Arch linux on msi

Arch Linux

I had to jump through some hoops to get Arch Linux installed on the MSI GT72 6QE Dominator Pro G and wanted to share my experience to help anyone else that has a similar gaming notebook.

Please ensure that you have the latest bios and EC firmware from MSI’s website here: https://www.msi.com/product/notebook/su … e=download

The latest bios will expose some new switches in the bios. Disable the switch labelled C-States. (Also disable secureboot while you are in the BIOS) Once you’ve disabled the C-States you will be able to boot normally.

This notebook has a physical hardware button to switch between the Intel and discrete (Nvidia 980m) GPU. While in windows, press this button to switch it from the default Nvidia to the Intel display adaptor. Now you will be able to boot from the Arch USB media. While the open source nouveau may be able to handle the 980m in the future, at this time you will need to use the proprietary nvidia drivers. Follow the absolute beginner’s guide wiki to finish the base arch install and remember to install the nvidia package as well. Now you will need to boot back into windows and use the button to switch the display adapter in use back to the nvidia gpu. (Please let me know if there is a way to accomplish this from the terminal). Once you’ve rebooted again into Linux you can complete your install.

This notebook also comes with «Killer» Ethernet and Wireless PCI adapters. Neither are working out of the box with Linux at this time. I had to use a usb wifi dongle to get up and running and then got the internal wifi working afterwards.
The wireless NIC in my notebook is the Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32) Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Device 1535. It uses the Ath10k driver library which is included in linux-firmware. For some reason, the drivers in linux-firmware at the time of this writing did not work. As a work around I had to install two files into /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/ from FireWalkerX’s github page here

sudo wget https://github.com/FireWalkerX/ath10k-firmware/blob/7e56cbb94182a2fdab110cf5bfeded8fd1d44d30/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin?raw=true /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board.bin sudo wget https://github.com/FireWalkerX/ath10k-firmware/blob/7e56cbb94182a2fdab110cf5bfeded8fd1d44d30/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin_WLAN.RM.2.0-00180-QCARMSWPZ-1?raw=true /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin

The files you need to overwrite are /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board.bin and /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin
Don’t forget to make these files executable with sudo chmod +x /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/*

After you reboot then the wireless NIC will be working and you will be on your way to enjoying Arch Linux with your MSI GT72 6QE

Last edited by nhasian (2016-02-01 22:04:30)

MSI MEG Z390 ACE Motherboard, Intel Core i7-9700K, MSI GeForce RTX 2080

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MSI GS66 11UX

MSI has released refreshed GS66 laptops with 11th Intel processors and NVIDIA Ampere graphics. Exact models are 11UH, 11UG and 11UE. Note that these models should not be confused with 10UX models as they are reported to work out of the box with Linux.

For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see Laptop.

Preparation

• Pressing INSERT during startup will open BIOS.
• Pressing F11 during startup will open boot menu.
• Pressing LEFT ALT + RIGHT CTRL + RIGHT SHIFT + F2 while in BIOS will show advanced settings.

Warning: It is possible to completely break the laptop if you do not know what you are doing with BIOS advanced settings. For example, you would not be able to use any screen (integrated or HDMI) if you disable internal graphics, including the BIOS screen. In such case, one might attempt to reset BIOS settings by powering off the laptop, then holding power button for ~30 seconds (laptop will turn on, then turn off, then power button starts blinking and then stops blinking).

Installation

BIOS configuration

Before installing Arch Linux, several steps need to be done in BIOS:

• Secure Boot must be disabled in BIOS > Security > Secure Boot.
• VMD controller must be enabled in BIOS > Advanced > VMD controller.

Install audio firmware

Arch Linux will not detect audio hardware unless you install ALSA firmware.

Tips and tricks

Keyboard RGB control

Install msi-perkeyrgb AUR and see the project’s README#usage. Using the —model gs65 argument works fine with GS66 11UX models that have an US keyboard. This has not been tested with all other keyboards, but it does not work with Spanish keyboards.

Disable fan when idle

Laptop fan never powers off, even when system is completely idle. This can be fixed by installing isw AUR package, configuring EC register to be available with write support and issuing this command on boot:

Mux switch

By default, this device operates in Hybrid graphics which works completely fine, but one of the key features of this device is mux switch. In short, it allows physically wiring NVIDIA GPU to the display, which eliminates the need for the integrated graphics processor and resulting in improved performance.

MSI only provides Windows application (UWP or ZIP) to switch between Hybrid graphics (Intel + NVIDIA) and discrete graphics (NVIDIA) mode. Basically it sets some sort of a flag (presumably in EC register) and reboots. During the reboot, it seem to temporarily boot into BIOS, change the graphics mode and reboot back to Windows. Some reverse engineering to achieve the same functionality has been done on a similar model (see the GitHub issue and the GitHub project), but there was no success for this specific model.

While there is an option in BIOS to change such graphics, it is greyed out. Fortunately, BIOS version E16V4IMS.107 (mirror) is the most up-to-date version that does not have such option greyed out and allows to change graphics. Note that you will need to activate advanced options, allow BIOS downgrading and flash this BIOS file as a regular BIOS update.

Known issues

Audio clipping

The audio device exhibits issues under Linux, whereby audio may be lost at the start or end of playback. During continuous playback, the device behaves as expected.

This occurs using ALSA directly, meaning it is independent of software mixers like Pulseaudio or Pipewire, and also occurs in legacy mode, using driver options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1 , and with power management disabled. It is unknown what is required to make the device operate optimally under Linux.

See also

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Arch Linux

I toyed with the idea to put a linux on my netbook, but I couldn’t really decide which one to use. A friend of mine told me to use Arch Linux when I mentioned gentoo. He has been using Arch for a while and totally talked me into it. The reason for my post is to see if I can find anyone else out there that has tried/done such an installation: Arch Linux on an MSI Wind U100. I used to play around with Linux a long time ago, but forgot most of details.

My goal is to optimize my system to the fullest. and I mean fullest. I don’t want anything on my system I’m not going to use. For example, if you do a basic Ubuntu install, you get all a lot of crap. I had Windows 7 on it for about a year now, and I couldn’t take how slow it ran (on my netbook). Anyways..

So, my questions: What are the sort of packages I need to get for an absolute barebones system? Like, which window manager or desktop environment could I use that will be good-looking but also fast and efficient? I’ve read some good things about Openbox and Xfce4? Which applications exists that will help my system run better?

#2 2010-04-29 07:15:56

Re: Arch Linux on my MSI Wind U100

It does sound like Arch Linux is what you want to run. I suggest you search both the wiki and forum for «Wind U100» as there is quite a lot of information already available, including a dedicated wiki page and lots of forum threads about specific problems.

I would suggest that you follow the «Beginner’s Guide» for your installation, installing Openbox as your windowing environment, and then searching the wiki for specific packages as you need them. There is plenty of information on the wiki, so I am sure that you will be able to find the answers you are looking for there.

«Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.» — Alan J. Perlis

#3 2010-04-29 07:42:35

Re: Arch Linux on my MSI Wind U100

Arch is fast out-of-the-box. Especially the kernel config is great. I mean, you can save a bit of space and lots of compiling time if you strip the kernel down but you can’t noticibly influence system speed/boot speed/power consumption.

You should consider using a tiling window manager. You can’t use the screen more efficiently than with a tiling window manager, especially if the screen is rather small and you need every bit of space. I’d recommend Awesome, it looks really good oob, has cool features and takes little space.
Then pick your apps from this wiki page.
Things you could do after that are optimization of boot speed (check the wiki) and optionally get zsh instead of bash.

Just to give you an idea: For a rather small installation with Openbox (~1.4 GB) I’m using the following packages.

BASE: alsa-utils acpid pm-utils cpufrequtils nfs-utils rpcbind rsync tree calc bc dosfstools ntfsprogs abs cups pmount samba openssh ntfs-3g ethtool lm_sensors stress reflector lzop unzip rar p7zip unrar zip xz-utils unace zsh grc cowsay fortune-mod vim htop screen irssi wgetpaste scrot curl clamav powertop laptop-mode-tools slock mpc moc imagemagick yaourt GUI: xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-video-intel openbox openbox-themes obconf obmenu gamin transset-df gxmessage xdg-user-dirs xcompmgr ttf-dejavu ttf-ms-fonts ttf-bitstream-vera terminal galculator gvim feh pcmanfm gmrun medit xarchiver epdfview mirage conky sonata gmpc firefox thunderbird flashplugin vlc

I suggest you try both Openbox and Awesome (as well as any other DE/WM you’d like to try of course).

Last edited by demian (2010-04-29 07:50:54)

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