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>out of the box support for the laptop components Drivers are going to be part of the kernel. The only thing I would expect to vary by distro is probably the w

by usrn 5y ago

>out of the box support for the laptop components Drivers are going to be part of the kernel. The only thing I would expect to vary by distro is probably the way firmware blobs are packaged (which is just a matter of installing the appropriate firmware blob package or worst case grabbing the blobs from kernel.org.) In general your hardware shouldn't constrain your distro choice outside of very weird hardware or very weird distros (or maybe Nvidia graphics cards but you just shouldn't use those.) If you're talking about your WiFi, Bluetooth, or possibly your GPU not working OOTB this is almost certainly what you ran into. Not that Fedora is a bad distro although personally I don't like it. Also switching out the UI is just a package away if you don't like the default. If you want to run, say, FVWM instead literally just `yum install fvwm` and then log out. It should show up in you display manager (and then since it's an X11 WM instead of a Wayland compositor you can just use scrot etc for screenshots.) >Just reboot to fix audio Sometimes Pulesaudio can get funky. Do you atleast run `pulseaudio -k` first? >Trackpad Yeah the trackpad situation is not great. I don't buy laptops without trackpoint mice partly for that reason and also because the only machine I've ever used where I didn't hate the trackpad was a mac. >Shopping for motherboards etc. An easy shortcut for this is to just check the Arch/Gentoo/Debian wiki for the composite hardware you're looking at and see if people have issues with it. Windows and OSX have similar issues if you want to buy hardware separate from the OS.

noirbot 5y ago
This was trying to get a Framework laptop running, and there were literally 3 Fedora team devs working on compatibility for it as a priority and stuff still didn't work. I only went to Fedora after I couldn't even get through the setup tools for Manjaro, Ubuntu, Debian, or Pop. I'd look into swapping out my UI if I had any confidence I knew what was going on and how to revert it. I mostly bricked an Ubuntu install earlier last year trying to get Wayland working on it. I'm pretty sure it's not pulseaudio, it's Pipewire by default, but I think neither of them works. It's something about the device just not registering correctly on boot for some reason. I knew what I was in for on trackpads, but it's still not a good system/sign either way. I'm really unsure I agree with you on Windows having "similar issues" with hardware. As someone who's been building and upgrading the same desktop computer for 20 years with a combination of Windows and various Linux distros running on it, I have literally never had a compatibility issue on Windows that took more than going to the company's website and running an EXE for drivers, and I never once went to check if Windows was compatible with any part I purchased. Meanwhile, I found out that the specific sub-SKU of my Intel CPU just doesn't work with the Linux kernel for some features, so I guess I'm either out hundreds of dollars on a new CPU or I just don't use Linux again on that computer. I'm to the point where I mostly like Linux for day to day stuff, and I really do understand a lot of the reasons why all of this isn't trivial, but it really gets my ire when people try to contend that Windows has worse usability for most normal use cases. I don't know nearly as much about Linux as you or many others, but I appreciate that I can fix things in ways I couldn't before. That said, the complete "there are no guard rails, the only instructions are a forum post you just have to copy-paste from, and sometimes the answer is just NO" of Linux is really its own universe of pain for anyone who doesn't want to have their computer eating up 1-10 hours a week just to keep it running acceptably.
- simfree 5y ago
  Don't run frankenDebian and your life will be much easier. My friend that bought a Framework as well had no trouble putting Debian 11 on it, you just need to add the non-free repo to /etc/apt/sources.list, install the non-free firmware with apt and reboot: https://community.frame.work/t/debian-11-on-the-framework-laptop/10395 https://community.frame.work/t/debian-11-on-the-framework-la... Wayland also works out of the box on Debian, I have been using it for a few years on a Ryzen laptop without issue. Fiddling with the OS is a rarity for me. Back when I was a teen I do recall the trouble that was upgrading Ubuntu or getting openSuse running after accidentally filling the disk fully. Switching to Debian simplified life, I don't invest effort into my OS (eg: opening up a terminal) with any kind of regularity and it simply works, letting me focus on actual work (and video games :D).

by usrn 5y ago

noirbot 5y ago

This was trying to get a Framework laptop running, and there were literally 3 Fedora team devs working on compatibility for it as a priority and stuff still didn't work. I only went to Fedora after I couldn't even get through the setup tools for Manjaro, Ubuntu, Debian, or Pop. I'd look into swapping out my UI if I had any confidence I knew what was going on and how to revert it. I mostly bricked an Ubuntu install earlier last year trying to get Wayland working on it. I'm pretty sure it's not pulseaudio, it's Pipewire by default, but I think neither of them works. It's something about the device just not registering correctly on boot for some reason. I knew what I was in for on trackpads, but it's still not a good system/sign either way. I'm really unsure I agree with you on Windows having "similar issues" with hardware. As someone who's been building and upgrading the same desktop computer for 20 years with a combination of Windows and various Linux distros running on it, I have literally never had a compatibility issue on Windows that took more than going to the company's website and running an EXE for drivers, and I never once went to check if Windows was compatible with any part I purchased. Meanwhile, I found out that the specific sub-SKU of my Intel CPU just doesn't work with the Linux kernel for some features, so I guess I'm either out hundreds of dollars on a new CPU or I just don't use Linux again on that computer. I'm to the point where I mostly like Linux for day to day stuff, and I really do understand a lot of the reasons why all of this isn't trivial, but it really gets my ire when people try to contend that Windows has worse usability for most normal use cases. I don't know nearly as much about Linux as you or many others, but I appreciate that I can fix things in ways I couldn't before. That said, the complete "there are no guard rails, the only instructions are a forum post you just have to copy-paste from, and sometimes the answer is just NO" of Linux is really its own universe of pain for anyone who doesn't want to have their computer eating up 1-10 hours a week just to keep it running acceptably.

simfree 5y ago
Don't run frankenDebian and your life will be much easier. My friend that bought a Framework as well had no trouble putting Debian 11 on it, you just need to add the non-free repo to /etc/apt/sources.list, install the non-free firmware with apt and reboot: https://community.frame.work/t/debian-11-on-the-framework-laptop/10395 https://community.frame.work/t/debian-11-on-the-framework-la... Wayland also works out of the box on Debian, I have been using it for a few years on a Ryzen laptop without issue. Fiddling with the OS is a rarity for me. Back when I was a teen I do recall the trouble that was upgrading Ubuntu or getting openSuse running after accidentally filling the disk fully. Switching to Debian simplified life, I don't invest effort into my OS (eg: opening up a terminal) with any kind of regularity and it simply works, letting me focus on actual work (and video games :D).