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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 th

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.

fuzzybear3965 4y ago
Ditto.
fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
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.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  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.
  - doyougnu 4y ago
    battery life with that laptop was always better on the mac, but I regularly got 4-6 hours on that machine for years, first with Arch linux, and then with NixOS.
  - echion 4y ago
    > if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat More than `powertop --auto-tune`?
    - 1over137 4y ago
      Just tried on my Framework with Ubuntu 22.04: $ sudo powertop --auto-tune modprobe cpufreq_stats failedCannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_results.powertop Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d Devfreq not enabled glob returned GLOB_ABORTED Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only Leaving PowerTOP
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      powertop --auto-tune is kind of annoying to use, it usually winds up tuning something that shouldn't be and there's no convenient way to filter what it does, and then suddenly your mouse stops being responsive if you leave it alone for more than 2 seconds. Also on a laptop you might have stuff being plugged and unplugged all the time. Tbh it's kind of surprising systemd hasn't grown a "powertop that remembers things" arm.
  - loudmax 4y ago
    I get six to eight hours on my Thinkpad, running Arch Linux. This did not happen out of the box. I think I got like two hours of battery life before I began tuning parameters. As usual, the Arch wiki is an excellent resource even if you're running a different distro: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
- nrp 4y ago
  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 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.
  - lillecarl 4y ago
    You know, not to promote NixOS too much but the reproducibility of it makes this specific OS especially easy to support. There's already a community driven hardware support module to use [1]. If you look at it it doesn't hold a lot of things though, since NixOS is quite bleeding edge (Wi-Fi already supported) and you Framework is otherwise quite Linux friendly (Please make a 1080p-ish display tho, until Wayland is 4 real). LPT: NixOS installs by themselves aren't good for much, use NixOS-hardware and look into power configurations if you have specific requirements. 1: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framework/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...
    - doyougnu 4y ago
      Yea and the best part was that installing NixOS was dead easy. I followed Graham Christensen's instructions[1] and had nix create a personalized image with the latest linux kernel and some other stuff. Then I just flashed and booted from that image after partitioning. Honestly it was dead simple and its so hard to go back to the ad-hoc system config style a la Arch linux and other distros. I'm probably a lost cause now because I think I'm going to convert my entire raspberry pi cluster to NixOS from ubuntu. [1]: https://grahamc.com/blog/nixos-on-framework https://grahamc.com/blog/nixos-on-framework
- trelane 4y ago
  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.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    The article says: We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that Fedora 36 works fantastically well out of the box, with full hardware functionality including WiFi and fingerprint reader support. Ubuntu 22.04 also works great after applying a couple of workarounds, and we’re working to eliminate that need. We also studied and carefully optimized the standby power draw of the system in Linux. You can check compatibility with popular distros as we continue to test on our Linux page 322 or in the Framework Community 39. [0], [1] There's semi-official Linux support it sounds like! [0] https://frame.work/linux https://frame.work/linux [1] https://community.frame.work/ https://community.frame.work/
    - trelane 4y ago
      "semi-official" is pretty far away from full support.
      - Shared404 4y ago
        But just as far away from no official support, which is where we stand with most hardware that I'm interested in.
        trelane 4y ago
        I don't get why you're not interested in hardware that fully supports Linux, and which comes with great support, but you do you I guess.
        samtheDamned 4y ago
        because this hardware is uniquely repairable and upgradable and it has better linux support than most of the industry. Unless you just want another rebranded clevo laptop this is very good.
- grumpyprole 4y ago
  I don't get why the Apple wins? You'd have plenty of issues on a MacBook running an unsupported OS.
dheera 4y ago
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-reappeared-the-next-morning-why/18634/2 https://community.frame.work/t/wi-fi-disappeared-and-reappea...
- starky 4y ago
  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.
rcoder 4y ago
> 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.
jerryzh 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    The Airs with usb-c always only had them on one side, didn't they? So did the low-end (two port) 13" MBPs; I have a 2016 Intel one with the same issue.
gonehome 4y ago
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.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    Are you running a Linux distro built for ARM in a VM on Mac?
- smeej 4y ago
  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.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    Thanks for the heads up - this is exactly the kind of thing I would be annoyed about if I bought it and why I abandoned laptop linux after college. Maybe one day, but unlikely soon as apple just accelerates their lead. I’m happy others are buying it though and funding them - I hope they get there.
causality0 4y ago
Don't most laptops with type-c power inputs support charging through any of them? My Asus does.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  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.
bodge5000 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
shawnz 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
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.
fui 4y ago
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.
wollsmoth 4y ago
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.
- k8sToGo 4y ago
  Isn't there an issue if you plug in on the wrong side? I remember something about CPU and throttling.
  - philistine 4y ago
    That was the Intel models.
- kibwen 4y ago
  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.
  - wollsmoth 4y ago
    Oh Idk actually. I was happy to learn it still works on the magsafe ones so I can still use the old charger though.
  - philistine 4y ago
    This sounds like a thing that happened on the Intel ones. The M1 laptops have a large cooling overhead that would render the point moot.
    - conradev 4y ago
      One other difference is that the M1 MacBook Pros only have one port on the right side and two on the left now, which has been annoying a few times
smoldesu 4y ago
I can't even imagine how good these'll be on Alder Lake... might have to grab that i5 model.
nikodunk 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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-controller/12846 https://community.frame.work/t/exploring-the-embedded-contro...
  - tashbarg 4y ago
    On my thinkpad, I've found it most useful to additionally set a start charge threshold much lower than the charge limit. My use case only sees a handful of minutes without charger per day. With charging starting at 40% and ending at 80%, the battery gets charged sometimes as seldom as once per week.
    - moondev 4y ago
      The other way to look at it with regards to the framework is to just not worry about it. Replacing the battery is trivial and only $60 https://frame.work/products/battery https://frame.work/products/battery Once the ecosystem picks up speed and there are multiple vendors, perhaps the price or even capacity will improve. Although this may be possible with the thinkpad as well.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    This doesn't seem useful based on what I know about LiIon batteries: they don't benefit from partial charges, since their capacity loss comes from discharge behaviour.
emiller88 4y ago
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/framework/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...
- fuzzybear3965 4y ago
  Thank you!!!
- benevol 4y ago
  Will you guys ever produce a "wide screen" version of your laptop? If so, you have another customer.
  - sennight 4y ago
    Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason, I've just never seen anyone publicly admit to being the cause. Would you also like to take the blame for glossy screens, chicklet keyboards, and non-replaceable batteries?
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      > Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason For me 16:9/10 is way more "useful" than 3:2/4:3 ever was (had that for ages, wouldn't go back). I love being able to have two different things side-by-side, e.g. an editor and a terminal, on a 13" screen, at a font size I can still read well. I definitely wouldn't buy a square-ish laptop screen.
      - rekoil 4y ago
        And I'll take anything that's more square than 16:9 personally. 16:9 is great if I wanna watch movies all day, unfortunately for the apparently unaware laptop industry, I need to also work a little bit sometimes. Thankfully Apple never jumped on the stupid 16:9 bandwagon with their laptops. Now if only some monitor manufacturer would wake up and start making 27"+, 16:10, 4K+ monitors with 120hz+ refresh rate then I'll literally instantly buy 5.
gigatexal 4y ago
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 4y ago
  If you’re on Linux, this does the job https://community.frame.work/t/linux-fan-speed-controller-with-custom-speed-curve/17208 https://community.frame.work/t/linux-fan-speed-controller-wi...
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    Thank you!!!
- gigatexal 4y ago
  Yep. Plan to run Fedora 36

fuzzybear3965 4y ago

Ditto.

fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago

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.

lukeschlather 4y ago
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.
- doyougnu 4y ago
  battery life with that laptop was always better on the mac, but I regularly got 4-6 hours on that machine for years, first with Arch linux, and then with NixOS.
- echion 4y ago
  > if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat More than `powertop --auto-tune`?
  - 1over137 4y ago
    Just tried on my Framework with Ubuntu 22.04: $ sudo powertop --auto-tune modprobe cpufreq_stats failedCannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_results.powertop Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d Devfreq not enabled glob returned GLOB_ABORTED Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only Leaving PowerTOP
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    powertop --auto-tune is kind of annoying to use, it usually winds up tuning something that shouldn't be and there's no convenient way to filter what it does, and then suddenly your mouse stops being responsive if you leave it alone for more than 2 seconds. Also on a laptop you might have stuff being plugged and unplugged all the time. Tbh it's kind of surprising systemd hasn't grown a "powertop that remembers things" arm.
- loudmax 4y ago
  I get six to eight hours on my Thinkpad, running Arch Linux. This did not happen out of the box. I think I got like two hours of battery life before I began tuning parameters. As usual, the Arch wiki is an excellent resource even if you're running a different distro: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
nrp 4y ago
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 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.
- lillecarl 4y ago
  You know, not to promote NixOS too much but the reproducibility of it makes this specific OS especially easy to support. There's already a community driven hardware support module to use [1]. If you look at it it doesn't hold a lot of things though, since NixOS is quite bleeding edge (Wi-Fi already supported) and you Framework is otherwise quite Linux friendly (Please make a 1080p-ish display tho, until Wayland is 4 real). LPT: NixOS installs by themselves aren't good for much, use NixOS-hardware and look into power configurations if you have specific requirements. 1: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framework/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...
  - doyougnu 4y ago
    Yea and the best part was that installing NixOS was dead easy. I followed Graham Christensen's instructions[1] and had nix create a personalized image with the latest linux kernel and some other stuff. Then I just flashed and booted from that image after partitioning. Honestly it was dead simple and its so hard to go back to the ad-hoc system config style a la Arch linux and other distros. I'm probably a lost cause now because I think I'm going to convert my entire raspberry pi cluster to NixOS from ubuntu. [1]: https://grahamc.com/blog/nixos-on-framework https://grahamc.com/blog/nixos-on-framework
trelane 4y ago
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.
- Shared404 4y ago
  The article says: We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that Fedora 36 works fantastically well out of the box, with full hardware functionality including WiFi and fingerprint reader support. Ubuntu 22.04 also works great after applying a couple of workarounds, and we’re working to eliminate that need. We also studied and carefully optimized the standby power draw of the system in Linux. You can check compatibility with popular distros as we continue to test on our Linux page 322 or in the Framework Community 39. [0], [1] There's semi-official Linux support it sounds like! [0] https://frame.work/linux https://frame.work/linux [1] https://community.frame.work/ https://community.frame.work/
  - trelane 4y ago
    "semi-official" is pretty far away from full support.
    - Shared404 4y ago
      But just as far away from no official support, which is where we stand with most hardware that I'm interested in.
      - trelane 4y ago
        I don't get why you're not interested in hardware that fully supports Linux, and which comes with great support, but you do you I guess.
        samtheDamned 4y ago
        because this hardware is uniquely repairable and upgradable and it has better linux support than most of the industry. Unless you just want another rebranded clevo laptop this is very good.
grumpyprole 4y ago
I don't get why the Apple wins? You'd have plenty of issues on a MacBook running an unsupported OS.

dheera 4y ago

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-reappeared-the-next-morning-why/18634/2 https://community.frame.work/t/wi-fi-disappeared-and-reappea...

starky 4y ago
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.

rcoder 4y ago

> 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.

jerryzh 4y ago

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 4y ago
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.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  The Airs with usb-c always only had them on one side, didn't they? So did the low-end (two port) 13" MBPs; I have a 2016 Intel one with the same issue.

gonehome 4y ago

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.

SkyMarshal 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Are you running a Linux distro built for ARM in a VM on Mac?
smeej 4y ago
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.
- gonehome 4y ago
  Thanks for the heads up - this is exactly the kind of thing I would be annoyed about if I bought it and why I abandoned laptop linux after college. Maybe one day, but unlikely soon as apple just accelerates their lead. I’m happy others are buying it though and funding them - I hope they get there.

causality0 4y ago

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

JoshTriplett 4y ago
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.

bodge5000 4y ago

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 4y ago
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.

shawnz 4y ago

> 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 4y ago

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.

fui 4y ago

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.

wollsmoth 4y ago

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.

k8sToGo 4y ago
Isn't there an issue if you plug in on the wrong side? I remember something about CPU and throttling.
- philistine 4y ago
  That was the Intel models.
kibwen 4y ago
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.
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  Oh Idk actually. I was happy to learn it still works on the magsafe ones so I can still use the old charger though.
- philistine 4y ago
  This sounds like a thing that happened on the Intel ones. The M1 laptops have a large cooling overhead that would render the point moot.
  - conradev 4y ago
    One other difference is that the M1 MacBook Pros only have one port on the right side and two on the left now, which has been annoying a few times

smoldesu 4y ago

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

nikodunk 4y ago

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 4y ago
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-controller/12846 https://community.frame.work/t/exploring-the-embedded-contro...
- tashbarg 4y ago
  On my thinkpad, I've found it most useful to additionally set a start charge threshold much lower than the charge limit. My use case only sees a handful of minutes without charger per day. With charging starting at 40% and ending at 80%, the battery gets charged sometimes as seldom as once per week.
  - moondev 4y ago
    The other way to look at it with regards to the framework is to just not worry about it. Replacing the battery is trivial and only $60 https://frame.work/products/battery https://frame.work/products/battery Once the ecosystem picks up speed and there are multiple vendors, perhaps the price or even capacity will improve. Although this may be possible with the thinkpad as well.
- XorNot 4y ago
  This doesn't seem useful based on what I know about LiIon batteries: they don't benefit from partial charges, since their capacity loss comes from discharge behaviour.

emiller88 4y ago

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/framework/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...

fuzzybear3965 4y ago
Thank you!!!
benevol 4y ago
Will you guys ever produce a "wide screen" version of your laptop? If so, you have another customer.
- sennight 4y ago
  Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason, I've just never seen anyone publicly admit to being the cause. Would you also like to take the blame for glossy screens, chicklet keyboards, and non-replaceable batteries?
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    > Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason For me 16:9/10 is way more "useful" than 3:2/4:3 ever was (had that for ages, wouldn't go back). I love being able to have two different things side-by-side, e.g. an editor and a terminal, on a 13" screen, at a font size I can still read well. I definitely wouldn't buy a square-ish laptop screen.
    - rekoil 4y ago
      And I'll take anything that's more square than 16:9 personally. 16:9 is great if I wanna watch movies all day, unfortunately for the apparently unaware laptop industry, I need to also work a little bit sometimes. Thankfully Apple never jumped on the stupid 16:9 bandwagon with their laptops. Now if only some monitor manufacturer would wake up and start making 27"+, 16:10, 4K+ monitors with 120hz+ refresh rate then I'll literally instantly buy 5.

gigatexal 4y ago

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 4y ago
If you’re on Linux, this does the job https://community.frame.work/t/linux-fan-speed-controller-with-custom-speed-curve/17208 https://community.frame.work/t/linux-fan-speed-controller-wi...
- gigatexal 4y ago
  Thank you!!!
gigatexal 4y ago
Yep. Plan to run Fedora 36