I have an Asus Vivobook S14 M5406WA with a Ryzen 9 365 and I really like its unusual touchpad gestures, especially swiping along the left edge to control volume and the right edge to adjust brightness. I'm considering installing Linux, possibly CachyOS, but I want to know whether these gestures can work there or be recreated with some configuration. I'm comfortable spending time setting things up, and I'd consider another distribution if it makes hardware support easier. I'm also concerned about HDR and color accuracy: Windows sometimes changes the display colors badly when HDR is disabled, so I'd like to know whether Linux handles switching between HDR and SDR more reliably on this kind of laptop.
3 Answers
A practical approach is to create a bootable USB with Ventoy and test several distributions in live mode. Check whether the touchpad is detected correctly, whether gestures can be configured, and how HDR and color profiles behave before committing to an installation.
CachyOS can be made to work, but it may not be the easiest starting point if you run into hardware-specific issues. Trying a few beginner-friendly distributions from a USB drive first could help you compare touchpad, display, and power-management support before installing anything.
Take a look at Touchegg, along with other Linux gesture tools. They can map custom multi-touch or edge gestures to actions such as changing volume or brightness, although the exact edge-swipe behavior may require some experimentation and may not be identical to Asus’s Windows utility.
That sounds promising. I was wondering whether these gestures come from hardware drivers or from an Asus-only Windows application, so I’ll investigate how much can be recreated through gesture software.
I don’t mind a learning curve, and having a friend who already uses CachyOS would make troubleshooting easier. I’ll still compare it with options like Pop!_OS.