Have been keeping half an eye on framework laptops as a potential next daily driver as and when I’m ready for one.
Just wondering what people’s experience of using them on linux has been, particularly nixos
I’m assuming all the drivers are in the kernel given the way the company is
Have been using a 2016 thinkpad for the past year or so and have had a decent experience with it, with the way lenovo have gone with their newer thinkpads it seems like framework is now the best for maintainability/upgradability
(not planning to upgrade in the immediate future as this machine is doing fine, but frameworks are a strong contender in my mind right now and I’m curious as to people’s experience)
I’m running Fedora on my Framework 13 - works great, no issues. I have only had it open to install the RAM so far, but it appears to be as upgradeable and repairable as advertised. Looks great, feels premium, nice and light. Not great battery life is my only complaint, but there are larger batteries available for the 13 since I bought mine.
Ooh battery upgrades are a good sign, what kinda battery life do you get now with an unupgraded one?
I’ve got a 16 without dGPU currently. Running Fedora Silverblue after a bad experience trying out NixOS. Battery life could be better but, it’s been pretty awesome and flawless so far. I’ve barely started my tinkering on it since I have a ton of other projects but, I’m really enjoying it and do recommend.
Ouch if nixos doesn’t work well that’s a deal-breaker, what were the issues and how long ago? Other people seem to have had decent experiences with it
Oh. The problem wasn’t the hardware. Don’t let my experience dissuade you, especially if you already know and like NixOS. It was the NixOS docs and my unfamiliarity with Nix/NixOS. Following the official docs gave me an install that worked perfectly but had no networking. I might give it another go once the docs are more mature but the experience and need of a DSL left a bad taste in my mouth.
I have the 16 and use NixOS. I haven’t had any issues. I’m able to use the fingerprint scanner and all of the function keys do what they’re supposed to.
If you’re not already aware, there’s a nixos-hardware repo with common settings for various devices that you can import. All of the Framework laptops have a module there. Although, if I recall correctly, everything worked fine before I pulled that into my config, so it seems like the hardware scan did a good job making everything just work.
Is the 16 the one with the GPU slot? Thinking of getting that one myself at some point possibly without the GPU to begin with to save a bit of money then upgrade if I need it
Yep, that’s the one. I can’t speak to the compatibility though because I got the one without a dedicated GPU.
I run NixOS on my Ryzen Framework 13 and it works flawlessly, including fingerprint reader. I run KDE now but I’ve also used Gnome with no issues.
I used this nixos-hardware module for some of the fancier hardware tweaks I don’t really understand: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware
How’s the fan noise? I’ve got quite accustomed to silent fans on my current laptop
if i have it on a table, it’s fine, mostly silent. if i have it on my lap blocking the vents then it can get noisier and hotter pretty fast
Ah that is irritating, I tend to have my ThinkPad on my lap every now and again and it’s usually because it’s in a public place without a desk. Would be pretty annoying for the fan to suddenly go crazy in public
it isn’t so loud that other people would notice, i don’t think - and usually just a bit of readjustment of my position is enough to unblock the vents
don’t let me dissuade you from buying the best laptop i’ve owned!
Hm, I think I need to try and track down someone local who’s got one and see for myself to be honest, I would guess places like pc world won’t have tester models
You probably have enough responses by now, but I have a 12th gen intel 13 running Bluefin, previously PopOS. I love it and haven’t had any problems with it. I once had to reset the main board by disconnection the batteries (both main and RTC) and it was a super simple process following their guide. The fan does get loud but I’ve only encountered that when I’m on Foundry or if I try to play a more modern game, but it doesn’t bother me.
What’s foundry?
Also, so using the thing normally the fans don’t spin up a lot? How about if doing a build or something else that uses 100% CPU?
It’s a program for running/playing ttrpgs (think d&d remotely). And I don’t think they’ve ever spun up without me trying to do something graphically intensive. But I also doing do builds so our cases might not overlap much.
If it doesn’t spin up at max CPU usage then builds won’t be a problem. I suppose ai might make it spin up but I’m not exactly doing that stuff every day anyway
Sleep kind of sucks on the original 11th gen hardware. They pushed out a bios update that broke S3 sleep, so now all you’ve got is the s2idle version, which the kernel is only OK at. Your laptop bag might heat up. S3 breaking isn’t really their fault, Intel deprecated it. Still annoying though. I’ve heard the Chromebook version and other newer gens have better sleep support.
Other than that, it’s great. NixOS runs just fine, even the fingerprint reader works, which has been rare for Linux
Do you know how to make the fingerprint reader work on my newly purchased Carbon X1 Gen 6 with Ubuntu on it? I’ve gone to great lengths to make it work but still haven’t found a solution
I can live with that, my thinkpad won’t sleep properly at the moment anyway (I’ve taken to just running systemctl hibernate before closing the lid, I should probably set that to the default behaviour instead of suspend at some point)
you should enable
suspend-then-hibernateinstead. laptop suspends normally and if not woken in, say, an hour, the RTC hibernates it to disk.Doesn’t work, I’ve already spent ages trying to get this to work properly and have basically just given up at this point.
I don’t mind waiting for it to recover from hibernation, I only hibernate it once or twice a day anyway
not to trample on your experiences, but you can make it work. it’s true it’s super cumbersome and involved though.
I’ve had/got it working on a T420s, T480s, T14, MBPr 2012, on debian, fedora, and arch. it helps if it’s not your primary/only workstation so you can tweak it without pressure. keep at it, it’s worth it, I can’t imagine using my laptops any other way.
maybe do I write-up one of these days.
I’m not doubting it’s possible but with the combination of my hardware and the fact I’m on nixos it proved to be too much trial and error, too many options to try and too much time to iterate as I needed to reboot every time it didn’t work
Is that the case for the AMD boards as well?
Couldn’t tell you unfortunately. It looks like AMD is also on board with deprecating S3 sleep, so I would guess that it’s not significantly better. The kernel controls the newer standby modes, so it’s really going to depend on how well it’s supported there.
Pretty much all my sleep/suspend issues with Linux went away when I switched to Manjaro from Fedora on my 11th gen Framework 13. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but the majority of the time I can open my laptop after a couple days and still have most of my battery.
What kernel are you running? From what I understand, that should be the major differentiator if you’re not using S3.
I’ve had a 13in for like 2 years now? Running Fedora KDE.
Software-wise, it is nearly flawless. Linux always has some gimmicks but the Framework experience has been on par with a Dell XPS 13 that I have also run Fedora on in the past.
Hardware-wise, also been pretty nice. Battery life is ok, not amazing. I broke the screen on a trip one time - I bought a replacement from the website and did the maintenance myself to put the new one in. Not going to lie, that felt pretty awesome (and I’ve built many high complexity desktops in the past). Fixing your own laptop isn’t something you can usually do.
The touch pad is currently haven’t some issues, so I’ll replace that too eventually.
Quirks: Touch pad responsiveness was never excellent but certainly serviceable. The 4:3 screen ratio is odd to some people, though I personally really enjoy it.
At this point I can’t picture myself going back to laptops I can’t repair myself. It has been a breath of fresh air. If you care less about that and want just the best Linux experience on a high end machine, Dell XPS might still be the one, but Framework comes very close in my opinion.
I’m a big fan of being able to fix stuff myself, XPSes I’ve heard are very good but I also like the idea of being able to just upgrade the CPU GPU and memory later on when it starts to slow down and not have to buy a whole new laptop
Honestly? Not that good. My favorite computer hardware I’ve used period, no competition. I like the design, the keyboard is fantastic, and the build is very high quality. Seeing it online doesn’t do it justice. That aside, the Linux experience? It’s been straight up bad. I bought this computer for school. it ended up being around $1300.00 which is absolutely not cheap by anyone’s standards (easily 3x as expensive as any laptop I’ve ever bought) but then again this is the first current gen computer I’ve bought as well. The first week using it was pretty good, actually. I’ve been using Ubuntu which is officially supported for this framework by the Ubuntu devs. Fast forward to week 2, the wifi stops working. Mind you, I’m using this FOR SCHOOL. The computer will connect to wifi no problem for the first few (literally maybe 3) minutes but after this the wifi will disconnect and will straight up refuse to work unless I restart the entire computer, and even after I do the problem will occur again in under 4 minutes. Doesn’t matter if I turn wifi off and back on in the quick settings or restart the wifi services in the terminal, no dice. I tried updating the kernel, etc etc etc. in order to get any of my school done I did literally have to restart my entire computer 3-5 times for every single class or for any time I wanted to use the computer. Again. $1300 computer I bought SPECIFICALLY FOR SCHOOL. The insanity of having to drive to my school and use their computer lab and work around the hours that the computer lab is open after spending that much on something is infuriating to me. I asked on Reddit, the best advice they could give me was replace the wifi card (Framework AMD) as ‘mediatek is crap’ which I thought should not be necessary. So I ate $20 after just spending $1.3k and bought one of the compatible intel wifi cards and for a few days, I though the issue was solved. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I still have to restart the computer 2-4 times per day. I’m just so sick of troubleshooting something every single day, and more than that I legitimately don’t have the time anymore even if I did have the energy. I believe in the concept and see the vision but I don’t have the time in my life to spend 2+ hours tinkering and troubleshooting and fixing something every day, (especially on an OS that is officially supported by the manufacturer and OS maintainers, mind you). I plan on wiping the computer and installing a different officially supported OS and if this does not fix the issue, I will be getting in touch with framework to ask for a refund.
P. S. - I’m sure this might be a duh thing when it comes to Linux on laptops but the battery life is not that good. It hasn’t been absolutely horrible, but I also haven’t been measuring it outside of “will this get me through the day” nor have I been doing much heavy work on it beyond the regular. I have not found the battery drainage issue to be a problem for me personally , although I have noticed it drain some especially after a couple of days. But if you leave it alone for a few days with a decent amount of charge it’s not going to be dead when you go to use it.
Edit: I also cannot for the life of me get my drawing tablet to work with it even though I have the drivers installed, but this could be a Linux issue.
I think you should try a full reinstall it sounds like something’s just borked in the install, otherwise get in contact with them and get a refund/send it in for them to look at it that’s what supported means
Also Ubuntu is kinda overrated nowadays anyway, you should absolutely try something else before giving up on it.
Gonna get hate for saying this but if you don’t want to tinker and you just want a working machine you should probably just put windows on it, at the very least if it still doesn’t work then you know it’s 100% a hardware issue and can get in contact with framework
Self managed Linux is not a good plan for people who have zero interest in having to fix anything themselves
I tried using windows one afternoon and almost shot myself.
It’s obviously subjective but it is not for me. If anything I’ll go back to macos if it doesn’t work out. It’s not that I “have zero interest in fixing anything myself” I just can’t spend 8+ hours a week troubleshooting things that should work out of the box on a $1300 computer. On top of school full time and my job. Hopefully I’ll get the time to do a reinstall this week. Being able to browse the web seems like the bare minimum.I read the last part of your comment in a nerd voice.
Entirely fair I am a nerd
My experience of Linux has been that it needs a certain amount of tinkering to function properly and my experience of people who make statements about supported configurations is that they are not willing to put up with that
Agree with that windows is a horrible user experience by comparison but it’s the most likely to just work and be supportable
I am an obsessive thinkerer. For me thinkering means tewaking you installation, get plugins, run weird scripts to do weird stuff. Wasting time kf real work to fix your wifi is not thinkering, it’s just frustrating
Yeah to be fair I agree, I’ve been having an issue with suspend on my current laptop which I decided to just ignore in the end cause it was frustrating me so much
Though installing other people’s random scripts and plugins is a good way to get an unstable broken system
Nixos is great to still be able to fiddle while staying stable given you can just boot an earlier install if you fuck up, also throwaway dev shells with temporary installed packages. Might be worth giving it a go
11th gen Intel Framework 13 and using Pop_OS. I have many USB related annoyances. For example, when I’m using their USB-A expansion cards that they state support USB 3.2 Gen 2 I am unable to get more than 30MB/s. If I use the same device but through a USB-A to USB-C adapter and a USB-C expansion card I see 500-800MB/s.
I also have some weird issue where USB devices sometimes just don’t show up when plugged in, or if I boot with them plugged in. Re-inserting the device usually fixes it. I was assuming it might have been a hardware problem at first, but it happens on every port regardless of what device it is regardless of if it’s through a USB-A or USB-C card. Not sure what’s going on or how to really go about debugging issues like this.
Sounds like some kind of hardware fault, have you got in touch with them about it?
I don’t really care about usb transfer speeds, that random disconnecting sounds like an issue though.
To clarify it doesn’t get disconnected. It just periodically doesn’t recognize that a storage device got plugged in or, alternatively, that there was one plugged in at the time that the laptop was powered on.
But no, I haven’t contacted them about it yet. I need to first check if there’s any dmesg/journalctl events happening that might be worth following up on before contacting support. Primarily because I don’t recall having any issues like that when I had Windows installed so I’m not convinced yet that it is a hardware fault.
Kubuntu on Framework 16 AMD 7000 series here. Sleep is horrible - definitely drains your battery. Bag heats up, and I estimate maybe a 1% drain per hour. I’ve enabled hibernate though I rarely use it.
Battery is alright but not great. I get maybe 2-3 hours of active, light use from full battery.
No compatibility issues that I’ve noticed, though, of course, Linux has its fair share of minor non-hardware-related bugs.
Camera is serviceable but not amazing. Not sure about microphone but I assume the same thing. Speakers are somewhat odd in that the speakers are pointed to the side rather than toward the front, but again - serviceable.
Have you tried it much without the GPU? I imagine that would cut down battery usage by a lot right?
Camera mic and speakers are not a deal-breaker especially as they’re upgradable from what I understand
Yes, I don’t use the external GPU. I just use the AMD APU. Also I realized that AMD 7000 could refer to both the cpu and the GPU. Ah, AMD and their marketing
Hmmm 3 hours battery is definitely a major downside, given it charges off usb c less of an issue but still
Was actually considering getting one of those copilot pcs once the Linux support catches up, supposedly people are charging those things once a week or so
My understanding is that Arm chips don’t have any fundamental advantage over x86 chips. They’re more efficient simply because they’ve been optimized to be more efficient for so long. I’ve heard that upcoming Intel and AMD chips could be able to compete with the new Arm cpu’s, so if you’re not going to get a new laptop soon, it seems worthwhile to just wait and see
I have a 12th gen Intel Framework running Arch. I love it, although as others have pointed out the battery life could be better. Early kernels shortly after release had some incompatibility issues that required specific kernel arguments to fix. Also I had to blacklist the light sensor as it conflicted with the brightness function keys.
The Arch wiki has a page with details on Framework laptops you may appreciate looking at.
How long would you say a charge normally lasts, apologies for the profiling but I’m assuming you tend to work at a terminal more if on arch rather than loads of heavy electron apps?
That’s hard for me to answer because I’m usually at home plugged in, and I set the max charge in the bios to only 65% so the battery will physically degrade slower (I don’t need the charge). A few hours is really all I can say with any accuracy. Worth noting a few things -
- Since I bought my laptop they came out with an improved battery I could upgrade to, so you’d get a better experience.
- I believe(?) battery life is improved a fair bit at least with the AMD ones; less sure on the newer Intel ones.
I will say that if long battery life is your #1 concern this may not be the laptop for you.
Not number one concern but I need it to survive long enough that I’m not just permanently plugging in everywhere I go
Not as bad if it’s usb c charge I’ll have to check that
I’ve been running KDE-debian for 1.5 years on my amd framework with no issues (fingerprint sensor worked after installing some software). Can’t say anything for nixos though.
Fantastic, no issues with sleep or anything? Everyone else seems to say the sleep mode battery drain is huge
(planning to do sleep then hibernate anyway, or maybe just hibernate and not even bother with sleep)
My Framework 13 AMD works great on Zorin, as well as most distros I’ve played around with. Can’t say anything for NixOS though. There is a script they have you run to install/auto update the OEM kernel. I have also noticed battery drain in sleep though.
Seems to be a pretty common complaint, you’d hope they would’ve fixed that given how many people seem to be having that issue
Have 16, FedoraKDE not nixOS though, no problems to report in my sector.
No issues with battery life or fan noise? That’s what I’m hearing from others
No fan noise, battery could be better but could be worse, but no external GPU which probably exacerbates both.
I’m not planning on getting the GPU anyway, most of my work is done from a terminal and a browser in a lightweight window manager, as long as the integrated graphics can handle that it’ll be fine
Oh for sure, it can handle 2160p video on the integrated, and a terminal and browser (with 16gb ram anyway), no problem. It’ll stutter a bit if I am file transferring with all that though.
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