[doyougnu]

I recently bought a framework laptop for a daily driver when I'm not on my desktop. For context I was running NixOS on an old 2014 macbook air, and I work on the glasgow haskell compiler in my day job so I do a lot of CPU heavy tasks.

I've got to say, as long as these things are being produced I'll never go back. They are just too good and I cannot recommend them highly enough. One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on. That may not seem like much but it was a revelation the first time I sat on the couch and thought "huh I really wish this was over on that side....wait a minute!".

I've also had absolutely no problems with NixOS on my machine, even my apple earbuds easily connect via bluetooth, something that I never quite got working on my macbook.

10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.

[emiller88]

FYI, we've added support for the framework to nixos-hardware. I appreciate any feedback or improvements anyone has! https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...

[fui]

Thank you for doing this! I've been following different posts on NixOS and how different folks have managed to get things working on NixOS.

[benevol]

Will you guys ever produce a "wide screen" version of your laptop? If so, you have another customer.

[fuzzybear3965]

Thank you!!!

[rcoder]

> 10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.

Agreed, with the seemingly-trivial but actually real elaboration: I’m excited because there’s a new version on the way and _I can decide, piece by piece, which parts of the upgrade I want._.

Having the upgrade be a literal circuit board I can swap out is 100% the value prop for Framework and I am likewise a very happy customer to see it, even if I’m happy with the current performance of my laptop and don’t need to upgrade.

[nikodunk]

Agreed! Got one from work, and it's a beast on Fedora 36 with the 11th gen. Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast. So cool that we'll actually be able to update the innards in a few years as necessary to keep it feeling fresh.

Edit: A small but nice design feature is the light that comes on to imply whether the usb-c port is charging properly. Coming from a mac that removed this feature when usb-c charging was introduced, this is a huge luxury.

[0x38B]

I just played through Mass Effect 2 & 3 on mine (Intel i5) with no problems, using Wine. When I do upgrade my main board, I may get the i7 for better graphics performance.

Another huge + is setting battery charge limit with a console command (1). When I’m connected to power at home, I run `ectool fwchargelimit 60` to keep the battery at 60%. If I’m going out, I set it to 100% in the morning and let it charge.

1: https://community.frame.work/t/exploring-the-embedded-contro...

[Abishek_Muthian]

>Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast. So cool that we'll actually be able to update the innards in a few years as necessary to keep it feeling fresh.

Isn't Intel graphics always been the best bet for Linux due to their excellent driver support? I'm excited for their discrete GPUs just for the sake of proper Linux support.

I have an 15W haswell machine in the corner decoding & encoding multiple HD camera feeds from motion on integrated GPU using intel_vaapi while the CPU is free for postgres, redis and a qemu VM - 24*7.

[bodge5000]

> Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast

Anyone have any idea how well this stacks up against RDNA2? I'd love it to be close enough to not have to worry much about, but from what I hear AMD have it significantly better

[fiddlerwoaroof]

This is interesting: over the last several months, a friend has been running NixOS on a Framework and has been told by Framework employees that they can’t help him with Linux kernel issues because he’s using an unsupported OS and he’s also had lots of complaints about battery life and power management.

I love the idea of the Framework, but it seems to suffer from all the issues that made me switch to MacBooks in the first place.

[nrp]

We would love to be able to provide more personalized service for different Linux distros, but we unfortunately just don't have the necessary expertise to be able to do that well.

For Linux-related service requests, we first ask that folks try an Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora 36 Live USB (the distros we have done the most internal testing with and created setup guides for) to be able to determine whether there could be a hardware issue. Once we have verified there isn't a hardware issue, we ask that folks post in the community thread for their distro for help: https://community.frame.work/c/framework-laptop/linux/91

In practice, this works well because we have an extremely helpful and engaged community (including in many cases maintainers for that distro). Additionally, because that debugging happens in the open, any answers from it are publicly visible for future users to see.

All of that said, we'd love to find better ways to provide deeper support ourselves and are open to input. A more official path would likely still start with the most popular distros.

[lukeschlather]

doyougnu was previously running NixOS on a Macbook so their bar for "working" is probably much lower than a normal person's.

I'm on Windows, but if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat. I don't know what it would take to have sensible power management on Linux without major issues.

[trelane]

I wondered. It looked very Windowsy, and I'd guessed the Linux support was non-existent. Sounds like I'm going to stay away then.

[grumpyprole]

I don't get why the Apple wins? You'd have plenty of issues on a MacBook running an unsupported OS.

[gonehome]

Does suspend work reliably? Is battery life ok? Does the trackpad suck?

I’m tempted but every time I’ve tried so far to leave Mac hardware I regret it - seems even harder now with M1 performance.

Still, the framework laptop is super cool. Might be worth trying anyway.

[smeej]

I still haven't been able to get suspend to work on my high-spec last-gen Framework, despite following all the troubleshooting and disjointed recommendations in the forum because the company won't just publish fixes for common problems directly.

Suspend will sap 30% of my energy by morning, even in "deep" sleep, and the computer won't wake properly. The trackpad will work intermittently or really fast after sleeping.

I have to turn the thing all the way off every time I use it. Which, alright, forced asceticism. Maybe a growth opportunity.

It's just frustrating and disappointing to find out so much work has gone into making a new one instead of fixing the pile of garbage I ended up with supporting them with the first version.

[doyougnu]

Suspend hasn't failed me yet but I run suspend+hibernate.

Trackpad seems good to me but my setup is not trackpad heavy. In fact I have a hotkey binding in xmonad that disables the track pad because everything I do is keyboard based including my browser. So I find I rarely need to use the mouse and it just gets in my way.

Battery depends on usage, with nothing (nothing is emacs daemon, wifi on, bluetooth on, xmonad and syncthing running, I don't use a desktop environment) running my battery reports a discharge rate of 5-6W, with normal usage (firefox and chrome open, slack and spotify open) the battery discharge is ~9-10W which is easily 6 hours, of course when I'm compiling GHC with all cores firing away this shoots up to ~30W and battery tanks to 1-2 hours but I can't really blame the machine for that :)

[girvo]

> seems even harder now with M1 performance

If it helps with the decision at all, certain 12th gen Intel mobile chips are competitive with the M1 in terms of performance. They do use more power to achieve that though if I remember correctly, but it's not an order of magnitude difference.

I'm stoked that mobile chips are getting as powerful as they are, even though I'm very much an Apple user. Higher perf low wattage parts are good for everyone, and competition will keep Apple moving forward which is good for me!

[SkyMarshal]

Yeah it's hard to beat just running linux in a VM on a Mac, especially with Mac's new hardware. Framework's modularity is probably the most compelling alternate value proposition, though.

[wollsmoth]

You can basically do this with macs if you still use the usb-c charger. Even with the new ones they still charge through those ports on either side.

But yeah, being able to swap those ports is great. I'm feeling the pain of having only 1 hdmi out on my laptop and the ability to just add one on sounds amazing.

[kibwen]

Do Macs still favor charging via the USB-C ports on the right side? IIRC charging on the left caused overheating/throttling. I'd be interested to know if the Framework also favors a specific port for charging.

[k8sToGo]

Isn't there an issue if you plug in on the wrong side? I remember something about CPU and throttling.

[dheera]

Same. Only things I wish were slightly better build quality and also I've had issues with Wi-Fi disappearing of late [0], fast battery drain during suspend, as well as battery refusing to charge from zero but there's a workaround involving a dumb USB charger. Kind of hoping these are just early adopter issues and that they'll be dealt with over time.

I really hope some community hardware experts can design more modules for this thing. I want an IMU+GPS+Barometer module among other things, but I'm a software person and don't know how to design PCBs.

[0] https://community.frame.work/t/wi-fi-disappeared-and-reappea...

[starky]

I couldn't get Wifi working reliably when trying to use my Framework on Linux, even trying multiple distros, it would just disappear and not come back. Eventually I gave up and switched to Windows which has worked perfectly.

My main complaint are that the built in speakers are not good, they just simply cannot get loud enough. I'm also a little annoyed that I bought mine and a month and a half later the 12th gen version comes out. I would have happily waited for it.

[gigatexal]

The new revision with the 12-gen chips does it fix the complaints people have had about loud fan noise?

I am super on the fence between this and an arm mac - this is super customizable but the arm chips in the air are silent — no fan.

[popol12]

If you’re on Linux, this does the job https://community.frame.work/t/linux-fan-speed-controller-wi...

[gigatexal]

Yep. Plan to run Fedora 36

[bodge5000]

Its a shame they don't have the option of AMD processors, the rdna2 igpu's included in the new ones would be more than sufficient for me, whereas my understanding is that the intel igpu's leave a lot to be desired.

As game dev is one of the main things I do with a personal PC, sadly this means Im somewhat tied down to having a decent gpu. RDNA2 would be perfect for me, powerful enough to dev on and weak enough to test on (so I dont need a seperate low-spec machine for testing low-end performance).

[Farfignoggen]

It's really a deal breaker for me if they do not Start Offering Ryzen options for the Mainboard Module as Intel's Integrated graphics is currently lacking compared to AMD's Ryzen 6000 series Mobile APUs with RDNA2 Graphics(680M).

But I want Linux and the Blender 3.2 version released and all that ROCm/HIP support shipping with the Linux Distro/Kernel so I can Have Cycles-X GPU accelerated rendering for Ray Tracing/Rendering as Eevee lacks Ray Tracing currently.

It's just too bad the Intel and AMD have gone with some non standard GPU compute APIs instead of supporting Vulkan Compute. Intel's got its OneAPI while AMD's gotten its ROCm/HIP for GPU Compute API support as the Blender Foundation's no longer supporting OpenCL there for Blender 3.0/later editions.

AMD's Ryzen 6000 series APUs with RDNA2 integrated graphics are just great there for rendering capabilities but it's strange the laptops that ship with the Integrated 680M Graphics are mostly only available on laptops that also Include Discrete Mobile GPUs, as if the OEMs are force up-selling Ryzen 6000 based laptops that come with discrete mobile GPUs only, even if one can get buy with the Integrated 680M graphics alone.

But ETA Prime's YouTube channel has already Reviewed an Unnamed Mini Desktop PC Unit that sporting a Ryzen 6000HX series APU and that 680M integrated graphics but that product is not scheduled for release just yet. There is also a just released Minisfourm Ryzen 5000 series Mobile APU based Mini PC that's still Vega Integrated Graphics but that Mini PC also has a Radeon 6660M discrete Mobile GPU.

[fui]

Apologies, I am new to HN, could you please share a write-up of your experience and process in case you haven't already? I'm moving from an MacBook Pro to a Framework and before the MBP, I used Slackware as my daily driver. Would appreciate any tips on using NixOS as a daily driver.

[shawnz]

> One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on.

I'm not really sold on the integrated dongle design of the framework. Doesn't this argument speak more to the design of USB-C than it does to the integrated dongles?

[Transisto]

I'd expect every new laptop to have at least one Usb-c on both sides by now.

It'd be great if they could make an extension with more than one port on it, they're wide enough for more.

[causality0]

Don't most laptops with type-c power inputs support charging through any of them? My Asus does.

[JoshTriplett]

No, some laptops with type-C inputs on both sides only support charging on one side (typically marked with a power icon), because they don't want to route power input to both sides of the laptop. It adds a bit of cost and complexity.

Higher-end laptops either support it on all ports, or just put ports on one side of the laptop.

[smoldesu]

I can't even imagine how good these'll be on Alder Lake... might have to grab that i5 model.

[jerryzh]

To be fair when MacBook move to typec one can charge on both sides for many years, and I kind of look forward to a future when all port use typec But when it comes to inside Mac by no mean compares to framework

[morganvachon]

Except the M1 Air and 13 inch M1 Pro reverted to left side only (the new models with M1 Pro/Max chips have an extra USB-C on the opposite side). It's my only real gripe with the M1 laptops compared to older Intel Macs.

Of course, the Framework is the polar opposite of the M1 Macs' locked down "appliance" feel. I'm enjoying the progress being made with OpenBSD and Asahi Linux on the M1 platform, but the hardware itself remains impossible to upgrade or repair for mere mortals. The Framework is the pinnacle of truly owning your laptop while not sacrificing speed and a crowd pleasing design.

[fuzzybear3965]

Ditto.