Why can no laptop manufacturer even make this an option?
There is this for Linux but I've never tried it:
How are they slower/impossible?
Not sure if it's a hardware (Dell) or software (Ubuntu) improvement, but thank god.
Don't think any one x86 laptop manufacturer can fix it.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th...
Someone should scoop up the niche market of anguished ThinkPad devotees, with a TrackPoint and a good, non-chiclet keyboard. Maybe Framework, leveraging its modular system. Maybe a Framework-compatible third-party.
There's a few that are close, but still not close enough. Also, Mac slightly changed their default settings (regarding the physical click behavior), I never recall what it is but only that I change it back when starting out on a new machine.
The type that doesn’t move at all and simulates a click with haptics on the other hand I find just fine. MacBooks do this of course but there’s also a few x86 laptops equipped with pads like that.
So in my opinion, mechanical clickpads should disappear entirely and laptops should offer two options: a static haptic clickpad and traditional trackpad with buttons.
I don't think I can rely on laptop manufacturers to buck the clickpad trend any time soon, so I'll do it myself.
Because it’s a variation of both the case and the internals that brings a higher failure rate, more dust ingress, more moving parts, and, most importantly, would rarely be chosen.
> They are so much slower,
They are objectively faster because you can click anywhere rather than moving a finger to a button or keeping one finger always on the button.
[0] https://frame.work/products/framework-laptop-13-mainboard-ki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#Naming_and_bran...
> Something that we hear over and over again across our entire product lineup is that people want pointing sticks. You might know it as trackpoint from other brands. The little nubs that you can use as a mouse. Obviously, if you're a ThinkPad user, former ThinkPad user, that might be something that you're very familiar and comfortable with. And so, it is something that actually on all of our products several times over the last 5 years, we have tried to prototype and make work. The big challenge on this actually is just that there's very, very little space here. That the Zstack here is incredibly thin.
> And for a keyboard, it works because the keys are compliant. If there's force that's put on the lid, like let's say you're got your laptop in a backpack with a book or something, it's just being pressed on like that, the screen is going to touch the keys and the keys are going to give way because they're just on these uh on these scissor mechanisms and the screen will be okay and you may get a little smudge you have to wipe off. You've got like finger grease on there.
> A pointing stick though is not compliant. Not compliant in that way. So, you've got this like sharp point basically sticking out from the keyboard. And if there's pressure placed on the lid, that's going to go right onto that point on the tracking stick and end up damaging screen or have a high likelihood of damaging the screen.
> And so, we've just kept over and over, we've kept trying this and seeing if we could get a low enough profile pointing stick solution to make that work, not risk the screen at all. And so far, that doesn't exist. That is something that we keep going into the supply base to try to find.
> Hopefully we that is something we find in the future because of course with this input module system on framework laptop 16, it would end up being relatively straightforward for us to just make an input module a keyboard that you can swap in that's got that pointing stick unlike uh you know even our other laptops where you'd have to have an entirely new input cover to get that kind of functionality.
I am thinking that something with a nub on a 2-axis slider as opposed to rocker switches could be an option, but that would potentially have drift issues. Not to mention the Framework keyboards themselves are probably mostly a COTS solution, where something like I'm thinking would require custom R&D an likely be limited release. If Framework, Dell and Lenovo could work together, they could probably come up with a good solution... though Lenovo likes the Fn button in the corner, where most others prefer Ctrl then Fn.
Would u consider setting up an assembly plant outside the US to sell to to customers internationally? I’m in Australia.
And if not, could you elaborate?
It would also be a huge benefit to use a replaced mainboard as a homelab base WITH ECC support in the future.
Same goes for the Framework Desktop, which features Strix Halo without ECC support, whereas ECC IS possible with Ryzen AI MAX+ 395+ PRO (e.g. HP Z2 Mini G1a).
Likely mostly down to resources/time as to the lack of official support.
Is the firmware identical for the models that ship with Windows and those that ship with Linux?
How well does Linux work out of the box? What kind of small glitches can a Linux user expect?
For the new generation, we'll list those as we get closer to shipments.
Yes. The firmware upgrade processes can differ, but there's no difference in firmware, and you can buy a Framework kit with no OS provided.
Where's the best places to go for troubleshooting, user guides, etc? I've played with all the bios and framework settings I can find, so I'm guessing it's hardware related, if that changes the resource recommendations.
I guess general "laptop maintenance" guides should be good enough? Guides that mention things like "Clean out all the dust/vent-junk once every X months/years" (if you have pets, you can't do this often enough it seems) and "redoing the thermal paste each X year".
What OS are you on? Also try opening it up, there just be some dust stuck in there or something
- Framework community forums: https://community.frame.work/
- Framework guides: https://guides.frame.work/c/Root
Here is the default link (US): https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=whats-new
It would be cutting out a massive chunk of Framework's potential customers to not even offer Nvidia GPUs.
I don't like Nvidia at all, they're a scummy company. But just offering their products as an option is not "openly hostile and offensive" to Linux users. That's a bizarre take.
I run Xorg, though. I guess Wayland is a sticking point.
Write them and ask if you could get the rebate. The times I've had this happened to me when shopping from small/medium-sized businesses they've been nice enough to either give me a refund for the difference, or at least a coupon for future purchases.
The specification targets on them are always chronically low.
I'm not sure the type-c (200-230w) would be sufficient to run these cards at their reccomended TGP (150w) + CPU (50w) + charge - not that most 16" productivity-oriented notebooks do (70-115W).
Gaming/productivity laptops of similar size ship with 300W power bricks now (e.g. MSI Vector 16 HX AI with RTX5090 ships with a 330W adapter to satisfy its 240W system power). It's also why most still use their own connector (ASUS decided to use their own connector due to conversion efficiency and heat issues with USB-C at high wattage).
Still, 330W pales in comparison of the TGP of a desktop-class RTX5070 (requires 250W). Nevermind the RTX5090's requirements (575W).
I guess we could do an apples-to-apples comparison (Linux or Windows performance on Macs that have it). Not sure how that works out, though.
It was surprisingly not as expensive as I thought it would be. There are also 3rd party options that will swap in parts for you or try to repair things.
It’s not as satisfying as ordering the parts and changing it out yourself but at this point I don’t prioritize repairs or failures in my buying decisions any more.
It depends on what you want.
About a week ago I got a new 15" laptop with a Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads) | Radeon 680M | 32 GB of RAM | 1 TB SSD | 1080p IPS panel for $570 USD. That 680m is an integrated GPU that can use up to 8 GB of your system RAM for its VRAM.
I put Arch Linux on it and it's quite nice. Things are very snappy.
A Macbook Air is almost 4x the price with the same memory / storage or 2x if you're ok with 16 GB of memory and a 256 GB SSD. No doubt the Air is going to be lighter, have better battery life and be quieter but this other one isn't too bad. Sure it has fans and sure it weighs 4.5 pounds but it's not a deal breaker.
I'm very happy with my framework!
Additionally, and non-trivially, the laptop's battery life is not good, and it drains very quickly on suspend. I have taken to leaving it plugged in when not in use. This may be a Linux issue, but still.
I agree with you: the idea is a good one, but my experience with the company has been not good.
1 - https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+...
This is awesome though, and exactly the sort of thing one buys a Framework for.
> the laptop's battery life is not good
Mine is great, I share a single USB-C cord among all my laptops (of which I have despairingly too many) and I often use my Framework all day while forgetting it's not plugged in. (Fedora, if the OS matters.)
It is certainly awesome for those that can, of course!
No, it's not awesome. Upgrading ram and disk or replacing a motherboard, screen or battery is great. Repairing a badly designed motherboard with a soldering iron is not great. In fact, it's bad. I think there's a good argument that it violates (warranty) law. If a car company sells to you based on "right to repair" and then it turns out there was a design defect in the engine, is it "awesome" if they tell you you need to pull the engine and rebuild it?
Glad your battery life is good. I notice you didn't mention it losing power when suspended. Curious.
Drain on suspend in particular has largely been resolved on newer mainboards, firmware, and kernel updates, though I don't have an 11th-gen Intel and haven't run Ubuntu for a long time.
Kernel updates fixed this on my 12th-gen, firmware updates fixed it on my 7040, and my Ultra 7 155H never experienced this issue.
Buying a brand new Framework tend to be more expensive then a ~ Chinese Laptop.
*New vs Upgrade*
In general, you can sell a second hand laptop at around 50% of the original price, about 2 years down the line (assuming you did not damage it).
So a new upgrade will be 50% cheaper. For that you tend to get (depending on the generation jump), more storage, more memory, potential better screen, faster CPU.
While a Framework upgrade may mean you gain a new Motherbord+CPU for the price of that equivalent laptop. But here you run into another economic issue. Sure, you can transplant your 2100mhz memory but what if 2660 is the standard. So you CPU upgrade is going to get throttled.
*Changes*
What if memory changed with a inner generational. So now that memory you had before is useless. You can recover some value, but are still forced to buy the generation memory.
That wifi card, 5e ... great, but now your getting maybe 6 standard in a new laptop.
Also do not forget, your laptop will have more wear and tear vs a new device. Keyboard may become a issue. Your oled screen may have reduced coloring after 1 or 2 generation of usage (oleds suffer from high screen brightness, and laptop are more often in locations like outdoors that run at 100% brightness).
*Compatibility*
What about compatibility? Maybe you had a Intel based Framework laptop, with a intel wifi card. The problem is, some intel wifi cards need specific intel instructions onboard the CPU. So now you upgraded to AMD but your wifi card becomes useless.
Yes, a new laptop is rolling the dice regarding defects or other issues. But so is upgrading a framework. The problem is, your getting all the not so fun parts of a desktop's upgradability, without the cost saving potential of a desktop.
*Resell issue*
Selling your framework memory, wifi card etc will not be a big issue. But the moment you want to sell a older part, now what? Great that you upgraded from 1080p screen to 4k by yourself, but who is going to buy your 1080p screen? Your at best looking at a small market of framework owners, and a even smaller market of framework owners that need a new screen (maybe to replace a damaged one).
What about the bezel changes? What about the keyboard? What is your buyers market. Sure, maybe you can sell your old MB/CPU but even that is a VERY specialized market of people, who maybe need one to repair their framework, or want a custom nas (cheaper to just buy a mini-pc from the dozens of Chinese brands) or the few people who run a very old framework mb, and upgrade (what about their selling 2+ generation old MB/CPU combo).
*Buyers*
Framework really is for people who do not like to change laptops / get used to new ones, and who have no issue taking in the extra costs of those upgrade potential. But then again, i see people running macbooks M1's still (darm good laptops), for 5 years. They did not need the upgrade path.
It really depends on you, what you really value. But from a economic point of view, your not going to be cheaper in the long run with a framework, and that is not the selling point also.
In the end, I think the Framework is worth it if you have a desire to support the company and the mission, but I think most people should go refurbished if they only care about value.
Weird phrasing. The #1 rule if you're getting hardware to run Linux is: don't by Nvidia.
Outside of Apple, there doesn't seem to be many good fanless laptops. I'd love to see Framework come up with something.
Is there any plans or similar for a 14in GPU enabled (with a decent TGP) laptop? I got a 14in laptop recently and find it very good for a power/perforamnce tradeoff (ASUS G14 or Razer Blade 14). Not to mention the amazing battery life.
My ASUS ROG Strix cost me $1500 back when the 3080's were new and has a 3080. Have prices risen that much?
So its more expensive but not $1500 vs $4000 expensive.
This was comparing the lowest end model ROG because that's the only one with a 5070. It was also 100% like-for-like, such as paying for windows, something I personally wouldn't do with a framework.
Mobile users suffer more problems then people with dedicated desktop GPUs, but it still gotten a lot better.
The one thing to be careful about AMD GPUs is that for most GPU OEMs AMD is just a after thought. So they get sub-par QA and heatsinks compared to their more popular Nvidia models.
It is best to go with card makers that only sell AMD GPUs, like Sapphire, PowerColor, and XFX. I am partial to Sapphire.
Once the rewritten "amdgpu" driver came out, things got much better. The first few cards created after that (IIRC the Polaris GPUs, RX 400's), the situation reversed. I still have had occasional issues with various Nvidia cards (normally driver updates breaking things), but for almost a decade now, I have not had issues with AMD GPUs under Linux.
[0] Except for pro features while using workstation cards. You need to use a proprietary driver for those, but even those share a lot of code with the open source driver.
Even Sea Islands/Southern Islands were much better with amdgpu (but you have to use a module parameter to enable support).
So it is both driver changes and architectural changes.
There is also AMDGPU-PRO, which is the proprietary version based on AMDGPU. Used to be you'd need it for ROCm, but that hasn't been true for a while not. There really isn't any reason to use the "pro" version anymore, unless you have a some special proprietary app that requires it.
Open source GPU drivers are based on Mesa stack. So they share a common code base and support for things like Vulkan.
So it is sorta similar to how DirectX works. With old-school OpenGL drivers each stack was proprietary to the GPU manufacturer so there was lots of quirks and extensions that applied to only one or another GPU. That is one of the reasons DirectX displaced OpenGL in gaming... Microsoft 'owned' DirectX/Direct3d stack.
Well the open source equivalent to that is Mesa. Mesa provides APi support in software and it is then ported to each GPU with "dri drivers".
For gaming things have improved tremendously with "Proton", which is essentially Wine with vastly improved Direct3D support.
This is accomplished with "DXVK", which is a Direct3D to Vulkan translator.
This way Linux essentially gets close to "native windows speed" for most games that support proton in one way or another.
Which means that most games run on Linux now. Probably over 75% that are available on Steam, although "running" doesn't mean it is perfect.
One of the biggest problems faced with Linux gaming nowadays is anti-cheat features for competitive online games. Most of the software anti-piracy and anti-cheating features games use can technically work on Linux, but it is really up to the game manufacturer to make it work and support it. Linux gamers can sometimes make it work, but also they get flagged and booted and even accounts locked for being suspected of cheating.
The days of Nvidia proprietary drivers being a safe bet is long gone. Especially for any sort of Wayland desktop, but it still applies to X11.
Intel drivers should be good as well, since they use the same Mesa code base.
With the ROCm stuff no longer depending on AMD Pro then there is not going to be any reason to step away from the default GPU drivers provided by your distro, provided they are relatively new.
While I am sure that there are still going to be professional-grade proprietary apps that recommend Nvidia... for most of us the only reason to actually go and choose Nvidia on Linux is because of CUDA. And, personally, I would rather lease time on the cloud or have a second GPU work horse PC separate from my desktop for that.
Unfortunately Nvidia is, by far, the most popular option for Windows users. Over 4:1 ratio according to Steam statistics.
So most new Linux users are still going to have to suffer through dealing with their GPU drivers.
Now that I have it working I see random glitches here and there that I can't pin down. Some Electron apps I have to turn off GPU acceleration or they won't get any windows showing up - they launch, the process exists, they're in the dock as active, but the window doesn't appear at all.
Getting a new laptop from work to replace this one and I'm really hoping it won't have nvidia hardware - or at least, if it does I can disable it and the Intel GPU will work fine also.
From a value proposition, it seems good. Our group definitely goes through keyboards and mainboards from spilled tea at least annually it seems, but AppleCare is just a no-brainer, and away we go.
I still drive on my original M1 at home without complaint, and use my M3 at work. Anyone have the early Frameworks still in daily use? How are they?
Honestly it'll probably last me another 5 years before I need to switch out the mainboard. I don't do anything intense like gaming.
Went and installed Slimbook Battery and left it at default settings and got several more hours of battery life without having to close everything. Had to reinstall later and just installed TLP and left it at default settings and still getting far better battery life.
Not sure why Ubuntu is so cripplingly bad out of the box when it's so easy to fix, but if you haven't tried that it might be worth checking out.
I'm happy with my framework 13 four years later. I might switch to the stiffer hinge and/or a matte screen in the future. Might try one of the AMD mainboards in a few generations when they're cheaper and put my current mainboard into another case...
Edit: FWIW I bought a macbook air M1 a year after getting the framework 13, and ended up selling it. The battery life on the macbook air was significantly better, but I can still spend an entire workday in the park with the glossy framework 13 without needing to recharge so the extra battery life from the M1 didn't really have a ton of value for me.
This was some seriously infuriating bullshit. I remember them blaming it on intel on the forums, even though no other laptop had the issue.
In my case, replacing the battery with a random aliexpress ine fixed the issue, and they could have just said so.
Really made me lose trust in the company.
Unfortunately I do not think anyone comes remotely close to Apple in the battery life department. I have an M2 Air that I really adore, but after driving Linux on my workstation for the last 2 years I want to explore Linux laptops. All my research has concluded that if you care about longevity, a Mac is the only way to go.
The MacBook has a better trackpad, stronger case, better battery life, far better display. But the ThinkPad has NixOS running perfectly (I had Asahi on my Mac Studio, but with the lack of Thunderbolt and not so great battery life I don't want to run it on a MacBook). At any rate, the Mac is going to be better, but I have to sacrifice a bit for tech-feudalism-free computing (Mac is slowly becoming more and more closed).
The battery life is good enough that I never worry/think about it. The keyboard is fantastic. The trackpad is meh, not terrible but not MacBook great—use a mouse or vim :)
When I first got a 12th-gen Intel mainboard FW13 with the original 55Wh battery running stock Ubuntu, the battery life at best was <6 hours. Since moving to the 7040 AMD mainboard, the upgraded 61Wh battery, and Fedora, I've not run out of battery in an 8-hour workday. I've also got an Ultra 7 155H mainboard with the same work performance with respect to battery life.
I can't speak to the FW16s with 85Wh batteries, but I also don't consider them as being designed with either work or battery life as priorities.
Framework doesn't provide official optimized Linux power management profiles. Community profiles make up some of the difference, but if untuned battery life out of the box is a priority to you, and if you also don't care about the process of replacing its battery, just get a Mac. If Linux is an additional priority to you, get an old M1 or M2 MBP with a low battery cycle count and run Fedora Asahi Remix on it.
We sorely need more competition in the 2in1 segment, there aren't many good options. Either gaming laptops (no long commitment, bad build quality) or Lenovo Yogas (bad value, limited/weak hw options).
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