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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

> I looked into the Framework laptops and so far it looks like they are still a bit beta.

I'm not sure that's fair, (and it's pedantically wrong - they're in production - but I know what you mean) the hardware is the nicest I've seen besides Macbooks (I agree with you about macOS, but I do like the hardware, keen for Asahi one day but that is very much beta (alpha actually I think)) and Linux is Linux? It works fine out of the box, everything 'in-tree'.

Unless you just don't want to buy any company's first product of course, which I suppose is fair enough, but I hope (for the longevity of a company I like & spares/upgrades for my laptop) that enough people don't feel that way.

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I use a Framework and it's been fantastic. Even the fingerprint works "out of the box" (in quotes because in Arch Linux nothing is really out of the box... I just had to install the right package). The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended. This is something I might be able to tinker away, of course. And for what it's worth, non-functional suspend is basically par for the course for every Windows laptop I've ever owned.

Also, I get the feeling that the Framework isn't your typical first product. It's built to be upgradable, so unless you find something fundamentally off-putting about the shape of the board, I'm not sure if you get much by waiting for the next generation. If they release a slimmer case, better keyboard, touch screen, or whatever, then you should be able to retrofit the new thing onto an old machine. Of course, the product is still young. Time will tell if this actually pans out.

> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended

That's a killer - it's 2022 and Apple are still the only company who can get that right. I'd switch over to a Framework in an instant (for dual-boot Linux/Windows) if they could fix that.

I didn't mention it because I don't think it's a Framework issue (GP obviously doesn't have it) but rather my somehow messed up configuration of it, but the one problem I have with mine at the moment is that ten seconds or so after resuming (but not before) everything starts segfaulting, literally any command. And consequently logs don't get written to disk, so there's no record of it after I reboot it (with the physical button, necessarily) - so I'm having a hell of a time trying to debug it...

Oh wow. Indeed I haven't experienced this. How's the battery drain while suspended? I can't help but wonder if you get better suspend in exchange for...everything segfaulting.

I haven't noticed that it's been bad, but then I've had more to worry about... I have the same CPU (and, I thought the same config...) on my work laptop and no problem with battery drain there; I use 'hybrid-sleep' (suspend to swap & RAM, resume from the latter if possible but tolerate power loss).

It sounds like you might be using 'shallow' or 's2idle' (suspend to idle) sleep mode? You might need to write 'deep' to /sys/power/mem_sleep. (But don't listen to me, mine segfaults!)

That makes sense. Thanks for the tip, too - I might give it a shot. If I start getting segfaults then I'll know what happened!

Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform, so every laptop with 11th+ generation Intel is plagued with this issue. Dell even put out an advisory that a sleeping laptop is not safe to store in a backpack anymore!

AMD still supports S3 sleep on their Ryzen processors, but you'll need to check user feedback to make sure that the vendor did their job implementing it properly. In S3 sleep, the UEFI/BIOS is responsible for suspending and resuming hardware state. If not implemented correctly, you'll have high battery drain (components not suspended) or bugs on resume. Lenovo had dropped the ball on that front repeatedly, with the last two gens of T14 requiring BIOS updates to fix issues.

>Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform

Wait what? How is that allowed?? What is the replacement?

> How is that allowed??

Looks like they can get away with it ¯\_O_/¯

> What is the replacement?

S0ix sleep (named s2idle in Linux), where the OS is responsible for suspending / resuming all non-essential functions. Work is ongoing on the Kernel and drivers to improve it, but there is a long way to go (yay Monday mornings with an empty battery because the power draw is still > 1W).

Even Windows is unable to make it correctly work without killing the battery overnight, so they now default to hibernating to disk after a couple of hours. This strategy is also possible with Linux, but making it work alongside full disk encryption is tricky: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Swap_encryption#Wi...

That sounds really awful...

While this is true for most vendors, this is not universally true. Lenovo specifically has an S3 BIOS option for some of their Tiger Lake Thinkpads (since they're Linux certified), although as you mention, it isn't always perfect: https://forums.lenovo.com/topic/view/27/5089860

There can be lots of EC/BIOS issues for suspending, IMO it's one of the best arguments for going for a Linux-first vendor (Tuxedo, System 76, Slimbook, etc), as you know that their top priority should be to get basic stuff working on Linux.

Do they? With the default configuration my MBP M1 doesn't sleep properly ( or at all, clicking Sleep just does a screen flicker and nothing further, i have to disconnect power for it to actually go to sleep), draining the battery to ~10% after a weekend.

Crazy, that's what I have always had with my windows laptops. My 2013 MBP 13 and M1 MBA work perfectly.

Isn't this because MS (kind of?) forcing modern sleep mode?

I bought a XPS end of 2019 and had a very bad experience forcing windows to use s3 mode. Actually I eventually stopped bothering with windows standby and let it suspend to ram now because 95% the time I use linux anyways and there s3 works fine.

I was several times greeted with a very hot notebook at the morning, because windows decided to boot up and do system updates during the night while the notebook was supposed to sleep.

> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended

Not particularly helpful to you necessarily, but I was able to solve the battery drain on windows by tweaking the deep sleep and hibernation settings and I'm now reasonably confident that if I close the lid on the laptop for the night it'll have a similar level of battery left when I open it in the morning.

I think everything defaults to intel's "not actually sleep" sleep mode which destroys the battery like nobody's business

The new suspend mechanism is s0ix and it works quite well. My xps13 9310 (32gb version with the jank AX500) will even get to opportunistic s0ix with a recent 5.17 kernel.

When I originally setup this laptop, I found that if I left the intel raid storage crap enabled, the mvd module would prevent s0ix/suspend. Switching to AHCI in the bios resolved this.

https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...

Just make it hibernate after X time (2 hours for me). There a repo of scripts on github (https://github.com/lightrush/framework-laptop-formula) where you might find information on how to do it. I'm sure it's not a 1 to 1 port to Arch, but it might get you started. Just note I had to disable secure boot for hibernate to work.

I made the switch back to mac after spending the last 9 years exclusively using linux on desktop with the release of the M1 Pro chip. I haven't regretted it. Their new chips really are impressive for their combination of performance and battery life. Combine that with Apple long having been the only manufacturer to manage high display resolutions without compromising battery life. It's the first laptop that I'll leave unconnected to power even when it would be convenient to connect it.

I'm definitely very keen to use Asahi once it's more stable and has support for more of the hardware though. For now I have an Arch Linux ARM VM that I keep running for some things (Haskell development on M1 is still a bit of a mess) and I can VNC into a Linux desktop over 2.5 gigabit LAN when I really yearn for my old workflows.

I cast another vote for Framework. I understand the hesitation when it comes to betting on a new company, because I was also slightly anxious when I ordered my laptop. But now that I have it in my hands, I'm really happy with it. I've also done programming with the keyboard and it feels nice.

Concerning battery life: There are various tools like TLP[1] that help you optimize your energy consumption without much configuration. I get more than 6 hours of my machine when I'm coding on the go. However, I only have a few terminals with Vim and a web browser open. Some IDEs might need more power.

[1] https://linrunner.de/tlp/

As of 3 days ago, from a thread started back in July 2021 (10 months ago), suspend in Linux still doesn't work properly: https://community.frame.work/t/high-battery-drain-during-sus...

I like the idea of Framework/what they're doing, but honestly, the lack of proper suspend is definitely an instant disqualifier, and their inability to fix it or even AFAICT properly acknowledge/address this after a year doesn't really inspire much confidence.

I get that they're a smaller company, but Framework is also much lower on my list because they're still selling their last-gen Tiger Lake 11th gen laptops, when 12th gen Alder Lake is a big improvement, and of course, that I (and I think many people) would much prefer AMD Ryzen 6000 (or heck, even 5000 series) that would give better perf/watt.

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