19 ms·

Open-Sourcing our Firmware

1168 points by aram 5y ago

smasher164 5y ago
I've been running NixOS on my Framework for the last few months, and I've been really happy with it. I initially got it so I'd have viable hardware to do osdev on, so learning that they are going to open-source its firmware makes me even more happy.
- rnk 5y ago
  Seems too good to be true. Reasonable prices, upgradable, no soldered ram. So has it been a reliable Linux laptop, what's the battery life with your options?
  - dheera 5y ago
    I've been using a Framework laptop for a month on Ubuntu 21.10 and pretty happy with it. Some hiccups but mostly answered by digging through forums. Battery life in operation is excellent, but it does drain 30% in 8 hours when on suspend which is a bit much. Not a dealbreaker but hope this can be solved.
    - addcninblue 5y ago
      Out of my element here, but would be curious to see if this is something solvable in firmware (now open-sourced!) or if it's a hardware problem to begin with (power states? etc). Edit: Also curious if this issue is generally a hardware or firmware issue in most laptops, or if it's a mix of both.
      - 4cao 5y ago
        Could be caused by Modern Standby (by default newer laptops remain on even when nominally off, which has been known to cause issues). Some more details here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145891-how-check-if-modern-standby-supported-windows-10-a.html https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145891-how-check-if-mode...
    - sydney6 5y ago
      I can imagine that the power draw in S3 could come from having (replacable) DDR Memory instead of (mostly soldered) LP-DDR Memory. edit: typo.
      - bestouff 5y ago
        The problem is that current Intel laptops don't use S3 anymore, they use S0ix a.k.a. "modern standby", an abomination where the CPU doesn't really sleep and the battery drains fast. Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. all have the same problem.
        jpetso 5y ago
        S0ix has stronger requirements on the "correct" interaction between firmware/BIOS and OS, it offloads more work to the OS. Poorly implemented S0ix will drain the battery faster, but correctly implemented S0ix is as good as S3 or even better. Lenovo put out a buggy S3 implementation on some systems that hasn't been tested well because it's only an optional "Linux suspend" setting. Drains twice as fast as Linux with correctly implemented S0ix. And the worst thing is, nobody except Lenovo do can fix it because it's all on the BIOS level, and their China-based firmware team has other priorities. Well-implemented S3 is nice. But it's going to disappear. Both Intel and AMD are switching away with full force, vendors won't have S3 options in the BIOS going forward and the ones that remain will likely suck. On the other hand, S0ix support is coming together even on AMD platforms which were a little late to the party. Once it's working decently, I'd rather trust my OS than my laptop manufacturer's firmware team to suspend components correctly.
        sydney6 5y ago
        I have a Thinkpad X1 from 2018 and by default it came with S0ix enabled and Lenovo later on added the S3 sleep state option through a BIOS update, called "Linux compatibility something".. Before that, one had to manually edit the DSD table to get rid of this evil burning-sleeping-laptop-in-backpack-feature called S0ix. Does the Framework Laptop, or other popular models from the other manfacturers you mentioned, not have a S3 sleep state option these days, i.e. S0ix only?
    - throwaway2568 5y ago
      High battery drain during standby on Linux can be due to the system not entering the proper sleep state. I had this happen to me on an AMD machine lately, in that case disabling secure boot solved the issue. Here is a pretty detailed blog post in checking if that is the problem and how to deal with it on intel systems https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-linux https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...
      - tata71 5y ago
        > disabling secure boot solved the issue Lovely...
        dheera 5y ago
        Isn't secure boot just a Microsoft thing to try to stymie competition by preventing booting OSes other than Windows?
        AndroidKitKat 5y ago
        Debian seems to indicate otherwise: https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
    - BlackLotus89 5y ago
      > cat /sys/power/mem_sleep If deep isn't selected do so and try again. You could have problems with your nvme coming out of suspend though. I got similar problems on my pinebook pro, but sadly this is all too common.
  - _zooted 5y ago
    Having come from elementaryOS I can say that Fedora 35 is awesome. So much better!
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      Having come from Debian, Ubuntu, and Manjaro I settled on what feels like the last distro I will use on my own systems: NixOS. It's not so much better, it's so much different. Every(ish) single package, every single line of configuration(ish) is under version control in a(couple) nix files. I share (most) of it between my systems. With flakes (and it's lockfile) it's a 100%(ish) deterministic system. Downside: The language is arcane to me and the tooling is dogshit. Not that I could've made it any better, but running my config repo through entre to rebuild on every write to get some promiscuous error nobody has had before sucks major D. Therefore I still have an Ubuntu container (because every desktop application targets Ubuntu) running with X11 forwarding for the few packages that aren't in nixpkgs that I wanna run. I also don't use home-manager, but chezmoi for my dotfiles. Since I want my home configuration to work on MacOS and other distros I might SSH. Atomic upgrades and downgrades are such a great feature I don't know how people can live without it now that I've experienced it. Note: The default configuration NixOS gives you is also shit, out of the box they don't ship a system like you'd want to consume it (nixos-generate-config). An anecdotal example is that Avahi isn't installed by default, which means chromecasting won't work until you figure out that you need Avahi, i18n config is shit too. So it's not all green grass, but definitely worth it, since every Nix line you write is an investment into making your experience better "forever" (I don't see NixOS going away anytime soon, very healthy activity on the project). Now after praising NixOS for awhile, let's praise the developers of all packages that are compiled into the lovely distros you all use. For me the KDE team can't get enough praise, the software is so damn good.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        > I also don't use home-manager, but chezmoi for my dotfiles. Since I want my home configuration to work on MacOS and other distros I might SSH. FYI, home manager works on MacOS just fine. I usually tell people to start with Home Manager as I think it's the best gateway drug to Nix stuff at the moment.
  - bo1024 5y ago
    You nailed it, battery is the only downside I’ve had, not awful but probably say 3 hours of video playback, or 5-6 hours of web use. Haven’t used it unplugged all that much so very rough guesses. Bigger problem with my fedora install at least is battery draining while the lid is closed. Overall great machine Edit: I may be missing software updates that improve this, no idea
    - reacharavindh 5y ago
      I very much wanted to hear about this and damn :-( Video playback must be hardware accelerated by now and be super efficient. Another worry was about low power sleep modes and waking up, and looks like it is not solved too. I might have to suck it up and buy the Mac for my needs after all. I have my trusty Linux desktop for all my big compute needs. I was hoping to make the mobile machine also run Linux, but the specific needs there (crisp display, nice battery life, Linux friendliness) seems to be an elusive goal.
      - DrBenCarson 5y ago
        * crisp display * nice battery life * Linux friendliness Not elusive at all, you can find an M1 MacBook Pro at any Apple, Best Buy, or Costco store.
        Kinrany 5y ago
        M1 are not Linux-friendly at all.
        DrBenCarson 5y ago
        I can run a Linux vm emulating x64 or aarch64 right now on M1… Not to mention zsh is the login shell out of the box… It’s more flexible that WSL2 in my opinion See https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima for a very friendly QEMU wrapper running on M1
        astrange 5y ago
        Run it in a VM. Works fine.
  - sneak 5y ago
    The screen is very low-res and the GPU is weak. This is why I don't have one. If you don't care about pixels (seems common in PC-land), this is probably a good thing re: power consumption. I look at text all day, every day, and want it to be high res. It's been high res on my Macs for half a decade, and my XPS is even better. I'll get one of these once they fix the screen.
    - aquova 5y ago
      The Framework has a 200 DPI screen. It's lower than say a MacBook, but I wouldn't consider that to be "low-res", especially in the laptop space.
    - jonaustin 5y ago
      This 'low-res' comment makes no sense, I'll never go back to 1080p, but 2256x1504 is plenty IMO for text (I live in a CLI all day pretty much).
      - gorjusborg 5y ago
        Especially on a 13" screen. I have an XPS 13 with a 4k screen and I never use it at native resolution undocked because I'd need a magnifying glass to read anything on it.
        sneak 5y ago
        You're always using it at native resolution, you're just adjusting your renderer settings. Nobody's saying your fonts should be tiny. I'm saying they should be rendered in high resolution. I have the same computer and display. I run it at 4k native but nothing is small, no magnifying glass required.
        gorjusborg 5y ago
        > You're always using it at native resolution, you're just adjusting your renderer settings. No, when I wrote 'native resolution' I meant 1:1 pixel mapping, which is pretty obvious by context. Nobody has a laptop with a CRT on it these days.
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    From what I've heard battery life is much worse on Linux than Windows. If you're willing to spend some time hacking around you can close the gap a bit, but it'll still be a gap.
    - sva_ 5y ago
      Personally I can't confirm this. I've recently replaced the battery on my 2014 Thinkpad, and on low brightness I get around 8h of battery. That is of course, while not doing a lot of compute (compiling). I don't think this was much higher, back when I used Windows all those years ago, so I'm not sure what people are saying with low battery with Linux? I don't see how Windows could get me much more? And why would it?
      - Rebelgecko 5y ago
        If you have a Thinkpad, then the issues with the Framework (CPU sleep states, needing to turn of secure boot to hibernate properly, power management issues in Framework BIOS 3.06, etc) wouldn't necessarily apply to your laptop
    - james-redwood 5y ago
      I’ve found this to be variable in my personal experience based on OS, hardware, and use of TLP.
    - shriek 5y ago
      I haven't run Windows in my Framework laptop so I can't really say if there's a difference but the issue in Linux was mostly because deep sleep wasn't enabled for some distros.
  - willmorrison 5y ago
    Battery life on mine with a pretty minimal Arch install and TTY is around 10 hours when doing light web browsing and programming. Only problems I’ve had are hardware related. The trackpad isn’t 100% reliable (sometimes clicks don’t work and I have to press hard to get it to work again) and the hinge is far too loose. Love the laptop overall.
- TallonRain 5y ago
  I'm curious what the build quality is like. I've heard some complaints about QA and reliability issues with the hardware, but I don't know anyone in person who owns one of these devices. What has your experience been like?
  - smasher164 5y ago
    I haven't had any hardware issues tbh. The only thing I would say is that the fans kick in pretty loud when doing anything remotely intensive. Even battery life has been fine, compared to my old Macbook Air. I've had to put in some work configuring drivers, since they're so new that they haven't landed in the distros yet. But NixOS makes that easy, so that's about it.
    - gorjusborg 5y ago
      Same here. I own two Framework machines and haven't had any issues so far. I also own an M1 air without any issues, but there was a class action lawsuit claiming that people were getting inordinate numbers of cracked screens (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-screen-lawsuit https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-s...). I haven't noticed inordinate fan noise running windows 10.
- _peeley 5y ago
  Exact same boat here - got my Framework a couple months ago when my Thinkpad X230 finally started showing its age, installed NixOS on it. The only disappointments so far have been battery life and heat management. I get maybe 5-6 hours from full charge, and the laptop gets super hot/noisy when sitting on anything other than a hard flat surface where the fans get maximum airflow (even using it when it's on my lap gets uncomfortable quick, and putting it on top of a blanket is out of the question).
kop316 5y ago
Does the Framework support coreboot? IIRC it does not, and I was sort of surprised to not see that in this announcement. Their github also doesn't have any mention of coreboot: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer https://github.com/FrameworkComputer And it isn't here either: https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  IIRC they said that it was a point of interest but not something they’d started work on yet.
- nrp 5y ago
  We called out "We're continuing to invest in open source firmware development, with the goal of replacing other proprietary firmware we're currently stuck with in the future too." in the blog post. Coreboot is something we're very interested in and have done experimentation around. We went with an off-the-shelf proprietary BIOS/UEFI to derisk launching the Framework Laptop on time and satisfying the core goals on it (getting a high-performance, thin, light laptop into the world that is fully repairable and upgradeable), but an open BIOS/UEFI solution is absolutely in line with our philosophy.
  - mjg59 5y ago
    Are you planning to ship systems that don't have Boot Guard enforcement enabled? I've done a couple of Coreboot ports (I'm typing from a laptop that's running my build) and the Framework is an extremely interesting target, but if Boot Guard is turned on then that becomes pretty difficult.
    - nrp 5y ago
      We haven't finalized our plans around this, but one path we have explored is a signed shim loader.
      - mjg59 5y ago
donkarma 5y ago
now lets get an open source baseband
- grishka 5y ago
  Osmocom is a thing, but no idea how good it is. I've seen articles about people running cellular networks with it.
  - p_l 5y ago
    The real issue is certification and so on. The people running small cellular networks tend to have necessary permissions or operate within certain limits. For public, general usage baseband, it will need to be at least tamper evident and you won't be able to just run your own. I'd personally be fine with auditable baseband (i.e. you can always verify what code it runs, then let's say compare to public code tree and build hashes), with possibly a signature scheme that would link builder and certifications. Then if you went to the trouble of proving you have the necessary qualifications and won't break shit, you could sign with your own certificate and take responsibility.
  - pabs3 5y ago
    Also, Qectel modems run Linux on one of the chips on the modem: https://projects.osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/ https://projects.osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/ I can't find the post right now, but there are folks reverse engineering the proprietary binaries running under Linux on the PinePhone modem (which is Qectel) and replacing them with open source versions. The Hexagon DSP is out of reach for that work though.
ignaloidas 5y ago
Side note: the language selection is stupid on the website. No, I'm not from Germany, and I don't speak German even if it's the closest country to me that you sell laptops in. Also, it's a bad practice to associate flags with languages. Or to give options that don't work after you select them. Otherwise, very nice news!
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I agree that flag != language (British Union flag for English being a prime example), but what is the next best alternative?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - flatiron 5y ago
    “Please select your ISO language code” /s
  - ignaloidas 5y ago
    Why have flags at all? Just use the native language name and a translation.
    - KeytarHero 5y ago
      If I end up on the page in a language I don't know, then how would I find the language selector? I agree that flags aren't great, but I don't know of any other solution to this problem.
      - scj 5y ago
        More problematically, in a character set you don't know! Iconography is required.
      - kilburn 5y ago
        We should push to adopt a standard iconography for "language/region menu/options". A good candidate may be a world icon (which some companies already use, e.g.: dell.com). Once there, given that the language list itself is in its own localization (or that iso codes are used to represent them, or both) you should be able to pick yours just fine.
VTimofeenko 5y ago
Excellent news, can't wait to play with the new firmware. I will echo the Fedora 35 recommendation from the article. Ran a liveusb of it for a week or so on this laptop and it was buttery smooth. All components that in the past I had mixed experiences with (wayland, pipewire) just work.
option 5y ago
I wish I could get one without Windows
- m0ngr31 5y ago
  You can
  - option 5y ago
    All configs list Win10. what am I missing? Of course I can buy with Win paying for it and then re-install.
    - COGlory 5y ago
      You want the DIY edition.
    - skrtskrt 5y ago
      Pretty sure from other discussions I have seen that it's only the DIY version that has an option for no OS, then you install Linux yourself
    - zmk5 5y ago
      This is the version you are looking for: https://frame.work/laptop-diy-edition https://frame.work/laptop-diy-edition
- pantalaimon 5y ago
  You can even get one without a drive
- option 5y ago
  You have to pay for Windows. Quote from their website: “ Base and Performance configurations ship with Windows 10 Home pre-installed and Professional ships with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed. You can also load your own operating system later, like a Linux distribution.”
  - 5y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I love these guys. I sincerely hope that they are successful and stick around. Keep up the good work!
marcodiego 5y ago
What is the reason behind closed firmware? I understand that wifi devices may operate out of the certification depending on what the firmware does, but other devices... why do they have closed firmwares?
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Probably to hide/protect corporate secrets, or if the firmware integrates proprietary code from a 3rd party it would be difficult to open source for legal reasons.
  - p_l 5y ago
    To give an example, a huge issue over all of the OpenSolaris lifetime at Sun was reportedly due to third party licensed content Solaris had by itself, which is why OpenSolaris source contained only the very base system and was stripped of certain stuff (including X11 server Xsun, iirc)
  - Shared404 5y ago
    Also in the case of Wifi/Bluetooth it seems like FCC regulations would make having open firmware difficult due to the fact that it would make it easier to allow end users to broadcast on arbitrary frequencies. This way they have deniability. ...That said, not a subject matter expert so take this with a grain of rock salt.
    - p_l 5y ago
      FCC doesn't prevent you from opening the firmware (now, trade secrets inside is another thing) - they just do not allow unlicensed devices i.e. you can't just build your own radio firmware and have it operate legally.
      - Shared404 5y ago
        So open firmware from the manufacturer is fine, but if you were to modify it and re-flash it yourself you would be breaking the law? I guess that makes sense, thanks for the clarification!
philipprk 5y ago
Really hoping for the laptop's next iteration to have a reverse T for the arrow keys. Otherwise very solid laptop, would be my first non-Mac choice.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Wow, you're right! Didn't understand how you could not have a reverse T for the arrow keys and took a look at the pictures. The up/down keys are split in half?! Why'd you make the arrow keys have different sizes?!
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    It was the design on MacBook's for almost 5 years. Apple rolled that change back in late 2020 but it will take other OEM's a while to update their available SKUs to match the Apple of today.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      My ex-boyfriend called me "insane", but I genuinely prefer ye olde 6-key arrow cluster from the Thinkpads of yore. I quickly got used to browsing with pgup and pgdown, now any keyboard without those keys adjacent to the arrows just feels wrong to me. In any case, the keyboard on the Framework is fully replaceable. If there's significant enough demand for an inverted-T cluster, you can bet there are people who will make the replacement for it (if OEM doesn't get to it first).
      - Eduard 5y ago
        And I hate the ThinkPad 6-key cluster because of accidentally hitting the pgup and pgdown buttons. I decapped both buttons because of it. Same with the the fn button next to ctrl.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Different strokes for different folks. I'm personally just glad that we were able to collectively hate the Touch Bar enough for Apple to '86 it.
floatboth 5y ago
Ooh, they use chromium ec, nice. Where is its serial console accessed? :)
656565656565 5y ago
What’s with the sticky scrolling on this site? (Safari at least)
- 656565656565 5y ago
  Add blocker was blocking cookie pop up, after disabling and acknowledging the pop up the problem disappeared even with blocker re-enabled.
trwired 5y ago
This is not related directly to the announcement, but touches on a thing that infuriates me to no end - for some reason the site assumed that because I live in the EU and relatively close to German border, I speak German and presented the site in that language. Despite my high-school teacher's heroic efforts, I can at best understand a few basic phrases. I didn't even know what to click in the cookie pop-up to kindly ask them to not track me. Language auto detection^W assumption is such an anti-feature. /rant edit: I see I am not alone, who got hit by this.
- uoaei 5y ago
  I'm surprised things like "preferred language" aren't built into HTTP yet, seems to have a natural home in the user-agent corner of that world.
  - U1F984 5y ago
    There is the Accept-Language header: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
  - dskloet 5y ago
    I guess this is sarcasm but if not: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
    - uoaei 5y ago
      Surprise! Not everyone on HN is in webdev. I don't know much about how this all works but surveyed my user-agent-switcher utility and found no such language options.
      - 4cao 5y ago
        No need for any add-ons or extensions, you can set it the browser directly, although most websites these days ignore it anyway.
yuuta 5y ago
Good news for learning as well. I had never seen an open source EC firmware before, and I'm curious about what's inside that.
- quesera 5y ago
  See also: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
temp12913231 5y ago
ohazi 5y ago
I've been so happy to see what Framework has been doing lately, and really want to support them, but I already have a desktop as my primary computer and two Thinkpads that are already set up nicely, but that I rarely use. I moved from 15" laptops to 14" when Lenovo added the numpad on the larger variant, and 14" is about as small as I want to go. I kind of want to buy a framework though, just to support them? But I have no use for another laptop, let alone a small 12" one! Should I get one anyway because, what the hell, why not? Should I wait and then jump on one if/when they release a larger model? Anybody else have similar feelings? Edit to add: I also have one of the last Thinkpad models that support S3 sleep (T480 -- within a model or two, I think?), which is currently super critical for Linux... I need to be able to close the lid and come back after a week. It's easy to blame the manufacturers for this, but the consistent answer seems to be "Intel's Tiger Lake platform does not support S3 sleep," and all of the system builders base their work on what Intel's reference platform does. So short of going to extreme effort to hack it together themselves (something that is likely not their specialty), reasonable sleep behavior is not going to be an option unless Intel brings S3 back, or does work to improve the S0ix states. I absolutely do not want to support the no-more-S3 clusterfuck right now.
- jrop 5y ago
  Buy someone else in your circles a Framework Laptop who needs a laptop! Or gift them one of your ThinkPads and get yourself a framework!
- gtsop 5y ago
  Similar feelings, yes. I don't mind the size at all. It's just that I've got a sweet thinkpad x13 already. My next laptop though, surely a framework (if they are still around)
- mmastrac 5y ago
  Adding my vote: I'll definitely jump on a Framework 14+" here. My eyes cannot work well w/a 13" without glasses. If I had better near vision (will be all over the lens-softening eye drops) it would be a different story.
  - 5y ago
alexott 5y ago
Just a suggestion for site - separate language from currency. For example, for me it’s much faster to read in English, but I’m paying in euro…
junon 5y ago
Note to the website developers: currency != language. I'm an American in Germany. My handle of the language isn't (yet) great, thus I still work with English primarily. However, I pay in EUR exclusively. Just the same (not that it appears to be a problem with Framework, though it's easy to make the same mistake), country != language.
- random_walker 5y ago
  This! I live in Belgium, primarily English speaker (not native), pay in EUR and my understanding of local language is not great. Lots of websites are so difficult to use without Google translate. Please treat Currency != Language != Country. Give options to change these.
taf2 5y ago
I'm hoping for a 16" or 15" version and then i'm in
chrsw 5y ago
It's getting harder to resist buying one of these.
akomtu 5y ago
I wish frame.work offered CUDA compatible GPUs and/or AMD CPUs.
- prophesi 5y ago
  On the bright side, there have been reports of people getting their Framework to work with an external GPU.
ad8e 5y ago
I checked the keyboard debouncing logic [0] and it was fine. Some keyboards from other manufacturers, notably Lenovo Thinkpads, have absurd debouncing algorithms that scramble keys or add delays, so it's good to see Framework has a correct solution. [0]: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/blob/6e38e82b9553240820c241c80a7d94fdc3ae5914/common/keyboard_scan.c#L510 https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/blob...
- poyu 5y ago
  Debounce is an interesting topic[0], I tend to use hardware debounce whenever possible on my own projects. [0]: https://hackaday.com/2010/11/09/debounce-code-one-post-to-rule-them-all/ https://hackaday.com/2010/11/09/debounce-code-one-post-to-ru...
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Don't accept a keypress if the same key was previously pressed less than x milliseconds ago. What else is there to know about debouncing?
    - talideon 5y ago
      The problem is that you're dealing with an analogue signal. The gold standard for debouncing because of that is a low-pass filter, which is implementable by a resistor and capacitor, and way more reliable (and responsive) than any software solution.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        Can you describe a case in which rejecting a duplicate keypress that arrives within a specified number of milliseconds is ineffective, unreliable, or even suboptimal? A lowpass filter is an empirical hack, not a gold standard. It has multiple disadvantages; rather than being "responsive," it adds latency to the initial input for no good reason, and it affects both rising and falling edges equally, again for no good reason. It also requires the addition of unnecessary physical components.
fancy_pantser 5y ago
A thread from two weeks ago gave me pause; I will wait a couple iterations until considering a Framework laptop to see if at least the software issues can be resolved and observe how the team navigates the waters. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430
- COGlory 5y ago
  That thread does not mirror any of my experiences at all, and I've been using the laptop since it was launched.
- nrp 5y ago
  We took that feedback and wrote step-by-step guides on setting up a few popular Linux distributions, calling out what items work out of the box and what needs manual workarounds. For now, we recommend Fedora 35 as the best distro to use where everything works out of the box, and Ubuntu 21.10 as a second option that works though requires some workarounds. * https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+35+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop/108 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+35+Installation+on+th... * https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop/109 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on...
TranquilMarmot 5y ago
I bought a Framework for personal use and love it so much. I have it running Windows 11, if only because it was easier to get longer battery life out of it without doing endless tweaks on a *nix OS. Upsides: - Hardware feels VERY premium and nice. It's not too heavy. You'd never guess it's the first laptop made by a new company. - Keyboard is a pleasure to type on. I did nanowrimo last year on it and wrote ~60k words and never had a complaint. - Company and its mission are awesome! Support team is very helpful and their communication has been great. - Guides on the website for opening it up and replacing/fixing parts is amazing. If anything I hope I can keep this thing running for many many years. - Choosing what ports you want via the expansion cards is really nice (USB-C charging on BOTH sides of the laptop?!?! amazing) Downsides: - Battery could be better. I get probably 3-6 hours on Win11 depending on what I'm doing. - It can get HOT. I have the i7 processor; doing light dev work with a few Docker images running and VSCode with a medium-sized Node project open, it gets uncomfortably warm on my lap and the fan occasionally spins up. I played through Inscryption on it (awesome indie game, built in Unity) and the fan was EXTREMELY loud during the whole thing because it was making heavy work of the integrated graphics card. Just browsing the web or watching videos it is cool and silent, though. - Because of issues with Tiger Lake, S3 sleep isn't supported so if it sleeps when you close the lid, the battery will continue to drain for a bit and eventually it'll go into hibernation. I set mine to just go into hibernation when the lid is closed which saves the battery more if I'm on-the-go. It takes around 11 seconds to wake from hibernation which isn't bad. Not an issue with the Framework specifically, I think this affects all Tiger Lake processors. - Expansion cards are a bit of a novelty for me. I have 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1X HDMI and don't see myself changing that any time soon and can't really think of any expansion cards I'd need in the future. Looking forward the question at the top of my mind is "will this actually be upgradeable?"... if they ever release AMD or ARM-based processors, it'd be great to try them out, but you'd have to swap out the whole mainboard which is a bummer (but understandable given the hardware constraints). Different screen sizes would require a whole new laptop but at least you could bring along the internals. A touch screen would be really nice.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  Thanks for this detailed write up of your experience with it. I love what they're doing but don't need a new laptop at the moment. On the expansion card front, I think I tweeted to them about doing some kind of card bay to put a USB dongle in.
yellowapple 5y ago
As if I didn't have enough reason to be happy with my decision to buy a Framework, here they are giving me yet more reasons.
teddyh 5y ago
Great! So how’s that RYF certification coming?
- kdtsh 5y ago
  Are there any OEM laptops with RYF certification? The only ones I can see on ryf.fsf.org are 10 year old refurbished and re-branded (and very expensive) Thinkpads.
- wmf 5y ago
  It's impossible for recent x86 systems to be RYF certified.
weystrom 5y ago
I wish they'd ship US ANSI keyboard in Europe, I would totally pick one up.
- nrp 5y ago
  The International English keyboard option is ANSI. It is US English with a Euro symbol and Alt Gr.
  - weystrom 5y ago
    Oh that's actually great, ot's just I've been burned before by German retailers with "English International" on ISO keyboards. I might go do some shopping then. Say hello to Linus btw, his video has done marvels to deservedly promote your product.
i5heu 5y ago
Is there any chance to know when frame.work sells laptops with 12th gen Intel processors?
stbtrax 5y ago
Man I remember reading this CEO's hobby blog a decade ago. Glad to see him doing cool stuff https://eclecti.cc/ https://eclecti.cc/
snambi 5y ago
This is one company I really like. Hope they offer an ARM based laptop soon.
jhallenworld 5y ago
I've extracted the Chromium-EC encryption functions, they are convenient for signing / verifying firmware on other platforms. Chromium-ec is nice for example code like this: https://github.com/jhallen/rsa-verify https://github.com/jhallen/rsa-verify On the other hand, if you are looking for some generic embedded system code all in C, here is our library (it's been cleaned up for ATSAM and STM32 targets, but we've used in on many other platforms): https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs I think it's most unique feature is the embedded schema-based database- so you can save things like calibration and configuration information in local flash memory (think protocol buffers, but for tiny systems). Recently I've been adding device drivers for all common devices I can find on break-out boards from the Arduino and Raspberry-PI communities.
hailvectron 5y ago
Things I'm hoping to see in time for a Framework machine to become my next laptop: - AMD processor options - Keyboards with a trackpoint - decades of ThinkPaddery have conditioned me; I regularly use a Dell touchpad-equipped laptop & contemporary Mac laptop and still pine for a trackpoint. Very personal preference, I know, but hopefully the Framework Marketplace comes to provide this. - Proper 14" HiDPI screen - Long battery life under Linux I'm impressed with what they've been able to do and really hope they become sustainably successful!
- arnaudsm 5y ago
  You're describing the Thinkpad T14S. It's a real shame it has soldered RAM, I hope Framework's success will show the industry there's an actual need for this.
  - ayushnix 5y ago
    > You're describing the Thinkpad T14S. It doesn't seem to have a proper 14 inch HiDPI display. 1080p on 14 inches usually needs anywhere from 1.2x to 1.4x scaling and 4K would need around 2.5x scaling.
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      Depends on the OS. With Windows 4K on 14" does need 2.5x scaling, but it's ideal on Linux; this is what I use.
  - hailvectron 5y ago
    I guess you're right, hadn't realized the AMD Thinkpads were now available with better than 1080p screens. Totally agree on the soldered RAM crap. Also would be great to buy from a more consumer-friendly company like Framework, especially if they are going to do things like support coreboot.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  > - Proper 14" HiDPI screen I can't stress this enough. The display on the Framework can't do integer scaling and so almost everyone who intends to use an external monitor with the Framework can't do that on Linux without extremely annoying issues such as significantly higher input latency, GUI apps behaving abnormally, and not being able to use an external monitor and the laptop screen simultaneously. I don't care if they release Coreboot for the Framework, it's useless with its screen.
toastal 5y ago
Call me when you get better display panels. Hopefully Linus Sebastian's obsession with OLED will help push the display is a higher-end direction -- or at least have the option.

1168 points by aram 5y ago

I've been running NixOS on my Framework for the last few months, and I've been really happy with it. I initially got it so I'd have viable hardware to do osdev on, so learning that they are going to open-source its firmware makes me even more happy.

rnk 5y ago
Seems too good to be true. Reasonable prices, upgradable, no soldered ram. So has it been a reliable Linux laptop, what's the battery life with your options?
- dheera 5y ago
  I've been using a Framework laptop for a month on Ubuntu 21.10 and pretty happy with it. Some hiccups but mostly answered by digging through forums. Battery life in operation is excellent, but it does drain 30% in 8 hours when on suspend which is a bit much. Not a dealbreaker but hope this can be solved.
  - addcninblue 5y ago
    Out of my element here, but would be curious to see if this is something solvable in firmware (now open-sourced!) or if it's a hardware problem to begin with (power states? etc). Edit: Also curious if this issue is generally a hardware or firmware issue in most laptops, or if it's a mix of both.
    - 4cao 5y ago
      Could be caused by Modern Standby (by default newer laptops remain on even when nominally off, which has been known to cause issues). Some more details here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145891-how-check-if-modern-standby-supported-windows-10-a.html https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145891-how-check-if-mode...
  - sydney6 5y ago
    I can imagine that the power draw in S3 could come from having (replacable) DDR Memory instead of (mostly soldered) LP-DDR Memory. edit: typo.
    - bestouff 5y ago
      The problem is that current Intel laptops don't use S3 anymore, they use S0ix a.k.a. "modern standby", an abomination where the CPU doesn't really sleep and the battery drains fast. Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. all have the same problem.
      - jpetso 5y ago
        S0ix has stronger requirements on the "correct" interaction between firmware/BIOS and OS, it offloads more work to the OS. Poorly implemented S0ix will drain the battery faster, but correctly implemented S0ix is as good as S3 or even better. Lenovo put out a buggy S3 implementation on some systems that hasn't been tested well because it's only an optional "Linux suspend" setting. Drains twice as fast as Linux with correctly implemented S0ix. And the worst thing is, nobody except Lenovo do can fix it because it's all on the BIOS level, and their China-based firmware team has other priorities. Well-implemented S3 is nice. But it's going to disappear. Both Intel and AMD are switching away with full force, vendors won't have S3 options in the BIOS going forward and the ones that remain will likely suck. On the other hand, S0ix support is coming together even on AMD platforms which were a little late to the party. Once it's working decently, I'd rather trust my OS than my laptop manufacturer's firmware team to suspend components correctly.
      - sydney6 5y ago
        I have a Thinkpad X1 from 2018 and by default it came with S0ix enabled and Lenovo later on added the S3 sleep state option through a BIOS update, called "Linux compatibility something".. Before that, one had to manually edit the DSD table to get rid of this evil burning-sleeping-laptop-in-backpack-feature called S0ix. Does the Framework Laptop, or other popular models from the other manfacturers you mentioned, not have a S3 sleep state option these days, i.e. S0ix only?
  - throwaway2568 5y ago
    High battery drain during standby on Linux can be due to the system not entering the proper sleep state. I had this happen to me on an AMD machine lately, in that case disabling secure boot solved the issue. Here is a pretty detailed blog post in checking if that is the problem and how to deal with it on intel systems https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-linux https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...
    - tata71 5y ago
      > disabling secure boot solved the issue Lovely...
      - dheera 5y ago
        Isn't secure boot just a Microsoft thing to try to stymie competition by preventing booting OSes other than Windows?
        AndroidKitKat 5y ago
        Debian seems to indicate otherwise: https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
  - BlackLotus89 5y ago
    > cat /sys/power/mem_sleep If deep isn't selected do so and try again. You could have problems with your nvme coming out of suspend though. I got similar problems on my pinebook pro, but sadly this is all too common.
- _zooted 5y ago
  Having come from elementaryOS I can say that Fedora 35 is awesome. So much better!
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    Having come from Debian, Ubuntu, and Manjaro I settled on what feels like the last distro I will use on my own systems: NixOS. It's not so much better, it's so much different. Every(ish) single package, every single line of configuration(ish) is under version control in a(couple) nix files. I share (most) of it between my systems. With flakes (and it's lockfile) it's a 100%(ish) deterministic system. Downside: The language is arcane to me and the tooling is dogshit. Not that I could've made it any better, but running my config repo through entre to rebuild on every write to get some promiscuous error nobody has had before sucks major D. Therefore I still have an Ubuntu container (because every desktop application targets Ubuntu) running with X11 forwarding for the few packages that aren't in nixpkgs that I wanna run. I also don't use home-manager, but chezmoi for my dotfiles. Since I want my home configuration to work on MacOS and other distros I might SSH. Atomic upgrades and downgrades are such a great feature I don't know how people can live without it now that I've experienced it. Note: The default configuration NixOS gives you is also shit, out of the box they don't ship a system like you'd want to consume it (nixos-generate-config). An anecdotal example is that Avahi isn't installed by default, which means chromecasting won't work until you figure out that you need Avahi, i18n config is shit too. So it's not all green grass, but definitely worth it, since every Nix line you write is an investment into making your experience better "forever" (I don't see NixOS going away anytime soon, very healthy activity on the project). Now after praising NixOS for awhile, let's praise the developers of all packages that are compiled into the lovely distros you all use. For me the KDE team can't get enough praise, the software is so damn good.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      > I also don't use home-manager, but chezmoi for my dotfiles. Since I want my home configuration to work on MacOS and other distros I might SSH. FYI, home manager works on MacOS just fine. I usually tell people to start with Home Manager as I think it's the best gateway drug to Nix stuff at the moment.
- bo1024 5y ago
  You nailed it, battery is the only downside I’ve had, not awful but probably say 3 hours of video playback, or 5-6 hours of web use. Haven’t used it unplugged all that much so very rough guesses. Bigger problem with my fedora install at least is battery draining while the lid is closed. Overall great machine Edit: I may be missing software updates that improve this, no idea
  - reacharavindh 5y ago
    I very much wanted to hear about this and damn :-( Video playback must be hardware accelerated by now and be super efficient. Another worry was about low power sleep modes and waking up, and looks like it is not solved too. I might have to suck it up and buy the Mac for my needs after all. I have my trusty Linux desktop for all my big compute needs. I was hoping to make the mobile machine also run Linux, but the specific needs there (crisp display, nice battery life, Linux friendliness) seems to be an elusive goal.
    - DrBenCarson 5y ago
      * crisp display * nice battery life * Linux friendliness Not elusive at all, you can find an M1 MacBook Pro at any Apple, Best Buy, or Costco store.
      - Kinrany 5y ago
        M1 are not Linux-friendly at all.
        DrBenCarson 5y ago
        I can run a Linux vm emulating x64 or aarch64 right now on M1… Not to mention zsh is the login shell out of the box… It’s more flexible that WSL2 in my opinion See https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima for a very friendly QEMU wrapper running on M1
        astrange 5y ago
        Run it in a VM. Works fine.
- sneak 5y ago
  The screen is very low-res and the GPU is weak. This is why I don't have one. If you don't care about pixels (seems common in PC-land), this is probably a good thing re: power consumption. I look at text all day, every day, and want it to be high res. It's been high res on my Macs for half a decade, and my XPS is even better. I'll get one of these once they fix the screen.
  - aquova 5y ago
    The Framework has a 200 DPI screen. It's lower than say a MacBook, but I wouldn't consider that to be "low-res", especially in the laptop space.
  - jonaustin 5y ago
    This 'low-res' comment makes no sense, I'll never go back to 1080p, but 2256x1504 is plenty IMO for text (I live in a CLI all day pretty much).
    - gorjusborg 5y ago
      Especially on a 13" screen. I have an XPS 13 with a 4k screen and I never use it at native resolution undocked because I'd need a magnifying glass to read anything on it.
      - sneak 5y ago
        You're always using it at native resolution, you're just adjusting your renderer settings. Nobody's saying your fonts should be tiny. I'm saying they should be rendered in high resolution. I have the same computer and display. I run it at 4k native but nothing is small, no magnifying glass required.
        gorjusborg 5y ago
        > You're always using it at native resolution, you're just adjusting your renderer settings. No, when I wrote 'native resolution' I meant 1:1 pixel mapping, which is pretty obvious by context. Nobody has a laptop with a CRT on it these days.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  From what I've heard battery life is much worse on Linux than Windows. If you're willing to spend some time hacking around you can close the gap a bit, but it'll still be a gap.
  - sva_ 5y ago
    Personally I can't confirm this. I've recently replaced the battery on my 2014 Thinkpad, and on low brightness I get around 8h of battery. That is of course, while not doing a lot of compute (compiling). I don't think this was much higher, back when I used Windows all those years ago, so I'm not sure what people are saying with low battery with Linux? I don't see how Windows could get me much more? And why would it?
    - Rebelgecko 5y ago
      If you have a Thinkpad, then the issues with the Framework (CPU sleep states, needing to turn of secure boot to hibernate properly, power management issues in Framework BIOS 3.06, etc) wouldn't necessarily apply to your laptop
  - james-redwood 5y ago
    I’ve found this to be variable in my personal experience based on OS, hardware, and use of TLP.
  - shriek 5y ago
    I haven't run Windows in my Framework laptop so I can't really say if there's a difference but the issue in Linux was mostly because deep sleep wasn't enabled for some distros.
- willmorrison 5y ago
  Battery life on mine with a pretty minimal Arch install and TTY is around 10 hours when doing light web browsing and programming. Only problems I’ve had are hardware related. The trackpad isn’t 100% reliable (sometimes clicks don’t work and I have to press hard to get it to work again) and the hinge is far too loose. Love the laptop overall.
TallonRain 5y ago
I'm curious what the build quality is like. I've heard some complaints about QA and reliability issues with the hardware, but I don't know anyone in person who owns one of these devices. What has your experience been like?
- smasher164 5y ago
  I haven't had any hardware issues tbh. The only thing I would say is that the fans kick in pretty loud when doing anything remotely intensive. Even battery life has been fine, compared to my old Macbook Air. I've had to put in some work configuring drivers, since they're so new that they haven't landed in the distros yet. But NixOS makes that easy, so that's about it.
  - gorjusborg 5y ago
    Same here. I own two Framework machines and haven't had any issues so far. I also own an M1 air without any issues, but there was a class action lawsuit claiming that people were getting inordinate numbers of cracked screens (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-screen-lawsuit https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-s...). I haven't noticed inordinate fan noise running windows 10.
_peeley 5y ago
Exact same boat here - got my Framework a couple months ago when my Thinkpad X230 finally started showing its age, installed NixOS on it. The only disappointments so far have been battery life and heat management. I get maybe 5-6 hours from full charge, and the laptop gets super hot/noisy when sitting on anything other than a hard flat surface where the fans get maximum airflow (even using it when it's on my lap gets uncomfortable quick, and putting it on top of a blanket is out of the question).

kop316 5y ago

Does the Framework support coreboot? IIRC it does not, and I was sort of surprised to not see that in this announcement. Their github also doesn't have any mention of coreboot: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer https://github.com/FrameworkComputer And it isn't here either: https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html

kitsunesoba 5y ago
IIRC they said that it was a point of interest but not something they’d started work on yet.
nrp 5y ago
We called out "We're continuing to invest in open source firmware development, with the goal of replacing other proprietary firmware we're currently stuck with in the future too." in the blog post. Coreboot is something we're very interested in and have done experimentation around. We went with an off-the-shelf proprietary BIOS/UEFI to derisk launching the Framework Laptop on time and satisfying the core goals on it (getting a high-performance, thin, light laptop into the world that is fully repairable and upgradeable), but an open BIOS/UEFI solution is absolutely in line with our philosophy.
- mjg59 5y ago
  Are you planning to ship systems that don't have Boot Guard enforcement enabled? I've done a couple of Coreboot ports (I'm typing from a laptop that's running my build) and the Framework is an extremely interesting target, but if Boot Guard is turned on then that becomes pretty difficult.
  - nrp 5y ago
    We haven't finalized our plans around this, but one path we have explored is a signed shim loader.
    - mjg59 5y ago

donkarma 5y ago

now lets get an open source baseband

grishka 5y ago
Osmocom is a thing, but no idea how good it is. I've seen articles about people running cellular networks with it.
- p_l 5y ago
  The real issue is certification and so on. The people running small cellular networks tend to have necessary permissions or operate within certain limits. For public, general usage baseband, it will need to be at least tamper evident and you won't be able to just run your own. I'd personally be fine with auditable baseband (i.e. you can always verify what code it runs, then let's say compare to public code tree and build hashes), with possibly a signature scheme that would link builder and certifications. Then if you went to the trouble of proving you have the necessary qualifications and won't break shit, you could sign with your own certificate and take responsibility.
- pabs3 5y ago
  Also, Qectel modems run Linux on one of the chips on the modem: https://projects.osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/ https://projects.osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/ I can't find the post right now, but there are folks reverse engineering the proprietary binaries running under Linux on the PinePhone modem (which is Qectel) and replacing them with open source versions. The Hexagon DSP is out of reach for that work though.

ignaloidas 5y ago

Side note: the language selection is stupid on the website. No, I'm not from Germany, and I don't speak German even if it's the closest country to me that you sell laptops in. Also, it's a bad practice to associate flags with languages. Or to give options that don't work after you select them. Otherwise, very nice news!

kingcharles 5y ago
I agree that flag != language (British Union flag for English being a prime example), but what is the next best alternative?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- flatiron 5y ago
  “Please select your ISO language code” /s
- ignaloidas 5y ago
  Why have flags at all? Just use the native language name and a translation.
  - KeytarHero 5y ago
    If I end up on the page in a language I don't know, then how would I find the language selector? I agree that flags aren't great, but I don't know of any other solution to this problem.
    - scj 5y ago
      More problematically, in a character set you don't know! Iconography is required.
    - kilburn 5y ago
      We should push to adopt a standard iconography for "language/region menu/options". A good candidate may be a world icon (which some companies already use, e.g.: dell.com). Once there, given that the language list itself is in its own localization (or that iso codes are used to represent them, or both) you should be able to pick yours just fine.

VTimofeenko 5y ago

Excellent news, can't wait to play with the new firmware. I will echo the Fedora 35 recommendation from the article. Ran a liveusb of it for a week or so on this laptop and it was buttery smooth. All components that in the past I had mixed experiences with (wayland, pipewire) just work.

option 5y ago

I wish I could get one without Windows

m0ngr31 5y ago
You can
- option 5y ago
  All configs list Win10. what am I missing? Of course I can buy with Win paying for it and then re-install.
  - COGlory 5y ago
    You want the DIY edition.
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    Pretty sure from other discussions I have seen that it's only the DIY version that has an option for no OS, then you install Linux yourself
  - zmk5 5y ago
    This is the version you are looking for: https://frame.work/laptop-diy-edition https://frame.work/laptop-diy-edition
pantalaimon 5y ago
You can even get one without a drive
option 5y ago
You have to pay for Windows. Quote from their website: “ Base and Performance configurations ship with Windows 10 Home pre-installed and Professional ships with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed. You can also load your own operating system later, like a Linux distribution.”
- 5y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I love these guys. I sincerely hope that they are successful and stick around. Keep up the good work!

marcodiego 5y ago

What is the reason behind closed firmware? I understand that wifi devices may operate out of the certification depending on what the firmware does, but other devices... why do they have closed firmwares?

HideousKojima 5y ago
Probably to hide/protect corporate secrets, or if the firmware integrates proprietary code from a 3rd party it would be difficult to open source for legal reasons.
- p_l 5y ago
  To give an example, a huge issue over all of the OpenSolaris lifetime at Sun was reportedly due to third party licensed content Solaris had by itself, which is why OpenSolaris source contained only the very base system and was stripped of certain stuff (including X11 server Xsun, iirc)
- Shared404 5y ago
  Also in the case of Wifi/Bluetooth it seems like FCC regulations would make having open firmware difficult due to the fact that it would make it easier to allow end users to broadcast on arbitrary frequencies. This way they have deniability. ...That said, not a subject matter expert so take this with a grain of rock salt.
  - p_l 5y ago
    FCC doesn't prevent you from opening the firmware (now, trade secrets inside is another thing) - they just do not allow unlicensed devices i.e. you can't just build your own radio firmware and have it operate legally.
    - Shared404 5y ago
      So open firmware from the manufacturer is fine, but if you were to modify it and re-flash it yourself you would be breaking the law? I guess that makes sense, thanks for the clarification!

philipprk 5y ago

Really hoping for the laptop's next iteration to have a reverse T for the arrow keys. Otherwise very solid laptop, would be my first non-Mac choice.

capableweb 5y ago
Wow, you're right! Didn't understand how you could not have a reverse T for the arrow keys and took a look at the pictures. The up/down keys are split in half?! Why'd you make the arrow keys have different sizes?!
- yurishimo 5y ago
  It was the design on MacBook's for almost 5 years. Apple rolled that change back in late 2020 but it will take other OEM's a while to update their available SKUs to match the Apple of today.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    My ex-boyfriend called me "insane", but I genuinely prefer ye olde 6-key arrow cluster from the Thinkpads of yore. I quickly got used to browsing with pgup and pgdown, now any keyboard without those keys adjacent to the arrows just feels wrong to me. In any case, the keyboard on the Framework is fully replaceable. If there's significant enough demand for an inverted-T cluster, you can bet there are people who will make the replacement for it (if OEM doesn't get to it first).
    - Eduard 5y ago
      And I hate the ThinkPad 6-key cluster because of accidentally hitting the pgup and pgdown buttons. I decapped both buttons because of it. Same with the the fn button next to ctrl.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        Different strokes for different folks. I'm personally just glad that we were able to collectively hate the Touch Bar enough for Apple to '86 it.

floatboth 5y ago

Ooh, they use chromium ec, nice. Where is its serial console accessed? :)

656565656565 5y ago

What’s with the sticky scrolling on this site? (Safari at least)

656565656565 5y ago
Add blocker was blocking cookie pop up, after disabling and acknowledging the pop up the problem disappeared even with blocker re-enabled.

trwired 5y ago

This is not related directly to the announcement, but touches on a thing that infuriates me to no end - for some reason the site assumed that because I live in the EU and relatively close to German border, I speak German and presented the site in that language. Despite my high-school teacher's heroic efforts, I can at best understand a few basic phrases. I didn't even know what to click in the cookie pop-up to kindly ask them to not track me. Language auto detection^W assumption is such an anti-feature. /rant edit: I see I am not alone, who got hit by this.

uoaei 5y ago
I'm surprised things like "preferred language" aren't built into HTTP yet, seems to have a natural home in the user-agent corner of that world.
- U1F984 5y ago
  There is the Accept-Language header: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
- dskloet 5y ago
  I guess this is sarcasm but if not: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
  - uoaei 5y ago
    Surprise! Not everyone on HN is in webdev. I don't know much about how this all works but surveyed my user-agent-switcher utility and found no such language options.
    - 4cao 5y ago
      No need for any add-ons or extensions, you can set it the browser directly, although most websites these days ignore it anyway.

yuuta 5y ago

Good news for learning as well. I had never seen an open source EC firmware before, and I'm curious about what's inside that.

quesera 5y ago
See also: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

temp12913231 5y ago

ohazi 5y ago

I've been so happy to see what Framework has been doing lately, and really want to support them, but I already have a desktop as my primary computer and two Thinkpads that are already set up nicely, but that I rarely use. I moved from 15" laptops to 14" when Lenovo added the numpad on the larger variant, and 14" is about as small as I want to go. I kind of want to buy a framework though, just to support them? But I have no use for another laptop, let alone a small 12" one! Should I get one anyway because, what the hell, why not? Should I wait and then jump on one if/when they release a larger model? Anybody else have similar feelings? Edit to add: I also have one of the last Thinkpad models that support S3 sleep (T480 -- within a model or two, I think?), which is currently super critical for Linux... I need to be able to close the lid and come back after a week. It's easy to blame the manufacturers for this, but the consistent answer seems to be "Intel's Tiger Lake platform does not support S3 sleep," and all of the system builders base their work on what Intel's reference platform does. So short of going to extreme effort to hack it together themselves (something that is likely not their specialty), reasonable sleep behavior is not going to be an option unless Intel brings S3 back, or does work to improve the S0ix states. I absolutely do not want to support the no-more-S3 clusterfuck right now.

jrop 5y ago
Buy someone else in your circles a Framework Laptop who needs a laptop! Or gift them one of your ThinkPads and get yourself a framework!
gtsop 5y ago
Similar feelings, yes. I don't mind the size at all. It's just that I've got a sweet thinkpad x13 already. My next laptop though, surely a framework (if they are still around)
mmastrac 5y ago
Adding my vote: I'll definitely jump on a Framework 14+" here. My eyes cannot work well w/a 13" without glasses. If I had better near vision (will be all over the lens-softening eye drops) it would be a different story.
- 5y ago

alexott 5y ago

Just a suggestion for site - separate language from currency. For example, for me it’s much faster to read in English, but I’m paying in euro…

junon 5y ago

Note to the website developers: currency != language. I'm an American in Germany. My handle of the language isn't (yet) great, thus I still work with English primarily. However, I pay in EUR exclusively. Just the same (not that it appears to be a problem with Framework, though it's easy to make the same mistake), country != language.

random_walker 5y ago
This! I live in Belgium, primarily English speaker (not native), pay in EUR and my understanding of local language is not great. Lots of websites are so difficult to use without Google translate. Please treat Currency != Language != Country. Give options to change these.

taf2 5y ago

I'm hoping for a 16" or 15" version and then i'm in

chrsw 5y ago

It's getting harder to resist buying one of these.

akomtu 5y ago

I wish frame.work offered CUDA compatible GPUs and/or AMD CPUs.

prophesi 5y ago
On the bright side, there have been reports of people getting their Framework to work with an external GPU.

ad8e 5y ago

I checked the keyboard debouncing logic [0] and it was fine. Some keyboards from other manufacturers, notably Lenovo Thinkpads, have absurd debouncing algorithms that scramble keys or add delays, so it's good to see Framework has a correct solution. [0]: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/blob/6e38e82b9553240820c241c80a7d94fdc3ae5914/common/keyboard_scan.c#L510 https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/blob...

poyu 5y ago
Debounce is an interesting topic[0], I tend to use hardware debounce whenever possible on my own projects. [0]: https://hackaday.com/2010/11/09/debounce-code-one-post-to-rule-them-all/ https://hackaday.com/2010/11/09/debounce-code-one-post-to-ru...
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Don't accept a keypress if the same key was previously pressed less than x milliseconds ago. What else is there to know about debouncing?
  - talideon 5y ago
    The problem is that you're dealing with an analogue signal. The gold standard for debouncing because of that is a low-pass filter, which is implementable by a resistor and capacitor, and way more reliable (and responsive) than any software solution.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      Can you describe a case in which rejecting a duplicate keypress that arrives within a specified number of milliseconds is ineffective, unreliable, or even suboptimal? A lowpass filter is an empirical hack, not a gold standard. It has multiple disadvantages; rather than being "responsive," it adds latency to the initial input for no good reason, and it affects both rising and falling edges equally, again for no good reason. It also requires the addition of unnecessary physical components.

fancy_pantser 5y ago

A thread from two weeks ago gave me pause; I will wait a couple iterations until considering a Framework laptop to see if at least the software issues can be resolved and observe how the team navigates the waters. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29806430

COGlory 5y ago
That thread does not mirror any of my experiences at all, and I've been using the laptop since it was launched.
nrp 5y ago
We took that feedback and wrote step-by-step guides on setting up a few popular Linux distributions, calling out what items work out of the box and what needs manual workarounds. For now, we recommend Fedora 35 as the best distro to use where everything works out of the box, and Ubuntu 21.10 as a second option that works though requires some workarounds. * https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+35+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop/108 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+35+Installation+on+th... * https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop/109 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+21.10+Installation+on...

TranquilMarmot 5y ago

I bought a Framework for personal use and love it so much. I have it running Windows 11, if only because it was easier to get longer battery life out of it without doing endless tweaks on a *nix OS. Upsides: - Hardware feels VERY premium and nice. It's not too heavy. You'd never guess it's the first laptop made by a new company. - Keyboard is a pleasure to type on. I did nanowrimo last year on it and wrote ~60k words and never had a complaint. - Company and its mission are awesome! Support team is very helpful and their communication has been great. - Guides on the website for opening it up and replacing/fixing parts is amazing. If anything I hope I can keep this thing running for many many years. - Choosing what ports you want via the expansion cards is really nice (USB-C charging on BOTH sides of the laptop?!?! amazing) Downsides: - Battery could be better. I get probably 3-6 hours on Win11 depending on what I'm doing. - It can get HOT. I have the i7 processor; doing light dev work with a few Docker images running and VSCode with a medium-sized Node project open, it gets uncomfortably warm on my lap and the fan occasionally spins up. I played through Inscryption on it (awesome indie game, built in Unity) and the fan was EXTREMELY loud during the whole thing because it was making heavy work of the integrated graphics card. Just browsing the web or watching videos it is cool and silent, though. - Because of issues with Tiger Lake, S3 sleep isn't supported so if it sleeps when you close the lid, the battery will continue to drain for a bit and eventually it'll go into hibernation. I set mine to just go into hibernation when the lid is closed which saves the battery more if I'm on-the-go. It takes around 11 seconds to wake from hibernation which isn't bad. Not an issue with the Framework specifically, I think this affects all Tiger Lake processors. - Expansion cards are a bit of a novelty for me. I have 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1X HDMI and don't see myself changing that any time soon and can't really think of any expansion cards I'd need in the future. Looking forward the question at the top of my mind is "will this actually be upgradeable?"... if they ever release AMD or ARM-based processors, it'd be great to try them out, but you'd have to swap out the whole mainboard which is a bummer (but understandable given the hardware constraints). Different screen sizes would require a whole new laptop but at least you could bring along the internals. A touch screen would be really nice.

JohnTHaller 5y ago
Thanks for this detailed write up of your experience with it. I love what they're doing but don't need a new laptop at the moment. On the expansion card front, I think I tweeted to them about doing some kind of card bay to put a USB dongle in.

yellowapple 5y ago

As if I didn't have enough reason to be happy with my decision to buy a Framework, here they are giving me yet more reasons.

teddyh 5y ago

Great! So how’s that RYF certification coming?

kdtsh 5y ago
Are there any OEM laptops with RYF certification? The only ones I can see on ryf.fsf.org are 10 year old refurbished and re-branded (and very expensive) Thinkpads.
wmf 5y ago
It's impossible for recent x86 systems to be RYF certified.

weystrom 5y ago

I wish they'd ship US ANSI keyboard in Europe, I would totally pick one up.

nrp 5y ago
The International English keyboard option is ANSI. It is US English with a Euro symbol and Alt Gr.
- weystrom 5y ago
  Oh that's actually great, ot's just I've been burned before by German retailers with "English International" on ISO keyboards. I might go do some shopping then. Say hello to Linus btw, his video has done marvels to deservedly promote your product.

i5heu 5y ago

Is there any chance to know when frame.work sells laptops with 12th gen Intel processors?

stbtrax 5y ago

Man I remember reading this CEO's hobby blog a decade ago. Glad to see him doing cool stuff https://eclecti.cc/ https://eclecti.cc/

snambi 5y ago

This is one company I really like. Hope they offer an ARM based laptop soon.

jhallenworld 5y ago

I've extracted the Chromium-EC encryption functions, they are convenient for signing / verifying firmware on other platforms. Chromium-ec is nice for example code like this: https://github.com/jhallen/rsa-verify https://github.com/jhallen/rsa-verify On the other hand, if you are looking for some generic embedded system code all in C, here is our library (it's been cleaned up for ATSAM and STM32 targets, but we've used in on many other platforms): https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs I think it's most unique feature is the embedded schema-based database- so you can save things like calibration and configuration information in local flash memory (think protocol buffers, but for tiny systems). Recently I've been adding device drivers for all common devices I can find on break-out boards from the Arduino and Raspberry-PI communities.

hailvectron 5y ago

Things I'm hoping to see in time for a Framework machine to become my next laptop: - AMD processor options - Keyboards with a trackpoint - decades of ThinkPaddery have conditioned me; I regularly use a Dell touchpad-equipped laptop & contemporary Mac laptop and still pine for a trackpoint. Very personal preference, I know, but hopefully the Framework Marketplace comes to provide this. - Proper 14" HiDPI screen - Long battery life under Linux I'm impressed with what they've been able to do and really hope they become sustainably successful!

arnaudsm 5y ago
You're describing the Thinkpad T14S. It's a real shame it has soldered RAM, I hope Framework's success will show the industry there's an actual need for this.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  > You're describing the Thinkpad T14S. It doesn't seem to have a proper 14 inch HiDPI display. 1080p on 14 inches usually needs anywhere from 1.2x to 1.4x scaling and 4K would need around 2.5x scaling.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    Depends on the OS. With Windows 4K on 14" does need 2.5x scaling, but it's ideal on Linux; this is what I use.
- hailvectron 5y ago
  I guess you're right, hadn't realized the AMD Thinkpads were now available with better than 1080p screens. Totally agree on the soldered RAM crap. Also would be great to buy from a more consumer-friendly company like Framework, especially if they are going to do things like support coreboot.
ayushnix 5y ago
> - Proper 14" HiDPI screen I can't stress this enough. The display on the Framework can't do integer scaling and so almost everyone who intends to use an external monitor with the Framework can't do that on Linux without extremely annoying issues such as significantly higher input latency, GUI apps behaving abnormally, and not being able to use an external monitor and the laptop screen simultaneously. I don't care if they release Coreboot for the Framework, it's useless with its screen.

toastal 5y ago

Call me when you get better display panels. Hopefully Linus Sebastian's obsession with OLED will help push the display is a higher-end direction -- or at least have the option.