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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

I am running 21.04. All these problems are occurring on 21.04.

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...

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.

> time is the main reason

If time is your valuable commodity then buying a first gen "revolutionary" product was never going to be a good move. In your case, buying "known good" was the direction you should have gone and let others cut themselves and bleed out on the edge. Sorry for your bad experience, chalk it up to lessons learned. It's ever the case with tech: the vision is far, far ahead of reality.

If it hadn't been for the glowing reviews of how seamlessly it supported Linux, and the suggestions if not outright claims on the website that it was designed with Linux support in mind, I wouldn't have.

It doesn't sound ridiculous to me that someone might decide to target the Linux market really well even though others haven't. I had hoped that was what had happened. Maybe I wanted to believe it more than I should have believed it.

But that's the motivation behind my posting here, to save anyone from making the same mistake.

I have a $1700 paperweight. Oh well. But that doesn't mean I want anyone else to make the same mistake.

When faced with the same issue (optimizing for time wrt computer setup), I moved from a thinkpad with Arch Linux to an M1 MacBook + headless Ubuntu server under my desk.

Truly best of both worlds in my experience- incredible battery life and everything ‘just works’ for normal workflows on the MacBook, and can ssh into the headless Ubuntu box directly or from anywhere with internet. Depending on your dev needs, this anecdote may be useful: I’ve exclusively used vim and VS Code with a remote server extension to target the Ubuntu box for builds and I haven’t touched the setup for 6-8 months.

Also, if you’re willing to spend some time learning, getting into Nix ends up saving time in the long run as your nix shell definitions should provide replicable user / build environments on top of whatever Linux flavor you happen to be running at the time, for the headless dev box

I have a similar setup, except I also have a windows machine for gaming with Steam Link.

How do you like the steam link? I had issues with getting multiple PS4 controllers to connect over Bluetooth and there always seemed to be a bit of latency / artifacting despite being wired, but that was years ago when it launched and I don’t know if those issues have been addressed or if the device was refreshed

> 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.

TBH, then I think you should have bought an Apple or Windows computer, and put up with whatever the downsides of such things are (such as the tracking you mention).

Not saying that the extremely poor performance you describe is your fault or that the manufacturer should be absolved or anything, just that this is precisely the point of paying for conventional computers and putting up with their bullshit (real or perceived).

My threat model does not support Apple or Microsoft products.

I'm glad yours does; that does sound convenient!

Never buy v1 of anything- you basically pay for the privilege of "beta testing"

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.)

They have a 30-day guarantee. If OP is having such severe problems, then they should return it and get a refund.

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.

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.

> 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).

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.

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.

> 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/

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.

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?

To put it simply: most things that you are enjoying in Ubuntu now first showed up in Fedora months or even years ago.

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?

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

It's also a very "tidy" system to administer for the most part, although sometimes I get tripped up on the "sysconfig" stuff.

What does Fedora currently have that Ubuntu is missing?

Fedora just gets everything sooner. Newer kernels, gnome, packages. But it's still rock solid because of Red Hat/IBM.

Well, that's just bullshit.

You either get stuff sooner or get stuff more stable, you can't have 'rock solid' stuff sooner.

Depends what you mean by stable... In my experience, recent Fedora releases don't break. They also have the best laptop compatibility. But if 3rd party software (or your own software) targets specific libs, you need to keep up. Ubuntu is typically about one release cycle behind.

"the early bird get's the worm, but the second mouse get's the cheese."

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?

Fedora is where most of the innovations in Linux happen, because it's an upstream of CentOS Stream, which is an upstream of RHEL.

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.

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.

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).

did you ever try Manjaro?

Yes, some years ago during a distro jump. Went back to Arch pretty fast, like all the other times I went through a distro-curious phase. Fedora 35 has been the only distro where I have not been crawling back to arch within weeks.

Do you think Fedora is an unpopular distro?

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.

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.

fair enough, maybe this has reversed recently.

public opinion here also seems to suggest that my experience is less trustworthy than your feeling and tbh i mostly don't care wich flavor of unix is running my wm and browser.

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.

- 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.

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.

That's not really fair... no one is going to buy a new laptop without the most modern processor. The problem really is that Intel on mobile is awful and has only been getting worse as they try to compete. I guess you could say Framework dropped the ball by not using AMD.

I don’t think AMD makes Wi-Fi chipsets,so it’s somewhat irrelevant isnt it?

I meant in terms of the OP's complaint about fans spinning up at the slightest usage - that is an Intel CPU issue. Modern mobile intel CPUs get way too hot, too easily. You're right, the wifi side is Intel, although Framework could have used an AX200 without any problems. Although, AX210 does work pretty flawlessly now in the most recent kernels.

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.

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...

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?

> 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.

My bad, I took that to be sarcasm.

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.

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.

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).

New throwaway since this is a rant at an entitled software developer community…

Do you want open computing?

Or Apple?

Pick one.

I’m really tired of the IT community that just wants high paying jobs but none of the skills that earn them.

As a hardware designer; do better, software “engineers”.

If the community is going to claim the title, it damn well better start engineering better than these awful websites and hacky operating system kernels and GUIs that glitch.

Or stfu over others efforts which are a bit beyond memorizing textbook math and recalling them via your text editor with algorithmic help.

Look at all the non-contributors certain they can do better.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

Thanks, will do!

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Does that work with flatpaks and snaps that store some app data in /home?

It should. The idea is, you never format or delete what is in /home.

You give them access to that partition

try Fedora on it and see if these issues still persist. It can't hurt and may aid in troubleshooting.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

Secure boot currently results in the Linux kernel disabling hibernation for security reasons IIRC.

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.)

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!

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

Or they'll be convinced to stay away, depending on the outcome...

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 :(

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.

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.

>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.

I suspect that many of the reviewers were running 21.04 as opposed to 21.10 which has been acknowledged still has support issues.

I've also been running 21.04, though, and had all the issues I mentioned above in that environment.

I love linux distros but let me just say that anytime I hear "linux" and "just works" in the same sentence, I knowingly snicker to myself at the road that lies in front of that poor sucker. I "just works" with plenty of learning opportunities included for free.

There was a time before current sleep issues where this was true.

You could buy some laptops, install a decent distro and be on your way. Nowadays sleep issues are affecting most recent CPUs, I had a pretty poor experience on any laptop. I picked a Surface 2 because there was a community effort (linux-surface) and I still have the same sleep / freezing issues I had on day one, despite my model being covered in green checkmarks on the support page of the project.

Unfortunately OSS is people working for free in their spare time and you can't expect much. Honestly I wish a company would come up and make a paid linux distro with proper support for one model.

I'd be happy to pay for an operative system that works and it's not Mac OS or Windows, as they both suck pretty bad in their latest iterations.

My ideal UX is the configuration of KDE I've used for years or my Sway setup, not window managers without tiling support and limited proprietary file managers which are designed for noobs.

>Unfortunately OSS is people working for free in their spare time and you can't expect much.

The majority of Linux dev work is actually done by paid devs at tech companies who contribute to Linux. Its been this way for years now. The reason it doesn't seem that way is because almost all of that contribution is going to enterprise code with the rest going to supporting whatever technologies those companies directly use. Google isn't spending time on making x86 laptop sleep states work, they are improving Android. Same with Amazon, they are contributing code that makes Linux more useful in AWS.

The consumer side is much much worse supported than the enterprise side. And there are actually paid versions of Linux that have paid development and support behind them. But again, it isn't aimed at PCs so PC specific features aren't getting fixed.

The only software company I can think of that is putting serious resources behind improving Linux on the PC is Valve.

In my case it just worked perfectly; though I have only tried with Gentoo and Guix

> 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.

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.

FWIW, if you want a laptop that is specifically designed to work with Linux, Star Labs does that.

https://us.starlabs.systems/

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 :)

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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

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...

BTW: You can buy the DIY version w/o the Intel WiFi board and bring your own that's more compatible.

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).

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?

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.)

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.

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..

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.

What sort of issues? I'm also running NixOS on mine.

are you using NetworkManager? I'm using i3 so I use nmtui and I absolutely hate it. I much prefer iwctl, but that's not one of the supported options unfortunately...

The main issues are just difficulty connecting to networks. When connected it usually works fine, sometimes DNS will randomly fail though.

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!

I'll give my own n=1 response:

I use Arch Linux for comparison.

The framework is not the best short-term laptop I've ever had, but it's Solid and if the company sticks around should be the best _long-term_ laptop I've ever owned.

- Deep sleep works fine; wake works fine (with a ~10s delay; that's just linux i think)

- Battery is far better than my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen. (have not really tested, but at a guess, solid 6-8 hours; which for linux is solidly average-to-good i think)

- Never freezes

- Fans are fine (way, way better than my 2018 macbook pro...)

- Network is fine (I had issues at first, but was my fault due to faulty systemd configuration)

- Hinges could be tighter, but no issue with practical use (I'm typing on this on my lap right now and it's fine)

- I use it practically every day for hours at a time.

- I've dropped it at least 2 times -- once from ~3-4 feet high (onto carpet). Totally fine functionally; though the monitor back now has a slight protrusion.

    - but hey, it's modular so I can just replace the screen at some point if I really want to (nit: hopefully they'll come out with a matte screen)

Basically the original post here is n=1 so, i mean... the framework is the most exciting laptop "ideology" frankly ever. And even this first 'beta' version is super solid.

> 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.

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.

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.

Stupid question: Could it be that your hardware is faulty? Power supply, memory, or a defective Mainboard?

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.

Do those things work well on other laptops with Linux and the same CPU?

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