I am absolutely flummoxed by this review. Mine is configured with nearly identical specs (except that I have 64GB RAM) and is one of the worst purchases I've ever made.
Enabling deep sleep works fine; waking from it is impossible. WiFi stops working. The touch pad becomes hypersensitive. I've resorted to turning the whole thing completely off after every use. But the battery still loses power even when the machine is completely powered down.
The machine also freezes if I try to open a jpg or a PDF from the file explorer. Just completely freezes. Fan spins up like crazy, but as I mentioned, I have 64GB of RAM in this thing. It should be able to open a single one-page scanned document from my own scanner. If there's anything wrong with the file, this is the computer that's making the file poorly.
The internet connection also just turns off after about half an hour of use. I have a Belkin dock with Ethernet plugged into it, which is then plugged into my Framework's USB-C port. This dock supports my work Mac all work day every day with no issues at all, so it's not the dock's problem. But the Framework? Internet just stops working after half an hour. And it manages to kill both wired and WiFi when it dies. I can turn them back on, but this is a ridiculous problem to have.
This last point is pretty minor, but the hinges are floppy. The whole screen shakes around when I type on it.
I have no idea how this author's experience is so much better than mine unless they just haven't used it much yet, but I regret absolutely everything about the purchase of this machine and feel like I was sold a bill of goods by all the glowing positive reviews all over the internet.
We definitely want to help you resolve these issues. Most of them sound like specific compatibility challenges on Ubuntu 21.10. To be clear, I agree that we need to get better with new Ubuntu releases. We've been providing hardware to the team at Fedora and have full support out of the box with Fedora 35, but don't have a setup like that with Ubuntu yet.
I'm with you. My configuration is more-or-less maxed out and at over $2500 it's one of the more regretful large purchases I've ever made. Current issues:
- As has been noted time and time again, battery life is atrocious. As in unusable for even the travel time required for a three hour flight: factoring in the poor sleep, an hour at the airport, and time on the aircraft the battery is dead. Crazy for 2021/2022 - my eight year old Macbook does better.
- Wifi. The Intel Wifi modules provided with the Framework are very poorly supported in Linux. I spent six hours the other night running additional ethernet drops because I just couldn't stand my workday routinely being interrupted by repeatedly disassociating from my AP (fixed with reboot). Even unloading and reloading the associated kernel modules wouldn't bring it back.
- USB-C acts... Strange. I have two 4K displays using Displayport over USB-C and the Framework repeatedly fails to initialize them from boot. I have to do a strange dance (the steps of which I'm still figuring out) involving powering off the Framework, unplugging/re-plugging everything, and then rebooting until it magically works again.
- Fan. The fan is crazy. I've settled on disabling turbo mode in Linux.
- Build quality. I'm convinced if I drop this thing it's all over.
All in all I'm mad at myself for spending over $3k on a productivity configuration centered around what is pretty much beta hardware. I should have known better.
Anyway, there's hope for some of these issues as they seem to be releasing BIOS updates pretty regularly (currently running 3.07) but even then I need to USB boot to use their EFI update tool. Intel wifi should get better over time and worst case I can swap it out for Atheros or something. That said I think the battery, build, and fan issues are fundamental hardware design choices.
> The machine also freezes if I try to open a jpg or a PDF from the file explorer. Just completely freezes. Fan spins up like crazy, but as I mentioned, I have 64GB of RAM in this thing. It should be able to open a single one-page scanned document from my own scanner. If there's anything wrong with the file, this is the computer that's making the file poorly.
This almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the framework itself. That sounds like a software bug all day long. Something about your OS install is broken or similar.
The only other possibility seems like it'd be if the storage drive is broken. Which could then possibly be why you're experiencing so many other issues, if things like code pages are just failing to load or getting corrupted in the same way your JPG isn't able to load.
But it seems like starting with a fsck or even a re-install seems like a good idea.
You have to go to bios and disable secure boot, then the battery doesn’t get drained anymore when the lid is closed. You also have to disable ps2 mouse emulation in bios, the mouse hypersensitivity goes away after that. I also enabled large text in accessibility so the text size is perfect and super high res with the 3:2 aspect screen, it’s fantastic.
I just bought the framework and running ubuntu 21.10. I had some of the problems you mentioned but the forum has solutions to many. It’s a new product, and specially with Linux, I knew there would be some problems. You have to be willing to solve these problems o/w you should stay away from buying new hardware from a startup.
They work fine under Windows. Ergo the problem isn't the laptop, its the driver support under Linux.
In my experience current gen laptops except for certain ThinkPads and Clevos will have support issues in Linux. You get a much better experience using a model a year or two old because the community has had time to address any issues.
The design goal of the Framework wasn't out of the box 100% Linux support, it was reparability. While they encourage Linux development on the platform, what hardware works best to meet their design goal may or may not already have Linux support.
I am surprised by the review also. While not mine a friend owns a Framework laptop and I have spent many hours trying to help them get it working as well as the Dell Latitude it replaced.
WiFi and power draw issues are the biggest two problems they continue to experience.
Also while the screen is very nice it is let down by the resolution. It isn’t high enough to used at 2x scaling but non-integer scaling really hits battery and performance. I feel that was a terrible oversight.
It is a shame as the laptops overall build quality is very good. Hopefully these common issues can be sorted properly as I would be interested in picking one up once it has rocked solid Linux support. Also a higher (or lower) resolution panel option would be nice. After all it is the Framework laptop, surely they should have different panel options :)
It’s probably the USB-C dock - I have the same issues with a Lenovo laptop and Ubuntu 20 LTS but works fine without dock connected.
On my phone now but there was a bug report I found to match this - apparently 5.14 kernel might work better but I haven’t been able to install it yet from the 3rd party repo.
I have been using mine (64GB with Ubuntu 21.04, Gnome Flashback) for the past several months as my primary work laptop. I have not experienced any of the issues you mention. I like it so far. In fact, hardly notice it. Except maybe when I do sudo/login. I can use my fingerprint instead of password :). My earlier laptop was a 2012 MacBook Pro which gave up last year. I do have an M1 which is used exclusively for iOS dev.
I did have to tweak few things mentioned in their community page/forum to get everything working.
Two issues (which hasn't bothered me yet)
- battery drain during suspend
- gnome not supporting different scaling with multiple monitors (fixed in later version of gnome as I understand)
As a counterpoint, I've been running Fedora on my DIY Framework since mid-October without any issues (besides needing to install a Respin to get the required WiFi driver). Even upgraded from Fedora 34 to 35 just fine. Enabled deep sleep and it's working as intended, issues with WiFi have always been due to Spectrum's terrible non-fiber service, etc.
What OS did you install? It could be related to their choice to install a cutting edge version of Ubuntu versus Ubuntu LTS (for patches that may resolve some of what you're experiencing).
That's surprising to hear. I've had one for a few months now. I pulled the nvme drive from my old laptop, put it in the framework laptop, and it booted up and has been running great. I haven't had any issues opening a jpg/pdf, waking up from sleep, or wifi dying.
Which isn't to disregard what you're experiencing, but maybe try updating the firmware? I've seen at least one email they sent out about new firmware that people should probably install if they haven't yet. And maybe try out a liveusb just to see if there's something weird in your installation?
Have you contacted their tech support to see how they stand by their claims? (Not asking to be passive-aggressive; genuinely curious to hear about their after-sales.)
I have also had wireless issues, but since I've only installed NixOS I can't tell if it's because of the OS or some hardware issues.
I also thing (again very minor) that the hinge is too loose. If I have it on my lap and type on it the hinge slowly opens up. I wish there was a stiffer hinge.
I have no issues with mine, except for the deep sleep one. The current prevailing theory on the forums suggests it's got something to do with PCIe Gen4 SSD firmware. The issue is widespread enough that I'm hopeful we'll see a fix soon enough.
The framework is not the best short-term laptop I've ever had, but it's Solid and if the company sticks around should be the best _long-term_ laptop I've ever owned.
- Deep sleep works fine; wake works fine (with a ~10s delay; that's just linux i think)
- Battery is far better than my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen. (have not really tested, but at a guess, solid 6-8 hours; which for linux is solidly average-to-good i think)
- Never freezes
- Fans are fine (way, way better than my 2018 macbook pro...)
- Network is fine (I had issues at first, but was my fault due to faulty systemd configuration)
- Hinges could be tighter, but no issue with practical use (I'm typing on this on my lap right now and it's fine)
- I use it practically every day for hours at a time.
- I've dropped it at least 2 times -- once from ~3-4 feet high (onto carpet). Totally fine functionally; though the monitor back now has a slight protrusion.
- but hey, it's modular so I can just replace the screen at some point if I really want to (nit: hopefully they'll come out with a matte screen)
Basically the original post here is n=1 so, i mean... the framework is the most exciting laptop "ideology" frankly ever. And even this first 'beta' version is super solid.
I haven't seen a lot of the problems you're seeing, but I definitely have seen this one. Not only is the touch pad hard to use because it's very sensitive, just using the builtin keyboard can accidentally cause the touch pad to be activated. I've read up on ways of fixing this in Linux, but I haven't quite found the trick to make the touch pad behave as well as the Mac touch pad, which is what I'm used to. I haven't even really found a fix yet, so I type very carefully, avoiding resting my hands on the laptop, when I'm not using an external keyboard.
I feel like this happens with any item. For example, I've been supremely happy with all the Apple laptops I've ever owned, but have seen others with a litany of problems. Could it be that you got a dud with some sort of hardware problem? Try contacting their support and maybe they'll let you exchange it or something.
The author does not address the screen resolution (and just says the screen is nice) but I'm hearing that the screen res is a bit to high to work with without scaling and a tad to low to do 2x scaling. And people don't like fractional scaling, at least in Gnome (it seems to look weird). Is this still an issue?
I tend to prefer 1080p for this reason on 12-14" screens. My Thinkpad X13 gen 2 has a 13.3", 1920x1200 screen, windows sets it to 150%, which seems ok, although Ubuntu works well for me without scaling still. The Frame work laptop has an even higher res (2256x1504). I do hear people scaling the fonts and that seems to be a nice solution... I remember from back in the old days that I never really liked the look of this.
What do people think of this? I'm hoping that in the future you can choose the screen (and easily get replacements as well, I hear they are working on that).
Edit: I hope these issues are being addressed by established DE's, I'm assuming they won't be an issue on Canonical's (hypothetical ;)) Flutter based DE that's (obviously ;)) coming and on System76's Rust based new DE for Pop OS [0].
I run Mint with 2x scaling on mine and I like it a lot. The screen's not quite as sharp as the one on the old XPS it replaced, but it's still quite nice.
I run a middling-width monospace font, and I can't quite fit two 80-column windows side by side at 2x without reducing the font size, but if you want that then you want smaller text anyway. (If you run a narrow font it shouldn't be an issue.) Other UI elements are not unreasonably large in my opinion, but YMMV.
I like my fonts on the quite small side; ~14" @ 2256x1504 sounds ideal to me.
That aside, I've been playing around with fractional scaling in Wayland on everything from a 6" Pinephone to 32"@4k in various configurations and it's been mostly painless. Mostly terminal, web browsing, Steam games (latter not on the Pinephone obv). I wouldn't be surprised if there can be issues with xwayland that I'm yet to experience.
I’m not on Ubuntu but using Wayland on nixos. Fractional scaling does not look or work well at all in my experience. I decided on 1.0 scaling and pushed it all over to font sizing (around 1.5). This works pretty well for most apps but it is a little small sometimes. The biggest issue is having to manually scale up some apps that don’t keep my preferences.
> Graphics card - Can this be made upgradable in the future? Would seriously consider building one for gaming if they were.
Oh man if they found a way to have upgradable GPU on a laptop it would be next level! I think it can be done through M.2 slot (the reason why you can get M.2 to PCIe adapters is because M.2 provides a PCIe interface [1], some eGPU solutions use M.2 [2], IIRC it's just a 4 lanes connection through the M.2 connector but better than nothing) - so in order to make this possible on a laptop you would basically have to take small (mobile class) GPUs and solder them on a board that can be inserted in an M.2 slot... I think this is not rocket science but probably those GPUs would be expensive unless the concept really takes off and they are mass produced.
EDIT - I just remembered that in the past there were some gaming laptops with upgradeable GPU, I think they were made maybe by Asus? And if I remember correctly it was a proprietary connector (but I might be wrong)
I'm using a Framework with Kubuntu and I have mixed feelings about it. I like the 3:2 screen ratio, repairability & the expansion cards. However, there are many downsides:
- The battery life is ATROCIOUS, even after TLP etc. It's about the same as my 4-year-old(!) Thinkpad. Standby battery drain is the worst, easily 20-30% overnight, which I find unacceptable. I can't use this laptop as intended and always have to switch it off completely. Also because of this:
- BIOS 3.06 ships with a bug that could result in the Framework not switching on if the battery is drained to 0%. The new beta BIOS might fix that, but errors like this show this is not a mature product.
- There are no stable LVFS firmware upgrades for Linux yet and some users also report overwritten bootloaders after upgrading. Linux compatibility is definitely not there yet.
- Many small annoyances on Linux: Fingerprint reader is not working out of the box, screen tearing, Bluetooth regressions etc. on certain kernels.
- My Framework didn't turn on for almost 2 weeks. I tried different RAM/SSDs to no avail... then, it suddenly worked again with the original components. No problems after that, very strange.
- The speakers are worse than the one in my smartphone. On most surfaces it sounds muffled and just not right.
- My CPU fan made strange noises. I could fix that thanks to the great repairability though.
- The fan can get very loud. Fortunately, it happens very rarely. Most of the time it's silent when browsing the internet or doing web dev work.
- Build quality is clearly a step down from my old Thinkpad X1 Yoga. The hinge doesn't feel as strong, some keys are mushy/creaking and I'm skeptical my Framework will survive as many falls as my old laptop.
Don't get me wrong: it's impressive for a first iteration product and a lot of modern laptops can't compete with it (despite the Framework being far more extensible). It ticks many boxes and offers a package that is hard to find these days (Lenovo & Co. seem to love soldered-on RAM, decreased keyboard travel, fewer ports).
After many glowing reviews I just expected a bit more. Coming from a 4-yo premium Thinkpad I'm not sure the Framework is an upgrade. It's more fragile, (currently) has worse Linux support & no next-day business support. I would definitely wait for the next generation of laptops.
Heads up to anyone who is running into the right click issue on Ubuntu relating to the framework laptop (right click acts a bit funky), I added the following lines to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
Framework is remarkable. Intel MacBook Pro power in MacBook Air footprint.
The build quality is far better than first gen devices, if not second.
Given enough time, it might be able to get many people off macOS.
The screen is amazingly crisp if you can overlook the fun resolution. Hard to look past 3x2.
Why did I return it?
I realized I needed to begin with a retail and turnkey Ubuntu experience where everything just worked and the things that mattered to me worked out of the box.
Framework is not quite an optimized retail Ubuntu experience yet like a Dell XPS with mature drivers largely ready to go.
- Battery life isn’t optimized and maximized out of the box, you will have to tpm. I have limited time for this at present. I’m sure there’s lots of interpretations that is not a a big deal. I’d rather be solving problems with the laptop than be solving problems in the laptop. I want max battery life without investing hours up front.
- Fingerprint reader required manual setup
- Wifi can have hiccups on the latest Ubuntu, and without trying into optimizing battery and kernels upset instead of getting things done.
- Touchpad is so so. Good hardware, maybe more tweaking in Linux needed. Very used to macOS too.
- HDMI port draws extra battery life when not in use so you have to to keep it removed.
The components otherwise seem high quality and well put together.
Again it’s not that these issues can’t be overcome, or that they won’t be out of the box in the future, I simply don’t have the time for either at present.
It was a joy to use for browsing in Ubuntu 21.04 as stuff is broken in 21.10.
I got mine a few months ago, and overall I'm rather pleased with the purchase, however I don't think I'm quite as satisfied as the author of this article. For the most part, I think it's a really great machine, but there are some oddities that have caused me trouble. I've been running Arch Linux + Plasma on it, and have gone between X11 and Wayland (more on that later).
- My touchpad is really flaky. Sometimes it works perfectly, but most of the time simply clicking just... doesn't work. Moving the cursor, tap to click, scrolling work fine, but the actual pressing the touchpad to an audible click won't result in a click on the machine. This seems to be a hardware issue, it can sometimes be remedied by pressing down across the whole touchpad, but not always, and it seems to be worse when it's cold in the room. Also, once in a blue moon it won't initialize quite right when waking from sleep causing it to be hypersensitive; putting the device back to sleep and rewaking it fixes that.
- They mentioned they were fond of the battery life, which surprises me as that seems to be the devices biggest failing. I'm somewhat new to Linux laptops, but even after setting up hibernate and deep sleep and all that, I simply can't leave it on sleep over night or it will drain the entire battery. The battery life while using it is fine, not as good as my old MacBook, but I've had to start shutting it down when not in use.
- The speakers really aren't great. A big part of that is the fact that they're downward facing, which seems a really bizarre design decision to me.
- Fractional scaling. This is more of an issue with Linux itself. I actually really like the display as a whole, particularly the 3:2 ratio. However, 1x is too small, and I found 2x to be too large. I've been using 150% scaling, which worked well for the most part, except some applications wouldn't obey it (cough Steam). I then tried switching to Wayland, which seems to have fixed Steam's issues (and the trackpad scrolling notably improved oddly), but xwayland programs have really blurry text.. There's always a bit of a tradeoff, although I'm still experimenting with this. I also find this display gives me more eye strain at later hours than other screens I use. YMMV.
Overall, I would say I am satisfied with my purchase however. I love the keyboard, love the modularity, I like the customizability. I don't regret the purchase, but I do think there are some things potential buyers should be aware of.
We've finally root caused physical clicks not registering on some units, and found that it was a batch of dome switches with a coating that was more likely to corrode over time depending on environmental conditions. We've recently switched coatings to prevent this from happening in the future, and we're also sending replacement parts to folks who write in with this issue. One of the benefits of this product being easy to repair is that we can just send you a replacement module instead of needing to take your system back or send you a full system!
Seconding your experience, except my battery life has been quite good somehow. I’m not sure if that’s due to one of the settings I changed when setting it up, OS (I’m using Pop!_OS), or just luck of the draw.
My touchpad will also just stop clicking sometimes. It’s usually an exercise of finding the right spot to push to reset the hardware clicker itself. I have the fix that Framework sent out about a loose touchpad cable, so it shouldn’t be that. It also occasionally will just stop registering the mouse at all, either from the touchpad or from an external mouse. Closing the lid and reopening it will fix this.
Fractional scaling was a little dicey, but I found 150% hits the sweet spot for me, I don’t have any issues aside from some occasional jagged screen regions while scrolling, which I don’t mind.
Overall, I’ve been happy with mine. It’s not perfect, and it occasionally hiccups in weird ways (like the mouse thing), but that was my expectation going in. As a daily driver and dev machine, it works well and I would recommend the DIY edition to anyone with a little tolerance for issues in their laptop.
There was a touchpad fix that they mailed out to people a while back. Maybe that’s related to your problem? I never applied it because mine seems to be fine.
I'm sad about the speakers if they are as flat as they said, even more if they are not upgradable parts. MacBook speakers are really good for their purpose and I even consider them to be one of the importants things I trully love on macbooks (with the screen and the touchpad).
Anyway, I'm still looking to buy a Framework laptop soon but I'd love to be able to test one before buying it.
I didn’t realize it had a hardwire switch for the webcam, that’s a nice feature they could put on the front page. I see it now on their “learn more” page.
It would be nice if the expansion cards came with a plastic cap to protect the usb c plug, I wouldn’t want to toss the spare hdmi card in my bag as is, but in the spirit of open hardware maybe one will pop up on thigaverse.
I also recently(~1 month) purchased one of these, (DIY edition + windows). So far my only complaint is the screen size. I was really wanting a 17" touch screen and a keyboard with a num pad. My first thought when I was opening + working with this was that the whole experience felt like a labor of love.
I love the concept of the Framework and it fits my use-case but I really wish they would at least add some form of screen configurability/options to their tech roadmap.
- I need a mate screen option, glossy displays in ambient light give me headaches.
- Some folks will also probably want touchscreens (uber glossy), more power to them
- Would also be very cool to bring back the old tech of transflective displays like the one in the Pixel Qi display. For folks that want to work outside (me again!) and are not fussed about color accuracy.
- TrackPoint pointing stick (red thing in the middle of the keyboard)
- Magnesium top display cover &
- USB-C charging
- Smartcard reader
- Ports including USB-A and -C, SD, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jack
- Security lock slot
- Thunderbolt 3
- Docking station (latest Ultra) that works
# Customization
& Parts swap
It's massively upgradable. 8 captive screws, and the bottom case pops out, the keyboard pops out too. ~10 screws, and the motherboard and everything else is out. People make frakenpads because the parts stayed so similar over the years. All the screws are Phillips. No hunting for weird Torx bits.
Honestly, the framework was one of the better purchases I have made. There were definitely some Bluetooth hiccups, but all other functionality worked perfectly out of the box on Arch. The wiki included a few key tips.
At least Framework placed the Power button NOT in the keyboard top-right corner (oh don't let me start on this).
But all other keys... does nobody ever uses Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys these days?
<rant>
Ask HN: Nobody ever uses Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys these days?
I understand what the current laptop keyboard layouts are made by alien^W someone who is clearly not using the computer as a work tool, but we are close to a decade of this ...nonsense.
All Fn+ keys REQUIRE using both hands. It is all fine until you are somewhere where you need to use one hand to hold your notebook and ... you can no longer press any Fn+ combo.
I have a pretty big hands and I can't stretch my fingers enough to reach both bottom-left Fn and any key on the right side of keyboard. On a 14" laptop. Which could had all the keys (compare X220 and T440 for example) but it doesn't.
Thinkpads are still have PrtScr on ContextMenu, which means I would 100% lose contents of the clipboard some hours later. Who needs PrtScr /there/ anyway? I want to hear the reasoning, like "we noticed (through our telemetry? how?) what our users are making screenshots all the day so we moved the PrtScr in the place of ContextMenu button"? You can replace the Space with PrtScr then, it would be pressed even more.
16" notebook? You will still have a sub 12" keyboard on it [0]
14" notebook? You won't even have the chance to see it's keyboard - you can see photo of it's back (like this is somehow important in the age where is nothing on a laptop back) but you can't see it's keyboard.
I do informal surveys of new laptops -- I wander around computer shops bashing out a sentence or two into Notepad or TextEdit.
They're all awful now. But most people are used to awful and so don't care.
Layouts suck too but that, to me, is secondary to key feel. If the layout is bad, some keystrokes will be bad; but if the key feel is bad, every keystroke will be bad.
You may want to consider a Mac. Most of its software doesn't use any Fn+ combos, or Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys. They have other shortcuts. It's a pain to learn them in the beginning, but in the long term it gives you an idea that maybe having many single-purpose keys on a laptop keyboard is not a best idea, ergonomically.
[+] [-] smeej|4 years ago|reply
Enabling deep sleep works fine; waking from it is impossible. WiFi stops working. The touch pad becomes hypersensitive. I've resorted to turning the whole thing completely off after every use. But the battery still loses power even when the machine is completely powered down.
The machine also freezes if I try to open a jpg or a PDF from the file explorer. Just completely freezes. Fan spins up like crazy, but as I mentioned, I have 64GB of RAM in this thing. It should be able to open a single one-page scanned document from my own scanner. If there's anything wrong with the file, this is the computer that's making the file poorly.
The internet connection also just turns off after about half an hour of use. I have a Belkin dock with Ethernet plugged into it, which is then plugged into my Framework's USB-C port. This dock supports my work Mac all work day every day with no issues at all, so it's not the dock's problem. But the Framework? Internet just stops working after half an hour. And it manages to kill both wired and WiFi when it dies. I can turn them back on, but this is a ridiculous problem to have.
This last point is pretty minor, but the hinges are floppy. The whole screen shakes around when I type on it.
I have no idea how this author's experience is so much better than mine unless they just haven't used it much yet, but I regret absolutely everything about the purchase of this machine and feel like I was sold a bill of goods by all the glowing positive reviews all over the internet.
[+] [-] nrp|4 years ago|reply
In the meantime, we've been recommending Ubuntu 21.04 because it does have full support and good stability with all updates applied: https://community.frame.work/t/ubuntu-21-04-on-the-framework...
[+] [-] kkielhofner|4 years ago|reply
- As has been noted time and time again, battery life is atrocious. As in unusable for even the travel time required for a three hour flight: factoring in the poor sleep, an hour at the airport, and time on the aircraft the battery is dead. Crazy for 2021/2022 - my eight year old Macbook does better.
- Wifi. The Intel Wifi modules provided with the Framework are very poorly supported in Linux. I spent six hours the other night running additional ethernet drops because I just couldn't stand my workday routinely being interrupted by repeatedly disassociating from my AP (fixed with reboot). Even unloading and reloading the associated kernel modules wouldn't bring it back.
- USB-C acts... Strange. I have two 4K displays using Displayport over USB-C and the Framework repeatedly fails to initialize them from boot. I have to do a strange dance (the steps of which I'm still figuring out) involving powering off the Framework, unplugging/re-plugging everything, and then rebooting until it magically works again.
- Fan. The fan is crazy. I've settled on disabling turbo mode in Linux.
- Build quality. I'm convinced if I drop this thing it's all over.
All in all I'm mad at myself for spending over $3k on a productivity configuration centered around what is pretty much beta hardware. I should have known better.
Anyway, there's hope for some of these issues as they seem to be releasing BIOS updates pretty regularly (currently running 3.07) but even then I need to USB boot to use their EFI update tool. Intel wifi should get better over time and worst case I can swap it out for Atheros or something. That said I think the battery, build, and fan issues are fundamental hardware design choices.
[+] [-] kllrnohj|4 years ago|reply
This almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the framework itself. That sounds like a software bug all day long. Something about your OS install is broken or similar.
The only other possibility seems like it'd be if the storage drive is broken. Which could then possibly be why you're experiencing so many other issues, if things like code pages are just failing to load or getting corrupted in the same way your JPG isn't able to load.
But it seems like starting with a fsck or even a re-install seems like a good idea.
[+] [-] nafizh|4 years ago|reply
I just bought the framework and running ubuntu 21.10. I had some of the problems you mentioned but the forum has solutions to many. It’s a new product, and specially with Linux, I knew there would be some problems. You have to be willing to solve these problems o/w you should stay away from buying new hardware from a startup.
[+] [-] thereddaikon|4 years ago|reply
In my experience current gen laptops except for certain ThinkPads and Clevos will have support issues in Linux. You get a much better experience using a model a year or two old because the community has had time to address any issues.
The design goal of the Framework wasn't out of the box 100% Linux support, it was reparability. While they encourage Linux development on the platform, what hardware works best to meet their design goal may or may not already have Linux support.
[+] [-] satysin|4 years ago|reply
WiFi and power draw issues are the biggest two problems they continue to experience.
Also while the screen is very nice it is let down by the resolution. It isn’t high enough to used at 2x scaling but non-integer scaling really hits battery and performance. I feel that was a terrible oversight.
It is a shame as the laptops overall build quality is very good. Hopefully these common issues can be sorted properly as I would be interested in picking one up once it has rocked solid Linux support. Also a higher (or lower) resolution panel option would be nice. After all it is the Framework laptop, surely they should have different panel options :)
[+] [-] gbuk2013|4 years ago|reply
On my phone now but there was a bug report I found to match this - apparently 5.14 kernel might work better but I haven’t been able to install it yet from the 3rd party repo.
Update: this is the bug I think: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200977
[+] [-] notpublic|4 years ago|reply
I did have to tweak few things mentioned in their community page/forum to get everything working.
Two issues (which hasn't bothered me yet)
edit: formatting[+] [-] prophesi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netsec_burn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amarshall|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaganyaan|4 years ago|reply
Which isn't to disregard what you're experiencing, but maybe try updating the firmware? I've seen at least one email they sent out about new firmware that people should probably install if they haven't yet. And maybe try out a liveusb just to see if there's something weird in your installation?
[+] [-] proactivesvcs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enricozb|4 years ago|reply
I also thing (again very minor) that the hinge is too loose. If I have it on my lap and type on it the hinge slowly opens up. I wish there was a stiffer hinge.
[+] [-] aquaticsunset|4 years ago|reply
Otherwise I'm extremely happy with mine!
[+] [-] jonaustin|4 years ago|reply
I use Arch Linux for comparison.
The framework is not the best short-term laptop I've ever had, but it's Solid and if the company sticks around should be the best _long-term_ laptop I've ever owned.
- Deep sleep works fine; wake works fine (with a ~10s delay; that's just linux i think)
- Battery is far better than my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen. (have not really tested, but at a guess, solid 6-8 hours; which for linux is solidly average-to-good i think)
- Never freezes
- Fans are fine (way, way better than my 2018 macbook pro...)
- Network is fine (I had issues at first, but was my fault due to faulty systemd configuration)
- Hinges could be tighter, but no issue with practical use (I'm typing on this on my lap right now and it's fine)
- I use it practically every day for hours at a time.
- I've dropped it at least 2 times -- once from ~3-4 feet high (onto carpet). Totally fine functionally; though the monitor back now has a slight protrusion.
Basically the original post here is n=1 so, i mean... the framework is the most exciting laptop "ideology" frankly ever. And even this first 'beta' version is super solid.[+] [-] allochthon|4 years ago|reply
I haven't seen a lot of the problems you're seeing, but I definitely have seen this one. Not only is the touch pad hard to use because it's very sensitive, just using the builtin keyboard can accidentally cause the touch pad to be activated. I've read up on ways of fixing this in Linux, but I haven't quite found the trick to make the touch pad behave as well as the Mac touch pad, which is what I'm used to. I haven't even really found a fix yet, so I type very carefully, avoiding resting my hands on the laptop, when I'm not using an external keyboard.
[+] [-] losvedir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] choeger|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philjohn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teekert|4 years ago|reply
I tend to prefer 1080p for this reason on 12-14" screens. My Thinkpad X13 gen 2 has a 13.3", 1920x1200 screen, windows sets it to 150%, which seems ok, although Ubuntu works well for me without scaling still. The Frame work laptop has an even higher res (2256x1504). I do hear people scaling the fonts and that seems to be a nice solution... I remember from back in the old days that I never really liked the look of this.
What do people think of this? I'm hoping that in the future you can choose the screen (and easily get replacements as well, I hear they are working on that).
Edit: I hope these issues are being addressed by established DE's, I'm assuming they won't be an issue on Canonical's (hypothetical ;)) Flutter based DE that's (obviously ;)) coming and on System76's Rust based new DE for Pop OS [0].
[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/08/system76_developing_n...
[+] [-] gdwatson|4 years ago|reply
I run a middling-width monospace font, and I can't quite fit two 80-column windows side by side at 2x without reducing the font size, but if you want that then you want smaller text anyway. (If you run a narrow font it shouldn't be an issue.) Other UI elements are not unreasonably large in my opinion, but YMMV.
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
That aside, I've been playing around with fractional scaling in Wayland on everything from a 6" Pinephone to 32"@4k in various configurations and it's been mostly painless. Mostly terminal, web browsing, Steam games (latter not on the Pinephone obv). I wouldn't be surprised if there can be issues with xwayland that I'm yet to experience.
[+] [-] keawade|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 91edec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 42jd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lio|4 years ago|reply
The “for less” bit might be true but is the better specs part?
In a comparison[1] the M1 in a MacBook Air seems to handily beat the Intel Core i7 1165G7 chip on most metrics.
Personally I’m not that CPU bound generally and I like Intel Linux compatibility so I’d still make the trade off.
1. https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1165g7-v...
[+] [-] mastazi|4 years ago|reply
Oh man if they found a way to have upgradable GPU on a laptop it would be next level! I think it can be done through M.2 slot (the reason why you can get M.2 to PCIe adapters is because M.2 provides a PCIe interface [1], some eGPU solutions use M.2 [2], IIRC it's just a 4 lanes connection through the M.2 connector but better than nothing) - so in order to make this possible on a laptop you would basically have to take small (mobile class) GPUs and solder them on a board that can be inserted in an M.2 slot... I think this is not rocket science but probably those GPUs would be expensive unless the concept really takes off and they are mass produced.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
[2] https://linustechtips.com/topic/831808-m2-x4-egpu-dock-faste...
EDIT - I just remembered that in the past there were some gaming laptops with upgradeable GPU, I think they were made maybe by Asus? And if I remember correctly it was a proprietary connector (but I might be wrong)
EDIT 2 - yes I was thinking about MXM and it was not proprietary, thank you to those who pointed that out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module
EDIT 3 - my proposed idea didn't take cooling into consideration, as correctly pointed out in the comments.
[+] [-] toberoni|4 years ago|reply
- The battery life is ATROCIOUS, even after TLP etc. It's about the same as my 4-year-old(!) Thinkpad. Standby battery drain is the worst, easily 20-30% overnight, which I find unacceptable. I can't use this laptop as intended and always have to switch it off completely. Also because of this:
- BIOS 3.06 ships with a bug that could result in the Framework not switching on if the battery is drained to 0%. The new beta BIOS might fix that, but errors like this show this is not a mature product.
- There are no stable LVFS firmware upgrades for Linux yet and some users also report overwritten bootloaders after upgrading. Linux compatibility is definitely not there yet.
- Many small annoyances on Linux: Fingerprint reader is not working out of the box, screen tearing, Bluetooth regressions etc. on certain kernels.
- My Framework didn't turn on for almost 2 weeks. I tried different RAM/SSDs to no avail... then, it suddenly worked again with the original components. No problems after that, very strange.
- The speakers are worse than the one in my smartphone. On most surfaces it sounds muffled and just not right.
- My CPU fan made strange noises. I could fix that thanks to the great repairability though.
- The fan can get very loud. Fortunately, it happens very rarely. Most of the time it's silent when browsing the internet or doing web dev work.
- Build quality is clearly a step down from my old Thinkpad X1 Yoga. The hinge doesn't feel as strong, some keys are mushy/creaking and I'm skeptical my Framework will survive as many falls as my old laptop.
Don't get me wrong: it's impressive for a first iteration product and a lot of modern laptops can't compete with it (despite the Framework being far more extensible). It ticks many boxes and offers a package that is hard to find these days (Lenovo & Co. seem to love soldered-on RAM, decreased keyboard travel, fewer ports).
After many glowing reviews I just expected a bit more. Coming from a 4-yo premium Thinkpad I'm not sure the Framework is an upgrade. It's more fragile, (currently) has worse Linux support & no next-day business support. I would definitely wait for the next generation of laptops.
[+] [-] zibzab|4 years ago|reply
I know expensive laptops are the norm in SF, but does anyone else pay that much for laptops they may drop or looked at any time?
(My current workhorse is a T-series thinkpad I got for free)
[+] [-] 8jy89hui|4 years ago|reply
Section "InputClass"
EndSectionThis fixed the issue for me. Your mileage may vary though.
[+] [-] fernandogrd|4 years ago|reply
Things I did:
- Enabled fractional scaling to use it at 150%
- Changed suspend from s2idle to deep, archwiki mentions that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Framework_Laptop
One small thing I loved about the laptop was how I was able to (albeit slowly) charge it with a pixel 3 charger.
[+] [-] j45|4 years ago|reply
The build quality is far better than first gen devices, if not second.
Given enough time, it might be able to get many people off macOS.
The screen is amazingly crisp if you can overlook the fun resolution. Hard to look past 3x2.
Why did I return it?
I realized I needed to begin with a retail and turnkey Ubuntu experience where everything just worked and the things that mattered to me worked out of the box.
Framework is not quite an optimized retail Ubuntu experience yet like a Dell XPS with mature drivers largely ready to go.
- Battery life isn’t optimized and maximized out of the box, you will have to tpm. I have limited time for this at present. I’m sure there’s lots of interpretations that is not a a big deal. I’d rather be solving problems with the laptop than be solving problems in the laptop. I want max battery life without investing hours up front.
- Fingerprint reader required manual setup
- Wifi can have hiccups on the latest Ubuntu, and without trying into optimizing battery and kernels upset instead of getting things done.
- Touchpad is so so. Good hardware, maybe more tweaking in Linux needed. Very used to macOS too.
- HDMI port draws extra battery life when not in use so you have to to keep it removed.
The components otherwise seem high quality and well put together.
Again it’s not that these issues can’t be overcome, or that they won’t be out of the box in the future, I simply don’t have the time for either at present.
It was a joy to use for browsing in Ubuntu 21.04 as stuff is broken in 21.10.
[+] [-] aquova|4 years ago|reply
- My touchpad is really flaky. Sometimes it works perfectly, but most of the time simply clicking just... doesn't work. Moving the cursor, tap to click, scrolling work fine, but the actual pressing the touchpad to an audible click won't result in a click on the machine. This seems to be a hardware issue, it can sometimes be remedied by pressing down across the whole touchpad, but not always, and it seems to be worse when it's cold in the room. Also, once in a blue moon it won't initialize quite right when waking from sleep causing it to be hypersensitive; putting the device back to sleep and rewaking it fixes that.
- They mentioned they were fond of the battery life, which surprises me as that seems to be the devices biggest failing. I'm somewhat new to Linux laptops, but even after setting up hibernate and deep sleep and all that, I simply can't leave it on sleep over night or it will drain the entire battery. The battery life while using it is fine, not as good as my old MacBook, but I've had to start shutting it down when not in use.
- The speakers really aren't great. A big part of that is the fact that they're downward facing, which seems a really bizarre design decision to me.
- Fractional scaling. This is more of an issue with Linux itself. I actually really like the display as a whole, particularly the 3:2 ratio. However, 1x is too small, and I found 2x to be too large. I've been using 150% scaling, which worked well for the most part, except some applications wouldn't obey it (cough Steam). I then tried switching to Wayland, which seems to have fixed Steam's issues (and the trackpad scrolling notably improved oddly), but xwayland programs have really blurry text.. There's always a bit of a tradeoff, although I'm still experimenting with this. I also find this display gives me more eye strain at later hours than other screens I use. YMMV.
Overall, I would say I am satisfied with my purchase however. I love the keyboard, love the modularity, I like the customizability. I don't regret the purchase, but I do think there are some things potential buyers should be aware of.
[+] [-] nrp|4 years ago|reply
We've finally root caused physical clicks not registering on some units, and found that it was a batch of dome switches with a coating that was more likely to corrode over time depending on environmental conditions. We've recently switched coatings to prevent this from happening in the future, and we're also sending replacement parts to folks who write in with this issue. One of the benefits of this product being easy to repair is that we can just send you a replacement module instead of needing to take your system back or send you a full system!
[+] [-] pythko|4 years ago|reply
My touchpad will also just stop clicking sometimes. It’s usually an exercise of finding the right spot to push to reset the hardware clicker itself. I have the fix that Framework sent out about a loose touchpad cable, so it shouldn’t be that. It also occasionally will just stop registering the mouse at all, either from the touchpad or from an external mouse. Closing the lid and reopening it will fix this.
Fractional scaling was a little dicey, but I found 150% hits the sweet spot for me, I don’t have any issues aside from some occasional jagged screen regions while scrolling, which I don’t mind.
Overall, I’ve been happy with mine. It’s not perfect, and it occasionally hiccups in weird ways (like the mouse thing), but that was my expectation going in. As a daily driver and dev machine, it works well and I would recommend the DIY edition to anyone with a little tolerance for issues in their laptop.
[+] [-] bo1024|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phoronixrly|4 years ago|reply
> Can this be made upgradable in the future? Would seriouly consider building one for gaming if they were.
IMO gaming with the current Framework design is a lost cause as cooling would become a major issue that I imagine will require designing around.
If I recall correctly, framework's USB ports are Thunderbolt-compatible, has anyone tried using an eGPU enclosure with them?
[+] [-] smaslennikov|4 years ago|reply
1. Ubuntu 21.10 had horrid support of the hardware. Eventually switching to Fedora 35 fixed most bugs
2. The DisplayPort expansion card I received was faulty and sometimes caused horrible performance.
3. EMI shields were incorrectly placed on my expansion slots[^1]. Eventually I simply removed them to get full performance back.
In the end, after months of tweaking and talking to support, I got a new DisplayPort card, switched to Fedora 35 and everything works smoothly.
[1]: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/one-port-on-my-laptop...
[+] [-] pjerem|4 years ago|reply
I'm sad about the speakers if they are as flat as they said, even more if they are not upgradable parts. MacBook speakers are really good for their purpose and I even consider them to be one of the importants things I trully love on macbooks (with the screen and the touchpad).
Anyway, I'm still looking to buy a Framework laptop soon but I'd love to be able to test one before buying it.
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
It would be nice if the expansion cards came with a plastic cap to protect the usb c plug, I wouldn’t want to toss the spare hdmi card in my bag as is, but in the spirit of open hardware maybe one will pop up on thigaverse.
[+] [-] sethhovestol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|4 years ago|reply
- I need a mate screen option, glossy displays in ambient light give me headaches.
- Some folks will also probably want touchscreens (uber glossy), more power to them
- Would also be very cool to bring back the old tech of transflective displays like the one in the Pixel Qi display. For folks that want to work outside (me again!) and are not fussed about color accuracy.
[+] [-] errcorrectcode|4 years ago|reply
I have a ThinkPad T480 with:
- i7-8650U CPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated and NVIDIA MX150 discrete graphics
- WQHD display (2560x1440)
- IR and HD cameras
- Speakers are kinda crappy
- True 10 hour runtime (limited by extra batteries)
- Hot-swappable 72 Whr second battery
- 64 GiB RAM # (it's not supposed to work according to Lenovo's and Intel's datasheet but it does)
- 2 TiB M.2 SSD #
- WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.2 #
- 4G WWAN card
- TPM 2.0
- Fingerprint reader
- NFC
- Milspec drop rating
- Awesome IBM-heritage, water-resistant, backlit keyboard
- Multitouch glass touchpad &
- TrackPoint pointing stick (red thing in the middle of the keyboard)
- Magnesium top display cover &
- USB-C charging
- Smartcard reader
- Ports including USB-A and -C, SD, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jack
- Security lock slot
- Thunderbolt 3
- Docking station (latest Ultra) that works
# Customization
& Parts swap
It's massively upgradable. 8 captive screws, and the bottom case pops out, the keyboard pops out too. ~10 screws, and the motherboard and everything else is out. People make frakenpads because the parts stayed so similar over the years. All the screws are Phillips. No hunting for weird Torx bits.
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zquestz|4 years ago|reply
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Framework_Laptop
One thing to note, is that I had a bad time with tlp. I would suggest using auto-cpufreq if you want better battery life.
[+] [-] justsomehnguy|4 years ago|reply
But all other keys... does nobody ever uses Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys these days?
<rant>
Ask HN: Nobody ever uses Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys these days?
I understand what the current laptop keyboard layouts are made by alien^W someone who is clearly not using the computer as a work tool, but we are close to a decade of this ...nonsense.
All Fn+ keys REQUIRE using both hands. It is all fine until you are somewhere where you need to use one hand to hold your notebook and ... you can no longer press any Fn+ combo.
I have a pretty big hands and I can't stretch my fingers enough to reach both bottom-left Fn and any key on the right side of keyboard. On a 14" laptop. Which could had all the keys (compare X220 and T440 for example) but it doesn't.
Thinkpads are still have PrtScr on ContextMenu, which means I would 100% lose contents of the clipboard some hours later. Who needs PrtScr /there/ anyway? I want to hear the reasoning, like "we noticed (through our telemetry? how?) what our users are making screenshots all the day so we moved the PrtScr in the place of ContextMenu button"? You can replace the Space with PrtScr then, it would be pressed even more.
16" notebook? You will still have a sub 12" keyboard on it [0]
14" notebook? You won't even have the chance to see it's keyboard - you can see photo of it's back (like this is somehow important in the age where is nothing on a laptop back) but you can't see it's keyboard.
</rant>
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/x...
[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/x...
[+] [-] lproven|4 years ago|reply
I do informal surveys of new laptops -- I wander around computer shops bashing out a sentence or two into Notepad or TextEdit.
They're all awful now. But most people are used to awful and so don't care.
Layouts suck too but that, to me, is secondary to key feel. If the layout is bad, some keystrokes will be bad; but if the key feel is bad, every keystroke will be bad.
[+] [-] maratc|4 years ago|reply