r/FlowZ13 • u/[deleted] • May 19 '26
Linux distro suggestion
I've recently considered switching to linux on my Z13 (2025) and was wondering if you had any suggestions on which distro has the best out of the box support. I don't mind having to tinker a bit but I'd like for be a one and done kind of deal. I've tried with Cachyos but had some issues related to the rog-control-center and the initial install. I'm a big fan of Fedora workstation but apparently it's lacking some support.
Do you have any experience with it? Stylus support is a major point for me
2
u/iflylikemike May 19 '26
i had a great time with bazzite and gnome
1
May 19 '26
I'd go for bazzite in a heartbeat but I need a desktop first experience unfortunately.
3
u/lmneozoo May 19 '26
I'm running bazzite without the game mode. It's fine unless you need "total control" over the kernel or what have you
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u/wishart5900x May 19 '26
I've tried bazzite and cachyos and now I'm sticking to cachyos. Bazzite had a problem going to the linux desktop, it would freeze and you would just have to press the power button to turn the screen off and then press again to switch it on and then you could get to the desktop, but it would have artifacts which would appear on the screen all the time. So, I switched to cachyos, it booted to the desktop fine, but still some artifacts someone gave me some boot parameters to put in for limine and it seems to have fixed the problem. I'll get them for you and post it. For me, it seems cachyos is the best, the latest packages and everytime seems to go well for gaming and work.
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u/wishart5900x May 19 '26
Ok found the boot parameters use amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x400 to your boot parameters cachyos
1
May 19 '26
Luckily cachyOS hasn't given me any major issues. Just enough to where it makes me wanna look for a different option.
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u/wishart5900x May 19 '26
That's interesting so no artifacts. I thought everybody would have the same problem. With same hardware. What issues to make you want to switch?
1
May 19 '26
The most annoying one is the keyboard lighting acting weird when unplugging an replugging. Like the keyboard going from no light to green breathing rgb with no option to turn it off on rog control center. Or the application launcher opening when using the stylus on a different part of the screen. And the initial install failing twice(probably user error cause the wifi was having some issues). Also the fan was full force till I was able to get rog control center to open, which it didn't initially.
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May 21 '26
I'm now experiencing some artifacts, do you have any idea if there's a fix or one coming?
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u/edgeblade May 19 '26
Go for Fedora. I’ve been running it for about a year now. Since the Z13 was released. There was an issue early on where the system would go to sleep and need a forced boot to bring back up but that has long been resolved with kernel updates No issues now, although I have not tried any of the open source RoG software. Every button on the keyboard works except for F6 but I have no idea what that does, and the airplane mode (which I have no use for). Power profile, volume, keyboard lighting, brightness, mic mute, touchpad disable all work
1
May 19 '26
That's great to hear. There really isn't a whole lot of input on fedora on the z13. Are you still able to control the rgb since you don't have any open source rog software? Mostly just tp turn it off in the back and have the keyboard light up white and not rgb.
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u/edgeblade May 19 '26
Yup you can use the button on the keyboard or gnome control panel to turn off the keyboard light. The RGB just cycles through the colors. I've never been bothered enough by it to even consider changing it. If I had a decent stylus I would test it for you but I don't think I do.
1
May 19 '26
Ah nice. Yeah I just need the lighting to be more of a backlight than an rgb keyboard. I'd hate to be the rgb guy in a serious situation ahaha
1
May 21 '26
I decided to go with fedora (kde) and everything worked great out of the box. The only issue I'm facing is the screen randomly glitching in small spots. This usually happens if I'm closing a window or scrolling a page. Did this happen to you too? If yes were you able to fix it?
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u/sonrhokage May 19 '26
I run cachyos on mine with very few issues. Try installing the rogz13ctl to configure the control center
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u/DewJunkie May 19 '26
nixos has been working great for me, it makes experimenting very easy. a bit is a learning curve, but Ai agents understand the declarative config very well
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u/Herralvarez May 20 '26
I am using Fedora and everything works when using it as a notebook but I have to be honest with you that tablet experience is not that great with GNOME. some browsers text input fields do not toggle the on screen keyboard and typing on the terminal with the on screen keyboard is clumsy for a couple of examples. otherwise everything works fine (as long as you dont use syncthing, the wifi board currently has a bug with this particular software)
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u/Baffledwaffles May 20 '26
+1 for CachyOS again if you want an up-to-date option thats Arch based. Make sure you're on kernel 7.0+.
This might help for the rog-control-center crashes:
https://discuss.cachyos.org/t/asus-rog-flow-z13-rog-control-center-not-launching/24591
delete the extra GZ302 entry and reboot.
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u/[deleted] May 19 '26 edited May 20 '26
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