ASUS Zenbook and Vivobook on Omarchy Linux

Verdict

Silver for a mainstream Intel Zenbook, bronze for most Vivobooks, and one named model you should skip for now.

That split is what the evidence supports. Across 21 Zenbook and 19 Vivobook issues in the tracker, almost nothing is broken about the basic desktop. The open reports cluster in three places: suspend and resume, fingerprint readers, and Wi-Fi chips. Omarchy ships exactly one piece of enablement aimed at this family, a backlight fix for the Zenbook S14 UX5406AA, and that same model has had no working audio since May 2026.

The honest summary is that a Zenbook or Vivobook will install and run, and the thing most likely to annoy you is closing the lid.

What works

Graphics come up on their own. Intel Iris Plus, Iris Xe and AMD Radeon integrated graphics all use in-tree drivers, and no Zenbook or Vivobook issue in the tracker reports a machine that fails to reach a desktop.

One old Wi-Fi regression is behind us. The MediaTek MT7921 and MT7922 breakage reported on a Vivobook S14 in issue #1829 was a linux-firmware-mediatek regression, and a commenter on that thread confirmed version 20251011-1 works again. The thread is closed. The Wi-Fi problems still open on this family are different ones, below.

Checked on 4.0.4. Most of this was already true on 3.x, since none of it depends on the Quickshell rewrite.

What breaks

Suspend is the recurring theme, and it is not one bug.

On the Zenbook UX325JA, an Ice Lake machine, issue #11458 reports a hard freeze 20 to 50 seconds after a successful s2idle resume on kernel 7.2.3. The reporter had 42 clean cycles on 7.1.9 before the update, which makes it a kernel regression rather than a configuration problem. Still open.

On the Zenbook 14 UM3406KA, issue #10924 reports the ASUP1206 I2C touchpad going dead after resume, with i2c_hid_acpi failing its power state restore and returning error -121. Unbinding and rebinding only that device brings it back, and the reporter runs that from a systemd sleep hook. Still open.

On the Zenbook UX8402ZE, an Alder Lake machine with NVIDIA graphics, issue #7788 reports a hard hang entering s2idle on lid close, 5 boots out of 7 before the reporter pinned MemorySleepMode=deep. A commenter links the same class of failure to the NVIDIA GSP suspend path. Still open.

Older but worth knowing: issue #4908 traced a UM3406KA that would not sleep at all to a linux-firmware-other update, and the fix was downgrading that package. DHH’s answer on that thread was blunt about scope, saying Omarchy has no power over the firmware bundle.

Audio is broken on one model. Issue #5557 shows the Panther Lake Zenbook S14 UX5406AA failing to register any sound card, with sof_sdw refusing the topology over an ABI mismatch and aplay -l reporting no soundcards. Pegorim tracked this to upstream SOF work and confirmed speakers, headphones, mic and HDMI all work with two Intel patches applied. A later commenter reports kernel 7.3.0-rc1 fixes it with no patching. Nothing in Omarchy’s stable channel is that new: linux-omarchy sits at 7.2.5, and the Panther Lake kernels this machine would actually run, linux-ptl and linux-mainline-panther-lake, are older still at 7.1.8 and 7.0-rc4. As of this writing the fix has not reached you. Note that PR #5606, which the tracker links to this issue, only installs sof-firmware on Panther Lake machines. It does not address the UX5406AA failure.

FocalTech fingerprint readers are a dead end on some units. Issue #8800 covers a Vivobook M6500QC where libfprint reports no driver for USB device 2808:A658, and there is no open source driver for that chip. Issue #11384 is the neighbouring problem. It was filed from an ASUS ExpertBook rather than a Zenbook, but it concerns the same FocalTech sensor family these laptops use: omarchy-hw-fingerprint lists vendors 27c6 138a 06cb 08ff 1c7a 147e, and FocalTech’s 2808 is not among them, so readers that would work are told they do not exist. On that ExpertBook, bypassing the gate got enrollment, fprintd-verify and PAM working end to end, which puts the fault in the detector rather than the hardware.

Wi-Fi after resume is chip dependent. Issue #7003 covers a Vivobook S 14 S3407CA whose Realtek RTL8852BE is dead after s2idle until the driver is reloaded. Issues #11813 and #11812, both on a Vivobook X1504VA with MediaTek MT7902, cover Wi-Fi that never reconnects on its own and a fresh install that prefers 2.4 GHz over the same SSID on 5 GHz.

Two smaller ones. Issue #8944 on a Vivobook 15 Pro reports the panel going dim above 95 percent brightness, resolved by swapping kernels. Issue #10344 was filed from a Zenbook using asus_nb_wmi and is about the battery panel misreporting a charge limit it did not set.

What Omarchy does for this model

Less than you might expect. Two files, one model.

bin/omarchy-hw-asus-zenbook-ux5406aa matches the string ux5406aa against /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name or product_family through omarchy-hw-match, then confirms a Panther Lake GPU. install/hardware/asus/fix-asus-ptl-display-backlight.sh uses that detector to write xe.enable_dpcd_backlight=1 into a Limine entry drop-in, because the panel reports an empty EDID and the xe driver otherwise picks PWM backlight, which leaves the panel with roughly two usable brightness levels. That fix shipped in v3.8.0 and is still wired into install/hardware/all.sh at v4.0.4. The script’s own comment says it is enabled only for the ExpertBook B9406 and the UX5406AA for now.

Everything else under install/hardware/asus/ targets other machines. The B9406 display and touchpad scripts gate on omarchy-hw-asus-expertbook-b9406. The ROG Flow Z13 touchpad rule, the asusctl install, and the user level ALC285 mic and soft mixer fixes gate on omarchy-hw-asus-rog, which requires DMI sys_vendor to be exactly ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. and the product family to contain ROG. A Zenbook or Vivobook matches neither detector. Speaker tunings ship only for the 2026 Dell XPS.

Variants

Prefer a recent Intel Zenbook that is not Panther Lake. The audio failure is tied to the UX5406AA SoundWire topology, and no other Zenbook or Vivobook in the tracker reports a dead sound card.

Avoid the Zenbook S14 UX5406AA if you want sound now. It is the one model with dedicated Omarchy enablement and the one model with a dead sound card.

Treat any Zenbook with a discrete NVIDIA GPU, such as the UX8402ZE, as a hybrid graphics machine first. Read /hardware/hybrid-gpu/ before buying.

On Vivobooks, check the fingerprint reader vendor and the Wi-Fi chip before you count on either. FocalTech readers and RTL8852BE Wi-Fi are both represented in open issues.

Zenbook Duo owners should expect the second panel to be extra monitor configuration work. That claim comes from an earlier hand written prototype for this site and is not backed by a tracker issue.

Before you install

• Run lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 network and lsusb on a live session, and write down the Wi-Fi chip and the fingerprint reader vendor id.
• Test suspend and resume ten times before you migrate your data. Close the lid, wait, open it.
• If the machine hangs entering suspend, try MemorySleepMode=deep in a sleep.conf.d drop-in. See /fix/suspend-wont-resume-s2idle/.
• Keep the previous kernel entry in Limine. Several of these reports are kernel regressions, and rolling back is the fastest test. See /releases/channels/.
• Check for sound before anything else on a Panther Lake machine. An empty /proc/asound/cards is the tell.

Related

• /hardware/suspend-sleep/, /hardware/audio/, /hardware/fingerprint/, /hardware/wifi/
• /fix/no-sound-from-laptop-speakers/, /fix/fingerprint-enrollment-fails/, /fix/battery-drains-fast/
• /hardware/asus-rog-zephyrus/ for ROG machines, which get asusctl and the audio quirks this family does not
• Omarchy manual: system sleep, keyboard, mouse and trackpad, monitors
• Have one of these machines? Send what you found to /hardware/submit/