Arch Linux

wyder

Member

Registered: 2025-07-28

Posts: 7

ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Got this new laptop and I decided to give Arch a spin on it, initially it hangs in the installer when using the April image, so nomodeset fixes that, everything seems to work apart from the iGPU which is the 386H Core Ultra 9 one, Xe3 based. I guess it's too new for the firmware packages to catch up? Using latest mesa 1:26.0.4-1 linux-firmware-intel 20260309-1.
Also tried to force probe on i915 and then forcing the new xe driver, doesn't work. Device id is: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Panther Lake [Intel Graphics] [8086:b0a0].
Anyone tried maybe on these new laptops?
Forgot to add that audio doesn't work, got sof-firmware installed too. Asus's download for the Windows drivers says it's a CS42L43(SDCA) from Cirrus, linux-firmware-cirrus 20260309-1 maybe doesn't have it?

Last edited by wyder (2026-04-17 20:34:11)

denisiurek

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 3

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Hi, also just recently got this laptop and installed Fedora on it. I struggled for the last two days trying to get audio input and output working.

As for other troubleshooting, I managed to get brightness settings working for the screen after removing vga=791, idk why it was there, and adding xe.enable_dpcd_backlight=1.

wyder

Member

Registered: 2025-07-28

Posts: 7

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Hi, also just recently got this laptop and installed Fedora on it. I struggled for the last two days trying to get audio input and output working.

As for other troubleshooting, I managed to get brightness settings working for the screen after removing vga=791, idk why it was there, and adding xe.enable_dpcd_backlight=1.

Whoa, so you actually had the graphics working without “nomodeset”? Brightness controls actually work but no gpu acceleration is making it not useable for now hehe. I’m on KDE.

denisiurek

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 3

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Well, during setup I had to have nomodeset, but after installing the system and getting updates through dnf I could remove it. For some reason when I had nomodeset my brightness was working, but after that it broke lol. So what I mentioned earlier helped with it.

Last edited by denisiurek (Yesterday 17:24:21)

wyder

Member

Registered: 2025-07-28

Posts: 7

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Well, during setup I had to have nomodeset, but after installing the system and getting updates through dnf I could remove it. For some reason when I had nomodeset my brightness was working, but after that it broke lol. So what I mentioned earlier helped with it.

I see. After updating today to new firmware packages, I get the same issue, doesn’t work without nomodeset

birdie-github

Member

From: Artem S. Tashkinov

Registered: 2021-10-09

Posts: 15

Website

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Funnily enough Fedora 42 worked perfectly for me with my PTL laptop, which is HP OmniBook 7 NGAI 16-bh0093TU.

I was initially using something like 6.18.7 (with the latest firmware files, perhaps that was necessary) and now running 6.19.8-100.fc42.x86_64. It took me quite some time to boot the system successfully though as Fedora 42/43 installers booted into a black screen.

My only complaint is that my laptop's firmware is extremely buggy, for instance on resume the CPU speed is limited to 4300MHz.

And the audio codec amp fails to load.

I wrote its review here, if anyone's interested:

https://itvision.altervista.org/hp_omni … eview.html

Last edited by birdie-github (Today 12:31:09)

denisiurek

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 3

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Well, during setup I had to have nomodeset, but after installing the system and getting updates through dnf I could remove it. For some reason when I had nomodeset my brightness was working, but after that it broke lol. So what I mentioned earlier helped with it.

I see. After updating today to new firmware packages, I get the same issue, doesn’t work without nomodeset

Did you try the xe driver? What kernel are you on?

wyder

Member

Registered: 2025-07-28

Posts: 7

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

Well, during setup I had to have nomodeset, but after installing the system and getting updates through dnf I could remove it. For some reason when I had nomodeset my brightness was working, but after that it broke lol. So what I mentioned earlier helped with it.

I see. After updating today to new firmware packages, I get the same issue, doesn’t work without nomodeset

Did you try the xe driver? What kernel are you on?

Yup, neither xe or 915 works, 6.19.12 as of today

splashd

Member

Registered: Today

Posts: 1

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

I have nothing useful to offer, other than I also tried installing linux mint 22.3 with OEM kernel on my UX5406AA with an Core 7 Ultra Series 3 386H, did a bunch driver module kludges and finally have concluded that until linux kernel updates to suppot PTL better, we may be dead in the water. I am hopeful someone pulls off a miracle and shares, as I love the laptop, but not Win 11...

I found late in the game that arch is my best bet, maybe omarchy...

Last edited by splashd (Today 16:15:42)

wyder

Member

Registered: 2025-07-28

Posts: 7

Re: ASUS Zenbook S14 UX5406AA (Panther Lake)

I have nothing useful to offer, other than I also tried installing linux mint 22.3 with OEM kernel on my UX5406AA with an Core 7 Ultra Series 3 386H, did a bunch driver module kludges and finally have concluded that until linux kernel updates to suppot PTL better, we may be dead in the water. I am hopeful someone pulls off a miracle and shares, as I love the laptop, but not Win 11...

I found late in the game that arch is my best bet, maybe omarchy...

I think it’s just a matter of time … I can manage working on Windows knowing it’s not permanent ?