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All I want from Framework is an ARM motherboard. It seems crazy to me that the only way to get a Linux ARM laptop that isn't essentially a Raspberry Pi (or equ

All I want from Framework is an ARM motherboard. It seems crazy to me that the only way to get a Linux ARM laptop that isn't essentially a Raspberry Pi (or equivalent) is to buy a Mac. I'd be happy to be wrong about this. If I am, please let me know where I can spend my money.

bgorman 4y ago
There are plenty of Qualcomm based ARM laptops on the market.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  I've looked, and all I've seen are jailbroken Chromebooks and Win 10 laptops that also need to be jailbroken and are missing drivers for important things like wifi and accelerated graphics.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    To be fair, buying an ARM Mac and running Linux on it doesn't come with drivers for accelerated graphics.
  - DannyBee 4y ago
    That is the state of non-server ARM in general on Linux. It requires mucking with device trees and what not on most SBC's, etc. Some of them kind of work. The likely OEM's the SOC for a laptop like this (rockchip, amlogic, etc) are mostly non-helpful. Though rockchip is getting upstream reasonably well now (IE you could probably build a mainline kernel that works). But honestly, I would expect a linux laptop built with any on-market ARM SOC to be a mess right now. There is actually one SBC vendor who runs linux in a container under the android kernel because the android kernel has much better ARM hardware support :) (which is probably right - most of the SOC's you'd put in a laptop are being built mainly for android based set top boxes, tablets, etc) It would take a couple iterations and dedicated work to get somewhere good.
- hackmiester 4y ago
  Which one is your favorite? And, what is your favorite OS to run on it?
twiclo 4y ago
Pinebook Pro?
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  Basically a Raspberry Pi. Pretty unimpressive specs. My usual process with laptops is to buy something pretty beefy for its time and get a solid 7 - 10 years out of it. User-replaceable batteries helps with this.
  - Kuinox 4y ago
    ARM outside of Macs are not beefy. Excluding apples cpus, x86_64 is ahead in perf/per watt. Remember that until 3 months ago, Apple was one CPU node ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Why ARM and which ARM processor would you want?
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  Battery life, and whichever has a good combo of performance and performance per watt.
  - tjoff 4y ago
    Which is for most usecases quite easy, it doesn't really exist outside of the apple ecosystem at the moment.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Is that an ARM thing or is that an Apple 5nm, 7nm ARM thing?
    - alphabettsy 4y ago
      I don’t think it’s the chip or process exactly. In my experience power management was very poor when using Linux on a laptop and required tinkering to get it inline with Windows. Is suspect the battery life seen with Apple silicon Macs is the OS + hardware. Maybe Framework is the right company to bring an ARM + Linux laptop with decent performance and battery life.
- alerighi 4y ago
  The new Intel processors are efficient, of course if you start doing compute intensive things they will consume a lot of power, the same can be said for ARM CPUs. You can always force the new Intel processors in low power mode (by activating only the low power cores, at least with Linux) if you want to save power. Of course there are the other things a laptop is compose of that consume power.
zekica 4y ago
Apple's chips are faster than all ARM competition per watt. The only competitor coming close to AMD Ryzen 6800u has better performance per watt (within 20% of Apple's M2) [0] while Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 [1] has about half. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-Review-Zen3-beats-Intel-Alder-Lake.623763.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-R... [1] https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-m1-vs-qualcomm-sm8450-snapdragon-8-gen-1/ https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-m1-vs-qualcomm-sm84...
nfriedly 4y ago
I know this isn't exactly what you're thinking, but a chromebook might be workable. Another option is an Android tablet with a keyboard, just pick one with an unlockable bootloader so that you can run your own software. That said, I'd love to see an ARM option from Framework.
JohnTHaller 4y ago
I'd wager it's because Linux is a relatively small subset of Framework users. And then ARM would be a very small subset of those users. There's nothing stopping a third party from creating one, but I highly doubt the financials would make sense.
- slaw 4y ago
  I thought most Framework laptops have some Linux distro installed.
  - JohnTHaller 4y ago
    Pre-built Framework laptops only ship with Windows. Last year's model has Windows 10. This year's model has Windows 11. The DIY model ships with either Windows 11 or "None (bring your own).
    - slaw 4y ago
      These are options. I don't see which is the most selected option.
- warner25 4y ago
  The Framework forum is dominated by Linux users. It makes sense that the forum would skew towards enthusiasts who like to tinker, but I wonder what the actual numbers are. I've speculated that the Framework DIY edition has created more new desktop Linux users than anything else in recent history.
aseipp 4y ago
The best you can get right now are some NXP parts from Solid-Run (bulky form factor for mobile, no GPU), the Nvidia Xavier/Orin series mobile SoCs, or some of the newer Snapdragon devices (I'm not familiar with these.) These (all) support UEFI, too. But they are all vastly more expensive in almost every way vs an Apple Silicon device running Linux, and offer worse performance and less CPU features except Snapdragon, it's true. And all of them including Apple Silicon still have quirks. Part of might be that -- and this is just an observation, speculation -- nobody seems to be licensing newer core designs in high volumes outside of server-class chips or explicit mobile SKUs. That means there's no volume to drip down to consumer parts. Everything is either a mobile SoC design or a high-margin server SKU, there's no mid-range option for a modern ARMv8.5 core -- which happens to be exactly the kind of device Apple targets with something like the Macbook Air. The rumor is that Nvidia is aiming to get the Xavier/Orin series devices to have full upstream Linux support (GPU acceleration is a different story and needs Mesa, but may come later I suspect, since both the mobile and desktop GPU drivers are now open.) If that happens I think these would probably be the best alternative options you could get, in potentially mobile form factors -- but they are still much pricier when considering performance.
- sliken 4y ago
  Nvidia desktop GPU drivers are not open. They recently published some include files that make it a bit easier to communicate with and helps the Noveau projects. You can't drive a Nvidia GPU with anywhere near the same performance/functionality with an open source driver. Corrections welcome.
  - wmf 4y ago
    In theory in the future you'll be able to use the GPL kernel driver with Noveau to have a fully open-source driver stack with not great not terrible performance. It's not clear when that future will arrive.
    - sliken 4y ago
      That fits, seems like Nvidia is heading in the same direction AMD did years ago, but is a long ways from nearing the functionality and performance of the binary driver.
Melatonic 4y ago
Theoretically couldn't you buy a Windows based ARM laptop or a beefed up Chromebook and then just install Linux?
- zekica 4y ago
  You could but: - you need to handle booting - this is relatively easy as they use UEFI or coreboot respectively, both of which work fine. Some others using uboot are harder to support as you need to load the device tree definition manually. - you need to have the drivers for the hardware - this is hard Most ARM manufacturers for consumer hardware don't seem to think that working with upstream is a good idea. Intel and AMD actively work with linux developers to provide the drivers, and some other companies provide partial (with closed firmware) or complete documentation so developers can create drivers. On ARM side, some companies are fine while others are refusing to provide documentation: Qualcomm's modems and GPUs and Broadcom's wifi hardware are some examples.
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    I have heard the microsoft surface ARM notebooks got very good battery life when not doing any x86 emulation - might be worth looking into Linux on those
CoolCold 4y ago
Thinkpad x13s? Surface?

bgorman 4y ago

There are plenty of Qualcomm based ARM laptops on the market.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I've looked, and all I've seen are jailbroken Chromebooks and Win 10 laptops that also need to be jailbroken and are missing drivers for important things like wifi and accelerated graphics.
- vel0city 4y ago
  To be fair, buying an ARM Mac and running Linux on it doesn't come with drivers for accelerated graphics.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  That is the state of non-server ARM in general on Linux. It requires mucking with device trees and what not on most SBC's, etc. Some of them kind of work. The likely OEM's the SOC for a laptop like this (rockchip, amlogic, etc) are mostly non-helpful. Though rockchip is getting upstream reasonably well now (IE you could probably build a mainline kernel that works). But honestly, I would expect a linux laptop built with any on-market ARM SOC to be a mess right now. There is actually one SBC vendor who runs linux in a container under the android kernel because the android kernel has much better ARM hardware support :) (which is probably right - most of the SOC's you'd put in a laptop are being built mainly for android based set top boxes, tablets, etc) It would take a couple iterations and dedicated work to get somewhere good.
hackmiester 4y ago
Which one is your favorite? And, what is your favorite OS to run on it?

twiclo 4y ago

Pinebook Pro?

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
Basically a Raspberry Pi. Pretty unimpressive specs. My usual process with laptops is to buy something pretty beefy for its time and get a solid 7 - 10 years out of it. User-replaceable batteries helps with this.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  ARM outside of Macs are not beefy. Excluding apples cpus, x86_64 is ahead in perf/per watt. Remember that until 3 months ago, Apple was one CPU node ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Why ARM and which ARM processor would you want?

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
Battery life, and whichever has a good combo of performance and performance per watt.
- tjoff 4y ago
  Which is for most usecases quite easy, it doesn't really exist outside of the apple ecosystem at the moment.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Is that an ARM thing or is that an Apple 5nm, 7nm ARM thing?
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s the chip or process exactly. In my experience power management was very poor when using Linux on a laptop and required tinkering to get it inline with Windows. Is suspect the battery life seen with Apple silicon Macs is the OS + hardware. Maybe Framework is the right company to bring an ARM + Linux laptop with decent performance and battery life.
alerighi 4y ago
The new Intel processors are efficient, of course if you start doing compute intensive things they will consume a lot of power, the same can be said for ARM CPUs. You can always force the new Intel processors in low power mode (by activating only the low power cores, at least with Linux) if you want to save power. Of course there are the other things a laptop is compose of that consume power.

zekica 4y ago

Apple's chips are faster than all ARM competition per watt. The only competitor coming close to AMD Ryzen 6800u has better performance per watt (within 20% of Apple's M2) [0] while Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 [1] has about half. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-Review-Zen3-beats-Intel-Alder-Lake.623763.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-R... [1] https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-m1-vs-qualcomm-sm8450-snapdragon-8-gen-1/ https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-m1-vs-qualcomm-sm84...

nfriedly 4y ago

I know this isn't exactly what you're thinking, but a chromebook might be workable. Another option is an Android tablet with a keyboard, just pick one with an unlockable bootloader so that you can run your own software. That said, I'd love to see an ARM option from Framework.

JohnTHaller 4y ago

I'd wager it's because Linux is a relatively small subset of Framework users. And then ARM would be a very small subset of those users. There's nothing stopping a third party from creating one, but I highly doubt the financials would make sense.

slaw 4y ago
I thought most Framework laptops have some Linux distro installed.
- JohnTHaller 4y ago
  Pre-built Framework laptops only ship with Windows. Last year's model has Windows 10. This year's model has Windows 11. The DIY model ships with either Windows 11 or "None (bring your own).
  - slaw 4y ago
    These are options. I don't see which is the most selected option.
warner25 4y ago
The Framework forum is dominated by Linux users. It makes sense that the forum would skew towards enthusiasts who like to tinker, but I wonder what the actual numbers are. I've speculated that the Framework DIY edition has created more new desktop Linux users than anything else in recent history.

aseipp 4y ago

The best you can get right now are some NXP parts from Solid-Run (bulky form factor for mobile, no GPU), the Nvidia Xavier/Orin series mobile SoCs, or some of the newer Snapdragon devices (I'm not familiar with these.) These (all) support UEFI, too. But they are all vastly more expensive in almost every way vs an Apple Silicon device running Linux, and offer worse performance and less CPU features except Snapdragon, it's true. And all of them including Apple Silicon still have quirks. Part of might be that -- and this is just an observation, speculation -- nobody seems to be licensing newer core designs in high volumes outside of server-class chips or explicit mobile SKUs. That means there's no volume to drip down to consumer parts. Everything is either a mobile SoC design or a high-margin server SKU, there's no mid-range option for a modern ARMv8.5 core -- which happens to be exactly the kind of device Apple targets with something like the Macbook Air. The rumor is that Nvidia is aiming to get the Xavier/Orin series devices to have full upstream Linux support (GPU acceleration is a different story and needs Mesa, but may come later I suspect, since both the mobile and desktop GPU drivers are now open.) If that happens I think these would probably be the best alternative options you could get, in potentially mobile form factors -- but they are still much pricier when considering performance.

sliken 4y ago
Nvidia desktop GPU drivers are not open. They recently published some include files that make it a bit easier to communicate with and helps the Noveau projects. You can't drive a Nvidia GPU with anywhere near the same performance/functionality with an open source driver. Corrections welcome.
- wmf 4y ago
  In theory in the future you'll be able to use the GPL kernel driver with Noveau to have a fully open-source driver stack with not great not terrible performance. It's not clear when that future will arrive.
  - sliken 4y ago
    That fits, seems like Nvidia is heading in the same direction AMD did years ago, but is a long ways from nearing the functionality and performance of the binary driver.

Melatonic 4y ago

Theoretically couldn't you buy a Windows based ARM laptop or a beefed up Chromebook and then just install Linux?

zekica 4y ago
You could but: - you need to handle booting - this is relatively easy as they use UEFI or coreboot respectively, both of which work fine. Some others using uboot are harder to support as you need to load the device tree definition manually. - you need to have the drivers for the hardware - this is hard Most ARM manufacturers for consumer hardware don't seem to think that working with upstream is a good idea. Intel and AMD actively work with linux developers to provide the drivers, and some other companies provide partial (with closed firmware) or complete documentation so developers can create drivers. On ARM side, some companies are fine while others are refusing to provide documentation: Qualcomm's modems and GPUs and Broadcom's wifi hardware are some examples.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  I have heard the microsoft surface ARM notebooks got very good battery life when not doing any x86 emulation - might be worth looking into Linux on those

CoolCold 4y ago

Thinkpad x13s? Surface?