Greetings everyone,

I was attempting to install and test out KaOS on my recently purchased Asus TUF Gaming A16 2023 Advantage Edition laptop (FA617NS). The laptop is designed for Win 11, is inexpensive, has gotten good reviews, and has an AMD CPU and GPU (bleeding edge hardware). There are issues with some Linux kernels not properly recognizing the internal keyboard and touch pad, thus a v6.4.8 or higher kernel is recommended. I have the KaOS-2023.11-x86_64 ISO file downloaded. Below is what I discovered in the live ISO environment:

[KaOS 2023-11 ISO]

  • Did not recognize the internal keyboard and touch pad. Must use external USB keyboard and mouse.

  • v6.5.11 kernel

  • v23.2.1 mesa

  • v17.0.2 LLVM

  • v1.3.270 Vulkan

  • CPU recognized, i-GPU and d-GPU, webcam recognized

  • It uses Wayland and XWayland

  • Did not use correct resolution. 1536x960 was the resolution used, but the laptop is 1920x1200 (1200p)

  • Audio, Ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth recognized

  • I'm not sure why the internal keyboard and touch pad aren't recognized properly with a v6.5.x kernel. On most other distros a v6.5.x kernel means proper internal keyboard and touch pad recognition and function. How do I go about gathering information (beyond a report from "inxi -Fx") and getting it to the appropriate party in the KaOS team so, that corrections/improvements can be made, and a fresh ISO can be publish that works on my hardware?

  • I'm not sure what caused the incorrect resolution selection. Every other distro, that I've examined, has selected the correct native resolution of 1200p at either 60Hz or 120Hz or 165Hz in the live ISO environments. 165Hz is the top end and the native refresh rate. Is this a Wayland issue?

I have a reddit post where, I and other Linux users that have the same laptop, are documenting our experience with the various distros. I'm deliberately going beyond many others by testing and documenting multiple Linux distros. This will provide Linux users with a wealth of information when deciding on a distro to use and what they can expect.

Reddit post URL = https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/159mj6i/anyone_have_experience_with_asus_tuf_gaming_a16/?sort=new

Laptop Specs (Asus TUF Gaming A16 2023 Advantage Edition):

The laptop is currently available from BestBuy (US) at $750 (US) which is a $350 discount. I paid $900 US for it. I upgraded the RAM and storage which is reflected in the specs above. Here is a video by Jarod Tech ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah99ekbPMHQ ). Jarod encountered the same issues with the internal keyboard and touch pad not being recognized and he used an Ubuntu ISO with an older kernel.

Thanks in advance.

Please start with providing the outcome os the SysInfo tool, hopefully that will show enough errors/indications what is missing:
https://kaosx.us/docs
https://kaosx.us/docs/#sysinfo-tool-in-octopi

On other distro's, did you use Wayland or X11? You might try and see if X11 corrects the incorrect resolution. Logout while in live mode, on the login screen (SDDM) select PLasma X11 instead of Plasma Wayland, and relogin with userneame & password live/live.

The distros that I examined/tested that used Wayland are:

  • KaOS 2023-11 ISO
  • MX Linux v23.1 ISO
  • openSUSE 2023-11-26 ISO

All others used X11. Logging out and switching to a X11 session did indeed show the 1200p resolution with max refresh rate. Below is the diagnostic and log file info collected and placed into pastebin uploads:

I did notice some ACPI error messages during the boot process of the ISO. I encountered similar behavior with Linux Mint Cinnamon v21.2. The folks in the Mint forums said that the ACPI error messages could be ignored because they weren't causing any issues. However, Mint/Cinnamon is not using Wayland and has an older kernel (v6.5.0). I have the latest BIOS update installed (v410).

Wayland causing issues in Live mode with a Dual GPU system is not that uncommon, hopefully will be fully solved with Plasma 6, so the resolution part is fixed with X11.
But no errors or any indication about why the keyboard and touchpad are not found (no need to add the inxi -F logs, they are included in the SysInfo tool), would be nice to know what that hardware is, so it can be checked if a kernel setting needs to be adjusted for it.
Maybe sudo libinput list-devices will gets some needed info.

Pastebin link for libinput_device_list_info = https://pastebin.com/3SVd58iK

My external USB keyboard is a wired G.Skill RipJaws KM 780 MX. My external USB mouse is a Xtrfy M42 wired gaming mouse.

So it seems to be an AT Translated keyboard, does it show any in the Xorg log & dmesg?
journalctl -b | grep -i translated
grep translated /var/log/Xorg.0.log
sudo dmesg | grep translated

Thank you for you quick reply. I apologize. My notes are incorrect. Instead of saying that the internal keyboard isn't recognized I should say that it isn't properly or fully recognized. The Fn key combos do not work. So, I cannot raise or lower the internal keyboard lighting. I cannot raise or lower the internal display's brightness via Fn key combos. The Windows key (meta key) does work which is great. The touch pad remains unrecognized and I cannot use it in the live ISO environment. I have to plug in my USB mouse.

I re-ran libinput command without my USB G.Skill keyboard connected and it gives the following output:

Device:           AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
Kernel:           /dev/input/event4
Group:            7
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     keyboard 
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      n/a
Nat.scrolling:    n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   none
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:   n/a
Rotation:         0.0

I had to alter your command to extract info from the Xorg.0.log. I used "cat Xorg.0.log | grep -i translated". Here is the output:

[    22.606] (II) config/udev: Adding input device AT Translated Set 2 keyboard (/dev/input/event4)
[    22.606] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[    22.606] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Applying InputClass "libinput keyboard catchall"
[    22.606] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Applying InputClass "Keyboard Defaults"
[    22.606] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
[    22.606] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: always reports core events
[    22.607] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: is tagged by udev as: Keyboard
[    22.607] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: device is a keyboard
[    22.607] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: device removed
[    22.619] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard" (type: KEYBOARD, id 12)
[    22.620] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: is tagged by udev as: Keyboard
[    22.620] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: device is a keyboard
[    23.066] (II) event4  - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: device removed

Here is the output of the journalctl query:

Dec 18 10:36:03 localhost kernel: input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input4
Dec 18 10:36:10 localhost systemd-logind[830]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event4 (AT Translated Set 2 keyboard)

I altered your dmesg query command. I used "sudo dmesg | grep -i translated". Here is the output of the query:
[ 2.294858] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input4

I loaded up the "pop-os_22.04_amd64_intel_36.iso" live ISO environment. Since Pop_OS is using X11/Gnome there is no libinput command. I ran "cat /proc/bus/input/devices" and uploaded it to pastebin.com. The Pop_OS live ISO environment is able to recognized the internal keyboard and touch pad, and it responds to touch pad gestures. The Fn key combos work properly as well. I don't know if the output in the pastebin upload will be helpful in getting your next kernel updated to fully recognize the internal keyboard and touch pad, but I'm hoping that it will. Pastebin link ==> https://pastebin.com/1NRgRNAz

I will be updating my reddit post and my notes. Let me know if there is additional info that I can provide to assist in getting your next kernel updated.

It doesn't look to be a kernel issue, i8042 is fully enabled here too, and shows no difference with a working or non-working system, so it looks to be more and Plasma issue. So far no output yet I can do anything with to try and fix, since no errors or indication what could be missing.
Regarding the Reddit post, KaOS is not suitable for a gaming system anyway, so might as well remove it from there (no lib32, no Steam for example).