: MediaTek MT7921 (linux reports it as: "MEDIATEK Corp. Device 7961")

Ethernet LAN: Realtek

Specs from Linux side: