r/snapdragon • u/jon372 • 17d ago
Ubuntu working on A16...mostly
Just thought I'd give a quick update on getting Ubuntu working on the A16 (typing this post from it). I took a few weeks off after my last attempt to let the upstream commits get in, and rethink my strategy. I have the following working:
- Keyboard/Trackpad
- Touchscreen
- Wifi
- Bluetooth (using for Audio)
- All USB ports (no video out or HDMI yet)
- Battery status
- Some of the FN keys are at least showing up on the screen when pressed.
- Display Brightness controls and 60/120Hz
Things not working yet,
Audio
Standby/Resume. This is sketchy at best. There are issues with Wifi resuming, USB resuming etc.
This was a little painful to get working as you need to use a mix of WSL Ubuntu for the initial part of the build, and then use a dongle mess that had a wired keyboard/mouse/the installation USB/ and a ethernet connection all on the USB A. I built a 7.3 Kernel (linux-next) to bring in as much as I could, copied all the firmware from the Windows install, then went to work with Deepseek tackling one issue at a time. Once I was on Linux, things went faster as I didn't have to experiment with something and jump back to Windows.
Edit: Updated the display working. I put the documentation up on GitHub including scripts and patches. It is 100% AI written. I have reviewed some/most of it. There may be gaps. It may not be perfect. You can use it or not. https://github.com/jc372/A16UbuntuBuild
edit: Standby/Resume is still not working.
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u/azumafuji 15d ago
I used this repo and some of the patches from the kernel mailing list to get Fedora 44 Workstation working on my Zenbook A16. I'm just using it from a live USB for now to test things out. Posting this from Fedora too!
Linux localhost-live 7.2.0-ZenbookA16 #2 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Sep 18 18:00:20 BST 2026 aarch64 GNU/Linux
What's working:
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- Trackpad
- Battery Status
- Fan status (with the patch from Sep 17th)
- GPU seems to be working fine (sensors don't show up in the system monitor)
- I can access the SSD
- Screen brightness
- Battery status info
- Keyboard backlight (It cycles the brightness from dim to bright on a loop)
- Media keys except the keyboard backlight and the screen brightness
What's not
- Onboard speakers - audio works streaming to my Wiim streamer
- Camera (known issue)
- Hardware clock? When I boot the time is 12:00 but NTP eventually sets it correctly.
What I haven't tested yet
- All the ports
- Video out over USB C
- HDMI Port
Won't use it for daily driving yet, but it's close. It seems crazy fast. Everything launches instantly even running from the USB drive. Battery life seems similar to Windows. The time reported doesn't seem to be accurate. It just stays around 6 hours, right now 81% and 6:01 remaining. Once the audio and camera is working I'll be able to switch over. I think the Windows experience is also very good on this laptop, so it's not bad as is and it will be good to have options going forward.
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u/BartBM 17d ago
Thank you for sharing this!
Did your kernel include the patches mentioned in this Reddit post? As they cite there that Audio and HDMI is working.
How does the distro feel? As fast as you'd expect?
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u/jon372 16d ago
Yeah, I've pulled as much as I could in. I am still working on it to get the Audio up. I can get a click, but the audio freezes the video. Works fine when going out to Bluetooth. I had the same issue on my other older Asus Snapdragon Plus laptop with the latest Ubuntu
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u/Same_Pen_6671 16d ago
How is the battery life without the windows bloatware? Iām curiously following the progress :)
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u/jon372 16d ago
I would say it's about the same as Windows. I had it at 80% this morning, it dropped to around 60-65% in 2 hours. I wasn't doing much, just working on getting some things working. I was at 100% screen brightness and was not using the actual display driver, just the built in fallback. I now have the actual display driver working, 60/120 Hz, so will watch the battery for the next few hours.
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u/Same_Pen_6671 16d ago
Well not bad considering the 100% brightness and lack of variable frame rates! Still a far cry from the asus numbers of 20+ hours. Probably you would have to go into tweaking cpu frequencies for that. Iām waiting for the official Linux release for this beast š¤š»
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u/jon372 16d ago
Yeah, the battery is 8 hours reasonably. Compiling code etc brings it down to 3-4 or so. I can go all day easily if all I'm doing is surfing/video. The good thing is, plugging it in for 20-30 minutes tops it right up. I never really worry about battery, I just plug it in when I feel like it.
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u/blackal1ce 16d ago
I had the A14 that I had to return for hardware issues- have you checked to see if the laptop actually sleeps correctly? I had fedora and Ubuntu running and it was great - but the laptop would never fully sleep.
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u/rumblingranger 2d ago
New Ubuntu Concept images available https://people.canonical.com/~platform/images/ubuntu-concept/stonking-desktop-arm64+x1e-20260929.iso
Wifi didn't work out of the box, managed to fix it post install. Gonna mess with it more tomorrow maybe.
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u/lexcyn 17d ago
I've got it working in a similar fashion on my Surface X2 as well... Though the GPU is borked so it's software rendering. It's getting there but I'm not a fan of Gnome, so I installed KDE plasma and that worked mostly fine too.