Newer ASUS Motherboards To See Improved Sensor Handling With Linux 5.18

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Newer ASUS Motherboards To See Improved Sensor Handling With Linux 5.18

Following yesterday's Linux 5.17 release, HWMON subsystem maintainer Guenter Roeck was quick to send in the feature updates for the hardware monitoring subsystem for Linux 5.18...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.18-HWMON

[archola]

> This ASUS sensor driver work sadly isn't from the company itself but the open-source community

Big hardware manufacturers like ASUS need to be shamed for their lack of contribution to the Linux kernel and for building stuff like this with custom, non-standardized interfaces without documenting it properly. It is such a shame that end users of their hardware had to wait three or more years for full sensor readings of their hardware and that this work actually had to be done by the community by reverse engineering it. This is actively hurting the adoption of Linux among computer enthusiasts.

I am glad though that this is finally implemented in 5.17 and will be further refined in 5.18, and that I'm now able to read the actual full sensor data on my ROG STRIX x570-F gaming mainboard. I will probably take a look at the 5.18 pull request later and add the patches to my 5.17 builds for the next couple of weeks, now that it's been officially submitted. Thank you to the people working on it!

[Sethox]

Big hardware manufacturers like ASUS need to be shamed for their lack of contribution to the Linux kernel and for building stuff like this with custom, non-standardized interfaces without documenting it properly. It is such a shame that end users of their hardware had to wait three or more years for full sensor readings of their hardware and that this work actually had to be done by the community by reverse engineering it. This is actively hurting the adoption of Linux among computer enthusiasts.

I mean, the company chooses what to support. It would be a problem though if ASUS DMCA the reverse engineering work or put a stop to the work. But I 100% agree with the sentiment that it sucks that the company/s does not choose to support Linux users as a standard.

[billyswong]

My ASUS B450 board lost fan sensor reading after the out of mainline it87 module no longer work with later kernel versions. I wonder when or if ever information from that module will be implemented in mainline.

[bug77]

> This ASUS sensor driver work sadly isn't from the company itself but the open-source community

Big hardware manufacturers like ASUS need to be shamed for their lack of contribution to the Linux kernel and for building stuff like this with custom, non-standardized interfaces without documenting it properly. It is such a shame that end users of their hardware had to wait three or more years for full sensor readings of their hardware and that this work actually had to be done by the community by reverse engineering it. This is actively hurting the adoption of Linux among computer enthusiasts.

I am glad though that this is finally implemented in 5.17 and will be further refined in 5.18, and that I'm now able to read the actual full sensor data on my ROG STRIX x570-F gaming mainboard. I will probably take a look at the 5.18 pull request later and add the patches to my 5.17 builds for the next couple of weeks, now that it's been officially submitted. Thank you to the people working on it!

Looking at how my new Asus board used UEFI to prompt me to install a bunch of crap in Windows (I declined it at first, but it turns out you can't install drivers any other way), including about two dozens of services that run at startup (node.js included), I'm inclined to be thankful Asus doesn't bother with Linux.

[Quackdoc]

not all sensors seem to be reporting, but I think most important ones are? installed dkms, it is nice thhough since it shows chipset fan speed. (but not cpu fan speed curiously) here https://github.com/zeule/asus-ec-sensors

[reavertm]

Looking at how my new Asus board used UEFI to prompt me to install a bunch of crap in Windows (I declined it at first, but it turns out you can't install drivers any other way), including about two dozens of services that run at startup (node.js included), I'm inclined to be thankful Asus doesn't bother with Linux.

You mean that Armoury Crate stuff that can be disabled in UEFI? I think I have none of things you mentioned (I would notice nodejs) and I have one of the most gamery motherboards from them there is, ROG x570 Strix-I gaming.

[darcagn]

"The asus-ec-sensors driver is intended to ultimately replace the asus-wmi-sensors driver merged in Linux 5.17"
"For now both the ASUS EC Sensors and ASUS WMI Sensors drivers will continue to co-exist but the WMI driver is deemed deprecated."

These statements are not true. The WMI driver is not going anywhere as I understand it. A large amount of sensors aren't exposed via the EC and only via WMI. However there are a few that are exposed via EC but not WMI. The EC driver is intended to supplement, not replace, the WMI driver.

[bug77]

You mean that Armoury Crate stuff that can be disabled in UEFI? I think I have none of things you mentioned (I would notice nodejs) and I have one of the most gamery motherboards from them there is, ROG x570 Strix-I gaming.

Yup. No matter how many drivers I downloaded manually from Intel, there was always something missing. Only Arnoury Crate knew where to get everything. I disabled almost everything in the meantime, save for the driver updating stuff. I expect once installed, it will be easier to keep drivers up to date, but until I can confirm that, I'm keeping Asus' "work of art" handy.

[moriel5]

Yup. No matter how many drivers I downloaded manually from Intel, there was always something missing. Only Arnoury Crate knew where to get everything. I disabled almost everything in the meantime, save for the driver updating stuff. I expect once installed, it will be easier to keep drivers up to date, but until I can confirm that, I'm keeping Asus' "work of art" handy.

Did you try using SDIO (Snappy Driver Installer Origin)? While my Asus Z97 Pro Gamer (bought second hand off AliExpress, as I could not find it for cheaper anywhere else) may be old, I had no issue installing all of the drivers for it on Windows 10 LTSC 2019 (I need to find time to replace it with LTSC 2022) on the secondary drive (My main OS remains Linux, with Solus being my distro of choice).