ASUS N551JM

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Hardware	PCI/USB ID	Working?
GPU (Intel)		Yes
GPU (Nvidia)		Yes
Ethernet		Yes
Wireless		Yes
Audio		Yes
Touchpad		Yes
Camera		Yes
Card Reader		Yes
Bluetooth		Yes

ASUS N551JM - this article covers hardware specific configuration. All topics covered can be performed after an installation of Arch Linux has been finished and the machine rebooted into it. Also this article could be applicable for the ASUS N551JK model.

For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see Laptop, for a predecessor with a similar configuration, see ASUS N550JV.

Graphics

For the hybrid graphics configuration, see Bumblebee.

Display brightness

FN+F5 and FN+F6 will not produce any output (will not work) until you use the kernel parameter acpi_osi= to your bootloader (the blank space is needed).

Although for the Asus N751JK the kernel parameter acpi_osi= works for the brightness controls, it also brings some ACPI errors in the kernel log. Using the following kernel parameters prevents these errors, while the brightness controls still work: acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2006\" acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2009\" acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2012\" acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2013\". The backslashes are needed for grub to escape the double quotes.

It might happen that display brightness adjustment will not work even when the kernel parameter is used. In this case, make sure you are still using kernel parameter acpi_osi= and load the asus_nb_wmi module with the following command:

# modprobe asus_nb_wmi

Audio

To enable the internal microphone and the external subwoofer support, install asus-n551-hda-fix^AUR. This package installs the pincfg patch, and also enables the internal microphone by adding the asus-mode8 to the HDA driver options.

After installation, reboot the laptop to ensure all modules are loaded. Check if the fallback device is correctly set to Build-in Audio Analog Stereo with pavucontrol. See PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Fallback device is not respected for more information. Also check for muted devices:

$ alsamixer -c PCH

Note: alsa-utils provides alsamixer and amixer shell programs.

Keyboard brightness

In some cases, FN+F3 and FN+F4 might not work out of the box with some desktop environments, so install asus-kbd-backlight^AUR. Load the module to control hotkeys:

# modprobe asus-nb-wmi

and Enable/start the asus-kbd-backlight.service.

Now you can take control over the keyboard backlight:

$ asus-kbd-backlight up
$ asus-kbd-backlight down
$ asus-kbd-backlight max
$ asus-kbd-backlight off
$ asus-kbd-backlight night
$ asus-kbd-backlight 2
$ asus-kbd-backlight show

Touchpad

Touchpad works out of the box with the default synaptics drivers. You can tweak its options using the default Xorg configuration files. For example:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
	Option "MinSpeed" "1"
	Option "MaxSpeed" "2.5"

	Option "TapButton2" "2"
	Option "TapButton3" "0"

	Option "ClickFinger2" "2"
	Option "ClickFinger3" "0"

	Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
	Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
	
	Option "VertScrollDelta" "60"
	Option "HorizScrollDelta" "60"

	Option "LockedDrags" "on"
	Option "LockedDragTimeout" "400"

	Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
	Option "CircScrollTrigger" "8"
EndSection

Rich multitouch gestures can be configured with Touchegg. To use two-finger or three-finger gestures, you should disable the corresponding features in the Xorg config:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"

        # ...

        # Two-finger gestures
	Option "TapButton2" "0"
	Option "ClickFinger2" "0"

        # Three-finger gestures
	Option "TapButton3" "0"
	Option "ClickFinger3" "0"

        # ...
EndSection

Troubleshooting

nouveau problems

Sometimes nouveau driver produces a lot of garbage log lines during boot and even causes a kernel panic. This is a bug in the driver. You can workaround this by disabling nouveau:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

blacklist nouveau

At the same time, you can install a proprietary nvidia dirver.

Tips and tricks

bbswitch

If you are using Bumblebee, you can install bbswitch package to manipulate the dedicated graphics card state. You can also change the default state of the dedicated graphics card.

Touchpad switch

The touchpad can be toggled using a xinput script.

Function keys

You can see the list of the function keys here: ASUS N550JV#Special keys for window managers.