ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A

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Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
GPU
8086:0166
Yes
Audio
8086:1e20
Yes
Wi-Fi
8086:088e
Yes
Webcam
04f2:b330
Yes
Bluetooth
8087:07da
Yes*
SD Card Reader
0bda:0139
Yes
*
Usage can impair Wi-Fi quality
This page contains instructions, tips, pointers, and links for installing and configuring Arch Linux on the ASUS Zenbook UX31A and UX21A Ultrabooks. Most of it should also hold for UX32VD.
See previous generation
ASUS Zenbook UX31E
page that has mostly orthogonal information to those here (may be only partially applicable to UX31A)
Installation
To install Arch Linux on UX31A, you can follow the official
Installation guide
. Since the UX31A uses UEFI and GPT, make sure to also read the
UEFI
,
GPT
and
Arch boot process#Boot loader
pages.
Boot from USB medium
Press
Esc
to get into the boot menu. If the USB bootable device is not listed, enter the configuration menu and directly press
F10
to save. Press
Esc
again on reboot: this time the USB bootable device should appear in the menu.
Make sure to boot the USB in UEFI mode, to easily install the
boot loader
later.
Function keys
Note
It is often necessary to
add a keyboard shortcut
or to use a desktop shell with built-in shortcut support for keycodes. For some of the keys the function operates on a BIOS level and no shortcut is needed.
Keys
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn+F1
Yes
3
Yes
XF86Sleep
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86WLAN
&
XF86Bluetooth
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86KbdBrightnessDown
Fn+F4
Yes
Yes
XF86KbdBrightnessUp
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F6
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F7
No
Yes
Turn off LCD
Fn+F8
Yes
Yes
XF86Display
Fn+F9
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F10
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+F11
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F12
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+a
Yes
Yes
m:0x0 + c:248
- Ambient light sensors
Fn+c
Yes
Yes
XF86Launch1
- Switch display profile
Fn+v
Yes
Yes
XF86WebCam
Fn+space
Yes
Yes
XF86Launch6
- Switch power profiles
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
systemd-logind handles this by default.
Screen backlight
The brightness is managed via hardware, so it should work across all DE's.
In case it is not working directly, you need to set the
kernel parameter
acpi_osi=
(the space is required).
Keyboard backlight
Keyboard backlight should work automatically with any recent kernel. Desktop environments that use UPower, like GNOME or KDE, work out the box and do not need any tool or script to register the keys and change the keyboard brightness.
Manually setting the brightness
See
Keyboard backlight
.
Using asus-kbd-backlight
asus-kbd-backlight
AUR
is a convenient way to manage the backlight brightness, if one does not want to use UPower. To allow users to change the brightness, write:
# asus-kbd-backlight allowusers
Now you can easily change keyboard backlight in terminal:
$ asus-kbd-backlight up
$ asus-kbd-backlight down
$ asus-kbd-backlight max
$ asus-kbd-backlight off
$ asus-kbd-backlight night
$ asus-kbd-backlight 2
$ asus-kbd-backlight show
You can then
bind
the
XF86KbdBrightnessDown
and
XF86KbdBrightnessUp
keys to the above functions.
Solid state drive
See
Solid state drive
and
Power management#SATA Active Link Power Management
Graphics
See
Intel graphics
. For hardware accelerated video read
Hardware video acceleration
.
Touchpad
Instructions to activate the right button
.
(As an alternative you cant try
This
).
Multifinger taps work out of the box.
Tip
Multifinger taps: Two finger for middle click; three fingers for right click.
Multitouch gestures
To enable multitouch gestures like those under Windows, one can install
touchegg
. Using
touchegg
will require disabling some input-handling that is done by the synaptics input driver. Edit your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "TapButton2" "0"
        Option "TapButton3" "0"
        Option "ClickFinger2" "0"
        Option "ClickFinger3" "0"
        Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "0"
        Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "0"
        Option "ClickPad" "true"
        Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "0"
        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection
An alternative to X.org configuration files is to use the
synclient
command within the
.xinitrc
script. This method will limit changes to your desktop environment.
synclient TapButton2=0 TapButton3=0 ClickFinger2=0 ClickFinger3=0 HorizTwoFingerScroll=0 VertTwoFingerScroll=0
touchegg
will need to be autostarted for multitouch gestures to be activated. This can be done with
touchegg &
in your
.xinitrc
, or using the autostart/startup applications functionality of your desktop environment.
~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf
can then be configured as necessary.
Multitouch gestures in GNOME
GNOME 3's gnome-shell does its own mouse-handling, which can interfere with synaptics and touchegg settings unless the appropriate plugin is disabled.
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.mouse active false
Note that disabling this plugin will cause the current settings within the Mouse & Touchpad section of System Settings to be ignored.
Disable Touchpad While Typing
One of the criticisms this laptop gets (see reviews at Amazon) is that the placement of the touchpad results in frequent touchpad brushing during typing. You should use whatever touchpad disabling method you prefer. See
Touchpad Synaptics#Disable touchpad while typing
.
HDMI plugged at boot
There seems to be a problem whereby having an HDMI device plugged in at boot results in the screens being switched and also the laptop screen not coming on. To make this more bearable you can automate switching HDMI on with the following udev rule and script:
Add the following script as root:
/usr/local/share/hdmi-plugged-startup
#!/bin/sh
export XAUTHORITY=/home/$USER/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0

/usr/bin/xrandr -display :0 --output eDP1 --auto --output HDMI1 --auto --above eDP1
then make it
executable
.
Add the following udev rule:
/etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
'ACTION=="change", SUBSYSTEM=="drm", RUN+="/usr/local/share/hdmi-plugged-startup"'
Suspending, unplugging the HDMI cable, and resuming is a way to enable the Zenbook's screen without rebooting if it was booted with the cable plugged in.
Powersave management
To configure some power saving options and tools, see
Power saving
.
Other Devices and Drivers
MEI
If you know what you are doing and want to use the i7 MEI, you need the Intel Local Manageability Service. You can find it as
intel-lms
AUR
.
Additional resources
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2005999
Wikipedia:Zenbook#UX32.2C UX42 and UX52