Asus laptops. Privacy?

Questions
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What do you think about Asus laptops?

I am not talking about compatibility or something. Especially general privacy. Like backdoor in UEFI etc…

I am considering AMD fully one so there shouldn’t be issues with setting up Linux.

No I don’t use Microsoft (and never will do so!)

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Welcome to the community!

I think Asus is a pretty good choice since it’s a premium brand. You want to be steer clear of the lower end devices that are packed with bloatwear to keep the price as low as possible. It’s insane how much bloatwear comes with low end laptops

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Asus is one of the wonderful companies that uses a stupid feature of UEFI that lets them embed an installer for their bloatware in the firmware and auto-install it on Windows[1], which wouldn’t affect a Linux user but is scummy nonetheless.

The other issue is their use of terrible wireless adapters[2] that may support linux but come with a litany of issues and may cause intermittent WiFi connection issues

And that’s if you get a laptop that is fully supported under Linux, their laptops are not all rosy when it comes to Linux support[3]

So ultimately, probably give Asus a pass if you want to run Linux and care about privacy.

  1. Zombie Crapware: How the Windows Platform Binary Table Works ↩︎

  2. use your favourite search engine to look up the MT7925 wireless card used in “high end” laptops like the ROG Zephyrus G14 ↩︎

  3. pick a random recent asus ROG laptop and see what’s broken under Linux; latest device I’ve looked into was the ROG Ally and that has some random small bugs under Linux like uhh getting locked in a particular TDP mode sometimes, not having a functional fingerprint reader, weird brightness issues &c &c ↩︎

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If I am not mistaken ASUS has the ProArt series that has a linux version and uses Ubuntu stock. One would assume ASUS being who they are, swapping to a different distro may cause issues if there were a hardware failure.

I personally have used the Dell XPS series with linux and been quite happy (Ubuntu) and they offered solid support.

The Lenovo (IBM?) Thinkpad has been my favorite laptop which comes in a Fedora variant which a huge bonus for me. But has Ubuntu as a choice as well if this is your preference.