HarlemSquirrel wrote:
I would like to have some control over the Aura RGB lights through Linux. I would be willing to contribute time/code but I need a place to start.

I feel you. I would also like to contribute in this scenario but seems the only solution is to reverse engineer the stuff and redo and open source progeam yourself taking the precaution to take clean-room engineering approach... Too much hassle really. Just set the rgb on windows and reboot on linux?

I argue +1 on an open (or at least semi-open) SDK for Aura control.

Let's face truth here:
The competitors have already come up with their own RGB LED implementations because LEDs can be plugged into power anywhere on board and RGBs can be plugged into firmware/software control code anywhere there's a couple of spare signal pins, and they're a rather low (probably very last) priority on the PCB trace paths. I've never analyzed the RGBness of competing RGB-capable motherboards, but I feel fairly confident that each manufacturer has engineered a different proprietary approach towards the same common objective.

A ROG Aura SDK (or API or BIN or whatever) is basically useless for anything and anybody who doesn't happen to have a ROG Aura platform to run it on. It's hardware-centric for a very specific (proprietary) motherboard design paradigm, it can't be "pirated" or "stolen" or "exploited" on any (non-ROG) platform which wires up a bunch of RGB LEDs in any kind of different fashion.

I've always disdained proprietary lockouts on software which is utterly useless without owning (buying!) the proprietary hardware it's specifically designed to operate. Let the people have full control over their pretty lights - it can only encourage more people to develop more creative new uses for this (otherwise largely useless) hardware feature, it'll certainly not negatively impact sales of ROG Aura products or give competing motherboard engineers some sort of secret insight into amazing new ways of wiring up LEDs, lol. I don't see NVIDIA forcing people to prove they own NVIDIA GPUs before downloading their driver packages - what would be the point? - would AMD or Intel realistically gain any kind of edge by looking at NVIDIA's code?

Windows and Windows gaming will not go extinct for a long, long time. But linux and linux gaming has always been slowly (glacially) gaining traction (in a hugely uphill battle). Imagine how much farther and faster linux gaming would go with a bunch of decent Vulkan games providing the impetus. A free, powerful, configurable, awesome OS vs a costly, bloated, "automated", problematic OS ... the choice becomes quite simple the first (or third or tenth) time you have to pay (again) for a WinOS and Microsoft Product Keys that got screwed up after swapping drives or other hardware. I foresee a day when gamers deliberately weigh the merits of both mainstream (game) operating systems, and I think that day will come not too long after a 2nd- or 3rd-gen Vulkan descendant can demonstrably hold its own vs Microsoft's DirectX. (I only wonder if Microsoft will one day "magnanimously" sacrifice DX to the freeware wolves to save what they can of their Windows market monopoly, but that's speculation for another thread.)

I can promise that if/once linux can run cool user-controllable Aura effects - be they from Asus or from selflessly evil codehackers - Windows will suddenly gain comparable capabilities in a remarkably short timeframe.