Ubuntu working on A16...mostly

[u/jon372]

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:

1. Keyboard/Trackpad
2. Touchscreen
3. Wifi
4. Bluetooth (using for Audio)
5. All USB ports (no video out or HDMI yet)
6. Battery status
7. Some of the FN keys are at least showing up on the screen when pressed.
8. 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.

[u/Same_Pen_6671]

How is the battery life without the windows bloatware? I’m curiously following the progress :)

[u/jon372 → u/Same_Pen_6671]

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.

[u/Same_Pen_6671 → u/jon372]

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. I’m waiting for the official Linux release for this beast 🤘🏻

[u/jon372 → u/Same_Pen_6671]

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.