In Search of Incredible (Revisiting Linux after 3 months of Windows) with my ASUS laptop

After getting quite a bit tired of Windows’s never ending slowdowns and quirks, I think i had enough.

In this note, I’m going to once again test several linux distros using my ASUS ExpertBook B7402FBA to see if my previous issues such as the audio jack detection not working, overheating issues (which makes me come back to Windows again) still persist. From several sources online, i see the newer Linux kernel’s (starting from 6.16) have supported Intel’s energy aware scheduling, and I want to see this new feature in action and what it meant to the temperature situation i had before.

I’ll try several linux distro’s Beta/Next/Pre-release version builds to try getting as close as possible to the newest fixes and kernel builds.

Before starting, I’d like to point out some general things:

• I’m using ASUS Expertbook B7 Flip (B7402FBA) with 12th gen Intel Core i5-1240P (12c/16t) and 32GB DDR5 RAM @ 4800MT/s
• Intel WiFi 6E AX211 WiFi adapter
• Intel 5G Solution 5000 for WWAN (Cellular) adapter
• Realtek USB GbE Family for LAN adapter
• BIOS is up to date as of Oct 4, 2025 (B7402FBA.330)
• I’m using balenaEtcher to put the images to a bootable flash drive

and for funsies, here’s my Windows stats:

• Idle RAM usage: 5.8GB/32GB
• Idle CPU usage: 2-4%
• Process count: 212
• Threads count: 2751

Now let’s go into it!

1. Ubuntu 25.10

Currently the build I’m using (ubuntu-25.10-beta-desktop-amd64) is in the Release Candidate stage with the approximate release build date of Oct 9.

Observed behaviors and quirks:

• Kernel version is 6.17.0.4-generic
• GNOME Desktop Environment
• Connectivity works (WiFi, Bluetooth) but no 5G WWAN

• Audio Jack is not working (it detected a jack has been plugged in, but outputs no sound)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 2.32GB/32GB, load avg is 0.31, 136 processes, 468 threads.
• CPU is absolutely chill and seems to able to run Ubuntu with zero sweats. Fan is off due to the temperature being so low.
• Playing 1080p YouTube video using Firefox: 0 dropped frames, load avg is 0.40, mem usage is 3.74GB/32GB, 147 processes, 828 threads.

2. Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Beta

I’m using pop-os_24.04_amd64_intel_20 image (which is the latest beta build you can get at time of writing, Oct 4)

• Kernel version is 6.16.3.76061603-generic [x86_64]
• COSMIC Desktop Environment
• Connectivity works (WiFi, Bluetooth) but no 5G WWAN

• Audio Jack is not working (it detected a jack has been plugged in, but outputs no sound)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 2.63GB/32GB, load avg is 0.23, 113 processes, 416 threads.
• CPU is absolutely chill and seems to able to run POP!_OS. Fan is off due to the temperature being so low.
• Playing 1080p YouTube video using Firefox: 0 dropped frames, load avg is 1.03, mem usage is 3.74GB/32GB, 127 processes, 730 threads.
• Weird issue of YouTube videos will freeze if the player is in fullscreen mode. I thought this is because of hardware acceleration not working correctly, turning the setting off will also still do this. Also, in the Firefox’s about:support it says it supports H264, VP9, VP8, AV1, HEVC hardware decoding! Which is quite complete.

3. Fedora Workstation 43

I’m using Fedora-Workstation-Live-43_Beta-1.3.x86_64 (latest working beta build as per Oct 4) live image environment to test Fedora on my machine. It identifies itself as Fedora Linux 43 Workstation Edition Prerelease

Observed behaviors and quirks:

• Kernel version is 6.17.0-0.rc3.31.fc43.x86_64
• GNOME Desktop Environment
• Connectivity works (WiFi, Bluetooth) and 5G WWAN is detected out of the box
• Audio jack is not working (again, it detected when something is plugged in but no audio output)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 3.24GB/32GB, load avg is 0.17, 151 processes, 467 threads.
• Playing 1080p Youtube video using Firefox fails with “An error occured. Please try again later.” message.

4. Fedora Desktop KDE

I’m using Fedora-KDE-Desktop-Live-43-20251004.n.0.x86_64 (latest working beta build as per Oct 4) live image environment to test Fedora on my machine.

Observed behaviors and quirks:

• Kernel version is 6.17.0-63.fc43.x86_64
• KDE Desktop Environment
• Connectivity works (WiFi, Bluetooth) and 5G WWAN is detected out of the box.
• Audio jack is not working (again, it detected when something is plugged in but no audio output)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 2.61GB/32GB, load avg is 0.17, 114 processes, 473 threads.
• Playing 1080p Youtube video using Firefox fails with “An error occured. Please try again later.” message.

I think i know why Fedora builds can’t play YouTube videos I tested. From navigating to the Firefox’s “about:support” page, i can see h264 hardware decoding as “unsupported” while the supported hardware decoding are VP8 and VP9.

Disabling hardware acceleration through settings and configuring the media.hardware-video-decoding-enabled flag to false still won’t make Firefox play the video i tested before. HOWEVER, trying it with another YouTube video then it plays absolutely fine. When I check the “stats for nerds” for these videos (which Firefox can plays) YouTube serves us with “av01.0.08M” codec which is AV1. Meanwhile the video i use to test it before were using “avc1.4d400c” which is H264. My guess is something about h264 decoding is broken with these Fedora live images.

5. Linux Manjaro KDE

I’m using manjaro-kde-25.0.8-250902-linux612 live image to test this. I can’t seem to find a easy way to download pre-release Manjaro builds, so i guess I’ll test it just using their regular release build, which from the filename suggest it was updated Sep 2 (last month as of this time of writing)

Observed behaviors and quirks:

• Kernel version is 6.12.44-3-MANJARO
• KDE Desktop Environment
• Audio jack still not working (it detected something is plugged in but no audio output)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 1.60GB/32GB, load avg is 0.22, 72 processes, 224 threads.
• Playing 1080p Youtube video using Firefox: 0 dropped frames, load avg is 0.40, mem usage is 2.84GB/32GB, 85 processes, 594 threads.
• CPU is chill but i see all cores wake up (no core is parking) but each cores only have 2-5% load. Top of chassis is a little bit warm to touch (this is while playing back YouTube videos)

I think this is because Manjaro still uses kernel 6.12 which does not have Intel Energy Aware Scheduling feature.

6. Linux Mint Cinnamon

I’m using linuxmint-22.2-cinnamon-64bit image (latest as of writing at Oct 4)

Observed behaviors and quirks:

• Kernel version is 6.14.0-29-generic
• Cinnamon Desktop Environment
• Audio jack still not working (it detected something is plugged in but no audio output)
• Internal Microphone works normally
• htop reported: Idle RAM usage is 1.46GB/32GB, load avg is 0.32, 99 processes, 323 threads.
• Playing 1080p Youtube video using Firefox: 0 dropped frames, load avg is 0.60, mem usage is 2.61GB/32GB, 112 processes, 686 threads.
• CPU is chill but i see almost all cores wake up (2 out of 16 core is parking) but each cores only have 2-5% load. Top of chassis is a little bit warm to touch (this is while playing back YouTube videos)

In summary:

All of the distro I tested above also suffers from the same thing, audio. My ASUS laptop uses Realtek ALC294 audio chip, which for some reason needs to be configured with some tweaks and quirks in linux (you can see my previous post here) for it to work (but then it still wont work 100% correctly. e.g: external mic input).

You can look it up online and you’ll see there’s already so much people complains about this and ALC294 mostly is used in High-end ASUS laptops.

Also for the new Intel’s energy aware scheduling, I think it’s working on these test (especially on Ubuntu and POP!_OS) because when I touch the top of the chassis, there is ZERO heat, not even a tiny bit of warmness to the touch. While testing the other one such as Fedora (with it broken video playback) I feel slight warmness on the chassis and for the others pre-6.16 kernels, i can definitely feel some warmness in the chassis.

Sorry if it feels less (or not) scientific at all but it’s the only way to describe it since i don’t have thermal camera or a temperature sensor probe to accurately measure the chassis temperature and i’m too bored to set up a temperature monitoring software and measure them one by one lol

For ease of reading, I’ve put all our findings into this table:

I was quite confused reading this chart, because before now, I always thought Ubuntu was the “bloated” one due to it’s mainstream presence and everyone go-to distro. I thought it going to try to cram as many app as possible, but turns out I’m wrong!

After reading this, I think I decided I’m going to install Ubuntu on my ASUS laptop. Want to know how will it go?

Thanks for reading and see you in the next note entry!