Zorin OS 17 on Asus N752VX: Kernel Compatibility Issues and Workaround

[Tokashi]

Hi everyone. I wanted to share the challenges I faced while installing Zorin OS Core 17 on an Asus N752VX laptop from 2016.

The PC has a 1TB NVMe SSD, 16GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor.

The main issue was with the kernels newer than 6.2 (specifically kernels 6.5 and 6.8) that Zorin 17 currently uses. The live USB wouldn’t boot—just a black screen after selecting the boot option. I managed to start the live USB by using the maxcpus=1 parameter, but that wasn’t a practical long-term solution.

I tested all the Zorin 17 ISOs, and the only one that booted properly was the very first 2023 release with kernel 6.2.

After installation, I didn’t want to leave such an old kernel, so I manually installed kernel 6.12 LTS using Mainline, and it works well. The problem now is that the kernel won’t update automatically, which is a concern since this PC is for elderly users who are transitioning to Linux.

This situation is a bit frustrating.

[Ponce-De-Leon]

@Tokashi

so I manually installed kernel 6.12 LTS using Mainline, and it works well. The problem now is that the kernel won’t update automatically

Shouldn't there be in Mainline a Settings for updating the Kernel - or at least an Update Note?

[Tokashi]

There is a notification system, but I don’t think I’ll keep Mainline installed on the PC otherwise, they might make bad changes and break everything.

[Ponce-De-Leon]

Okay, well ... when You need the 6.12 LTS Kernel, You could try it with Debian Gnome. This comes with the 6.12 LTS Kernel by default. But You would have to set up Debian with Extensions so that it will run similar like Zorin. To make that, could be a bit annoying.

[littlekun]

How about getting the 6.12 kernel from the tuxinvader repository. Although I am not sure whether they receive updates automatically or not.

[Tokashi]

Thank you for your suggestions. For now, I’ve looked into it further by installing kernel 6.8.0 using Mainline, and everything is working fine. It seems that the Ubuntu kernels have an ingredient that’s causing the issue.