[HN Gopher] Framework Laptop with Ubuntu Review
___________________________________________________________________
Framework Laptop with Ubuntu Review
Author : luisartola
Score : 485 points
Date : 2022-01-05 08:12 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (luisartola.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (luisartola.com)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I love the concept of the Framework and it fits my use-case but I
| really wish they would at least add some form of screen
| configurability/options to their tech roadmap.
|
| - I need a mate screen option, glossy displays in ambient light
| give me headaches.
|
| - Some folks will also probably want touchscreens (uber glossy),
| more power to them
|
| - Would also be very cool to bring back the old tech of
| transflective displays like the one in the Pixel Qi display. For
| folks that want to work outside (me again!) and are not fussed
| about color accuracy.
| markstos wrote:
| You can buy a matte screen protector.
| https://viascreens.com/screen-protector/framework/laptop-13-...
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Be very careful, I recall some Framework laptops being
| damaged by certain screen protectors
| skunkworker wrote:
| Unfortunately I didn't see any comments other than one in passing
| about the trackpad's feel and software integration. At the moment
| I consider macOS to still have the edge over other
| implementations (software, the glass feel and haptics all in
| harmony), but I do know that in recent years the precision
| touchpads have come a long way.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| The trackpad is top-notch for something not a MacBook
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "If you need to do native iOS or macOS development then a
| MacBook is your obvious choice."
|
| No, it's not. I do cross-platform development for over a decade
| now and all I have are virtual machines. Over 2 dozens of them
| and I never owned any Apple hardware. Why pay for overpriced
| hardware when virtualization covers everything for a 100th of the
| price?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| If I remember correctly, Apple's EULA prohibits users from
| running virtualized macOS on a non-Apple hardware.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Except I am not an user, I'm a developer, hence no EULA
| infringement. You might want to take a second look at their
| EULA for their Apple developer ID and you'll see that for
| those $100/year they sing a very different song. Money talks!
| danieldk wrote:
| _Except I am not an user, I 'm a developer, hence no EULA
| infringement._
|
| IANAL, but it doesn't work like that. Like any original
| creative work, macOS falls under copyright protection.
| Apple only gives you a licenses you to copy/run macOS on
| Apple-branded hardware.
|
| _You might want to take a second look at their EULA for
| their Apple developer ID_
|
| I don't see anything in the Apple Developer Agreement that
| would cancel the terms of the macOS EULA. But I'd love to
| be proven wrong, please give me a pointer.
|
| _you 'll see that for those $100/year they sing a very
| different song. Money talks!_
|
| $100/year is less than pocket change for Apple. Even if
| they have a million paying developers (unlikely), it's
| ~1/3658th of their yearly revenue. If they'd make their
| iPhones 50 cents more expensive, they would make more
| money.
|
| The $100 per year is only there as one of the many ways to
| fight scammers. It makes it more costly to open many
| accounts, they have a credit card (with a name) on file,
| etc. Sure, it is not air tight, but it is just one of many
| measures.
| tpush wrote:
| No, it's still prohibited. From Apple's terms for devs[0]:
|
| "You agree not to install, use or run the Apple SDKs on any
| non-Apple-branded computer, and not to install, use or run
| iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, macOS and Provisioning Profiles
| on or in connection with devices other than Apple-branded
| products, or to enable others to do so."
|
| [0]
| https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/terms/apple-
| de...
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Developing natively for iOS without testing on any iOS devices
| sounds like a shortcut to making mediocre iOS apps.
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| Honestly I think you should be able to test stuff in real world
| scenarios if possible.
|
| I would never do iOS development seriously without native
| devices.
|
| Virtualization brings you far, true, but it's still different.
|
| I would even create a hardware lap if I would do end-user
| device Software development.
|
| And the quote is still true. If you do iOS MacOS development it
| IS the obvious choice obviously.
|
| Yours might be cheaper and might have other advantages but it
| is NOT obvious.
| aquova wrote:
| I got mine a few months ago, and overall I'm rather pleased with
| the purchase, however I don't think I'm quite as satisfied as the
| author of this article. For the most part, I think it's a really
| great machine, but there are some oddities that have caused me
| trouble. I've been running Arch Linux + Plasma on it, and have
| gone between X11 and Wayland (more on that later).
|
| - My touchpad is really flaky. Sometimes it works perfectly, but
| most of the time simply clicking just... doesn't work. Moving the
| cursor, tap to click, scrolling work fine, but the actual
| pressing the touchpad to an audible click won't result in a click
| on the machine. This seems to be a hardware issue, it can
| sometimes be remedied by pressing down across the whole touchpad,
| but not always, and it seems to be worse when it's cold in the
| room. Also, once in a blue moon it won't initialize quite right
| when waking from sleep causing it to be hypersensitive; putting
| the device back to sleep and rewaking it fixes that.
|
| - They mentioned they were fond of the battery life, which
| surprises me as that seems to be the devices biggest failing. I'm
| somewhat new to Linux laptops, but even after setting up
| hibernate and deep sleep and all that, I simply can't leave it on
| sleep over night or it will drain the entire battery. The battery
| life while using it is fine, not as good as my old MacBook, but
| I've had to start shutting it down when not in use.
|
| - The speakers really aren't great. A big part of that is the
| fact that they're downward facing, which seems a really bizarre
| design decision to me.
|
| - Fractional scaling. This is more of an issue with Linux itself.
| I actually really like the display as a whole, particularly the
| 3:2 ratio. However, 1x is too small, and I found 2x to be too
| large. I've been using 150% scaling, which worked well for the
| most part, except some applications wouldn't obey it (cough
| Steam). I then tried switching to Wayland, which seems to have
| fixed Steam's issues (and the trackpad scrolling notably improved
| oddly), but xwayland programs have really blurry text.. There's
| always a bit of a tradeoff, although I'm still experimenting with
| this. I also find this display gives me more eye strain at later
| hours than other screens I use. YMMV.
|
| Overall, I would say I am satisfied with my purchase however. I
| love the keyboard, love the modularity, I like the
| customizability. I don't regret the purchase, but I do think
| there are some things potential buyers should be aware of.
| pythko wrote:
| Seconding your experience, except my battery life has been
| quite good somehow. I'm not sure if that's due to one of the
| settings I changed when setting it up, OS (I'm using Pop!_OS),
| or just luck of the draw.
|
| My touchpad will also just stop clicking sometimes. It's
| usually an exercise of finding the right spot to push to reset
| the hardware clicker itself. I have the fix that Framework sent
| out about a loose touchpad cable, so it shouldn't be that. It
| also occasionally will just stop registering the mouse at all,
| either from the touchpad or from an external mouse. Closing the
| lid and reopening it will fix this.
|
| Fractional scaling was a little dicey, but I found 150% hits
| the sweet spot for me, I don't have any issues aside from some
| occasional jagged screen regions while scrolling, which I don't
| mind.
|
| Overall, I've been happy with mine. It's not perfect, and it
| occasionally hiccups in weird ways (like the mouse thing), but
| that was my expectation going in. As a daily driver and dev
| machine, it works well and I would recommend the DIY edition to
| anyone with a little tolerance for issues in their laptop.
| nrp wrote:
| I commented on the parent comment as well, but could you
| reach out to our support team on the touchpad issue:
| https://frame.work/support#contact_support
| nrp wrote:
| Could you reach out to our support team on the touchpad issue:
| https://frame.work/support#contact_support
|
| We've finally root caused physical clicks not registering on
| some units, and found that it was a batch of dome switches with
| a coating that was more likely to corrode over time depending
| on environmental conditions. We've recently switched coatings
| to prevent this from happening in the future, and we're also
| sending replacement parts to folks who write in with this
| issue. One of the benefits of this product being easy to repair
| is that we can just send you a replacement module instead of
| needing to take your system back or send you a full system!
| bo1024 wrote:
| There was a touchpad fix that they mailed out to people a while
| back. Maybe that's related to your problem? I never applied it
| because mine seems to be fine.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| I have a couple of years old Thinkpad X1 and the WiFi issues are
| pretty much the same on Ubuntu. Drops out after a while.
| fernandogrd wrote:
| I'm surprised by comments about how it didn't work ok for some
| people. It worked almost flawless for me, maybe because I chose
| Fedora 35?
|
| Things I did:
|
| - Enabled fractional scaling to use it at 150%
|
| - Changed suspend from s2idle to deep, archwiki mentions that:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Framework_Laptop
|
| One small thing I loved about the laptop was how I was able to
| (albeit slowly) charge it with a pixel 3 charger.
| clepto wrote:
| I as well am very surprised by how many people seem to have had
| issues with it.
|
| I have used Manjaro and Pop OS on it, and encountered basically
| 0 issues on either one. The only issue with Pop OS is Gnome's
| support for fractional scaling is pretty terrible(at least at
| the time I tried it).
|
| I use Cinnamon on Manjaro and pretty much everything works
| flawlessly. The only thing I had any issue with was the
| fingerprint scanner, though I mostly just gave up on it at the
| first sign of issue as it wasn't a feature I really cared about
| having.
|
| I haven't had any issues with battery life, and I just carry an
| Anker portable battery with it so it's not really a concern
| anyways, and having that gets me charging for laptop, phone, or
| anything else that can use USB C power.
|
| Even still, I've observed as high as like 8 hours of battery
| life while being actively used and that's more than enough for
| me.
|
| Might be worth noting I don't primarily use a laptop though.
| It's almost exclusively for when I'm out somewhere and an issue
| comes up or something.
| smeej wrote:
| I am absolutely flummoxed by this review. Mine is configured with
| nearly identical specs (except that I have 64GB RAM) and is one
| of the worst purchases I've ever made.
|
| Enabling deep sleep works fine; waking from it is impossible.
| WiFi stops working. The touch pad becomes hypersensitive. I've
| resorted to turning the whole thing completely off after every
| use. But the battery still loses power even when the machine is
| completely powered down.
|
| The machine also freezes if I try to open a jpg or a PDF from the
| file explorer. Just completely freezes. Fan spins up like crazy,
| but as I mentioned, I have 64GB of RAM in this thing. It should
| be able to open a single one-page scanned document from my own
| scanner. If there's anything wrong with the file, this is the
| computer that's making the file poorly.
|
| The internet connection also just turns off after about half an
| hour of use. I have a Belkin dock with Ethernet plugged into it,
| which is then plugged into my Framework's USB-C port. This dock
| supports my work Mac all work day every day with no issues at
| all, so it's not the dock's problem. But the Framework? Internet
| just stops working after half an hour. And it manages to kill
| both wired and WiFi when it dies. I can turn them back on, but
| this is a ridiculous problem to have.
|
| This last point is pretty minor, but the hinges are floppy. The
| whole screen shakes around when I type on it.
|
| I have no idea how this author's experience is so much better
| than mine unless they just haven't used it much yet, but I regret
| absolutely everything about the purchase of this machine and feel
| like I was sold a bill of goods by all the glowing positive
| reviews all over the internet.
| nafizh wrote:
| You have to go to bios and disable secure boot, then the
| battery doesn't get drained anymore when the lid is closed. You
| also have to disable ps2 mouse emulation in bios, the mouse
| hypersensitivity goes away after that. I also enabled large
| text in accessibility so the text size is perfect and super
| high res with the 3:2 aspect screen, it's fantastic.
|
| I just bought the framework and running ubuntu 21.10. I had
| some of the problems you mentioned but the forum has solutions
| to many. It's a new product, and specially with Linux, I knew
| there would be some problems. You have to be willing to solve
| these problems o/w you should stay away from buying new
| hardware from a startup.
| smeej wrote:
| Thank you for these directions! I'll give them a shot as soon
| as I get a chance and hopefully they'll make a difference!
| beckman466 wrote:
| awesome. i would be keen to get a little status report in a
| week if you could? others will then possibly be convinced
| to support the development and growth of Framework if they
| are searching HN through Algolia
| oneepic wrote:
| Or they'll be convinced to stay away, depending on the
| outcome...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > You have to go to bios
|
| IMO, a computer should work decently without needing to tweak
| the BIOS. If a feature is "experimental" and is likely to
| cause problems, it should be disabled by default.
| oldandboring wrote:
| Oh, please. I've had to disable Secure Boot on every
| Thinkpad I've ever had in order to run Linux on it without
| drama. It takes two seconds.
| username190 wrote:
| For what it's worth, on most computers I've daily driven
| with Linux, tweaking the bios has been the norm. At
| minimum, I've had to disable secure boot on most distros.
|
| I agree with the idea that it _should_ work decently
| without - but as of now, that is not the status quo.
| macNchz wrote:
| I imagine it does work decently in Windows...it's pretty
| standard to have to flip a few setting in the BIOS when
| installing Linux on a machine that came with Windows, best
| case is to have clear instructions on what settings need to
| be changed.
|
| That said this is also the very first model of a device
| that's intended to be DIY repairable...tweaking some BIOS
| settings shouldn't be scary for someone buying what is
| effectively the beta version of a laptop that comes with a
| screwdriver so you can change out its parts.
| rozab wrote:
| This is a computer you have to put together yourself (if
| you want to choose your hardware config). It comes with a
| screwdriver in the box. The logo is a gear. These are not-
| so-subtle hints that this machine is for tinkerers.
| amarshall wrote:
| > disable secure boot, then the battery doesn't get drained
| anymore when the lid is closed
|
| Do you have a link to further elaboration and testing on
| this? Seems strange, and searching the forums is a bit
| difficult since the two terms get mentioned together a lot.
| pja wrote:
| Secure boot currently results in the Linux kernel disabling
| hibernation for security reasons IIRC.
| amarshall wrote:
| That is true, I had (perhaps incorrectly) assumed the
| previous commenter was talking about it affecting power
| consumption in "normal" suspend rather than hibernate. (I
| actually can't use hibernate anyway because I use ZFS,
| but that's a different story.)
| pja wrote:
| NB. Hopefully the 'no hibernate with secure boot turned on'
| is going to get sorted eventually - I believe Matthew Garrett
| has been working on it.
|
| At the moment, the inevitable battery drain while asleep is
| quite annoying on modern laptops running Linux :(
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I'm with you. My configuration is more-or-less maxed out and at
| over $2500 it's one of the more regretful large purchases I've
| ever made. Current issues:
|
| - As has been noted time and time again, battery life is
| atrocious. As in unusable for even the travel time required for
| a three hour flight: factoring in the poor sleep, an hour at
| the airport, and time on the aircraft the battery is dead.
| Crazy for 2021/2022 - my eight year old Macbook does better.
|
| - Wifi. The Intel Wifi modules provided with the Framework are
| very poorly supported in Linux. I spent six hours the other
| night running additional ethernet drops because I just couldn't
| stand my workday routinely being interrupted by repeatedly
| disassociating from my AP (fixed with reboot). Even unloading
| and reloading the associated kernel modules wouldn't bring it
| back.
|
| - USB-C acts... Strange. I have two 4K displays using
| Displayport over USB-C and the Framework repeatedly fails to
| initialize them from boot. I have to do a strange dance (the
| steps of which I'm still figuring out) involving powering off
| the Framework, unplugging/re-plugging everything, and then
| rebooting until it magically works again.
|
| - Fan. The fan is crazy. I've settled on disabling turbo mode
| in Linux.
|
| - Build quality. I'm convinced if I drop this thing it's all
| over.
|
| All in all I'm mad at myself for spending over $3k on a
| productivity configuration centered around what is pretty much
| beta hardware. I should have known better.
|
| Anyway, there's hope for some of these issues as they seem to
| be releasing BIOS updates pretty regularly (currently running
| 3.07) but even then I need to USB boot to use their EFI update
| tool. Intel wifi _should_ get better over time and worst case I
| can swap it out for Atheros or something. That said I think the
| battery, build, and fan issues are fundamental hardware design
| choices.
| amarshall wrote:
| - Re WiFi: it's not specific to Framework, and are just bugs
| in Intel's Linux driver. See bug (and workaround and patches)
| in my report
| https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214693 as well as
| forum discussion https://community.frame.work/t/using-the-
| ax210-with-linux-on...
|
| - Re battery: Yup, battery life during sleep sucks, it seems
| like this is mostly an Intel 11th gen issue as S3 sleep went
| away and folks on Dell, Lenovo, etc., 11th gen hardware have
| similar issues.
|
| - Re Fan: it does seem to like to ramp up a bit too much even
| when components are not really that hot yet.
|
| - Re USB-C: have not used that, so cannot comment
|
| - Re build quality: yes, it is a bit flimsier than I would
| like (though have definitely used laptops that are _way_
| worse), but it is also lighter than competitors that are less
| so. I am mostly okay with that trade-off, others may not be.
|
| As you say, the company has been responsive and helpful on
| the community forums in a way the big players never have
| been, and the BIOS updates are fixing genuine issues and
| complaints with real release notes. It's not all great for
| sure, but there's lots of things that are a lot better than
| competitors.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying that the Intel wifi issues are a
| Linux kernel thing, not a Framework thing. I tried to
| communicate that in my comment but obviously I could have
| been clearer. I'm fairly confident they'll get fixed in
| Linux eventually but it's still yet-another-issue that's
| frustrating for a laptop so heavily embraced by the Linux
| community.
|
| I understand the sleep issues but battery life is miserable
| generally - the sleep issues only exacerbate an already
| pretty-much-terrible situation. Fortunately I don't really
| need significant battery life but if I did I'd be looking
| to unload this thing at this point.
| criddell wrote:
| How are the wifi issues not Framework's responsibility?
| They are the ones who defined the hardware specs. I would
| assume they tested different configurations and picked
| the best options.
|
| Which makes me wonder - maybe the Intel wifi board has a
| lot of problems but is still the best Linux option...
| amarshall wrote:
| I mean, Dell and Lenovo sell laptops with Linux pre-
| installed with Intel AX* WiFi boards that almost
| certainly suffer the same issue.
|
| I'm not trying to give Framework (or any other laptop
| maker) a free pass here, just saying that it's not a
| unique problem to this laptop.
| criddell wrote:
| I was thinking that there was a good Linux option out
| there. That may not be true.
|
| One of the benefits that a company like Framework has is
| that they don't have to support everything. They can be
| like Apple and tailor their hardware choices to the ones
| best supported by the software.
|
| To me, Asahi Linux is the most exciting thing going on in
| Linux-land right now. They have a very small number of
| hardware configurations to support. In theory, they
| should be able to get it really dialed in and polished to
| the point where it just works. I don't care if they go
| for KDE or Gnome, SystemD or SysVinit, or anything else
| in particular. If it works right from the start and is
| extraordinarily stable, I'll learn to love the choices
| they make.
| amarshall wrote:
| The issues are the same as always: drivers and suspend.
| Drivers are made worse by the intersection of newer
| hardware and lagging distros, suspend lately made worse
| by Intel's changes in 11th gen and Microsoft pushing its
| vision of "modern standby".
|
| Asahi is more of a project for driver and related
| development and upstreaming it. They do plan to release a
| distro, but the current plan is for it to just be Arch
| with the bleeding edge of their work applied (so perhaps
| not the "dialed-in" you're looking for since Arch is far
| from that). IMO, Asahi is just solving the same issue
| with anything else: lack of drivers for some hardware. It
| just so happens that the hardware is very specific and
| popular. My feeling is that I don't want to invest in
| hardware whose manufacturer is unwilling to invest at all
| in my use-case (Linux).
| [deleted]
| tiredofU2 wrote:
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Their design aim was to make a laptop that is upgradeable
| and serviceable first. Not 100% Linux support first. This
| makes sense because software is much easier to improve
| after the fact than hardware.
|
| And I'm curious to know which WiFi chipset you would
| rather they have used, as most alternatives either have
| worse Linux support or aren't as advanced as Intel's.
| Would you rather they used Broadcom, The bane of WiFi and
| Linux?
| criddell wrote:
| > which WiFi chipset you would rather they have used
|
| That's what my last sentence was trying to express.
| Something can be shitty and also the best option.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| My bad, I took that to be sarcasm.
| amarshall wrote:
| FWIW the workaround in the bug report 100% resolves the
| WiFi issues for me (it just means losing 802.11ax
| support, but my AP does not have that anyway). It was
| _definitely_ the most frustrating issue for me; made game
| streaming via Moonlight impossible.
|
| Anecdotally, my battery life is plenty good when actually
| using it (I've yet to feel like I need to reach for the
| charger at all unless I started very low), but everyone's
| use case is different.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Yep, I'd actually forgotten about that workaround but I
| couldn't risk another entire day of lost productivity so
| I spent my evening running Ethernet. No regrets!
| AlphaSite wrote:
| I mean at the end of the day, you're buying a laptop from
| framework, if the laptops work does work that's on them for
| choosing to use an intel chip with known issues.
|
| Laptops are sold as an appliance for the most part, they
| have to own it's quality.
|
| Actually more than that, this should first be an excellent
| laptop and then the repairability and customisable it
| should be layered on top of that without compromising it
| (too much), as opposed to the other way around.
| hda111 wrote:
| Would be interesting to see how much battery life there is on
| Windows. For ThinkPads it's always much better on Windows
| than on Linux.
| nrp wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| Andrew noted in a sibling comment what the issue was with the
| AX210 in Linux. Intel has informed us that the patch is going
| into kernel 5.17. In retrospect had we known how many issues
| we'd see with AX210 relative to AX201, we would have gone
| with the latter as the default option on the DIY Edition.
| Going forward though, we do expect compatibility and
| stability to improve (on 5.17 and later).
|
| On the USB-C issues, it would be great to know the model
| numbers of the displays and cables that are having this
| issue. We want to continue to build up our library of
| peripherals that have unknown issues in order to resolve
| them.
|
| On build quality, we've seen exceeding few field failures on
| mechanical issues, and a couple of reports of people dropping
| their system (or as often happens, blaming their cat for
| this) from high enough to dent a corner of the chassis and
| then being able resolve that by ordering a replacement cover
| part from us.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Hi! Thanks for taking the time to reply to my
| overwhelmingly negative review. I suppose what I'm saying,
| generally, is that I should be more selective in my tools.
| You're a startup. I'm on my third. I should know that when
| I'm often barely hanging on from the stress and workload of
| building my own stuff I should select "safe" and "proven"
| tools. In this case that should have probably been a
| Macbook (again) because Linux on a laptop is still
| practically a part-time job itself.
|
| EDIT: Speaking of startups, if you didn't know already you
| have a lot of "street cred" out there. When wrapping an in-
| person presentation or meeting many of the questions I get
| are about my Framework!
|
| Where should I report on the displays and cables with the
| USB-C issues?
|
| Regarding drops I've actually never dropped a laptop in the
| > 20 years I've had them. So kind of a non-concern but the
| comment was referring to the general "feel" which may not
| really mean anything outside of perception.
| nrp wrote:
| On the USB-C issues, if you could drop a ticket in
| https://frame.work/support#contact_support and mention
| this thread, that would be great. Thanks!
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Thanks, will do!
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > The machine also freezes if I try to open a jpg or a PDF from
| the file explorer. Just completely freezes. Fan spins up like
| crazy, but as I mentioned, I have 64GB of RAM in this thing. It
| should be able to open a single one-page scanned document from
| my own scanner. If there's anything wrong with the file, this
| is the computer that's making the file poorly.
|
| This almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the
| framework itself. That sounds like a software bug all day long.
| Something about your OS install is broken or similar.
|
| The only other possibility seems like it'd be if the storage
| drive is broken. Which could then possibly be why you're
| experiencing so many other issues, if things like code pages
| are just failing to load or getting corrupted in the same way
| your JPG isn't able to load.
|
| But it seems like starting with a fsck or even a re-install
| seems like a good idea.
| kodah wrote:
| > This almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the
| framework itself.
|
| I mean... Kind of? It's pretty clear that they're driver
| issues. Hardware manufacturers have to make in-roads with OS
| teams to get these things delivered flawlessly, otherwise
| they have to wait for the community to build fixes. System76
| and Lenovo do their best to get ahead of driver issues from
| what I've seen. I'm assuming a lot of this has to do with the
| fact that OP is running 21.10 rather than an LTS release.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| But opening a jpeg or PDF doesn't really involve any
| drivers, so driver issues wouldn't explain why those
| specifically are failing to open. If opening _anything_
| caused random freezes, that 'd suggest something like the
| GPU driver might be failing. But otherwise opening JPEGs &
| PDFs are just generic CPU work, there's no drivers for
| those.
| smeej wrote:
| To be clear, they open fine if I open a compatible
| program and then open them from within the program.
|
| They just freeze the system if I try to open them from
| the file explorer.
|
| I've not seen anything like this before.
| Shorel wrote:
| Do you have a separate partition for /home and other for
| / ?
|
| I do, and this enables me to delete and reinstall any
| Linux version without changing my home directory.
|
| It seems reinstalling the operating system is the first
| thing you should try.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Does that work with flatpaks and snaps that store some
| app data in /home?
| kodah wrote:
| You give them access to that partition
| bradwood wrote:
| try Fedora on it and see if these issues still persist.
| It can't hurt and may aid in troubleshooting.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Honestly, that sounds like a kernel panic. Two guesses:
| bizarre GPU/driver issue triggered by some kind of
| preview/desktop environment thing (less likely), or your
| filesystem is corrupt and/or your SSD has trouble (more
| likely).
|
| Try `pv /dev/nvme0n1 > /dev/null` (or just cat, but pv
| will give you a nice progress bar if you install it). If
| that errors out or your machine freezes, you have a
| storage problem and probably need to replace your SSD. If
| that works, try booting in single user mode or from a USB
| boot drive and running fsck.
|
| You can also try SSHing in from another machine while
| trying to open the file locally. If the SSH session dies
| instantly, it's probably a kernel panic. If it survives,
| you can look at logs and top see what happened (maybe the
| issue is the desktop environment locks up?)
|
| Sleep issues, the dock stuff, those sound like legitimate
| driver/support issues that would affect anyone. But
| opening PDFs crashing your machine really sounds like
| either your hardware or install is specifically broken
| and needs fixing, or you're running into a really weird
| bug that is not hardware-specific.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| It sounds like it's failing to lookup what program to
| launch from the file type. That's all but certainly
| either a corrupt OS install or a bad storage drive then,
| and wouldn't be indicative of any general problem with
| Framework laptop's linux support (or lack thereof).
| amarshall wrote:
| Re WiFi: this is a Linux driver bug, see my report for
| workaround and patches
| https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214693 as well as
| forums discussion https://community.frame.work/t/using-the-
| ax210-with-linux-on...
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| BTW: You can buy the DIY version w/o the Intel WiFi board and
| bring your own that's more compatible.
| amarshall wrote:
| Absolutely! I'd just already bought that one (not knowing
| the Linux driver issues) and, while considered buying
| another board, was fortunately able to find a workaround
| for the issue that fully resolves for me (just disables
| 802.11ax, which I don't need presently anyway).
| prophesi wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I've been running Fedora on my DIY Framework
| since mid-October without any issues (besides needing to
| install a Respin to get the required WiFi driver). Even
| upgraded from Fedora 34 to 35 just fine. Enabled deep sleep and
| it's working as intended, issues with WiFi have always been due
| to Spectrum's terrible non-fiber service, etc.
| allochthon wrote:
| > The touch pad becomes hypersensitive.
|
| I haven't seen a lot of the problems you're seeing, but I
| definitely have seen this one. Not only is the touch pad hard
| to use because it's very sensitive, just using the builtin
| keyboard can accidentally cause the touch pad to be activated.
| I've read up on ways of fixing this in Linux, but I haven't
| quite found the trick to make the touch pad behave as well as
| the Mac touch pad, which is what I'm used to. I haven't even
| really found a fix yet, so I type very carefully, avoiding
| resting my hands on the laptop, when I'm not using an external
| keyboard.
| jandrese wrote:
| Palm detection in Linux is a definite weak area. I have tried
| everything and still get spurious clicks when typing on
| pretty much every laptop.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| What OS did you install? It could be related to their choice to
| install a cutting edge version of Ubuntu versus Ubuntu LTS (for
| patches that may resolve some of what you're experiencing).
| smeej wrote:
| First Ubuntu 21.10 like the author. Then reverted to 21.04
| because the Framework forums recommended that to get the WiFi
| card working at all (it didn't on 21.10).
|
| With the RAM exception, my Framework and the author's appear
| to be apples to apples.
|
| That's why this review confuses me so much; we appear to be
| using almost the exact same machine.
| mfer wrote:
| I have the same configuration as the author and get similar
| results (except I don't have hibernation setup yet)
|
| I had touchpad issues but there was a fix for it in the
| forums
|
| With windows (I setup dual boot) everything works done. I
| had to tinker with Linux for everything to work how I
| wanted it. Which is what I've had to do with other Linux
| desktops too
| choeger wrote:
| Stupid question: Could it be that your hardware is faulty?
| Power supply, memory, or a defective Mainboard?
| smeej wrote:
| Maybe? All the hardware came from Framework (i.e., I haven't
| subbed in any parts), though, so it would point to a quality
| control issue at least.
| losvedir wrote:
| I feel like this happens with any item. For example, I've been
| supremely happy with all the Apple laptops I've ever owned, but
| have seen others with a litany of problems. Could it be that
| you got a dud with some sort of hardware problem? Try
| contacting their support and maybe they'll let you exchange it
| or something.
| nrp wrote:
| We definitely want to help you resolve these issues. Most of
| them sound like specific compatibility challenges on Ubuntu
| 21.10. To be clear, I agree that we need to get better with new
| Ubuntu releases. We've been providing hardware to the team at
| Fedora and have full support out of the box with Fedora 35, but
| don't have a setup like that with Ubuntu yet.
|
| In the meantime, we've been recommending Ubuntu 21.04 because
| it does have full support and good stability with all updates
| applied: https://community.frame.work/t/ubuntu-21-04-on-the-
| framework...
| hansel_der wrote:
| really curios if there is ANY overlap of your target audience
| and fedora users.
|
| i mean, for a top-down approach i would probably also choose
| redhat because they seem to have structures for a streamlined
| b2b communication and commitment, but on the other hand i
| absolutely know nobody who uses it apart from the odd
| researcher and enterprise-it guys.
| sevagh wrote:
| Do you think Fedora is an unpopular distro?
| hansel_der wrote:
| no. i imagine the install- and user-base is huge due to
| the footprint in edu and enterprise.
|
| but ime it is unpopular for personal use esp. in the
| enthusiast/dev/ops/hacker demographic that i consider to
| be a sizeable portion of the framework target market.
| sevagh wrote:
| I feel like the exact opposite of what you're saying is
| true. Education and enterprise stick to Ubuntu, which is
| practically the Windows of Linux distributions. Hugely
| popular and mainstream.
| messo wrote:
| I switched from Arch (btw!) To Fedora last year and it has
| been an awesome experience. Highly recommended! 10 years of
| Arch has thought me alot and I have enjoyed i3 and sway,
| but now I needed an OS that just works.
|
| Nice to hear that Framework plays well with Fedora, it will
| definitely be the next laptop I buy (if they ever start
| shipping to Norway).
| bradwood wrote:
| did you ever try Manjaro?
| krn wrote:
| > really curios if there is ANY overlap of your target
| audience and fedora users.
|
| I believe it's the other way around: no other Linux
| distribution has a higher overlap with the target market of
| the Framework Laptop than Fedora.
|
| Because unlike Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation has been
| specifically design for developers, hobbyists, and early
| adopters[1].
|
| Personally, I only recommend and install Ubuntu for non-
| technical people, who don't need or care about always
| having the most modern OS features.
|
| [1] https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/
| hcal wrote:
| I have to say I agree. I feel like a lot of people seem
| to think it is a suit and tie enterprise type boring
| distribution. Its really not. It has similarities to the
| enterprise distros, but it certainly doesn't feel like
| RHEL.
|
| Its where the new fun stuff goes first... not so new that
| it will bite you, but still new enough to be fun to play
| with. That seems perfectly in line with the marketing I
| see from framework.
| pmontra wrote:
| I always used Ubuntu on my hardware and about 90% Debian
| derived distros for customers vs a 10% of Red Hat derived
| ones, some CentOS and some Amazon Linux 2. I really don't
| like rpm. I do adapt to the different organization of the
| configuration files but I prefer the Debian one (maybe
| because of habit.) Most importantly I feel it's easier to
| google for solutions to Ubuntu problems. Of course I'm
| also more used to do that, I'm probably at 20 vs 1
| Debian/Ubuntu vs RH machines now.
| plokiju wrote:
| I'm a developer who's pretty much always used Ubuntu, and
| haven't bothered digging too deep into other distros.
| What are the modern features I'm missing?
| krn wrote:
| To put it simply: most things that you are enjoying in
| Ubuntu now first showed up in Fedora months or even years
| ago.
| bradwood wrote:
| Manjaro! It gives you the best of Arch without the
| tinkerers overhead... I've used RHEL, Debian/Ubuntu,
| Slackware, et al, and Manjaro, for a laptop, is hands-
| down the best developer distro out there IMHO.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| What does Fedora currently have that Ubuntu is missing?
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Fedora just gets everything sooner. Newer kernels, gnome,
| packages. But it's still rock solid because of Red
| Hat/IBM.
| mathfailure wrote:
| Well, that's just bullshit.
|
| You either get stuff sooner or get stuff more stable, you
| can't have 'rock solid' stuff sooner.
| jl6 wrote:
| Ubuntu feels to me like it's been feature complete for
| about ten years and all we really get in the new versions
| are updated upstream apps and drivers, a stability
| crapshoot (sometimes better, sometimes worse), and an
| extension of support. Is Fedora doing anything different?
| krn wrote:
| Fedora is where most of the innovations in Linux happen,
| because it's an upstream of CentOS Stream, which is an
| upstream of RHEL.
| bashinator wrote:
| The packaging system is what originally brought me to
| debian and ubuntu; RPM caught up a while back, but apt
| was better for decades. Stability and easy access to good
| tooling is what I like about Ubuntu; how is Fedora
| better?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Fedora is a maintainers dream, in my (limited) opinion.
|
| Things like mock and fedpkg make modifying
| upstream/bundling your own stuff up super easy. Then add
| in COPR (like PPAs) and it's a feedback-loop friendly
| setup
| smeej wrote:
| I _am_ running 21.04. All these problems are occurring on
| 21.04.
| nrp wrote:
| In that case, we definitely want to understand what is
| occurring, because that is pretty unusual. I would
| recommend either commenting in the 21.04 thread or creating
| a new thread in our Linux sub-forum on this, so that both
| us and members of the community can help debug this:
| https://community.frame.work/t/ubuntu-21-04-on-the-
| framework...
| torstenvl wrote:
| Hey. I don't have a Framework and I'm not in the market
| soon, so I'm not particularly invested in the underlying
| specifics here, but...
|
| As a general matter, I have seen this kind of sentiment a
| lot, and I don't think it's particularly helpful. This
| subthread OP clearly feels let down and potentially
| betrayed. Why would you respond by suggesting that the
| conversation goes private onto a forum Framework
| controls? Shifting the forum of the discussion to a place
| where one party has more power seems inherently
| questionable.
|
| I say that even though I have no reason to believe you
| all would do anything inappropriate, and my general view
| of your project is highly positive.
| fsflover wrote:
| > by suggesting that the conversation goes private onto a
| forum Framework controls
|
| AFAIK it will not go private, it will still be available
| for everyone to follow. HN is not exactly convenient
| place for user support (unless it's Google or Apple).
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but they cannot provide
| assistance on HN either, it's not a good fit.
|
| At this point, when a client of mine that is technically
| litterate has such a bad experience, I pay them a visit.
|
| They would probably learn a ton by having the setup at
| hand.
| kadoban wrote:
| I suspect HN isn't a very good place for a back-and-forth
| on debugging issues like this. If nothing else, HN has a
| reply depth limit that will be hit pretty quick.
| smeej wrote:
| I will try to do this as soon as I have the time.
|
| But time is the main reason I bought the machine in the
| first place. Reviews about Ubuntu support were glowing.
| Linux support was touted in the website significantly.
|
| I'm really not trying to do anything extraordinary with
| the machine, so I thought it would be better just to
| spend the money and get one that works than it has been
| trying to do things like run Lubuntu on my old Chromebook
| Pixel.
|
| I'm doing basic things like research things in a web
| browser, scan documents with xsane, or occasionally
| record audio in Audacity. I'm not trying to do anything
| extraordinary or complicated.
|
| I just wanted a machine that would do those things
| without tracking me everywhere (Windows) and where I
| could fix pieces rather than having to replace the whole
| device if something broke or wore out.
|
| I paid more than twice as much as I ever have for a
| computer so that I would NOT have to help you develop the
| product, do quality control, or troubleshoot it. I wanted
| it to be ready to use for my run-of-the-mill needs.
|
| And it wasn't, and that's why I wrote this review here.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I want Framework to succeed (and, in fact, had strongly
| considered becoming a customer) so its out of love that I
| say: it's this reply just as much as the original post
| that convinces me never to buy a Framework laptop. OP
| describes numerous major issues with the laptop and calls
| it one of the worst purchases he has ever made (and it
| wasn't a _small_ purchase) and you...direct him to an
| internet forum for help troubleshooting??? If I were the
| original poster, I 'd be furious.
|
| Given all the very _positive_ press out there about
| Framework products, and the forum where this conversation
| is happening, I would have expected an answer more along
| the lines of: "your experience is unacceptable to us.
| Let us send you a box to return the laptop for an
| exchange or a full refund."
|
| I realize that this might be more appropriate for a
| private communication with he customer, rather than a
| public HN post. Maybe you've done that. I have no way of
| knowing. But from what I _can_ see, it seems like OP is
| being told that its on him to figure out how to fix a
| laptop that he just paid $1,600(?) for and that, from the
| sound of it, _never_ worked properly.
|
| I get that this product is aimed at folks who aren't
| afraid to get their hands dirty. But I would not have
| expected that to mean a customer would be relegated to
| the forums to address such major issues. The fact that
| some of your employees may help him do this on the forums
| is very cold comfort. It is still going to burn up a lot
| of the customer's time.
|
| Edit -- Just to refine my thoughts here: it's not a bad
| thing that Framework has an active forum that can help a
| customer resolve issues like this, nor is it a bad thing
| to invite a customer to participate there if they want
| to. On the contrary: that's all to the good. At the same
| time, though, I'd expect a company like Framework to
| evince a greater sense of their own ownership of the
| customer's problems, rather than exclusively suggesting
| ways that the customer can find a fix for themselves.
| throwaway27727 wrote:
| I would assume that OP would have the option of returning
| if he so desired, without that needing to be pointed out
| in a public thread.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| One would think. But, as a prospective customer, the
| posts on this thread give me some information about what
| kind of response I can expect if I have my own problems
| with their product. (Especially if they crop up after the
| close of the return window, etc.)
| tw04 wrote:
| I'd counter with: someone complaining on HN that hasn't
| so much as sent an email to the manufacturer is kind of
| acting in bad faith. I _COMPLETELY_ agree that a brand
| new laptop should work out of the box, but it 's also
| kind of on you to let the manufacturer know so they can
| actually do something about it. Now you could make the
| argument: but a forum? They should be opening a support
| ticket!
|
| But that's kind of framework's go to market: an open
| ecosystem. Which includes troubleshooting in public so
| other users can see what the problem and solution is. Vs.
| the magic bullet being locked in some internal KB. It
| also would do no good to run through troubleshooting
| here, clogging up a thread on HN trying to solve one
| users issue.
|
| So - you say: immediately return the laptop! I say:
| nothing he's described immediately indicates a hardware
| problem; it mostly looks like software configuration
| issues. So why on earth would they replace the hardware
| as step 1?
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Fair points. But doesn't that just mean the response
| should be something along the line of: "Hey, those issues
| sound very abnormal to us to please reach out to us here
| [support link] so we can fix it. If you prefer, you might
| also consider posting on [forum] so others can learn from
| this. Either way, don't worry. We'll absolutely get it
| sorted out."
|
| I don't mean to tell them exactly how they should
| communicate with their customers, but communicating some
| sense of ownership over the problem would have gone a
| long way.
|
| Of course, it's also entirely possible that I'm just not
| the target market for these laptops. I certainly have no
| problem with fixing my own tech problems as a general
| matter, but I wouldn't want that to be my _only_ recourse
| on my daily driver. If that 's just not what Framework is
| selling, then I'm glad they've communicated that!
| thereddaikon wrote:
| They work fine under Windows. Ergo the problem isn't the
| laptop, its the driver support under Linux.
|
| In my experience current gen laptops except for certain
| ThinkPads and Clevos will have support issues in Linux. You get
| a much better experience using a model a year or two old
| because the community has had time to address any issues.
|
| The design goal of the Framework wasn't out of the box 100%
| Linux support, it was reparability. While they encourage Linux
| development on the platform, what hardware works best to meet
| their design goal may or may not already have Linux support.
| int_19h wrote:
| FWIW, if you want a laptop that is specifically designed to
| work with Linux, Star Labs does that.
|
| https://us.starlabs.systems/
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > You get a much better experience using a model a year or
| two old because the community has had time to address any
| issues.
|
| It's what I do. I bought a used LG Gram 17" with 24 GB of RAM
| about 18 months ago I think. Ultra lightweight (I think it's
| the lightest 17" laptop that exists) and I've got zero issue
| under Linux. It may not be as good as the Mac M1 I also own
| but it is lighter, has more RAM, works fine with Linux and
| cost me only 400 EUR (granted, that was a good deal back
| then).
|
| For a laptop running Linux I never buy the latest of the
| latest.
| rozab wrote:
| I've pre-ordered my framework with the expectation that Linux
| support will rapidly improve because lots of hackers will buy
| them, same as what happened with classic thinkpads.
| smeej wrote:
| An awful lot of the reviews and hype have been touting Linux
| support, and this review in particular says it "just works."
|
| It doesn't, and I very much wish the company and reviewers
| had made that clearer.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I suspect that many of the reviewers were running 21.04 as
| opposed to 21.10 which has been acknowledged still has
| support issues.
| smeej wrote:
| I've also been running 21.04, though, and had all the
| issues I mentioned above in that environment.
| accelbred wrote:
| In my case it just worked perfectly; though I have only
| tried with Gentoo and Guix
| thereddaikon wrote:
| >It doesn't, and I very much wish the company and reviewers
| had made that clearer.
|
| The reviewers definitely need to do a better job of
| thorough testing before making claims. But in my experience
| it is common for things to inexplicably not work when
| before they did and vice versa in Linux with no good
| explanation as to why. It's part of the reason why "the
| year of the Linux desktop" is always next year IMO.
|
| As for Framework themselves, I checked the product page and
| this is all they had to say about Linux support:
|
| "Available in configurations with Windows 10 Home or
| Windows 10 Pro, we've also tested for compatibility with
| common Linux distributions and will be publishing guides on
| using them."
|
| I don't see those guides in the support section yet so it
| seems they don't support them yet. If a vendor doesn't
| explicitly list an OS as supported then I don't consider it
| supported. So like 99% of Linux situations I would assume
| YMMV.
| satysin wrote:
| I am surprised by the review also. While not mine a friend owns
| a Framework laptop and I have spent many hours trying to help
| them get it working as well as the Dell Latitude it replaced.
|
| WiFi and power draw issues are the biggest two problems they
| continue to experience.
|
| Also while the screen is very nice it is let down by the
| resolution. It isn't high enough to used at 2x scaling but non-
| integer scaling really hits battery and performance. I feel
| that was a terrible oversight.
|
| It is a shame as the laptops overall build quality is very
| good. Hopefully these common issues can be sorted properly as I
| would be interested in picking one up once it has rocked solid
| Linux support. Also a higher (or lower) resolution panel option
| would be nice. After all it is the Framework laptop, surely
| they should have different panel options :)
| jandrese wrote:
| If I have to turn on scaling I always think I screwed up. I
| spent too much on pixel density that I can't even use, so now
| I have to make everything aliased just to read the text.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Have you contacted their tech support to see how they stand by
| their claims? (Not asking to be passive-aggressive; genuinely
| curious to hear about their after-sales.)
| smeej wrote:
| I see their team working alongside the community in the
| forums trying to troubleshoot my issues and issues like them,
| but I haven't found solutions there and haven't contacted
| them directly.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| For that kind of money, getting that kind of battery life
| would be a return from me..
|
| I'd love to get off the apple train, but I can't go back
| after the battery life on my M1.. I can do two full 8 hour
| workdays without a charger on this thing... With VMs..
| enricozb wrote:
| I have also had wireless issues, but since I've only installed
| NixOS I can't tell if it's because of the OS or some hardware
| issues.
|
| I also thing (again very minor) that the hinge is too loose. If
| I have it on my lap and type on it the hinge slowly opens up. I
| wish there was a stiffer hinge.
| tortasaur wrote:
| What sort of issues? I'm also running NixOS on mine.
| philjohn wrote:
| Do those things work well on other laptops with Linux and the
| same CPU?
| notpublic wrote:
| I have been using mine (64GB with Ubuntu 21.04, Gnome
| Flashback) for the past several months as my primary work
| laptop. I have not experienced any of the issues you mention. I
| like it so far. In fact, hardly notice it. Except maybe when I
| do sudo/login. I can use my fingerprint instead of password :).
| My earlier laptop was a 2012 MacBook Pro which gave up last
| year. I do have an M1 which is used exclusively for iOS dev.
|
| I did have to tweak few things mentioned in their community
| page/forum to get everything working.
|
| Two issues (which hasn't bothered me yet) -
| battery drain during suspend - gnome not supporting
| different scaling with multiple monitors (fixed in later
| version of gnome as I understand)
|
| edit: formatting
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| It's probably the USB-C dock - I have the same issues with a
| Lenovo laptop and Ubuntu 20 LTS but works fine without dock
| connected.
|
| On my phone now but there was a bug report I found to match
| this - apparently 5.14 kernel might work better but I haven't
| been able to install it yet from the 3rd party repo.
|
| Update: this is the bug I think:
| https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200977
| smeej wrote:
| The Ethernet support might be the dock.
|
| The rest of the problems persist whether or not it's
| connected to the dock.
|
| But the dock also doesn't have Ethernet problems with any of
| my other devices.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| That's surprising to hear. I've had one for a few months now. I
| pulled the nvme drive from my old laptop, put it in the
| framework laptop, and it booted up and has been running great.
| I haven't had any issues opening a jpg/pdf, waking up from
| sleep, or wifi dying.
|
| Which isn't to disregard what you're experiencing, but maybe
| try updating the firmware? I've seen at least one email they
| sent out about new firmware that people should probably install
| if they haven't yet. And maybe try out a liveusb just to see if
| there's something weird in your installation?
| aquaticsunset wrote:
| I have no issues with mine, except for the deep sleep one. The
| current prevailing theory on the forums suggests it's got
| something to do with PCIe Gen4 SSD firmware. The issue is
| widespread enough that I'm hopeful we'll see a fix soon enough.
|
| Otherwise I'm extremely happy with mine!
| pjerem wrote:
| Nice review.
|
| I'm sad about the speakers if they are as flat as they said, even
| more if they are not upgradable parts. MacBook speakers are
| really good for their purpose and I even consider them to be one
| of the importants things I trully love on macbooks (with the
| screen and the touchpad).
|
| Anyway, I'm still looking to buy a Framework laptop soon but I'd
| love to be able to test one before buying it.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Who listen anything on speakers anyway?
|
| When travelling I will always use headset, when hooked to
| docking it uses my home studio monitor speakers and if I want
| to listen to watch a movie in the bed or a show in my kitchen
| it is paired to my Bose bluetooth speaker.
| nrp wrote:
| The speakers are replaceable (and therefore upgradeable), but
| like a sibling comment noted, most of the magic in speakers in
| portable consumer electronics products comes down to DSPs and
| smart amps. We started with a CODEC that had built in smart amp
| and DSP functionality, but weren't able to get the necessary
| support from the supplier to enable it. It ended up not
| mattering anyway, because we had to switch to a different CODEC
| without that functionality due to the global silicon crunch.
|
| This is absolutely something we want to improve in the future.
| We're actively investigating other audio parts we can use that
| have better capability, but equally importantly, supply
| availability and software support.
| pjerem wrote:
| Thank you for your detailed answer on this topic.
|
| It's wonderful when companies listen to (potential)
| customers.
|
| You are doing an amazing (and important) work.
|
| I wish you all the best and you are on my top list for my
| next laptop (although, my current one is far from dead).
| kzrdude wrote:
| And no mention of the touchpad quality either, in the review.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| When I purchased mbp m1 pro I didn't expect the speakers to be
| that good as most of the mbp reviews were about processor,
| ports, and screen. I don't think I now need an external music
| system for indoor listening.
| pjerem wrote:
| To be fair, it's not unique to the M1 pro. All macs of the
| last decade at least have pretty good speakers (for the size,
| that is). Just what's needed to don't need anything else to
| listen music on the go when you have no other solution or to
| watch movies in the bed.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Not of the last decade, their speakers have really only
| been top notch since the 2016 redesign, and even more so
| starting in 2019 with the 16". I've had a 2012 MacBook, a
| 2015, 2016, 2019, and now 2021.
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| Most modern laptops use DSP to get the speakers to sound the
| way they do. If you switch that off they have the same 'flat'
| sound described in this review. Wonder if this can be solved in
| software ?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| This is one of those things where Linux is a decade behind
| everything else because nobody has bothered to solve this
| problem yet. Yes, most laptops require DSP for the speakers
| to sound the way they're supposed to, and Linux has no way of
| handling this. The Windows driver provided by the OEM would
| normally do this, AIUI.
|
| While you can certainly _manually_ add DSP to your system
| (PulseEffects, some random JACK or PipeWire flow, etc. - I do
| exactly this for headphone calibration on my desktop), what
| we need is a standardized mechanism for storing speaker
| profiles and having the audio subsystem seamlessly and
| transparently apply the right EQ and crossover profile for
| your device (there are usually more than 2 speakers). This is
| already a thing on e.g. Android, but not desktop Linux.
|
| This is required for MacBooks too. For Asahi Linux, once the
| underlying sound hardware works, we'll be spending some time
| working out a sane way to do this; I consider it a mandatory
| feature in this day and age. And once that's all done,
| everyone will be able to use it to get proper sound on any
| laptop as long as they can obtain or make an EQ profile.
|
| For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses of
| what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its hardware
| accesses, so we can just play a test sound and capture the
| raw samples going to the speakers) and use them on Linux.
| This should give identical audio at moderate volumes. I'll
| have to check whether it also does some kind of compression
| or volume-dependent EQ worth replicating or emulating too, at
| higher volumes.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| You can handle it with Pulse (qpaeq), but it's pretty
| janky.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| That's doing it manually; there are a million ways of
| doing that, but the point is it should be transparent and
| automated and select the right EQ profile for you based
| on your hardware.
| matheist wrote:
| > _For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses
| of what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its
| hardware accesses, so we can just play a test sound and
| capture the raw samples going to the speakers)_
|
| They do some sort of crosstalk cancellation to make stereo
| sound better, it'd be interesting to look at those impulse
| responses and see that happening!
| caskstrength wrote:
| Yes, the terrible sound on my Lenovo x1c is the only
| driver-related issue I have with this laptop on Linux. In
| all other aspects it is either same or superior experience
| compared to Windows.
| akvadrako wrote:
| The X1 Carbon 7th edition has pretty good sound with
| Linux. It does require quite recent kernel versions to
| get the good driver.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Ideally speakers should be flat. If you want effects they
| should be done in software.
| [deleted]
| breakfastduck wrote:
| You're misunderstanding the situation.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I suspect the confusion is between flat as "linear response
| across ear bandwidth" and "total lack of depth", eg, the
| later isn't about being linear, just low quality speakers
| with very inconsistent frequency response.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Yeah, there's clearly confusion here. The article and GGP
| are using "flat" to mean "bad". The GP is using it to mean
| "flat frequency response", i.e. good. Unfortunately, all
| small speakers sound awful uncorrected; there's no way to
| make a flat-as-in-good laptop speaker. The question is how
| would those speakers sound with software DSP for
| correction, which is standard on other OSes but not Linux.
| sneak wrote:
| > _The screen has a 3:2 ratio, high-resolution, and super bright
| colors._
|
| No. Only in backwards anachronistic PC land is 2256x1504 "high
| resolution" in 2022.
|
| The 14" Macbook Pro is 3024x1964. My XPS actually has 3840x2160.
|
| Please kill this meme. 1500 pixels tall is not a high res screen.
| gbrindisi wrote:
| how is the battery life?
| 8jy89hui wrote:
| I run the framework with a i7-1165G7 and Ubuntu+i3wm. I have
| had this laptop for ~3 weeks now. Battery life for me is
| running around 5-8 hours with full brightness, music streaming,
| and somewhat active use. It isn't fantastic but it is pretty
| reasonable. I haven't conducted any serious measurements but
| I'd say the battery life is pretty solid (and the screen is
| pretty bright). (This is all anecdotal though, If you really
| want serious numbers, I'd wait for some tech reviewer)
| Karupan wrote:
| Same question here. I'd love to ditch my MBP for this, but I
| rely on portability heavily and will need something that will
| last a work day.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Unfortunately it's the Achilles heel of this device. I was
| getting 3-4 hours of battery on Linux web browsing and VSCode
| [deleted]
| dymk wrote:
| This person purchased this laptop no more than a few weeks ago.
| How is this a review? It's basically just an unboxing and "first
| impressions".
|
| I'd like to know what somebody thinks of this laptop after having
| used it for a few months, at least.
| j45 wrote:
| Framework is remarkable. Intel MacBook Pro power in MacBook Air
| footprint.
|
| The build quality is far better than first gen devices, if not
| second.
|
| Given enough time, it might be able to get many people off macOS.
|
| The screen is amazingly crisp if you can overlook the fun
| resolution. Hard to look past 3x2.
|
| Why did I return it?
|
| I realized I needed to begin with a retail and turnkey Ubuntu
| experience where everything just worked and the things that
| mattered to me worked out of the box.
|
| Framework is not quite an optimized retail Ubuntu experience yet
| like a Dell XPS with mature drivers largely ready to go.
|
| - Battery life isn't optimized and maximized out of the box, you
| will have to tpm. I have limited time for this at present. I'm
| sure there's lots of interpretations that is not a a big deal.
| I'd rather be solving problems with the laptop than be solving
| problems in the laptop. I want max battery life without investing
| hours up front.
|
| - Fingerprint reader required manual setup
|
| - Wifi can have hiccups on the latest Ubuntu, and without trying
| into optimizing battery and kernels upset instead of getting
| things done.
|
| - Touchpad is so so. Good hardware, maybe more tweaking in Linux
| needed. Very used to macOS too.
|
| - HDMI port draws extra battery life when not in use so you have
| to to keep it removed.
|
| The components otherwise seem high quality and well put together.
|
| Again it's not that these issues can't be overcome, or that they
| won't be out of the box in the future, I simply don't have the
| time for either at present.
|
| It was a joy to use for browsing in Ubuntu 21.04 as stuff is
| broken in 21.10.
| thomasfl wrote:
| I really hope there will be some competition to the Apple M1 chip
| soon. All other laptops seems bulky, noisy and powerconsuming
| compared to the MacBook Pro M1 I've been using for a year now.
| Lio wrote:
| > I have a machine with better specs than a comparable MacBook
| Pro M1 for less.
|
| The "for less" bit might be true but is the better specs part?
|
| In a comparison[1] the M1 in a MacBook Air seems to handily beat
| the Intel Core i7 1165G7 chip on most metrics.
|
| Personally I'm not that CPU bound generally and I like Intel
| Linux compatibility so I'd still make the trade off.
|
| 1. https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-
| core-i7-1165g7-v...
| confiq wrote:
| he was not talking only about CPU but about extensibility!
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| After using a dead-quiet laptop for a few weeks, it's hard even
| to think about Intel airplane+heater offerings.
| dathinab wrote:
| IMHO it's a bit troublesome that it ships with a 1165G7, while
| competition available during the same time (e.g. T14 gen 2) is
| already on a noticable faster ryzen 5000 (through also stuck at
| only 16GiB of RAM).
|
| I understand that upgrading the CPU is not yet quit viable at
| this point in time for framework but still, it noticable lacks
| behind the competition when it comes to CPU perf for many (all)
| tasks.
|
| And things will only get harder with the Ryzen 6000 laptop CPUs
| coming late this year (on the German marked maybe only early
| next year).
|
| And similar is true for the competition from newer Intel
| processors.
|
| Edit
|
| This kinda has me stuck, 16GiB of RAM isn't enough, but the
| additional perf of the newer CPU is well wanted, but then USB
| ports being non easily repairable on a T14 is a problem to as I
| somehow tend to brake them. And only 2 USB-C ports on the T14
| are a proble, too.
| pja wrote:
| Raw CPU perf obviously favours the M1, but if you're a dev,
| then a laptop that can take up to 64Gb of commodity RAM & as
| much fast storage as you can cram into it is pretty compelling.
|
| Compiling LLVM eats a lot of memory for instance. 16Gb is not
| really enough to take full advantage of the number of CPUs in a
| modern laptop.
|
| Is this a laptop for everyone? Not necessarily, but for certain
| classes of users it's manna from heaven.
| liamwestray wrote:
| You realize the framework laptop's cpus are limited to 4
| cores, right?
|
| No $2000 laptop in 2020 should have only quad core cpus.
|
| The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7 (highest
| spec chip framework sells) compiling llvm with 64gb of ram.
|
| Only using a shitload of idle VMs will have any apparent
| benefit over M1 MacBook pros.
|
| The cpu is just too limiting for the 64gb of ram argument.
| pja wrote:
| Sure: 4 cores, but 8 hyperthreads.
|
| LLVM builds eat memory in my experience & end up swapping
| if you don't play games with the build system to reduce the
| parallelism of memory intensive parts of the build.
|
| If you've got a VM or two sitting around then obviously
| that makes things worse.
| eertami wrote:
| >The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7
|
| I have an M1 MBP and an 1185g7 based Linux laptop. Single
| core benchmarks, the i7 comes out slightly ahead. Multi
| core benchmarks, the M1 comes out slightly ahead. There are
| no circles being run around in performance - only in
| battery efficiency. For day to day developer usage, testing
| things literally side by side, I find absolutely no
| discernible difference in speed.
|
| The M1 does win for battery life, but the battery still
| lasts for a full work day in my i7 laptop. Honestly at home
| I always reach for the Linux laptop, because I don't really
| need the battery life. But for going out and about away
| from power, the M1 MBP has advantages. Sadly the software
| (personally) lets it down, I'd probably use the MBP more if
| it has better Linux support in the future.
| liamwestray wrote:
| Prolonged compiling tasks will thermally throttle the
| 1185g7 chip long before the M1.
|
| It will run circles around the 1185g7 compiling large
| codebases.
|
| Passmarks across hundreds of benches show a 25% single
| and 40% multithreaded performance boost over the 1185g7.
|
| I've got an i9 8/16 laptop chip and the 13" M1 is trading
| blows with my laptop despite 2-3x the thermal headroom
| and considerably less cores/threads across all workloads.
| pja wrote:
| The frame.work people are very explicit that they've
| designed the cooling system to permit you to run the CPU
| fairly hard. It can dump 28W continuously according to
| https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/the-upgradeable-mainboard.
|
| The i9 Apple laptops were notorious for not having a
| cooling system that could match the heat output of the
| CPU & throttling almost instantly.
|
| Modern Intel laptop CPUs are no where near the
| performance / W of the M1, but they are considerably
| better than those that Apple stuffed into their laptops a
| few years ago with inadequate cooling I believe.
| jeffbee wrote:
| On my 1185g7 laptop, the browser benchmark Speedometer
| 2.0 scores 116. On my M1, I get 288. That's a bit more
| than "slightly ahead". The M1 absolutely smokes Tiger
| Lake and even Tiger Lake-H.
| eertami wrote:
| Sure, but that's expected because ARM essentially has
| hardware JavaScript acceleration built-in via FJCVTZS[0].
| I personally don't find JavaScript specific benchmarks to
| be a good indicator of general computing power.
| (Ultimately, I spend little time in a web browser.)
|
| FWIW, Cinebench multi-core benchmark is around 20% faster
| for me on the M1.
|
| [0]: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100076/0100/
| a64-inst...
| jeffbee wrote:
| I doubt that instruction is relevant. It comes down to an
| abundance of microarchitectural resources on the M1. A
| 12th-gen Intel CPU gets 310 on this benchmark while
| having no particular accelerators. They just added tons
| of caches and buffers, like the M1 has.
| aulin wrote:
| Is this really common? I mean using a laptop for such compute
| intensive tasks? I mostly use my macbook air m1 as a client
| to more powerful machines. I always have a few ssh sessions
| opened, a few tramp emacs buffers, some browser tab to
| jupyter notebooks running elsewhere...
| michaelt wrote:
| Presumably, the people who were using desktop workstations
| pre-pandemic have started working from home with laptops -
| but their ways of working and tooling all center around
| doing things locally.
| wonton53 wrote:
| I think it is quite common. I develop financial systems,
| and I compile apps regularly for running tests locally and
| large parts of the system is running locally using docker
| compose. This has the benefit of fast iteration for unit
| and system tests. Of course the tests and deployment is
| also run by a CI server but that is just for QA purposes so
| people dont have to remember to run their tests locally and
| to keep a clean main branch. I cannot imagine how long our
| feedback loop would be if we had to wait for the CI server
| for every change, or if we had a common dev server that
| everyone interacted with through a <<dirty>> development
| branch. Basically I think it is just different use cases.
| My experience with jupyter is that you use it for data
| analysis which is really more IO bound than cpu bound, also
| big data is often not possible to keep locally (because of
| the size and also in europe GDPR)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yes, I specced my machines for local docker-compose of
| testing. It's pretty valuable, although different
| engineers use it different amounts.
| aulin wrote:
| Note that I didn't necessarily refer to CI servers when
| talking about remote machines. Sometimes it's just a
| better specced workstation in the office, sometimes it's
| my own headless machine learning rig at home. Sure
| different engineers and different fields have different
| workflows but I believe it's still easier to build a good
| workstation from components than finding a laptop that
| excels in both portability and specs.
| wonton53 wrote:
| Interesting approach. I have some coleagues that actually
| remote desktops to their powerful desktop computer. I
| never did that because I fear all the tiny issues I have
| to deal with, but they tell me it works quite well. Also
| just offloading the heavy lifting through ssh or other
| types of build servers seems super interesting (I think
| some build systems have built in support for a common
| server, not sure if it is true, but it could be very
| helpful if it works well)
| Lio wrote:
| Yeah I totally agree with that sentiment.
|
| It's often tempting to dismiss a product that doesn't meet
| your own personal use cases but it's a bit naive.
|
| It's actually fun to see products get popular that I know I
| wouldn't buy myself. It doesn't make them bad it just makes
| them not for me right now.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| 1) There are 64Gb M1 MacBooks.
|
| 2) If you need 64Gb just sometimes, swapping on M1 MBP is
| insanely fast.
| disiplus wrote:
| 64GB ram for my lenovo legion was 250EUR, i could not
| configure a m1 with 64gb for less then 2900EUR i hate it
| that they bundled the ram with the m1 max i wanted to order
| the 64gb ram option but the difference between 32gb pro and
| 64gb max is 650EUR or more, and i just dont want to pay
| that to have more RAM.
| [deleted]
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Your laptop has DDR4 memory. I've checked prices for DDR5
| memory 64Gb - around ~EUR500. So the difference with
| Apple is not so dramatic.
| disiplus wrote:
| it cost 250EUR to go from 0GB to 64GB on lenovo, but it
| cost 650EUR to go from 32GB pro to 64GB max macbook pro
| 16, so it is dramatic for me. Im buying a macbook for 4-5
| years.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| You want to ignore the difference between DDR4 and DDR5,
| but the market doesn't ignore it and DDR5 is more
| expensive (I'm talking about non-Apple memory sticks).
|
| Also, you want to ignore 400 Gb/s provided by Apple's
| 64Gb memory, but... you know.
| google234123 wrote:
| You sure this is true? I would bet the M1 is faster
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/apple-m1-compiles-
| lin...
| samhw wrote:
| As he explicitly points out, the benchmark amounts to
| cross-compiling for the Intel CPU vs compiling native code
| for the Mac CPU, so it's not exactly even. I have no dog in
| this hunt, I don't have an M1 Mac and I don't care, but it
| felt wrong to let that stand without correction.
| pja wrote:
| Kernel compiles are not particularly memory hungry. LLVM
| compiles on the other hand are very memory hungry,
| especially during linking.
|
| I'm sure there are other 'workstation-ish' jobs that people
| would happily run on their laptop if it had > 16Gb memory.
| 64Gb is quite the leap.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| I was in the market for a new laptop and right now I just could
| not find anything that would beat the M1 MacBooks on a CPU-
| battery-price combination, especially if you're OK 16GB of RAM
| - it gets a bit more competitive if you're looking at 32GB
| models, but even if you can compete on CPU and memory you loose
| hard on battery life.
|
| I just couldn't bring myself to use macOS daily, so I punted
| the laptop change to next year. I wish Apple would just sell
| their hardware like anyone else, working with OS vendors to get
| it supported.
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| Apple has kept the M1 Macs open for other operating systems,
| which is why a project like Asahi Linux can exist:
| https://asahilinux.org
|
| Apple doesn't provide Linux drivers for their components, but
| neither does "anyone else", sadly.
|
| But it means that Linux on M1 Macs might actually happen in
| the near future.
|
| Edit: And Windows doesn't run natively/officially on M1 Macs
| because Microsoft has a stupid exclusivity deal:
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/microsoft-qualcomm-
| arm-...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| AMD and Intel provide drivers for their components. Realtek
| provides drivers for their components. Even Nvidia provides
| Linux drivers for their components, in proprietary form.
| Several laptop vendors even sell their hardware with Linux
| preinstalled.
|
| Apple not actively hindering Asahi Linux isn't exactly a
| great accomplishment. They chose not to write Linux drivers
| for their platform and that's their choice, but that puts
| them behind even Nvidia as far as supporting Linux goes.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| FWIW, Nvidia actively sabotaged the Nouveau project with
| the firmware signing story; Apple aren't doing that
| (their firmware is signed but loaded pre-boot and they
| provide OS images we can use to set all that up, so it's
| seamless for Linux).
| bubblethink wrote:
| Great progress on Asahi. What's the firmware situation
| like in general ? Since firmware won't be
| redistributable, would users need to periodically 'fetch'
| it from Apple CDNs or OS images ? Also, in the past
| broadcom has been quite problematic for wifi. How is it
| on the new macs ?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| There's two classes of firmware: the bits loaded pre OS
| boot by the OS loader (which runs before our Linux
| loader), and the bits loaded by Linux. Both classes come
| from macOS recovery images and our installer takes care
| of fetching that from Apple's CDN. For the pre-boot
| firmware, it just gets installed into the Preboot
| partition the same way it does for macOS, and we don't
| have to worry about it after that. For the firmware
| loaded by Linux (current list: WiFi, video decoder), I
| have a design for a vendor firmware mechanism where the
| installer copies a tarball to the EFI boot partition, and
| then distros will have a script that extracts that on
| first boot or when it changes.
|
| Since Apple do not keep their firmware ABI stable across
| the board, we'll have specific firmware versions
| (=specific macOS versions they come from) "blessed" for
| Linux compatibility. For updates (bugfixes or security
| issues, chiefly) you'd re-run our installer which will
| eventually have an "upgrade my firmware please" mode.
| That would run from recovery mode, same as the original
| install. All this stuff is per-OS, so it does not affect
| any adjacent macOS install which will use its own
| firmware - you can upgrade macOS whenever you want
| without breaking Linux.
|
| Wifi works fine (modulo some firmware support details
| that'll get ironed out); people have been doing
| performance and stability tests and there is no major
| issue. I've heard stories about bad radio performance on
| Macs in the past, but those are almost certainly due to
| using the wrong firmware or config. That's what my patch
| set fixes: we use all the same firmwares and configs that
| Apple does, so we get the same results.
| roywashere wrote:
| But it is not all about GPUs. Broadcom is notoriously bad
| on many items and is used a lot for wifi and BLE and
| webcams, as is that touch pad vendor whose name I forgot
| that is in many laptops.
|
| I installed Linux on a 2015 MBP recently and there is no
| real way to get the webcam working.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > AMD and Intel provide drivers for their components.
|
| ATI/AMD intentionally redesigned their GPU silicon to
| make it's possible to develop open source drivers without
| exposing HDCP secrets, and even the open source drivers
| can use HDCP if they want to.
|
| This is not known very widely, but this is worthy of
| great praise if you ask me.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| I don't think _any_ GPU vendor has ever had HDCP secrets
| exposed to the OS. That 'd be terrible security; you'd
| need mandatory OS secure boot to keep the keys secret.
| This is the case for Nvidia, for Apple M1s, etc; the OS
| never has to touch plaintext HDCP keys, and this has
| nothing to do with open source drivers.
|
| Can you clarify what you mean exactly? I have a hard time
| believing AMD ever ran HDCP keys through the Windows
| kernel.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > I don't think any GPU vendor has ever had HDCP secrets
| exposed to the OS. That'd be terrible security; you'd
| need mandatory OS secure boot to keep the keys secret.
|
| Yes, I'd not argue with that, I also never wanted or
| implied that I shall be able to get said keys from the
| card.
|
| AMD/ATI back in the day said that, they have
| intentionally coupled video decoders, related logic and
| HDCP to same IP block for performance and silicon real-
| estate reasons, but in order to keep their promises about
| open drivers and accessible hardware, starting with
| (then) next generation silicon, they'll move all HDCP
| stuff to another IP. In turn, they will allow unfettered
| access to all GPU including 3D and video related features
| sans HDCP. However, with that architecture, even open
| drivers can use HDCP related hardware and functions
| without compromising the security and licensing around
| it, as a result allowing identical experience and freedom
| (from a developer standpoint) regardless of the driver
| used.
|
| This is something to praise for, IMHO.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| I still don't really understand how this is relevant for
| the drivers. Even if HDCP is part of another IP block,
| that doesn't mean open drivers can't use it. That's just
| an implementation detail. You can use HDCP on any
| platform the same way the proprietary drivers would (if
| you implement the right knobs to control it). Do you have
| a reference with more detail?
|
| Ultimately the open driver should always be able to do
| all the same things the closed driver does and get the
| same result. If there are any secrets in the closed
| driver that "can't" be exposed, that's a security flaw in
| the design.
| bayindirh wrote:
| In their previous setup, as per their word, it was
| impossible to access video decoders and related machinery
| without exposing some HDCP stuff, incl. the key related
| storage and other secret stuff.
|
| So, they were unable to provide the access they wanted to
| provide (for video decoders, at least), on the previous
| (then current) architecture.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| That's... very weird. What would that expose? If you can
| read the keys at all from the OS, directly or indirectly,
| that's a security flaw. AFAIK AMD GPUs have supported
| video decode on Linux across all generations, so what was
| unavailable?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Considering the history of ATI with video, and how they
| enabled GL shaders to work with video acceleration, post
| processing and effects before anyone was able to dream
| this thing (Readeon 8500 was able to use shaders to post-
| process and apply effects to the video), I think their
| silicon layout was very convoluted and unconventional for
| today's standards.
|
| Considering HDCP came later, it might have just been
| slapped as a side module and some of their math magic
| might be offloaded to GPU even. I remember having old ATI
| drivers having a very cinematic look when video was
| accelerated by the GPU itself (it was surreally
| beautiful), but they had to throw all this machinery out
| from the driver when they started to modernize their
| stack (and they broke video playback for months due to
| not supporting proper overlay formats).
|
| Similarly, I think closed source drivers were programming
| some of the cards during initialization, because I
| remember they're talking about moving all this init step
| to the BIOS itself, and opening some doors on the BIOS to
| tweak the card during the init (clocks, fans, temp reads,
| etc. IIRC) for allowing OS and open drivers to play nicer
| and with less effort with the cards in the long run.
|
| The details are hazy, because these transitions were made
| almost a decade ago if not longer. However, while NVIDIA
| was playing the deaf, and Intel was just starting to
| provide good open drivers for their IGPs, AMDs move as a
| prime GPU vendor brought a lot of good light to them.
|
| If you want, I can try to dig the history and create a
| timeline for you, but it might not be an immediate
| endeavor.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Oh, I know that AMD has done a lot to help out the open
| ecosystem (and even interop with the closed parts - heck,
| I got their _closed_ AMDGPU-PRO Linux drivers to work on
| the PS4 without any patches, even though that 's not a
| GPU variant offered elsewhere, because the amdgpu
| userspace/kernel interface is just so well designed). I
| recommend AMD for Linux users; lately, they've been doing
| good work while Intel drivers bitrot, especially on older
| hardware.
|
| I'm just quite confused as to how HDCP factors into all
| that. HDCP really is just a hardware block that's part of
| the video output which you enable or disable; there is a
| bunch of nonsense associated with PAVP and other such
| stuff on Windows, but none of that should really matter
| to Linux, nor should whatever way HDCP is implemented
| affect other features of the open drivers. AMD certainly
| do deserve credit for their work on Linux support, I just
| find your specific HDCP story quite strange :-)
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| I'd agree if we were talking about desktop machines,
| which are basically a box around a GPU, CPU, and some
| networking. The situation there is infinitely better than
| on the M1 Mac Mini.
|
| But if I go and buy a random Windows _laptop_ and try to
| slap Linux on it, I might have all sorts of issues with
| the trackpad, webcam, fingerprint sensors, never mind
| sleep/wake.
|
| That's why Linux laptop vendors are a thing and deserve
| our praise (just like the companies you've mentioned)!
| All I'm saying is that Apple is hardly the only company
| left that doesn't actively support Linux.
| phh wrote:
| > Apple doesn't provide Linux drivers for their components,
| but neither does "anyone else", sadly.
|
| ?!?!
|
| There are vendor-provided Linux drivers for pretty much
| everything?
|
| Everything in Intel and AMD CPUs are supported in mainline.
| nVidia provides Linux drivers.
|
| I don't have a clear view about how many devices nowadays
| are reverse-engineered, and how many are provided by
| someone with datasheet (it happens quite often that
| mainline drivers are not provided by vendor directly, but
| by a third party that got access to datasheet), but it
| really feels like most vendors do work with OS vendors to
| get their hardware supported, and that Apple is totally an
| exception in the hardware world.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Apple has requested and obtained semi-custom hardware
| from vendors before. Their Boradcom wireless cards
| (around 2006-2012 IIRC) are almost produced only for
| them, and getting it run on Linux was a long endeavor.
|
| Also, like Java, they have maintained their own nVidia
| drivers up to a certain point.
|
| Today that gap is smaller since HW manufacturers are more
| open about their firmwares and drivers, and Linux is more
| widely adopted.
| flatiron wrote:
| Apple still maintains their own Java internally. Very
| minor tweaks and with their own CA since they self sign
| certain internally starting 2-3 years ago.
| bayindirh wrote:
| But the packages are still distributed by ORACLE, right?
| flatiron wrote:
| Not the internal Java. That's not for customers. That's
| for apples internal servers.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > Apple has requested and obtained semi-custom hardware
| from vendors before. Their Boradcom wireless cards
| (around 2006-2012 IIRC) are almost produced only for
| them, and getting it run on Linux was a long endeavor.
|
| I just sent in a patch series to Linux a few days ago to
| get all custom Broadcom cards for T2 and M1 Macs working
| (~2017-present), with the right firmware selection logic.
| Took a week or so to develop and test on both ARM64 and
| x86. (There was some prior art but certainly nothing that
| would've taken more than a few more weeks to work out
| from scratch; besides, I found a Broadcom source dump for
| Android that contained most of the interesting knowledge
| excluding the Apple-only bits, since some of it is
| relevant to newer non-Apple chips too).
|
| Once you have a team of the right people and enough
| motivation, getting reverse engineered hardware working
| on Linux doesn't take as long as everyone thinks :-)
| bayindirh wrote:
| I remember many people have bruised themselves by banging
| their heads to their peripherals and desks while trying
| to reverse these BCM chips and trying to make them work
| with Linux, however back in the day BCM was _hostile_
| towards Linux, and NDIS_wrapper was a thing...
|
| OTOH, kudos for all the hard work you're doing on the
| kernel. Maybe one day I'd have enough spare time to work
| on that marvelous beast.
|
| > Once you have a team of the right people and enough
| motivation, getting reverse engineered hardware working
| on Linux doesn't take as long as everyone thinks :-)
|
| As long as the hardware (or the vendor) is not
| intentionally malicious towards Linux or being reverse
| engineered. I've seen my fair share. :-)
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > I remember many people have bruised themselves by
| banging their heads to their peripherals and desks while
| trying to reverse these BCM chips and trying to make them
| work with Linux, however back in the day BCM was hostile
| towards Linux, and NDIS_wrapper was a thing...
|
| The b43 days were definitely special, and that was a full
| from scratch reverse engineered driver _plus_ open
| firmware, which is a crazy accomplishment. These days
| though, we just accept that we 're going to have to run
| vendor firmware, either because there's signing involved
| or because it's a huge amount of work to attempt to
| reverse engineer and reimplement that bit. Firmwares have
| grown from dozens of kilobytes to megabytes and it's just
| not viable to rewrite all that any more, if it's even
| possible.
|
| OTOH, we also have better tools for and experience
| reverse engineering now than we did back then. Ghidra has
| made "proper" disassembly and decompilation accessible to
| anyone, and we can run proprietary OSes in VMs to study
| how they interact with hardware.
|
| > As long as the hardware (or the vendor) is not
| intentionally malicious towards Linux or being reverse
| engineered. I've seen my fair share. :-)
|
| Well, it doesn't happen that often outside of closed
| platforms (i.e. needing an exploit to do anything) and
| Nvidia ;-)
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| I am aware that for GPUs specifically, the driver
| situation on Linux is pretty good (minus the
| Nvidia/Wayland friction). But a laptop is more than just
| a GPU and a CPU.
|
| When I was shopping around a few years ago, the
| fingerprint reader even on Dell's Linux-focused developer
| laptops was dead. I liked the Razer Blade, but many
| components didn't support Linux; looks like the trackpad
| on some models still doesn't work.
|
| If "any vendor" actively supported Linux, we wouldn't
| need companies like Framework or system76 that pick
| compatible components. I'm not saying that Apple is
| particularly helpful, just that they're hardly alone in
| not caring about Linux.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| People unfamiliar with computer history beyond the past
| decade are downvoting you.
|
| Apple may not contribute much more than a bare platform
| with M1, but that isn't unusual in the scope of computer
| history. What's important is that they are not actively
| enforcing exclusivity or deterring the attempt. They've
| even shown tacit support in recent EFI patches by making
| changes that preserve the current mechanism other OSes can
| be loaded.
| davidw wrote:
| > I just couldn't bring myself to use macOS daily
|
| I have to use it for work, and it really is a drag compared
| to Linux.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| same. i have a maxed mbp 16" from work and it's amazing how
| much that thing stutters during normal usage.
|
| also, sometimes even a simple `ls` from terminal takes a
| few seconds. why? i have absolutely no idea.
| nerdponx wrote:
| On my 2019 work machine (MBP) all filesystem operations
| were slow. On my 2021 one they aren't. Same specs, same
| OS. Maybe there's some bug in the filesystem? Not sure if
| you can fix by clean-reinstalling or if it's tied to the
| hardware.
| sjroot wrote:
| I've owned macs for years and never once had any issue
| like that. I'd dig deeper than "it must be macOS"
| username190 wrote:
| > why? i have absolutely no idea.
|
| If you don't have a stable internet connection, that
| could be the reason - macOS sends a hash of every
| executable to Apple's servers before it is opened[0].
| This caused a major issue at the end of 2020, when these
| servers stopped working and all macs stopped working
| unless disconnected from the internet[1].
|
| macOS has also been updated so that syspolicyd bypasses
| VPNs and system firewalls like Little Snitch[2], so you
| can't easily block these connections now.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/gp52pe/apple
| _is_tra...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816
| pfranz wrote:
| Your own links show that likely isn't parent's issue. It
| only sends a hash on the first run of an executable. I'm
| not saying the problem you're talking about isn't a
| problem or concerning, but it's very likely not the
| problem they're talking about.
|
| I hate when people say "mine works," but here's an `ls`
| of my homedir showing it's not universally slow. I
| currently have an absolute garbage network connection.
|
| > ls -G 0.00s user 0.00s system 64% cpu 0.010 total
|
| There are also many, many other reasons it could be; some
| macOS specific and others that aren't--most importantly
| what they're seeing isn't universal. macOS often ships
| with very old GPL2 tools that can cause various problems
| (many people brew install updated GPL3 versions), people
| often have configurations that can slow down `ls` by
| multiple factors (colors, sorting, etc can each cause
| multiple queries to disk or require the listing to
| complete before displaying output), customizations
| causing a slow prompt, a slow or corrupt disk, listing a
| slow network drive, etc.
|
| The VPN bypass was very quickly removed from macOS over a
| year ago [1]. So it would only be relevant if they were
| using a very old version of Big Sur.
|
| [1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/46179028
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I'll jump in here and say that it probably _is_
| notarization. The issues arrise when osx thinks it can
| get a connection to ocsp but actually because of real
| world consequences it can't. This can cause a delay of
| upto 5 seconds while it times out.
|
| Some specific examples,
|
| No internet connection: instant fail over
|
| Blocked OCSP firewall or whatever: instant fail over
|
| Slow internet but still able to reach: slow start: 1+
| seconds
|
| Bad internet, not able to reach: 3-5 second delay waiting
|
| Normal internet, OSCP reachable: <1 second delay
|
| Disabled trustd: Nothing will start, single user mode and
| trustd restore required
|
| I've experienced all of these and is one of the reasons I
| have a shiney new Framework laptop sitting waiting to be
| migrated over to. Also the "only on first run" also isn't
| true. It periodically checks for certificate revocation
| (as it should) and therefore will cause issues at
| sporadic intervals.
|
| And the kicker of course is that all this is via plain
| ol' http, so everyone knows what developer's programs
| you're starting via the hash.
| titanomachy wrote:
| My 2019 (intel) work MBP is painfully slow and stuttery
| compared to my personal (M1) laptop. I wonder if it's
| partly the fault of the software that my company has pre-
| loaded on there.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i really think it's the monitoring software that is
| installed. the thing is, i complained to internal support
| and they said "i was the only one complaining" so
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Mind elaborating a little bit?
|
| I've tried to push myself to use various Linux distros
| (most recently Pop and Ubuntu), but I always end up back on
| MacOS.
| davidw wrote:
| It's just not set up the way I want, with things like
| focus follows mouse, and it's harder to customize than
| Linux with a good window manager. I also prefer how Linux
| package management works; that it's an integral part of
| the system rather than something bolted on. I do like the
| screen and keyboard on the Mac, with the exception of the
| lack of volume buttons.
|
| I also like the open nature of Linux. It's fun to be able
| to look into the source code for pretty much anything.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Genuine question: what are you doing at work that would
| make Linux more desirable? Unless you write applications
| for Linux, I'm have a hard time thinking of a niche that
| would make Linux better.
|
| I do recognize that you could also just like Linux more
| from a usability perspective, which is your opinion to
| hold!
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The new i9-12900HK processors are supposed to be more
| powerful than M1 Max. I am personally waiting till these show
| up in laptops.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Being able to outperform an M1 Max isn't the issue. It's
| doing it while also being as efficient as it.
|
| No one doubted that Intel could make a CPU as powerful. But
| everyone knows that it isn't gonna be cool and quiet.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| While M1s definitely win in the efficiency category, the
| added efficiency is really not that useful for most
| people on a day to day basis.
|
| Cellphones have moved away from replaceable batteries
| specifically because of fast charge. Most phones with 20
| watt charging will reach ~50% battery in 30 mins, so even
| with battery degradation, you really don't notice the
| effect in day to day life.
|
| Same thing with laptops, there really are very few
| situations where you don't have access to a charging port
| for ~6-8 hours.
|
| Given that, Id personally rather take the hit on
| efficiency in return for way better compatibility,
| ability to run a full linux natively , and not deal with
| all the extra crap that Apple throws in the M1. And, If I
| really care about longevity, a second battery is easily
| an option for laptops like Frameworks.
| btgeekboy wrote:
| The power requirements to achieve that though are insane.
| Battery life will be small; heatsinks will be massive.
| gibagger wrote:
| Either that... or massive throttling due to manufacturers
| putting them in thin laptops without adequate heat
| dissipation.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| at the expense of twice the power consumption.
| protoax wrote:
| Which lose to the M1 handily on the battery and price
| aspects.
| nine_k wrote:
| If you're ok with 16 GB, how do you use the large CPU power?
| Just curious about various usage patterns other people have.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Does it make compiling stuff, running unit tests, etc.
| faster?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Like a dream laptop, the only things I could wish for is an AMD
| option, Dvorak keyboard option and a matte screen option.
| lawn wrote:
| I agree, but I would like an ergonomical keyboard. Something
| like this 34 key one, but built-in:
| https://github.com/pierrechevalier83/ferris
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| A laptop with an ortholinear+QMK option would probably be an
| instabuy from me. Hell... native QMK (or ZMK) alone would get
| my attention.
| holografix wrote:
| This is such an interesting laptop. Hopefully an AMD based
| version with a more premium screen will be released.
| je_bailey wrote:
| So the problem with AMD and Framework is that the Framework
| uses Thunderbolt4 as the basis for it's expansion ports.
| Something that AMD doesn't natively come with.Not to say that
| it couldn't happen but I'm guessing 12th gen intel before AMD
| yread wrote:
| the zen3+ 6000 CPUs also won't have thunderbolt support:(
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| Looks like they will have USB4 though, maybe just no
| Thunderbolt 4 certification yet? As far as I understand,
| frame.work is capable of TB3, but just not certified (yet?)
| heftig wrote:
| Are you sure? The adapters are all covered by USB-C and its
| DP alt mode. Even the storage expansion cards are attached
| via USB and not PCIe. No Thunderbolt required.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| To add - AMD will have to support it on their mobile
| processors, so it will be a while. As far as I understand,
| AMD's current desktop CPUs do not support it, and the support
| will probably have to start on the desktop.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yeah the AMD APU laptops are absolutely amazing. Be ready
| though, their Linux support is quite possibly the worst I have
| ever experienced in almost 30 years of using Linux. I'm typing
| this right now on a first gen Ryzen APU laptop (Raven Ridge)
| and it took more than three years for enough kernel bugs to be
| fixed that plain old Ubuntu LTS wouldn't constantly crash or
| hard lockup randomly. There were straight up silicon bugs and
| major sleep state issues that had to be sorted out and worked
| around with this early generation of chips. It's finally a
| great machine but it really soured me on the quality of AMD GPU
| code in the kernel--apparently it is a huge black box even to
| folks like Linus and can be quite the bug farm.
| dagw wrote:
| _Be ready though, their Linux support is quite possibly the
| worst I have ever experienced in almost 30 years of using
| Linux._
|
| So it's not just me :)
|
| I bought a Ryzen APU since everybody kept telling me that AMD
| GPUs where the best when it came to Linux support, and it has
| been a massive pain. It finally runs almost stable using the
| latest Pop_OS, but it has been a not fun journey to get here.
| devKnight wrote:
| i've been running a ryzen 5 2500u laptop for the last 2 or so
| years. no issues at all getting things running with the
| various distros i've used
| holografix wrote:
| Oh the "joys" of Linux. Precisely why I use a Mac. However
| everyone and then I get tempted.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| What is even the appeal of such a device. Linux runs as smooth as
| it gets on Thinkpads and those are also pretty upgradeable and
| components can be replaced if required. Maybe not onboard Wifi or
| GPU but pretty much anything else. So why the fuzz about this
| laptop?
| [deleted]
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| I don't honestly get the appeal.
|
| I have a ThinkPad T480 with:
|
| - i7-8650U CPU
|
| - Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated and NVIDIA MX150 discrete
| graphics
|
| - WQHD display (2560x1440)
|
| - IR and HD cameras
|
| - Speakers are kinda crappy
|
| - True 10 hour runtime (limited by extra batteries)
|
| - Hot-swappable 72 Whr second battery
|
| - 64 GiB RAM # (it's not supposed to work according to Lenovo's
| and Intel's datasheet but it does)
|
| - 2 TiB M.2 SSD #
|
| - WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.2 #
|
| - 4G WWAN card
|
| - TPM 2.0
|
| - Fingerprint reader
|
| - NFC
|
| - Milspec drop rating
|
| - Awesome IBM-heritage, water-resistant, backlit keyboard
|
| - Multitouch glass touchpad &
|
| - TrackPoint pointing stick (red thing in the middle of the
| keyboard)
|
| - Magnesium top display cover &
|
| - USB-C charging
|
| - Smartcard reader
|
| - Ports including USB-A and -C, SD, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio
| jack
|
| - Security lock slot
|
| - Thunderbolt 3
|
| - Docking station (latest Ultra) that works
|
| # Customization
|
| & Parts swap
|
| It's massively upgradable. 8 captive screws, and the bottom case
| pops out, the keyboard pops out too. ~10 screws, and the
| motherboard and everything else is out. People make frakenpads
| because the parts stayed so similar over the years. All the
| screws are Phillips. No hunting for weird Torx bits.
| je_bailey wrote:
| For me the appeal is that when a feature that I don't currently
| have becomes available it's straight forward for me to upgrade.
|
| When the next iteration of motherboards come out, I won't be
| buying a new laptop, ideally I will go here
| https://frame.work/marketplace and just order the one that I
| want and follow the video guides to install it.
|
| The potential to customize this is huge, larger than any other
| laptop that I'm familiar with. The ability to self maintain, to
| fix every piece of the hardware if necessary just makes this
| thing a win for me.
| zepto wrote:
| It remains to be seen how much the promise of upgradability
| turns into a reality.
|
| I typically buy replace my laptops or desktops after around 6
| years. That is a long time to expect things to remain
| compatible with a chassis.
| amarshall wrote:
| My issues with Thinkpads:
|
| - They seem to be getting worse for repairability and build
| quality with each new generation. Everyone who raves seems to
| be running older generations (yours is comparatively not too
| old).
|
| - Trying to buy new is an exercise in frustration because of
| their ridiculous pricing. Either get gouged outside a sale
| paying a huge premium over competitors, or wait for the right
| sale and get a competitive (but not cheap) price.
| dathinab wrote:
| many Thinkpad models in similar sizes are also also limited
| to 16GiB of RAM.
|
| And while the are up and downs with the quality there seen to
| be a general downward trend.
|
| Like my previous Thinkpad didn't had any major defects after
| the years but with my current one after not quite the years
| the mousepad broke (the coating is damaged getting slowly
| worse starting as just an annoyance to now frequently
| registering phantom middle clicks).
|
| Similar while using custom secure boot platform keys have
| been working with Thinkpad T series for years, for the
| lastish T14 series a non distinguishable subset of them gets
| bricked by it.
| nrp wrote:
| I've been a ThinkPad user in the past and was using a ThinkPad
| as my last laptop before starting Framework. In many ways, the
| Framework Laptop is a modern take on where ThinkPads came from.
| The T480 is relatively recent, but even there, the current
| generation of it (T14 Gen 2) loses one of the SO-DIMMs and the
| swappable battery.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| > Graphics card
|
| > Can this be made upgradable in the future? Would seriouly
| consider building one for gaming if they were.
|
| IMO gaming with the current Framework design is a lost cause as
| cooling would become a major issue that I imagine will require
| designing around.
|
| If I recall correctly, framework's USB ports are Thunderbolt-
| compatible, has anyone tried using an eGPU enclosure with them?
| enricozb wrote:
| Yep it works well. As is usual with linux, it took a
| frustrating day or two to set up but I now play Steam windows
| games with Proton on NixOS using an NVidia eGPU. I'm using X,
| not wayland though, but it works both on external displays and
| on the Framework's "internal" display.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Yes it works https://youtu.be/6NVkToI-vBI
| pja wrote:
| It's an Intel Xe GPU, so it's probably integral to the CPU
| package.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| If the author is here, please add to your review: trackpad; fans
| noise; heating; Bluetooth stability.
| zquestz wrote:
| Honestly, the framework was one of the better purchases I have
| made. There were definitely some Bluetooth hiccups, but all other
| functionality worked perfectly out of the box on Arch. The wiki
| included a few key tips.
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Framework_Laptop
|
| One thing to note, is that I had a bad time with tlp. I would
| suggest using auto-cpufreq if you want better battery life.
| ativzzz wrote:
| I have one of these laptops running an arch based distro. Some of
| the hardware was buggy especially wifi/bluetooth and the intel
| GPU had some issues with KDE but all of the issues are fixed.
| Still requires a reboot here and there but pretty much all
| computers I've had do at some point. Battery life isn't great.
| Overall I wish I spent $500 more and bought an M1.
| mastazi wrote:
| > Graphics card - Can this be made upgradable in the future?
| Would seriously consider building one for gaming if they were.
|
| Oh man if they found a way to have upgradable GPU on a laptop it
| would be next level! I think it can be done through M.2 slot (the
| reason why you can get M.2 to PCIe adapters is because M.2
| provides a PCIe interface [1], some eGPU solutions use M.2 [2],
| IIRC it's just a 4 lanes connection through the M.2 connector but
| better than nothing) - so in order to make this possible on a
| laptop you would basically have to take small (mobile class) GPUs
| and solder them on a board that can be inserted in an M.2 slot...
| I think this is not rocket science but probably those GPUs would
| be expensive unless the concept really takes off and they are
| mass produced.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
|
| [2] https://linustechtips.com/topic/831808-m2-x4-egpu-dock-
| faste...
|
| EDIT - I just remembered that in the past there were some gaming
| laptops with upgradeable GPU, I think they were made maybe by
| Asus? And if I remember correctly it was a proprietary connector
| (but I might be wrong)
|
| EDIT 2 - yes I was thinking about MXM and it was not proprietary,
| thank you to those who pointed that out
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module
|
| EDIT 3 - my proposed idea didn't take cooling into consideration,
| as correctly pointed out in the comments.
| rg111 wrote:
| I will buy a Framework laptop in a heartbeat if they came with
| RTX GPUs.
|
| It would be doubly great if the GPU were upgradable as you say.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Upgrading a GPU internally in a laptop chassis is tricky
| because you need the power/heat/space to work for the range of
| possible products. And I like a CPU where you might design for
| a 35W CPU and that gives you dozens of options from 15W to 35W,
| the GPU range needs to encompass 100W (!) if the purpose is
| meant to allow configuring as a gaming machine. This will
| obviously affect cooling/power supply/bulk for all who buy the
| laptop and _don't_ want the gaming config.
|
| External GPUs have their own difficulties but I think it's a
| less challenging design problem than "configurable GPUs [up to
| enthusiast/gaming/pro cards]"
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| These GPUs use an MXM connector, not M.2.
|
| I've got an HP Z2 Mini unit which also uses MXM for its GPU,
| and is upgradable.
|
| Due to the cooling requirements of a GPU, MXM modules are often
| pretty thick though, so would probably make the whole laptop
| thicker.
|
| You also have to consider how the heatsink & heatpipes for a
| GPU would attach to the GPU.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module
| Anonymous4272 wrote:
| It was dells area 51m recently. I own one, and it was marketed
| as upgradeable, though it turns out its only upgradable in the
| same class e.g. mine can only be swapped with a 2060 2070 or
| 2080.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Would you settle for an external eGPU over USBC?
| k1rcher wrote:
| This is what I have been looking into for a portable gaming
| setup.
|
| My framework setup already has so much raw power in terms of
| RAM and CPU. A solid GPU is the next step :-) Would do a GPU
| pass through setup with virtio/QEMU and a Linux host... if
| only eGPU setups weren't so damned expensive! And that's not
| even factoring in the sheer lack of availability of 30x
| series cards.
| tvararu wrote:
| I have a custom built small form factor PC in a Dan Case A4
| [0]. The case is a lot smaller than a Razer Core. And it's
| a whole PC, not just a GPU. Fits in a cabin bag or backpack
| and I have traveled with it.
|
| You can go even smaller at 3.9L in a Velka 3 [1], if you
| use a single fan graphics card.
|
| - [0] https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php
|
| - [1] https://www.velkase.com/products/velka-3
| k1rcher wrote:
| The Dan Case is absolutely gorgeous. What hardware are
| you running in yours?
|
| I'd love to get a setup like this going with a 30x series
| card, but I'm not sure how difficult getting one at
| listing price is these days.
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| Just use an external GPU?
|
| Or make it upgradeable like an external GPU.
|
| Using a mobile GPU chip and putting it into a small external
| GPU case could be easy.
|
| The only reason why current external GPU cases are so big is
| that the form factor of GPUs is big and the big power
| consumption.
|
| Using a mobile GPU could make this into a small cube of 15*15
| or so.
| [deleted]
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > were some gaming laptops with upgradeable GPU
|
| You are thinking about MXM [0]
|
| Idea was neat but Regular Joe doesn't upgrade GPU in the
| laptop. And Non-regular Joes who does demand what it should be
| cheap and performant.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module
| yread wrote:
| The Schenker vision 14 comes with 3050ti and it is pretty
| repairable
| pjmlp wrote:
| They did in the past made laptops with upgradable GPU, I have
| one Asus that still is working (from 2009).
|
| However so few people ever bothered to upgrade them, hence why
| OEMs have moved on.
|
| Even on desktops, every time I came around to upgrade
| components back in the day, it was about time to upgrade
| everything.
| spicybright wrote:
| That's my experience too. Honestly I don't think people are
| going to upgrade their Framework laptops much. And while
| they're popular now, it's still likely they'll stop producing
| parts (assuming the standard for each component isn't
| completely free to copy). Then you're out of luck.
|
| But the real huge win is replacing broken components easily.
| That alone is making the Framework extremely tempting for me.
| 8jy89hui wrote:
| Heads up to anyone who is running into the right click issue on
| Ubuntu relating to the framework laptop (right click acts a bit
| funky), I added the following lines to
| /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
|
| Section "InputClass" Identifier "libinput
| touchpad catchall" MatchIsTouchpad "on"
| MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event\*" Driver
| "libinput" Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger"
| Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm" Option "Tapping"
| "false"
|
| EndSection
|
| This fixed the issue for me. Your mileage may vary though.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It looks like preorder is open in Germany now! Not in my country
| but it's a bit closer to home, maybe something can be arranged..
| andreareina wrote:
| I went ahead and had mine shipped to a forwarder in the US, who
| then shipped it to me. Depends on how much in a hurry you are
| and whether you can find a forwarder you trust.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| and if you are willing to pay import duties.
| andreareina wrote:
| Yes that's a good point, especially since you're paying
| them twice (you're probably not getting a refund from the
| origin)
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Some of the carrier also charge crazy high fees for doing
| the import service.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, UK, France, & Germany since 17 Dec. I noticed because I
| was checking every day - bit surprised then to only get the
| email (I'd also subscribed for updates/let me know when
| available) yesterday (4 Jan).
| ativzzz wrote:
| I have one of these laptops running an arch based distro. Some of
| the hardware was buggy especially wifi/bluetooth and the intel
| GPU had some issues with KDE but all of the issues are fixed.
| Still requires a reboot here and there but pretty much all
| computers I've had do at some point. Battery life isn't great.
| I'm not unsatisfied, but overall I wish I spent $500 more and
| bought an M1.
| zibzab wrote:
| > This configuration at $1,600 USD is an incredible value
| compared to a MacBook and other comparable laptops.
|
| I know expensive laptops are the norm in SF, but does anyone else
| pay that much for laptops they may drop or looked at any time?
|
| (My current workhorse is a T-series thinkpad I got for free)
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| All the laptops I've bought have been $1-2k. It's not really
| that much, sub $1k laptops are pretty shit.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| There's a lot of solid laptops in the $600-1000 range. Sub
| $600 is generally pretty shit but there's some sales and
| exceptions
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I don't live in SF but paid about that much (bit less) for my
| current laptop. It's more than I've ever paid for a laptop
| before but I wanted something that would last a good while both
| in terms of build quality and specs/upgradability. I got a Dell
| Latitude but the latest Thinkpad T-series was running about the
| same price with similar specs. I live in the UK.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I charge 1000 Euro per day when I'm consulting. That would be
| in Berlin. For that money, I need a laptop that is fast and
| works. I spend most waking hours using it so it also needs to
| be comfortable to use. So, I value quality and performance.
|
| That being said, my expensive 2017 Macbook Pro broke a few
| weeks ago and I picked up a very nicely discounted Samsung
| Galaxy book for about 700 Euro because the only macs available
| were obsolete and the new ones had 4 week delivery times. It's
| a 16GB, i5 with a surprisingly decent Iris XE graphics system
| on a chip thing and 512GB ssd. Nothing fancy but good enough
| for the money and great value at that price actually.
|
| I put Manjaro on it and was up and running in a few hours. I
| only had 4 hours to configure it in the evening as I had a
| customer meeting the next morning and needed a working
| development environment. So, I was pretty pleased all of that
| worked out fine. That means that laptop earned itself back in
| under a day. I even managed to revive some of my 32 bit Steam
| library and get playable fps (with that intel XE graphics!).
| And unlike the mac, it does not have thermal throttling issues.
| It was always unusable for gaming.
|
| I'll probably buy one of the new fancy macs when delivery times
| improve a bit and when we get some clarity on the inevitable
| early adopter issues (which bits are going to break this
| time?). But I'm not in a hurry. This thing works well enough
| and I'm kind of liking Manjaro so far. Lots of rough edges but
| nothing I can't deal with. Definitely not for users not
| comfortable using a command line.
|
| I'd totally spend 3000-4000 Euro on a laptop regardless of the
| OS if it is good value for money. My last mac book pro was 3500
| Euro. Money is not the issue for me when I literally spend a
| lot of my billable time waiting for this thing to do stuff for
| minutes on end many times a day and interrupting my flow (which
| is priceless). But I expect performance for that money as well
| as a decent keyboard (so definitely not my Macbook Pro) and a
| nice screen. Apple fixed all of those things with their latest
| iteration but the configuration I'd want puts me close to
| 4000-5000 Euro this time. I'm actually considering doing that.
| But it's a lot of money and Apple tax this time. And the build
| quality of the last one was terrible, which makes me more
| hesitant. The worst I've ever seen from Apple. Hence, the
| cheapo emergency replacement.
|
| So, this laptop looks like a great deal. Twice the memory (or
| more if you upgrade), ssd, and better CPU than what I picked up
| for just 700 Euro a few weeks ago. Close to good enough for me.
| I'd like a proper screen though. Not having retina/HDPI feels
| like going back to the stone age a bit. Yes, Linux needs a bit
| of work on that front but Wayland seems capable of this at
| least. But other than that, not bad. If they do a more
| expensive version with a better screen, I'd consider getting
| one.
|
| Finding decent laptops is actually a problem. There are not a
| lot of premium laptops that are nice enough for my criteria. I
| don't want a gaming laptop monstrosity that sounds like a
| vacuum cleaner. I don't care for Thinkpads with a nipple and
| shitty touchpad. Dell has support issues though their XPS is
| pretty nice. But I want something premium, with a nice screen,
| keyboard and touchpad that doesn't feel like a huge compromise.
| This Samsung is quite nice on this front actually considering
| the price. The touchpad could be a bit bigger. But it does
| multi touch and it works (after lots of fiddling with
| settings). The 1080p screen feels like a huge leap backwards
| after having used a Retina screen for the last few years. Not
| loving that.
| f6v wrote:
| When you spend so much time in from of the laptop, even 2k
| doesn't seem excessive.
| sneak wrote:
| A $6k laptop seems reasonable if you are using it for earning
| SWE incomes ($200k+/year).
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I live in a country where the average salary is $20k and the M1
| MacBook Air STARTS at $1330. Devs here still often use MacBooks
| or similarly priced higher-end machines. So yeah, good laptops
| are worth it even in much poorer countries.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I paid $2000 for my laptop, and not a day goes by that I'm not
| grateful to past-me for that decision. Having a snappy machine
| is immensely pleasant.
| monopoledance wrote:
| I have a ten year old X220 with an SSD upgrade.... I don't
| have to wait for anything really, either. Don't get me wrong,
| I know there is a difference, but... is it a 2000$
| difference?
|
| This is about snappiness only, I have no trouble finding
| workloads stressing this old i5 (e.g. 2k/4k videos), where an
| M1 would fly through. Personally, I just think snappiness
| alone is a bit forced argument to spent 2k$.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Build quality is probably night and day. An old thinkpad is
| going to be clunky and made of cheap plastic. A modern
| $2000 ultra book is going to be slim and made of metal or
| other high quality materials, it will be pleasant to type
| on, to look at, and it will have a reasonable trackpad size
| by modern standards.
|
| When this is your main tool, it's much more pleasant to use
| something with a nice build quality.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I don't know the model he mentioned specifically, but I'd
| put some old T-series thinkpads against almost anything
| you can buy now for build quality.
| cehrlich wrote:
| In terms of durability, the 10 year old ThinkPad will
| exceed just about any modern laptop. Size/weight is
| different story though. Just depends on priorities.
| Joeri wrote:
| Thinkpads typically have magnesium cases, not plastic,
| and the older models have rollcages so they can take a
| beating like no other. I have an m1 air and while it
| feels sturdy, I have no doubt that X220 can withstand
| much more abuse than my macbook. Also, I have no doubt
| the X220 is more pleasant to type on, because older
| thinkpads have keyboards that have no equal in the laptop
| space. I would say my macbook has a satisfactory
| keyboard, but it is clearly a step down from the T series
| thinkpad it replaced. Still though, the macbook is for me
| overall the better package than any thinkpad that was in
| my budget range.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Magnesium? I must be confused then, because the
| "thinkpad" I was imagining was made of plastic. I've
| definitely felt a magnesium laptop from Microsoft's
| surface brand before and that build quality was great.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Keyboard is unmatched indeed, but my nipple mechanic is
| worn now and the trackpad is atrocious. I am not
| defending this machine, it is 10 years old, the CPU is a
| major limitation now. I bought it refurbished for 240EUR
| in 2015, so I had a "single use" laptop for a trip...
| Became my main machine for years to follow. The low price
| point is one of the best features, as I am not constantly
| worried about it. Also the original spill resistance
| saved my ass two times. Oh yeah and SSD and RAM upgrade
| took me literally 5 minutes. Ridiculous. Almost
| disappointing as a DIY project.
|
| Tho, I suspect it will perform much, much better cleaned,
| repaired and thermal-paste reapplied. But I wont open it,
| as long as I have no alternative set up.
|
| (Also M1 + Linux, would be a no-brainer for me - best
| bang for the buck right now. I just fucking hate Apple
| OSs and the ecosystem. Oh and the keyboard too - feels as
| pleasant an ATM's number pad... Following Asahi closely,
| still.)
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Wow, that seems like a steal for 240EUR. If you don't
| mind me asking, why do you need a single use laptop to
| travel? Also regarding the MacBook keyboards, they've
| completely redesigned them. They were the worst keyboard
| I've ever used from 2016-2019, but the latest models have
| a brand new keyboard and it's my favorite laptop keyboard
| ever, although that's obviously just personal preference.
| monopoledance wrote:
| "Single-use" may have been the wrong expression. I meant,
| I needed something that could break, be stolen, or
| tempered with at the airport, without me losing
| trust/access to my main work/digital life tool, and
| without me getting too sad about it.
|
| I try the Macbooks' keyboards every time I see one in the
| store. Yes, it has been even worse, but the new ones feel
| clickity-clackity, like an ATM pad, to me too. No travel,
| and annoying high pitched noises. Feels weird to rest
| your fingers on those keys. Not even close to a Thinkpad
| keyboard, old or new. I could get used to it, but it is
| not a great input device. Not at all. Trackpad rocks of
| course, but so does the nipple, if you type a lot.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Ah okay. Fair enough, I could see how the keyboard is
| very polarizing. I'm tempted to pick up an old thinkpad
| with how much people rave about them..
| contidrift wrote:
| Clunky sure, but cheap plastic? Old thinkpads can take a
| beating and keep going.
|
| I guess different people just have different needs.
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| I didn't mean cheap plastic in terms of durability, but
| in terms of how it feels quality wise. They can
| definitely take a beating
| monopoledance wrote:
| Jeez, I explicitly stated my comment was about
| "snappiness" only. Sure you can move the goalpost, if it
| makes you happy, but I am not trying to argue a 10 year
| old Thinkpad, or any laptop that age, is nicer than a
| recent Macbook. You win, tiger.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Meh, I just forgot you said that while I was replying
| nicbou wrote:
| My last laptop purchase was 11 years ago. I got recall-upgraded
| to a new laptop 6 years ago. Once amortised, it's a really
| small price to pay for something I use this much.
|
| Since it's a business expense, it's even cheaper.
| harel wrote:
| I'm self employed. The laptop is my main "tool". If I was in
| construction this would be comparable to a van load of power
| tools and then some. I spend more time using it than any other
| tool I have. It's also a taxable expense.
|
| So for me the PS2000+ I paid for my laptop to max it out to the
| extreme is money well spent. Did I mention it's a taxable
| expense?
| 5etho wrote:
| where you guys are reselling? highly interested!
| sneak wrote:
| I have several laptops that are multiple times that. It's
| common for people earning $200k+ per year to spend 5-10k per
| year on computing hardware.
|
| My desktop was like $14k new. It has been my daily driver for
| over 4 years, so less than $300/month (and still going down).
| That's a rounding error in relation to the money I have earned
| using it.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I'll bet your T-series cost at least $1600 2021 dollars when it
| was new.
| zibzab wrote:
| Fair point, those things are expensive when new.
|
| But then again, I would never buy those when just released.
| flatiron wrote:
| 3 years later that same laptop is on eBay for $500 with
| almost perfect Linux compatibility though. It's tough to beat
| used thinkpads on eBay. I never buy my personal laptops new.
| [deleted]
| markyc wrote:
| - retina screen
|
| - great touchpad (and gestures)
|
| - all day battery
|
| - no noise at all (optional but for me a big plus)
|
| - hinge that stands the test of time
|
| - aluminum (of very resistant) body
|
| i'll buy a laptop that checks these off under $1600, but so far
| m1 air is the only one I found, and it's cheaper than that
| zibzab wrote:
| But most of these are meaningless if you don't work full days
| on the run. Most of us sits in an office with a big monitor
| and a mouse and keyboard most of the time.
|
| And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either. During
| the most productive period of my life (by a huge margin, now
| I understand) I only had a $200 laptop. It was literally sold
| as "the cheapest laptop you will ever find".
|
| (I give you the noise though, I hate fan noise)
|
| Edit: do hinges ever break? Unless you sit on it, I have
| never seen this happen even with the cheapest laptops.
| timeon wrote:
| I haven't used mouse since I switched to mbp - and I use
| autocad/rhino a lot.
|
| > And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either.
|
| Among other reasons some people are concerned with energy
| use in general.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Whether you can get away with a cheap laptop really depends
| on what you're doing.
|
| Like for someone who works in
| Photoshop/Illustrator/Sketch/Figma even a little will need
| a great screen and almost without exception you're not
| going to be getting that in a $200 laptop. This admittedly
| can be worked around with a "cheap" $300 IPS external
| monitor, but at that point you're spending more on the
| monitor than your laptop which feels upside-down. (I know
| this from experience -- at one point I had to do PS work on
| a $500 Gateway laptop and it was miserable because a
| quarter of the document's details weren't even visible).
|
| Or if you're compiling code a lot, you're going to want
| more oomph than a $200 laptop can provide, because
| otherwise you're going to be twiddling your thumbs and
| getting distracted and breaking flow waiting for code to
| compile. For me this is particularly impactful, and any
| reduction in compile times is easily felt.
|
| As for hinges, on even a number of "mid tier" laptops, they
| tend to get loose and wobbly over time. I've seen a number
| of IdeaPads owned by friends and family suffer this fate.
| prmoustache wrote:
| You can still do a lot of great work and have decent
| screen by just focusing on second hand stuff. I never
| bought a personnal laptop as new and right now my main
| laptop is one I bought from my previous company when
| leaving. The bonus is usually once you get them they are
| already fully supported and stable on Linux.
|
| It only costed me 375 euros. It is not a high end model,
| but a mid range (Lenovo E580) from a few years ago that
| was specced with the fastest i7 cpu and with as many ram
| (32GB) as supported. It is not Macbook M1 whatever
| fast/nice but for me it is still pretty much current. I
| cringe when people say they cannot work with 1080p screen
| but the reality is you are perefectly comfortable on them
| as long as you don't know better. This is something I
| have learned with different domains, not just computing
| but also sport equipment, music hardware. You don't
| necessarily miss the new tech until you tried it and you
| are not necessarily less productive, comfortable,
| creative or competitive on older tech, only expectations
| changes. But once you tested the new drug sure it is hard
| to come back.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I won't argue that there's high value in used machines. I
| will say that I probably wouldn't buy a used consumer
| grade laptop... their specs are often mediocre even when
| new and their build quality often doesn't hold up to the
| rigors of time. I would only give used business and
| workstation laptops serious consideration.
|
| Personal anecdote: at one point in the early 2010s I was
| cash strapped and needed a reasonably capable machine.
| First I tried that $500 Gateway I mentioned, which was
| terrible to use across almost all dimensions. I ended up
| returning that machine and instead putting it toward a
| used Dell Precision M4400 workstation laptop, which was
| expensive when it was new in 2008 but I got it along with
| a bunch of accessories off of Craigslist for $350. That
| thing was immensely better than the cheap 4 years newer
| Gateway in every way, and much much more usable for work.
| That machine held out for me for several years until I
| could afford something better.
|
| As far as screens go, resolution is less important to me
| than panel quality. I'll take a 1280x800 screen with
| decent color performance over a 1920x1080 screen with
| garbage color. In the case of the cheap Gateway, the
| screen's unusability had more to do with it being a
| terrible bottom of the barrel TN display than it having a
| 1366x768 resolution. While the Precision's panel was
| higher rez (1920x1200) it also handled color much much
| better which is what made the difference for me.
| markyc wrote:
| I hear you
|
| I was very surprised after I bought a nice big monitor and
| great mouse that I ignored them most of the time, so now I
| just work off the laptop, it works best for me, which I
| never would have guessed in my desktop years
|
| That said, I've been very productive with a creaky noisy
| cheap lenovo with ubuntu so in my case it's not just about
| productivity but also comfort
|
| Re: do hinges ever break? they tend to, when you use the
| laptop 10 hours per day
| monopoledance wrote:
| That's terrible ergonomics and you will grow a hunch. One
| day you will notice in the mirror and your consequent
| attempts to straighten your neck will fail. Laptops are
| such a legacy format, we only endure because we're denied
| power-/useful tablets, which would be much more flexible
| ergonomics-wise.
| nullwarp wrote:
| So much this, working off a laptop while having a proper
| keyboard and mouse near by seems crazy to me.
| markyc wrote:
| I have a standing desk and take plenty of breaks, which
| helps
| monopoledance wrote:
| Standing desk doesn't help with the viewing angle and
| neck strain. Your upper body should be exactly the same
| as sitting well adjusted.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| I think you're underplaying two things:
|
| - not just a great touchpad, literally the best one in the
| game undisputed
|
| - all day battery life. And not PC laptops that claim 14
| hours of battery but see 5 in reality, I'm talking actually
| 14 hours of battery in real world use.
| timeon wrote:
| - decent speakers
| jjice wrote:
| My laptop is a X1 Carbon Gen 3 (released in 2015). Bought it
| used on ebay and I'm still fairly happy with it. I will say,
| the lack of hardware transcoding is the biggest pain point
| these days. When I was still in school and had zoom calls,
| those were a nightmare and ramped up to a consistent 90% CPU
| usage. Other than that, Rust compiles times are slow, but
| nothing else is a huge issue.
|
| Next machine needs to have hardware transcoding though. That's
| become so important to me. Needing to give up all of my
| processing power just to be on a video call is awful, but it
| served well for years for $400.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| I never paid more than $400, but I also use Linux and don't
| play games or edit video, so I never really felt the need for a
| modern powerful computer.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Same here. My laptop cost $400 in 2016 and still serves my
| needs perfectly.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Yes, since I use it about 8 hours a day for a couple years, the
| cost per hour is pretty low and the better screen, keyboard and
| speed is worth it.
|
| However getting accidental damage protection, like from Lenovo,
| does help the peace of mind.
| lawn wrote:
| I'm still amazed that people prefer to work on a laptop over
| a desktop.
|
| I mean, I still use a laptop in the evenings, but for work a
| desktop is to me a must.
| DeWilde wrote:
| I use a desktop into which I SSH or RDP from my laptop.
| Giving my flexibility and performance. But I still have an
| extra monitor in my office and home which I almost always
| use.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| For my personal machine, I'm fine with a desktop because
| it's unlikely I'll need that power portably, and if I ever
| do I can set things up to remote into my personal desktop
| with my personal laptop.
|
| For my work machine, a laptop is preferred because then I
| can do my work anywhere without fuss even without an
| internet connection.
|
| Besides, with an M1 Pro, plugging my work laptop into the
| Thunderbolt hub at my desk provides a near-desktop
| experience for the overwhelming majority of its usage. For
| day to day work the difference between my M1 Pro laptop and
| 5950X desktop isn't staggering enough to justify giving up
| portability.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think it depends what kind of work you do and if you
| travel a lot. Pre/post pandemia are also different for a
| lot of people. A lot of people are now working 100% at home
| in a dedicated office and could only use a desktop while
| they used to move from meeting to meeting with their laptop
| prior to the pandemic. Others were travelling a lot from
| conf to conf and customers. Some still do a lot of
| customers on site work. There are many use-cases.
|
| Anyway a laptop becomes a desktop by plugging it's usb-c
| port to your docking station so there is very little
| downside appart from being subject to throttling when doing
| heavy cpu stuff to using one instead of a desktop. Which
| not everybody is subject too, mostly only people compiling
| stuff on their laptop.
|
| I personnally spend most of my time in my office at home
| with dual screen but I like to move to the living room when
| attending conferences, in my rooftop when it is not to
| sunny or in the kitchen to have a chat with my gf while
| grabbing a tea when she is at home and I am waiting for a
| job/whatever to complete so a laptop is still nice to have
| even when working 100% from home.
| dagw wrote:
| As someone who shifts between 3 different desks (home, main
| office, project office) and sometimes as to go and see
| clients, having a laptop is pretty necessary. However once
| I plug my laptop into its docking station connected to my
| monitors, keyboard, mouse etc. I really don't notice much
| of a difference between a laptop and desktop.
|
| But I agree that working all day on a laptop in laptop mode
| is right out.
| unionpivo wrote:
| I have desktops at home and at office that i keep
| partially in sync (my home desktop is also for gaming
| (steam linux), no need for that in office).
|
| I have a laptop for those rare cases when I need to work
| where i am not at either of those locations.
|
| With so capable phones in pocket, I rarely find myself
| needing to pull out a laptop to the point that I don't
| think I'd buy replacement if this one broke.
|
| But to each his own.
| fastball wrote:
| My last laptop was $3500.
|
| I dropped it 4 days after purchase.
|
| My next laptop was $2000.
|
| I dropped it a few months after purchase.
|
| I don't live in SF. So I guess the answer to your question is
| yes.
| criddell wrote:
| If you purchased your laptops with a credit card you should
| check to see if you have accidental damage protection.
|
| My credit card has that and I've used it to replace a phone
| with a cracked screen. It was literally a 5 minute phone call
| to make the claim and all of my money was refunded the next
| day.
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| My private laptops are around 1000 to 1500. But I also have my
| desktop PC.
|
| My company laptop is 3k$ and I actually carry that around more
| often. True I care less about it but I still don't feel like
| I'm dropping devices while I'm moving.
|
| I dropt my Thinkpad primarily at home when it was sitting next
| to the couch :')
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| At least Framework placed the Power button NOT in the keyboard
| top-right corner (oh don't let me start on this).
|
| But all other keys... does nobody ever uses
| Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu keys these days?
|
| <rant>
|
| Ask HN: Nobody ever uses Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu
| keys these days?
|
| I understand what the current laptop keyboard layouts are made by
| alien^W someone who is clearly not using the computer as a work
| tool, but we are close to a decade of this ...nonsense.
|
| All Fn+ keys REQUIRE using both hands. It is all fine until you
| are somewhere where you need to use one hand to hold your
| notebook and ... you can no longer press any Fn+ combo.
|
| I have a pretty big hands and I can't stretch my fingers enough
| to reach both bottom-left Fn and any key on the right side of
| keyboard. On a 14" laptop. Which could had all the keys (compare
| X220 and T440 for example) but it doesn't.
|
| Thinkpads are still have PrtScr on ContextMenu, which means I
| _would_ 100% lose contents of the clipboard some hours later. Who
| needs PrtScr /there/ anyway? I want to hear the reasoning, like
| "we noticed (through our telemetry? how?) what our users are
| making screenshots all the day so we moved the PrtScr in the
| place of ContextMenu button"? You can replace the Space with
| PrtScr then, it would be pressed even more.
|
| 16" notebook? You will still have a sub 12" keyboard on it [0]
|
| 14" notebook? You won't even have the chance to see it's keyboard
| - you can see photo of it's back (like this is somehow important
| in the age where is nothing on a laptop back) but you can't see
| it's keyboard.
|
| </rant>
|
| [0]
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/x...
|
| [1]
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/x...
| maratc wrote:
| You may want to consider a Mac. Most of its software doesn't
| use any Fn+ combos, or Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/Insert/ContextMenu
| keys. They have other shortcuts. It's a pain to learn them in
| the beginning, but in the long term it gives you an idea that
| maybe having many single-purpose keys on a laptop keyboard is
| not a best idea, ergonomically.
| causi wrote:
| I just wish there was an option for having separate touchpad
| buttons. Not being able to clearly feel the dividing line between
| left and right click is a dealbreaker for me with any laptop.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Nowadays most notebooks have multitouch touchpads and thus
| right clicking is done not by tapping in a specific button, but
| by a gesture (e.g.: tap anywhere in the touchpad with two
| fingers).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I didn't realize it had a hardwire switch for the webcam, that's
| a nice feature they could put on the front page. I see it now on
| their "learn more" page.
|
| It would be nice if the expansion cards came with a plastic cap
| to protect the usb c plug, I wouldn't want to toss the spare hdmi
| card in my bag as is, but in the spirit of open hardware maybe
| one will pop up on thigaverse.
| nrp wrote:
| Yep! It's a hardware cut-off on both the camera and
| microphones.
|
| For the Expansion Cards, there are some discussions on holders
| for them as well as 3D printed designs from the community:
| https://community.frame.work/t/expansion-card-carrying-case/...
| cassepipe wrote:
| Lots of people seem to complain about Ubuntu support on this
| machine. There seems to be a consensus that Fedora is the option
| that works best for that machine.
| nrp wrote:
| I noted this elsewhere, but we've been providing the team at
| Fedora with hardware, which has helped make Fedora 35 work
| great out of the box. We've also been doing that with some
| smaller distros like Elementary. That isn't a relationship we
| have with Ubuntu at the moment, and it shows, though Ubuntu
| 21.04 works well:
| https://community.frame.work/t/ubuntu-21-04-on-the-framework...
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| This looks like a great piece of kit.
|
| I'd usually be wary of dropping that much cash on a product from
| a vendor without a track record.
|
| How well backed / funded are these guys?
| teekert wrote:
| The author does not address the screen resolution (and just says
| the screen is nice) but I'm hearing that the screen res is a bit
| to high to work with without scaling and a tad to low to do 2x
| scaling. And people don't like fractional scaling, at least in
| Gnome (it seems to look weird). Is this still an issue?
|
| I tend to prefer 1080p for this reason on 12-14" screens. My
| Thinkpad X13 gen 2 has a 13.3", 1920x1200 screen, windows sets it
| to 150%, which seems ok, although Ubuntu works well for me
| without scaling still. The Frame work laptop has an even higher
| res (2256x1504). I do hear people scaling the fonts and that
| seems to be a nice solution... I remember from back in the old
| days that I never really liked the look of this.
|
| What do people think of this? I'm hoping that in the future you
| can choose the screen (and easily get replacements as well, I
| hear they are working on that).
|
| Edit: I hope these issues are being addressed by established
| DE's, I'm assuming they won't be an issue on Canonical's
| (hypothetical ;)) Flutter based DE that's (obviously ;)) coming
| and on System76's Rust based new DE for Pop OS [0].
|
| [0]:
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/08/system76_developing_n...
| 91edec wrote:
| I don't understand why 1440p hasn't become the standard on
| laptops. Its always 1080p or 4K which is useless on such a
| small display.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I don't understand why 1440p hasn't become the standard on
| laptops.
|
| Because that's really low.
|
| My 14 inch laptop is 1964 rows and I wouldn't really want
| anything lower than that.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| 1440p is hugely common on gaming laptops. Alienware M15,
| Razer Blade 14/15, Lenovo Legion 5, etc... all offer displays
| in the QHD or WQXGA range.
|
| The reason you typically see 1080p or 4k on ultrabooks is
| because 1080p is how you get the low entry price, and 4k is
| what sounds better on marketing and looks the best for text-
| related things (4k is not at all useless - the sharpness it
| provides to text is noticeable). The balance that QHD
| provides isn't very desirable in that market usually,
| although there are exceptions like the Framework laptop or
| the Surface Laptop 4. Usually those exceptions then also come
| with more unique aspect ratio displays like 3:2, though, so
| they aren't exactly 1440p/QHD. But they are in that density.
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| It's not useless.
|
| Resolution is independent of size. Just because it doesn't
| work perfectly on Linux high DPI is much nicer and easier to
| read.
|
| The decapsulate on of resolution and size is btw already
| quite old. Games have this as well were they dynamically
| change the internal resolution but not the screen resolution.
|
| And you might not care about it but: - text is much smoother
| - images from DSLR have higher resolution than 4k for ages
| and you can see the difference
|
| The only arguments against 4k on smaller screens should be
| power consumption and not scaling issues. But for this we
| should focus on dynamic refrehsrates and similar power saving
| mechanism and again NOT complaining about 4k.
|
| MacOS is doing this flawless for years. Windows can do it and
| under Linux it starts to be usable based on comments of this
| article.
| Joeri wrote:
| The problem of 4k is efficiency. 1440p is already 2x at 14
| inches, which at normal viewing distances is about as sharp
| as people can see. Going up to 4k does not really improve
| visual quality, but it dramatically increases the pixel
| count that must be rendered, which burns through a lot more
| power. 4k laptops have worse battery life and worse display
| performance than 1440p laptops, but they offer no upside
| for those downsides.
|
| There is a reason macbooks, still the gold standard for hi
| dpi rendering, have never had 4k panels.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Going up to 4k does not really improve visual quality_
|
| Speak for yourself. The 4k display in my XPS is my
| favorite output device I have ever owned. I wish my rMBP
| had that kind of pixel density.
| altcognito wrote:
| MacOS doesn't scale. You can change font sizes, you can
| change resolution, but scaling via DPI isn't present.
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193723/scaling-
| all...
|
| If somebody understands the situation better on MacOS I'd
| be interested, but based on my experience, Windows is the
| only OS that gets this as close as possible to right. It's
| a single setting that affects all applications and I can
| set monitors independently and it will scale on the fly
| (even if it does look a little weird as you drag an app
| across and it dynamically shifts)
|
| Every now and then I'll come across a app that doesn't
| quite deal with high DPI scaling correctly, but it is the
| exception to the rule.
|
| Linux also works pretty well, but as with everything Linux,
| it's almost always "it depends and well, not quite" (not
| usually multi-monitor aware, lots of per app settings)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you think 'scaling' means or
| what you think this Stack Exchange answer means, but
| macOS (not 'MacOS') does allow scaling the UI of both
| integral and external monitors, and independently.
|
| It renders a high-resolution image to a buffer, and then
| scales that when rendering to the actual screen buffer.
| The buffer image is at least as large as the actual
| screen buffer.
|
| You can see for yourself that it isn't changing the
| hardware resolution of external monitors when scaling by
| taking a look at the actual resolution on your monitors
| OSD if it has done. It'll always be the native
| resolution.
| lostmsu wrote:
| It does not do 1.5 or 1.33 or 1.25 scaling, or does it
| blurred. Windows can handle any ratio.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It does not do 1.5 or 1.33 or 1.25 scaling, or does it
| blurred. Windows can handle any ratio.
|
| Non-integer scaling (of a pixel source, vectors are
| different but not relevant here) either requires blending
| or crisp unequal-sizing artifacts.
| lostmsu wrote:
| In Mac OS, because that's how its scaling is designed.
| Windows does not have this problem, because it tells
| programs to render themselves at 1.33 or whatever and
| provides facilities to do it without pain in the ass. As
| the result scaling in Windows is painless with any
| displays at any resolutions. In fact, my main setup has
| two 1.25x DPI displays and an old 1x DPI display with
| zero blending or sizing artifacts excluding brief moments
| when you move a window from 1.25x display to 1x one until
| it lands.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Again I don't really know what you think you mean by
| 'blurred'? How do you think this is working?
|
| If I tried all the possible scalings for my external
| monitor, the grey line around each window, to give a
| specific example of, is always a crisp physical one-pixel
| wide.
|
| macOS creates a buffer to render to that is the same size
| as the physical output you're choosing to use, and is
| able to render with pixel precision in that buffer.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Would be easier if you said what scalings have you tried
| and what is your external monitor native resolution.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 4k external monitor - here's HN at all the scalings
| https://imgur.com/a/QTrI6uJ. For example, look at the
| white box around the Y, that's always rendered precisely
| on hard physical pixel boundaries. It's one pixel for
| some scalings, then moves to two pixels for larger
| scalings. It's never a blur from a larger or smaller
| image that is then interpolated. It renders at the native
| resolution, knowing physical pixel boundaries, by the
| scaling of the render _commands_ (the x and y to render
| at, before the render command runs) not an intermediate
| rendered image. (Remember to download the images so you
| aren 't using browser interpolation to scale them.)
| lostmsu wrote:
| This looks pretty good. Though scaling in browsers has
| been mostly independent of corresponding OS features for
| quite a while. E.g. the issues mentioned above with Linux
| and fractional scaling do not affect browsers as much.
| The problem is usually with native UI elements, such as
| the settings app itself.
|
| However, it is unclear to me what are the scaling ratios
| relative to the native resolution in your examples. In
| this article for Sierra you seem to be only able to pick
| integer factors: https://www.eizoglobal.com/support/compa
| tibility/dpi_scaling...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > In this article for Sierra you seem to be only able to
| pick integer factors
|
| Maybe? But that's ancient history.
|
| I don't know what the ratios are - the UI doesn't expose
| them.
| lostmsu wrote:
| What does it expose? In Sierra as you can see from the
| screenshot it simply shows scaled resolutions. So you can
| just divide native resolution by the scaled to get the
| factor.
| vehemenz wrote:
| What? MacOS does scale. MacOS was doing this correctly
| years before Windows!
|
| First of all, DPI is not the metric we're interested in.
| That is a unit for print quality, and it has no relevance
| for an OS, for Photoshop, or anything we do on a screen.
| The operating system does not know how big your screen
| is. Inches nor dots are relevant; only pixels are. It
| would be more accurate to talk about the ratio of monitor
| pixels to apparent pixels. I guess Microsoft finally got
| the memo in Windows 11 (or was it 10?) and changed to
| percentages.
|
| In MacOS, a 4K monitor set to 1920x1080 will still be
| 3840x2160, but it displays 4 pixels for every 1 apparent
| pixel. Everything scales correctly, except for legacy
| applications. The UI elements, text, etc. appear to be a
| sharper version of 1080p. In Windows land, this is the
| same thing as "200%." As far as I can tell, Windows does
| the same thing but uses scaling percentages instead of
| apparent resolution.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Your only problem with Windows appears to be that it
| named the scaling setting "DPI" until Windows 7 or so to
| handle scaling. But as the parent mentioned, Windows is
| definitely superior to MacOS, as it provides arbitrary
| scaling ratios, and renders text perfectly at any ratio.
|
| To go deeper into nitpicking, DPI is not even that
| misleading, if you take "inch" in DPI to be equal to 72
| points as used in font sizes. Then a 72pt font on the
| screen with DPI X will be rendered with height of X
| pixels.
| int_19h wrote:
| DPI is a valid metric for anything that the human eye
| sees. There's no difference in that regard between text
| printed on paper, and text displayed on the screen. The
| smaller the dots, the better it looks.
|
| And yes, the OS does in fact know how big your screen is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identifica
| tio...
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| Huh?
|
| I'm not sure what you mean. My MacOS does the scaling and
| it looks good.
|
| How is MacOS scaling different?
| loganwedwards wrote:
| I use Pop_OS on my Framework and loved 1.5x scaling except for
| screen tearing I get (YouTube for example). I reverted to 1x
| and increased icon and font sizes to semi compensate.
| teekert wrote:
| Do you still get the tearing when you use Wayland?
| keawade wrote:
| I've been using Fedora 35 with Wayland and fractional scaling
| set to 150% on my Framework laptop and it works great for me.
| addicted wrote:
| As an aside, I'm increasingly convinced that Fedora is
| probably the best Linux distro around right now for both
| enthusiasts and beginners.
|
| Great stability. Close to the edge of progress. And they
| focus on delivering real unique value on top of what others
| have created as opposed to reskinning and hacking Gnome.
|
| I've never used Fedora but I'm keen on moving over my
| personal desktop the next time I have a couple of days to
| mess around with it.
| pja wrote:
| Personally, I've found fractional scaling on Gnome makes the
| window furniture too large for my taste. I've settled on
| boosting the default font size in gnome-tweaks to 125% instead,
| which makes font rendering match the DPI of my monitor but
| leaves window bars / tool bars etc at a more sensible size.
| Karliss wrote:
| I am on gnome 41+wayland and quite satisfied with fractional
| scaling. That is with 4k@1.5X+2560x1440@1X. Fractional scaling
| related issues don't seem to be more often than programs not
| supporting wayland and scaling at all (in which case those
| programs are slightly blurry but reasonable size). There are
| certain settings which need to be enabled, they might be
| enabled by default on some distros. I might not notice some of
| the issues due to bad scaling at 4k still being comparable to
| lower resolution screen, unless things break badly. Issues
| might be more obvious with ~2K at 1.25-1.5 scale. Things may be
| slightly simpler in single monitor setups without mixed
| scaling. How much of effort configuring stuff is acceptable
| depends on person and what kind of software they commonly use.
|
| * Gnome the desktop -> org.gnome.mutter/experimental-features
| "scale-monitor-framebuffer". Only integer scales available
| without this. Following assume that this is enabled.
|
| * gnome apps: work great out of the box
|
| * QT apps: Qt5 requires QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland environment
| variable to force wayland backend. Enabled by default in Qt6.
| Used to be quite bad ~1-2 years ago, but is now usable.
|
| * Firefox: MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
|
| * chromium and electron: --ozone-platform=wayland seems fine
| for chrome, but some electron apps went crazy when moving
| between windows with different scale. Maybe the electron app
| bundled an older chrome version. No issues (except less sharp
| text) when not enabling the experimental wayland backend.
| gdwatson wrote:
| I run Mint with 2x scaling on mine and I like it a lot. The
| screen's not quite as sharp as the one on the old XPS it
| replaced, but it's still quite nice.
|
| I run a middling-width monospace font, and I can't quite fit
| two 80-column windows side by side at 2x without reducing the
| font size, but if you want that then you want smaller text
| anyway. (If you run a narrow font it shouldn't be an issue.)
| Other UI elements are not unreasonably large in my opinion, but
| YMMV.
| fsh wrote:
| In my experience, fractional scaling in Gnome Wayland works at
| least as well as on Windows. I use 150% on my 4K 27" monitor
| and have experienced basically zero problems in the last few
| months.
| flurdy wrote:
| I've run Gnome+Wayland at 125% on a 32" 4k screen for over a
| year and noticed no issues. But that is just a sample size of
| 1.
|
| But a 1080p screen would be a no for me. At 2256x1504 on 13.5"
| screen I think Framework laptop would probably be fine at 100%
| ie no scaling
| Gigachad wrote:
| As soon as you open up a legacy X application it looks
| blurry. The main offender was Chrome/Electron but I think
| this has been fixed last year.
| oever wrote:
| Isn't scaling from 3072x1728 to 3840x2160 (so 125%) very
| blurry? A one-pixel line at 3072x1728 would be spread over
| slight more than line pixel wide on 4k.
|
| To get nice integer scaling one could render at 15360x8640
| (16k) which is 5x3072x1728 and 4x3840x2160 but I doubt that's
| what Wayland is doing. No common graphics card could handle
| that.
|
| The font hinting relies on the resolution too. By scaling the
| rendered pixmap 125% the fonts would look bad too. Rendering
| the fonts in a larger size at the native screen resolution
| should look better.
| Karliss wrote:
| Who said anything about scaling rendered pixmaps? Proper UI
| scaling is handled at the desktop and UI toolkit level,
| instead of brute force changing desktop resolution or
| scaling rendered windows. That's why it's not a simple
| problem and support varies not only based on operating
| system, but also UI libraries used by applications, their
| combination, application developers updating their UI
| libraries and using the new APIs. Whether the UI toolkit
| exposes it to application developer by having the graphic
| api operate at pixel independent units or having the
| developer manually calculate sizes based on the scaling
| factor or relative to something like default font size
| varies. Basic geometric shapes and text (assuming vector
| instead of bitmap fonts) can be rendered at any size and
| resolution. As for more photo like images downscaling them
| by fractional amount typically works quite well, so if they
| are big enough for integer 2x scaling they also work with
| 1.25 scale.
| oever wrote:
| Here is an explanation of fractional scaling of GNOME in
| Wayland which is what the parent is using at 125%:
|
| https://discourse.gnome.org/t/how-fractional-scaling-
| works-i...
|
| For scaling 125%, the client windows are rendered at 2x
| their size and sampled down. On the parent's system, a
| full-screen window would be rendered at 6144x3456 and
| scaled down to 3840x2160 (0.625%).
|
| This gives a blurry result and is taxing on the graphics
| chip.
|
| Qt apps and Firefox support scaling themselves which
| gives a much crisper result for fonts and line-art.
| int_19h wrote:
| Is it really all that taxing? I mean, we're not talking
| about a 3D game here.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Instead of scaling the whole of the UI, I find that scaling via
| fonts works well enough when integer based scaling is not an
| option.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I've been wondering about this for a while. Why do we need
| scale numbers and can't use dpi? Essentially if wayland (or
| desktops shells) would specify sizes in a "real world unit"
| changing the size of windows, text etc would just mean changing
| the dpi. In particular it would be trivial to have different
| size/resolution monitors display the elements at the same size.
| Considering if elemtents are vector graphics we don't even need
| fractional scaling for desktop elements.
|
| Now we still would need to scale images etc, but that is much
| less an issue than fractional scaling text or lines etc.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| It's incredibly hard to change course if the UI toolkits
| weren't designed for it in the first place.
|
| Android is still about the only OS with reliable density
| independence. It's also the only one where things like DPI
| were an initial part of the UI system, and not something
| bolted on later.
|
| Windows has been trying to retrofit density independence for
| nearly a decade now, and it's still pretty hit or miss. Apple
| didn't bother trying at all, and has been more successful at
| pretending it works (so scale rendering by whole numbers
| only, then fractionally scale the resulting image to the
| actual display size). Web browsers mostly went the Apple
| route, but we all also regularly expect pinch/zoom scaling to
| fix any glaring issues anyway and just accept it's kinda
| janky. Linux... well, Linux is still struggling with the
| basics of putting stuff on screen (Wayland vs. X11). I
| wouldn't hold my breath for that ecosystem to get this UX
| refinement working well anytime soon. Especially not across
| the many UI widget systems, window managers with differing
| border decorations, DEs, etc...
| int_19h wrote:
| Windows has had the necessary bits for DPI independence
| since the 90s - it's why stuff like "dialog units" is a
| thing.
|
| The problem, as usual, is getting the apps to actually use
| it.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| "dialog units" seems to be about the size of the system
| font, not about DPI independence. Things like
| WM_DPICHANGED seem to only really show up in Windows 8+,
| with some stuff like LOGPIXELSX showing up as "early" as
| Windows 2000 but doesn't look very complete.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| The only program I've seen do it "properly" is Darktable,
| which has a dots-per-inch setting for things which have to be
| compatible with real-world linear measurements (WYSIWYG stuff
| for the most part), a dots-per- _degree_ setting for things
| which depend on how far away you are sitting from your screen
| (UI element size), _and_ a font size. I suspect the reason
| people don't regularly do this is the same as the reason CSS
| no longer has pixels: it's difficult to design (in the
| declarative CSS model) with more than one independent length
| unit.
|
| (I just went to check my several-years-old impressions
| against Darktable's almost-undocumented config file, and...
| it no longer seems to have these settings? I'm not sure.)
|
| Unfortunately, the "UI scale" thing seems to be baked into
| Wayland nowadays; I have no idea how to get Evince to realize
| that an A4 sheet at 100% should be 210 cm wide whatever my
| screen resolution and "UI scale".
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > it's difficult to design (in the declarative CSS model)
| with more than one independent length unit.
|
| Modern CSS is quite close to Turing complete, so an
| entirely constraint-driven design (which is what's needed
| when more than one unit is being chosen by the user) ought
| to be feasible. You need at least "real world units" for
| stuff like the minimum size of touch targets, and "angular
| units" (like CSS pixels) for the general scaling of
| widgets. Plus it would be nice to add a separate scaling
| factor for text, since users differ widely in what they
| find most readable. So that makes for three independent
| settings, in the general case.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > You need at least "real world units" for stuff like the
| minimum size of touch targets [...].
|
| That touch targets need absolute lengths is a good point.
|
| > So that makes for three independent settings, in the
| general case.
|
| Yes, and you'll notice that's what Darktable does (or
| did) :) I'm not unsympathetic, just have never seen it
| done in a moderately complex situation.
|
| > Modern CSS is quite close to Turing complete, so an
| entirely constraint-driven design (which is what's needed
| when more than one unit is being chosen by the user)
| ought to be feasible.
|
| I suspect it's not a question of theoretical expressive
| power so much as ergonomics: allowing easy description of
| (what people think about as) simple things. It probably
| doesn't have to be precisely; if a full constraint-based
| / linear programming approach[1] is the way to go, I
| expect designers will adapt, it's just that last I
| checked those could be quite tricky to use: small changes
| could lead to drastic rearrangements of the layout, and
| as soon as you try to add a couple of breakpoints the
| whole thing becomes NP-complete.
|
| It's like, say, LR(k) parsers. LR(k) parsers are nice,
| fast, and good at expressing our intuitions about
| ambiguity (unlike ordered choice). They are expressive
| enough for almost anything you might want to say. But
| nobody really _wants_ to work with them, the failures are
| tricky and hard to predict, and they lack many things you
| want for modularity (say, closure under unions).
|
| It seems to me that the situation with truly resolution-
| independent layouts is similar in this respect: we can
| technically do them, to some extent, but they are a pain,
| so nobody does. And it's not so much a problem of finding
| the perfect language as a problem of figuring out what it
| is that we want to say that seems so simple in our heads.
|
| [1] https://gss.github.io/guides/ccss
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > and as soon as you try to add a couple of breakpoints
| the whole thing becomes NP-complete.
|
| Sure, that's a given with the constraint satisfaction
| approach but NP-complete problems work just fine when N
| is small enough.
| 42jd wrote:
| I'm not on Ubuntu but using Wayland on nixos. Fractional
| scaling does not look or work well at all in my experience. I
| decided on 1.0 scaling and pushed it all over to font sizing
| (around 1.5). This works pretty well for most apps but it is a
| little small sometimes. The biggest issue is having to manually
| scale up some apps that don't keep my preferences.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Gnome's accessibility feature "larger text" works a bit
| better than font scaling IMEx. With font scaling often some
| alignment and spacing seems odd. And you can toggle "larger
| text" with one click, if you make the accessibility menu
| permanent.
| NCFZ wrote:
| This is what I do as well. I find it works better than
| fractional scaling.
| colordrops wrote:
| I've got a Thinkpad with a 14" screen at 2256x1504. Running
| Wayland and SwayWM, I could never get integer or fractional
| scaling to work just right. In the end, turning off system-wide
| scaling and configuring apps that don't scale automatically was
| what did the trick.
| 3np wrote:
| How long ago did you try last? I recently started using Sway
| and haven't hit any issues yet.
| colordrops wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't clear - just mentioning that I'm using
| Sway, but it's not the problem. The problem was with apps
| running in XWayland, e.g. Gimp, Firefox, Spotify, Slack,
| gnome apps, etc
| 3np wrote:
| I like my fonts on the quite small side; ~14" @ 2256x1504
| sounds ideal to me.
|
| That aside, I've been playing around with fractional scaling in
| Wayland on everything from a 6" Pinephone to 32"@4k in various
| configurations and it's been mostly painless. Mostly terminal,
| web browsing, Steam games (latter not on the Pinephone obv). I
| wouldn't be surprised if there can be issues with xwayland that
| I'm yet to experience.
| carlob wrote:
| >I've been playing around with fractional scaling in Wayland
|
| Even with Intel graphics? I have stumbled on a number of
| showstopping bugs and moved back to X, which is also pretty
| horrible...
| 3np wrote:
| Oh, actually not yet. That's surprising as in general I
| think Intel graphics tend to have the best compatibility
| out there. Currently main workstation on amdgpu on a 5xxxG
| - I'm still not sure if I've gotten the hardware
| transcoding etc working properly but that's all unrelated
| to fractional scaling, I assume.
| LawnGnome wrote:
| The screen resolution is my least favourite aspect of the
| Framework, for sure. Not a deal breaker, but every now and then
| my eye catches a poorly aliased bit of text and gets sad.
|
| I've basically resigned myself to running Sway in 1.5x scale
| mode, which means that things get rendered at 2x and scaled
| down. Sway does about as well as I think any desktop
| environment could be expected to, but it's never going to be
| the same as rendering at true screen resolution. Alas, running
| in 1x or 2x and using font settings to handle it breaks down
| the moment you connect to an external display that really is 1x
| or 2x.
|
| That said, I love the rest of the laptop (well, maybe except
| the battery life), so my hope is that at some point we can buy
| a replacement screen at a more useful resolution, at which
| point I'll be first in line to buy and install it.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I do hear people scaling the fonts and that seems to be a
| nice solution... I remember from back in the old days that I
| never really liked the look of this.
|
| I'm doing this, in particular on a 24" 4k screen. It's true
| that it may look a bit "weird", in that fonts are huge compared
| to other UI elements.
|
| However, for me that's a win. I don't care to have huge buttons
| or what have you, I mostly use shortcuts. So I get nice, sharp
| fonts and also get to have smaller UI elements which leave more
| screen space for the text.
| michaelt wrote:
| Even if you're on 1x scaling, you always have the option to
| adjust the zoom in your browser, and the text size in your
| terminal/IDE/text editor.
| k1rcher wrote:
| Anecdotal personal experience:
|
| I'm on PopOS running Wayland with fractional scaling to 200%.
| It looks fantastic imo and have only had some issues with Guake
| terminal when plugged in to an external monitor, which I
| believe may be a Guake-Wayland-specific bug.
| morsch wrote:
| 200% is not fractional scaling, though?
| k1rcher wrote:
| Oops, you're right. 150% is what I have set, typo on my
| end!
| ximeng wrote:
| I used to have issues with two different screens that needed
| different scaling but as of 20.04 it's mostly fine to use
| fractional scaling on one monitor and not the other.
|
| I've still had some issues with some applications not scaling
| their widgets properly, but it's mostly ok.
| sethhovestol wrote:
| I also recently(~1 month) purchased one of these, (DIY edition +
| windows). So far my only complaint is the screen size. I was
| really wanting a 17" touch screen and a keyboard with a num pad.
| My first thought when I was opening + working with this was that
| the whole experience felt like a labor of love.
| zepto wrote:
| > I have a machine with _better specs_ than a comparable MacBook
| Pro M1 for less.
|
| ...except for display quality, performance and battery life.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I legit taught myself basic Linux terminal since when I was 17 I
| couldn't afford a windows license.
|
| Half the fun, at least for me was always liberating an old
| Windows PC.
|
| The pricing on this isn't really competitive with buying a mid
| Windows Laptop + seeing if Ubuntu runs. Such fun to give up on
| Ubuntu and use Fedora since Fedora was supported better.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is so over the top enthusiastic I hope he is getting paid.
|
| You can swap battery, harddrive, memory, network chip yay. That
| was possible on nearly all laptops some years back. At the
| enterprise level both Dell and Lenovo have models that does most
| of this. (Unless recently discontinued)
|
| Quite a few laptops had "bays" where you could swap out extra
| harddrive, cd rom, extra battery,
|
| Then a while back computer had PCMCIA/PC Card, that let you add
| all sorts of very useful hardware.
|
| All in all this is far less user configurable than a two bay, to
| pcmia slots. (with battery, memory easily upgraded).
|
| I would love someone to come out with a laptop like that again.
|
| Further modules for the framework are expensive, made by a single
| company, few variants. If the company fails you are stuck.
|
| On the old style laptops, ram, memory, cd player, extra hard
| drive, batteries, PCMCIA/PC Cards were all usually available from
| several sources. Bays might be the most proprietary.
| DHowett wrote:
| > That was possible on nearly all laptops some years back.
|
| Not necessarily in this size class/with this chassis design.
| "Ultrabooks" as a class haven't been nearly as user-serviceable
| as you're suggesting.
|
| > made by a single company, few variants; Bays might be the
| most proprietary
|
| Eh. I'm not terribly worried about this given that they're TB3
| or TB4 (to wit: PCIe) and provided with reference designs[1].
|
| I have to admit, though, that I couldn't easily find IBM's old
| expansion bay spec or proprietary connector... or for that
| matter, HP's, or Dell's, or... well, yes. Bays sure are
| proprietary. To extoll the virtues of somebody else's bays and
| in the same breath deny these is at best misplaced nostalgia.
| :)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards
| the_other wrote:
| Looking at the first photo, with all the dongles in their own
| little boxes, and the fact the author bought one "just in case",
| highlights for me that USB-C is a failure. It has introduced
| massive technical debt into the industry as a whole. Instead of
| companies all moving gently towards USB-C ubiquity, we have major
| players* choosing to solve the failings of USB-C on behalf of
| their users. This is a patch. It'll be 30 years or more before
| we're over this hump.
|
| *=Apple and Framework. I'm calling Framework "major" because they
| have the ear of the industry. They're a computer-person's
| computer company.
| stavros wrote:
| What would USB-C being a success look like? Everyone throwing
| away every single device that has an old USB port immediately
| on day 1?
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| I am not OP, it a couple things:
|
| * Power and cable clarity. For most folks there is no real
| way to pick up a random power supply, and a random cable, and
| have any idea how fast your device will actually charge. Or
| if it will at all. Generally plugging a laptop into a charger
| that doesn't supply sufficient power ends up in battery drain
| while plugged in.
|
| * A realistic hub. Every try to find a USBC hub? The best
| I've found without paying multiple hundreds of dollars
| includes a usbc port for power, and a usbc port for a device.
| I've yet to find a reasonable device that allows me to plug 4
| usbc devices into one usbc port.
| pashky wrote:
| It would look like lots of _new_ devices NOT shipping in 2022
| with micro USB (and even mini USB!) and HDMI and barrel power
| connectors. But unfortunately they still do.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Curious- what's shipping with micro usb? I had to find a
| micro usb cord to charge an older device a few weeks ago
| and probably have 1 or 2 cords compared with 15 or so USB C
| cords (and I've never bought a USB C cord outright- those
| are all from products that shipped with C).
|
| As for mini usb, the only thing I own that uses it is my
| TI-84+ calculator.
| smm11 wrote:
| Dell XPS
| tpl wrote:
| My has been a dream with NixOS on it. A great dev laptop really.
| The Intel GPU is enough to play around with graphics programming
| too.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| What kernel do you use on NixOS? Bluetooth connection was
| spotty for me until I used 5.15.12.
| smaslennikov wrote:
| I have a batch one Framework laptop with the i7-1185G7. Overall,
| I absolutely love it, but it didn't come easy.
|
| 1. Ubuntu 21.10 had horrid support of the hardware. Eventually
| switching to Fedora 35 fixed most bugs
|
| 2. The DisplayPort expansion card I received was faulty and
| _sometimes_ caused horrible performance.
|
| 3. EMI shields were incorrectly placed on my expansion slots[^1].
| Eventually I simply removed them to get full performance back.
|
| In the end, after months of tweaking and talking to support, I
| got a new DisplayPort card, switched to Fedora 35 and everything
| works smoothly.
|
| [1]: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/one-port-on-my-
| laptop...
| haspok wrote:
| Anyone wanting to upgrade their laptop in the near future should
| probably wait a few months, because new models that were
| announced at CES will show up with the next gen Intel or AMD CPUs
| that will hopefully be worth the wait. This looks like one of
| those "generational" upgrades that we have only every 7 years or
| so.
|
| I'm not sure if the Apple M1 is going to be beaten (especially in
| the efficiency department), but challenged for sure. Will have to
| wait and see.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I tried it for a few weeks but had to ultimately send it back.
| Tried Arch and Ubuntu, but even as a developer who's very
| comfortable using Linux for servers and whatnot (moreso than
| consumer windows, honestly), I just couldn't deal with the battle
| to accomplish anything on desktop Linux.
|
| Want fingerprint support (which is _supposedly_ first-class)?
| Spend an hour fiddling with drivers and configuration files until
| it works.
|
| Want to download discord? Spend an hour trying out the different
| methods of installing it until you find the one that works
| acceptably for your installation.
|
| and so on. It was not uncommon to wake it up from sleep only to
| have it kernel. That's not acceptable when I'm trying to take a
| timed quiz in class.
|
| And yet I still think it's a great machine. It's just not for me-
| someone who's purchasing as an enthusiast or looking for a
| "project laptop" would probably love it. I need a laptop with
| high availability though, and I just don't think desktop Linux is
| ready for that.
| toberoni wrote:
| I'm using a Framework with Kubuntu and I have mixed feelings
| about it. I like the 3:2 screen ratio, repairability & the
| expansion cards. However, there are many downsides:
|
| - The battery life is ATROCIOUS, even after TLP etc. It's about
| the same as my 4-year-old(!) Thinkpad. Standby battery drain is
| the worst, easily 20-30% overnight, which I find unacceptable. I
| can't use this laptop as intended and always have to switch it
| off completely. Also because of this:
|
| - BIOS 3.06 ships with a bug that could result in the Framework
| not switching on if the battery is drained to 0%. The new beta
| BIOS might fix that, but errors like this show this is not a
| mature product.
|
| - There are no stable LVFS firmware upgrades for Linux yet and
| some users also report overwritten bootloaders after upgrading.
| Linux compatibility is definitely not there yet.
|
| - Many small annoyances on Linux: Fingerprint reader is not
| working out of the box, screen tearing, Bluetooth regressions
| etc. on certain kernels.
|
| - My Framework didn't turn on for almost 2 weeks. I tried
| different RAM/SSDs to no avail... then, it suddenly worked again
| with the original components. No problems after that, very
| strange.
|
| - The speakers are worse than the one in my smartphone. On most
| surfaces it sounds muffled and just not right.
|
| - My CPU fan made strange noises. I could fix that thanks to the
| great repairability though.
|
| - The fan can get very loud. Fortunately, it happens very rarely.
| Most of the time it's silent when browsing the internet or doing
| web dev work.
|
| - Build quality is clearly a step down from my old Thinkpad X1
| Yoga. The hinge doesn't feel as strong, some keys are
| mushy/creaking and I'm skeptical my Framework will survive as
| many falls as my old laptop.
|
| Don't get me wrong: it's impressive for a first iteration product
| and a lot of modern laptops can't compete with it (despite the
| Framework being far more extensible). It ticks many boxes and
| offers a package that is hard to find these days (Lenovo & Co.
| seem to love soldered-on RAM, decreased keyboard travel, fewer
| ports).
|
| After many glowing reviews I just expected a bit more. Coming
| from a 4-yo premium Thinkpad I'm not sure the Framework is an
| upgrade. It's more fragile, (currently) has worse Linux support &
| no next-day business support. I would definitely wait for the
| next generation of laptops.
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| > Standby battery drain is the worst, easily 20-30% overnight,
| which I find unacceptable.
|
| I guess that's the "modern standby" that is replacing s3 sleep
| these days.
| smeej wrote:
| No, it isn't even. Mine drains that fast with the s3 "deep"
| sleep enabled.
|
| It's horrible.
| eloisius wrote:
| I'm glad to find that it's not just me. I was wondering
| what I've done wrong to wake up with 80% battery after
| closing the lid and unplugging it. After two swollen
| batteries in a MacBook Pro, I've made a habit of not
| leaving a laptop on the charger 24/7, but it sucks to throw
| this thing in a backpack and head to a coffee shop only to
| discover that I don't have a full charge.
|
| I'll also add that I'm surprised at how long it takes to
| wake up from deep sleep. It's like a full 15-30 seconds of
| tapping ctrl to check if it's awake yet before my screen
| locker appears. I guess using a Mac for the last ten years
| spoiled me, because they usually wake up almost instantly.
|
| I haven' yet tried to set up hibernate with a swapfile, but
| I wonder if that would be the thing I'm missing with
| regards to battery drain. It would be cool to have it
| suspend for an hour and then go into hibernation
| automatically, but I'm not sure if it would help. Might be
| to glitchy upon wake.
|
| I realize it may sound like I'm complaining, so I want to
| clarify that I love this machine. The screen resolution is
| fine. It took me a little while to get it where I like it,
| but via .Xresources Xft.dpi: 192
|
| and export GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.85
|
| Everything looks nice in i3.
|
| The build quality is good, it feels nice in my hands, and I
| am genuinely enjoying using it. It's been a while, and I
| forgot how much I loved tinkering with a Linux setup and
| making everything work how I want it.
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| I don't have a Framework, but I had this kind of problem
| with my Dell XP. Turns out there is a USB port that will
| drain the battery if anything is plugged in there - and
| this is even documented but not very visible in the docs. I
| had to move my device to a different port to alleviate
| this. Maybe something similar is going on here?
| smeej wrote:
| I don't have mine plugged into anything while it's
| sleeping.
|
| The only thing I can think of could be if the port
| pieces, which are essentially form-fitted dongles plugged
| into USB-C ports in the laptop, are causing the problem
| even if nothing is plugged into _them_?
| toberoni wrote:
| Unfortunately this is happening with S3 sleep and numerous
| battery tuning tricks activated.
|
| Don't buy the Framework as your main laptop if you plan to
| travel/use it unplugged a lot - I consider it a broken device
| for this intended usage. Put down the lid overnight and
| you'll have around 2-4h SOT left (and that's with a fully
| charged brand-new battery).
|
| No other business laptop in the last 15 years felt so
| limiting in this regard, battery life is a constant worry. My
| Framework won't leave the dock and I'll hope manufacturers
| close the gap to the M1 soon (I don't care about raw power,
| but energy efficiency).
| moderation wrote:
| I'm running Xubuntu 21.10 on my Framework and am relatively
| happy. Mine stays docked most of the time without much travel
| so haven't noticed the battery issues.
|
| > - There are no stable LVFS firmware upgrades for Linux yet
| and some users also report overwritten bootloaders after
| upgrading. Linux compatibility is definitely not there yet.
|
| At the moment, you can't upgrade BIOS on Linux systems without
| using Windows which is a major shortcoming. No LVFS support is
| a big miss right now for Linux users
| nrp wrote:
| Standby battery drain in deep sleep in Linux is something we're
| investigating. We have seen enough reports of it to know there
| is an issue there, but one that does not occur in Windows.
|
| We do strongly recommend updating to 3.07. The issue in 3.06
| was a regression that we've released 3.07 to resolve. We'll be
| removing the Beta label on the release shortly since we've seen
| large update on the release.
|
| I agree we have work to do collaborating with Linux distro
| maintainers to ensure compatibility out of the box. We've been
| able to do that with the team at Fedora and Fedora 35 has
| basically complete support and solid stability:
| https://community.frame.work/t/fedora-linux-35-on-the-framew...
|
| Beyond that, we very much appreciate the feedback. We're always
| looking to improve what we're building, and real user feedback
| helps us do that.
| nrp wrote:
| Too late to edit, but that should be "we've seen large uptake
| on the release".
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| I have to disagree on the build quality, I found it really only
| second to MacBooks and Dell XPS. Ultimately I returned it for
| an M1 MacBook because of the battery. With an M1 I charge it
| once a week and it sips power on standby. The Framework was
| dropping 30-40% battery overnight on sleep.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| That is most likey a Linux problem in general. Linux is known
| to have worse energy management. TFA explains the owner had
| to enable deep sleep and hibernation:
|
| > One of the initial caveats with installing Ubuntu is that
| deep sleep and hibernate are not enabled by default. Deep
| sleep is easy to enable. Hibernate takes a bit more effort,
| but it's straightforward. Once configured it works like a
| charm. I noticed about a 2% drain in 3 days of hibernation.
| If this power loss is linear, it can go for weeks in
| hibernation.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| My battery results were with deep sleep. I was unable to
| get hibernation working although I didn't put a lot of time
| into trying it.
| radioactivist wrote:
| I've measured a drain of ~0.9% per hour on mine when the lid is
| closed (deep sleep, not hibernating) and I've only USB-C
| expansion cards slotted in (or no cards at all). When I've two
| USB-C cards and and 2 USB-A cards it goes up to ~2%/hr. So your
| large drain might (~3%/hr) might be mostly from whichever cards
| you've got in.
| tkubacki wrote:
| Last time I checked there was no EU distribution. Anyone's aware
| if there are any plans ?
| kalnins wrote:
| They are now accepting preorders for UK Germany and France [1].
|
| [1] https://frame.work/blog/now-available-for-pre-order-in-uk-
| ge...
| ameminator wrote:
| I like the idea of the Framework laptop, but I haven't paid more
| than $500 for a PC, ever.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Do you adjust it for inflation? 1995 $500 is quite a bit more
| than 2021 $500
| dijit wrote:
| What decent laptop can you get for $500.
|
| I paid PS500 for a laptop 10 years ago (so, more with
| inflation) and it was:
|
| 1) Built really shit, fell apart after a year, broken hinges,
| weird fan noise
|
| 2) Got super hot.
|
| 3) had about 3hrs on battery if you avoided doing anything on
| it.
|
| 4) was huge and heavy.
|
| Not saying you're wrong. But maybe your expectations vastly
| differ from mine.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| I paid $500 for each laptop my kids needed at beginning of
| pandemic in March 2020 (so $1000 in total). Each is a Ryzen
| 7, 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD (one of them is actually NVMe).
| Both laptops are still performing greatly without hiccups and
| they saw 2 vacations on the other side of the country during
| the 2 summers. And one of them (the NVMe one) I used it to do
| my work during the 2 weeks vacation last summer
| (virtualization and virtual machines for all my projects,
| though I had to get an external USB SSD for the virtual
| machines to fit with me).
|
| All in all if you take care of them it can be used as work
| horse during vacations. Only thing I can't do on them is last
| generation gaming, for that I need my usual work horse which
| is a $2500 desktop gaming rig.
| dijit wrote:
| Which laptops?
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| Refurb last year's model off eBay. Paid a quarter of the
| price on a high-end ultrabook and it looks brand new.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Do you mean 75% of the price? I find it nearly impossible
| to believe you got a 1/4 discount off a 1 year old
| refurbished high-end ultra book. You're telling me a $2k
| laptop dropped to $500?
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| You can find a $1500 laptop for $400-ish if you're
| willing to wait it out. Either used or refurbs from other
| countries, provided you can live with some minor
| inconveniences like the wrong keyboard. Nothing a $2
| sticker set won't fix.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Interesting, I've never looked at importing slightly used
| international models
| dijit wrote:
| Fair, bit like buying a used car: can't be expected to pay
| full price.
|
| Macbooks seemingly hold their value though, and it's a
| wonder of why this is.
| dijit wrote:
| Ok. Unpopular opinion. This was my laptop[0], since nobody is
| sharing theirs and just talking about hypothetical $500 new
| laptops.
|
| This laptop is the reason I don't buy bottom of the barrel
| prices with high specifications.
|
| [0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-
| Aspire-5520G.6408.0.html
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Well this isn't the market for you, and Framework have never
| claimed to be going for the ultra cheap laptop market. At least
| not yet... perhaps if they get a lot of enthusiastic support
| they'll see a market for the $500 upgradeable laptop.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| What are you using currently?
| mgaunard wrote:
| I don't understand what's so configurable about this laptop. All
| you can choose is the expansion cards which control what ports
| you get, which is useless.
| snemvalts wrote:
| The usb c ports have recesses for standardised dongles, that's
| mostly it.
| dijit wrote:
| You should look at the Linus tech tips review. The components
| inside are all clearly marked and easy to upgrade. Even the
| screen has an easily removable bezel.
| einr wrote:
| You can buy it without RAM, without storage, without WiFi card,
| and without OS and sort out all those things yourself. It's
| still a laptop with all that entails, but everything that was
| reasonable to make configurable or swappable -- they did it.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Do you actually save money if you buy all those components
| yourself? With all the shortages and issues it is a real
| nightmare sourcing inexpensive components these days. Unless
| you're at a huge scale and have contracts with the component
| manufacturers, or you've been hoarding a supply of parts from
| years ago... I bet it's going to be cheaper to tick a box
| when ordering vs. buying the same stuff from newegg, etc.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, even if only because you can choose something lower-
| spec'd than they offer, they're certainly not ripping
| anyone off (like any other manufacturer does!) vs. buying
| the same elsewhere. I checked Amazon & Scan at my time of
| pre-order (UK) and decided to go for it just for the..
| 'thrill' of it. (Suppose I can/should check again nearer
| the time.)
| mgaunard wrote:
| Doesn't any laptop already allow this?
| endominus wrote:
| What laptop do you know of that allows this?
| mgaunard wrote:
| Anything Dell makes allows you to choose components and
| OS.
|
| To be fair I haven't purchased a laptop since 2010.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Before Ultrabooks this kind of upgradability was the norm, even
| the CPU was socketed.
|
| These days you can't even change the battery on most laptops.
| remus wrote:
| > All you can choose is the expansion cards which control what
| ports you get, which is useless.
|
| Given the number of people who argue about which ports are the
| right ones I think it's quite a nice feature.
| boltzmann_brain wrote:
| prohobo wrote:
| The new Thinkpad, imo. I really like most of what they've done
| with it, but I'm just not into that keyboard... It doesn't look
| too usable, although people are saying it's good.
| IE6 wrote:
| Long time thinkpad user here - my previous was a W520
| specifically for that older style keyboard. I am not a fan of
| Chiclet keyboards but I put the Framework keyboard up there
| with Thinkpads / OG Pixelbook. Too bad they're not out at a
| best buy for you to walk up and try...
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