System76 Pangolin pang12

Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
GPU
1002:1681
Yes
Wi-Fi
14c3:0608
Yes
Audio
1002:1640
Yes
Touchpad
0911:5288
Yes
Webcam
0c45:6809
Yes
Fingerprint reader
2808:9348
No
Bluetooth
0e8d:0608
Yes
This article covers the installation and configuration of Arch Linux on a System76 Pangolin model name "pang12", manufactured in 2023. Specific specifications can be found at the
manufacturer's website
.
Unlike many previous System76 laptops which were manufactured by Clevo, this model was made by Emdoor.
For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see
Laptop
.
Installation
System76 develops a special distribution (
Pop!_OS
) for their computers, and it comes with many tweaks and tools to ensure a seamless end-user experience. Arch does not have these out of the box, but can be installed if desired. They are
not
necessary for a good user experience with this particular laptop.
Recovery partition
If you are replacing Pop!_OS on the NVMe that came with your laptop, it is recommended to leave the recovery partition intact.  The BIOS is hard-coded to attempt to boot this on
Space
, and this recovery partition can be a handy way to get out of a tight spot if something should happen that renders your Arch install unbootable.
System76 automatically updates this recovery partition from within Pop!_OS;  at present, it is not known how to update it from within Arch Linux.
It may be possible to replace the contents of this recovery partition with any LiveCD you want, but as of now it is not known if anyone has tried.
Packages
All System76 specific packages can be found in the
AUR
.
Modules
system76-dkms-git
AUR
Daemons
system76-driver
AUR
system76-power
AUR
system76-firmware
Note
As stated above, these are not required for use of this laptop. System76 support has confirmed that these are the relevant packages to use for this specific laptop, and potentially offer small optimizations in areas such as fan curves and power usage.
Activation
Once you have installed the above, you will need to tell your computer to use them.
Services
Enable
the following services:
system76
system76-firmware-daemon
system76-power
Modules
To make sure all drivers are being loaded correctly, run
system76-driver-cli
; this will automatically add necessary rules to
/etc/modprobe.d
, and execute
mkinitcpio
.
Accessibility
Laptop comes with Pop!_OS installed by default, but is ready out of the box to be installed with Arch Linux install media.
BIOS is fully navigable via keyboard and is simple (blue and light grey with some white), so it may work well with OCR software.
External hardware guide and LED key
The BIOS is accessed with the
Esc
key.
Del
may work too.
Firmware
Install the following:
firmware-manager
AUR
(optional if you want to know when there is a BIOS update available)
system76-firmware
(required if you want to update your BIOS)
To check your current BIOS version and whether there is a new version available, run
firmware-manager
as root. Keep in-mind that this is a GTK application, so you need to be running X or Wayland for it to run. (It has no CLI -- it does not even respond to
--help
.)
To update your system to the latest firmware on the next boot, run
system76-firmware-cli schedule
.
Graphics
This system comes complete with integrated (
AMD
) graphics. It is suggested to follow the instructions there, including support for Vulkan and hardware acceleration.
Touchpad
Some Pangolin models have touchpad issues that can surface later. The touchpad registers mouse events when idle (interrupting sleep and suspend to RAM and consuming battery). In extreme case, the laptop mouse being unusable with multiple unintended mouse events (movement/clicks).
System76 and
users
suggest the following
Kernel parameters
:
modprobe.blacklist=psmouse
i8042.noaux
Sometimes the issue does not get fixed, you might have to contact support and send it for repair.
Function keys
Keys can be changed between serving as an F key or a Function in bios. By default, (aka on new firmware updates), it will work as the following:
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn+Esc
Yes
Yes
Vanilla Escape Key
Fn+F1
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+F4
No
No
No function
Fn+F5
No
No
No function
Fn+F6
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F7
No
Yes
Keyboard Backlight
Fn+F8
No
No
No function
Fn+F9
Yes
Yes
XF86RFKill
Fn+F10
Yes
Yes
Multiple, brings up display manager
Fn+F11
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F12
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.