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Comment by fiddlerwoaroof | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting: over the last several months, a friend has been running NixOS on a Framework and has been told by Framework employees that they can’t help him with Linux kernel issues because he’s using an unsupported OS and he’s also had lots of complaints about battery life and power management.

I love the idea of the Framework, but it seems to suffer from all the issues that made me switch to MacBooks in the first place.

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We would love to be able to provide more personalized service for different Linux distros, but we unfortunately just don't have the necessary expertise to be able to do that well.

For Linux-related service requests, we first ask that folks try an Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora 36 Live USB (the distros we have done the most internal testing with and created setup guides for) to be able to determine whether there could be a hardware issue. Once we have verified there isn't a hardware issue, we ask that folks post in the community thread for their distro for help: https://community.frame.work/c/framework-laptop/linux/91

In practice, this works well because we have an extremely helpful and engaged community (including in many cases maintainers for that distro). Additionally, because that debugging happens in the open, any answers from it are publicly visible for future users to see.

All of that said, we'd love to find better ways to provide deeper support ourselves and are open to input. A more official path would likely still start with the most popular distros.

You know, not to promote NixOS too much but the reproducibility of it makes this specific OS especially easy to support. There's already a community driven hardware support module to use [1]. If you look at it it doesn't hold a lot of things though, since NixOS is quite bleeding edge (Wi-Fi already supported) and you Framework is otherwise quite Linux friendly (Please make a 1080p-ish display tho, until Wayland is 4 real).

LPT: NixOS installs by themselves aren't good for much, use NixOS-hardware and look into power configurations if you have specific requirements.

1: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/framewor...

Yea and the best part was that installing NixOS was dead easy. I followed Graham Christensen's instructions[1] and had nix create a personalized image with the latest linux kernel and some other stuff. Then I just flashed and booted from that image after partitioning. Honestly it was dead simple and its so hard to go back to the ad-hoc system config style a la Arch linux and other distros.

I'm probably a lost cause now because I think I'm going to convert my entire raspberry pi cluster to NixOS from ubuntu.

[1]: https://grahamc.com/blog/nixos-on-framework

I'm daily driving NixOS both at home and work, but to be honest I don't really use the Nix features all that much, I just have a system that's predictable.

Every now and then I spin up an OS container w/ Ubuntu or the likes, forward X if I'm doing something that isn't supported in NixOS yet.

Ubuntu 22.04 fixed none of the problems I've had since 21.04. Not a single one is better in any respect.

Even "deep" suspend saps 30%+ of battery overnight. And it won't wake right.

If this is the best testing you've done, people just shouldn't buy this thing.

I replied to one of your other comments, but you should follow the latest version of the Ubuntu 22.04 guide, setting nvme.noacpi=1, with which we see around 0.8%/hour in s0ix: https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop#Section_How-to

This is why most people just buy a MacBook: it should not be necessary for the user to read, do, or configure _anything_ to make suspend mode work properly and not drain 30% of your battery overnight.

I've set aside this afternoon to update my macbook because it refused to do the 12.4 update by itself. Then it refused when I asked it to restart manually. Then it looked like it worked and was restarting but actually it just kernel panicked or something I'm not sure. Then it wouldn't acknowledge an update existed. Then it wouldn't check for an update.

So now, I'm watching it download and prepare an update in real time in safe mode, while doing absolutely nothing else, because apparently a light breeze will knock this update process over. Preparing the update has so far taken 30 minutes. No doubt installation will take another 30 mins to an hour.

"Just buy a macbook" doesn't work anymore.

Sucks that you had this issue, but the 12.4 update went smoothly for me (unattended) on both an Intel MBP and an M1 Mac Studio. I’ve never experienced an update issue on the Mac (Windows is an entirely different story).

I understand the sentiment, and for users who don’t want to do any configuration, we do have systems preloaded with Windows 11 that work out of the box with everything you’d expect a laptop to do. WSL has even gotten good enough to be a reasonable substitute for many people. For folks who do want Linux, in practice we have not seen following the steps in the setup guides be a constraint for usability.

This is because the people who want a Unix-like operating system that doesn't require manual following of guides after purchase to get basic features working all self-select out of your user pool and go buy a MacBook.

My MacBook hasn't been suspending itself properly for ages. Love it when my bluetooth headset decides to connect to my MacBook that's been closed and unplugged for 3 hours.

Not that Windows is any better.

My work-issued X1 Carbon with Windows 10 came with busted sleep out of the box. So yes, Windows is no better.

Fucking "connected standby" is the worst thing to happen to ACPI since ACPI. In every OS it's a battery draining backpack heater that provides features nobody wants. In every OS you'd better hope the firmware still supports hybrid suspend or suspend-to-hibernate.

Windows XP, my laptop hibernated when lid was closed, very simple, very reliable.

Things have just gotten worse since then. :(

To be fair, do macbooks and frameworks really share a target market? Apple defines itself by "do it the Apple way and everything just works." Framework is all about "customize it your way and it works." The Venn diagram in my head doesn't have a lot of overlap.

If you want the Mac experience on a Linux device, perhaps you'd be happier with an ubuntu preinstalled Dell or Thinkpad. If you do things the ubuntu way, I'd say the Apple "just works" guarantee applies.

I tested this yesterday.

After being off for 24 hours, it dropped from 100% to 47%.

That's more than 2% per hour, and still unacceptable for a device that's supposed to be sleeping.

It doesn't work.

I have 3 other machines running the same version of Ubuntu. Not one of them would have lost more than 7% in the same amount of time.

Yeah, honestly when folks roll over to Nix, it's just not a walled garden anymore and there are too many deviations for a support team, it really needs community/forums where people talk to you in a way that teaches as you go.

MS and OSX are locked down enough that you need to be fairly clever to begin with just to get off the beaten path.

I think community is always the way to go when heading down the Nix road, you all are doing an incredible job with it!

doyougnu was previously running NixOS on a Macbook so their bar for "working" is probably much lower than a normal person's.

I'm on Windows, but if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat. I don't know what it would take to have sensible power management on Linux without major issues.

I get six to eight hours on my Thinkpad, running Arch Linux.

This did not happen out of the box. I think I got like two hours of battery life before I began tuning parameters. As usual, the Arch wiki is an excellent resource even if you're running a different distro: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management

That's impressive. I've done the equivalent of tuning everything and still wound up with battery lifetime half of what it should be on Windows.

There's also specific programs that are really bad. Edge used to add 2-4 hours extra battery life when using my Surface to read PDFs. If I used Firefox, it was shorter by a very noticeable amount.

Does straight chrome have similar battery performance?

Chrome was worse compared to MS's Edge, but Chrome based Edge seems worse than previous Edge. My testing isn't as exhaustive on the new Edge.

Huh. Wonder what the secret sauce is that apparently they can't release upstream. Open source FTW?

> if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat

More than `powertop --auto-tune`?

Just tried on my Framework with Ubuntu 22.04:

$ sudo powertop --auto-tune modprobe cpufreq_stats failedCannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_results.powertop Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d RAPL device for cpu 0 RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d Devfreq not enabled glob returned GLOB_ABORTED Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only Leaving PowerTOP

powertop --auto-tune is kind of annoying to use, it usually winds up tuning something that shouldn't be and there's no convenient way to filter what it does, and then suddenly your mouse stops being responsive if you leave it alone for more than 2 seconds.

Also on a laptop you might have stuff being plugged and unplugged all the time. Tbh it's kind of surprising systemd hasn't grown a "powertop that remembers things" arm.

Framework boards has its own compilation of battery tweaks for linux, though I'd also recommend the Arch wiki another user posted in this thread.

https://community.frame.work/t/linux-battery-life-tuning/666...

Have a look at thinkpads. I used x280 and x1 over the past 5 years with more than a week’s worth in folded lid sleep state.

I own/have owned multiple Thinkpads, a couple of which run Linux. The power management on Linux is bad.

What counts as sensible for you?

Experience differs depending on hardware. My Dell XPS 13 got 7hrs out of the box on Manjaro, which I tweaked to get to 8.5-9. On ubuntu I didn't have to bother with the tweaks. That's comparable to Windows on this device...

Try Pop OS.

On System76...

Pop OS on a Dell XPS is giving me good battery life. If you already have your machine and files are backed up, worth a shot.

"Good battery life" is not my measure of good power management. I can leave my windows laptop sitting out, it will sensibly turn off the screen and eventually hibernate, I don't need to worry about it. A Linux laptop will need babying when it's not plugged in.

Yes it’s horrible when I’m not plugged in and you have to shutdown before closing the lid for transportation.

But if you want off windows and aren’t willing to go Mac, you take what you can get.

> Yes it’s horrible when I’m not plugged in and you have to shutdown before closing the lid for transportation.

Why? Does it not hibernate?

No it does not. If you’re not careful you’ll open your laptop bag to a hot and barely touchable laptop.

Ouch.

They usually suspend when the lid is closed by default rather than hibernating.

Not necessarily

Gnome has power management features like that, didn't even enable them. It's the most installed DE I think, so your characterization of Linux is pretty off.

I like Gnome and its newest incarnation Gnome 40, but at least on Nixos it has some issues so I often rebuild to an i3-based environment instead.

I didn't have the same experience with pop on a newer XPS. I wasn't able to get more than 4 hours on a full charge.

I’m on a 2020 XPS17. At the time I was having a hell of a time and it took almost a year for everything to be supported out of the box.

Why do people keep doing this to themselves?! I really don't get it. Just buy a laptop from a vendor that actually supports linux, like System76.

Because there are countries out side of America. You may have heard of them.

They also can get these devices. You may have heard that.

Of course, depends highly on the value of "they". Because the "you may have heard..." pattern is worse than useless, here's actual info to compare and decide whether either of these may work for you:

https://knowledgebase.frame.work/de/in-welche-lander-und-reg...

https://system76.com/shipping

Sadly, protectionism is a thing. Launching in new countries is hard and expensive. Perhaps there's a company in country that would do it better than some giant international megacorp.

Framework does not ship internationally yet. System 76 does.

But if I’m buying a laptop for work why would I get a laptop from a manufacturer that has no presence in my country? What am I going to do when things go wrong? Unfortunately, it may be better to take a punt on a manufacturer with global presence.

Then you get what you choose.

battery life with that laptop was always better on the mac, but I regularly got 4-6 hours on that machine for years, first with Arch linux, and then with NixOS.

I wondered. It looked very Windowsy, and I'd guessed the Linux support was non-existent. Sounds like I'm going to stay away then.

The article says:

    We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that 
    Fedora 36 works fantastically well out of the box, with full hardware
    functionality including WiFi and fingerprint reader support. Ubuntu 22.04
    also works great after applying a couple of workarounds, and we’re working
    to eliminate that need. We also studied and carefully optimized the standby
    power draw of the system in Linux. You can check compatibility with popular
    distros as we continue to test on our Linux page 322 or in the Framework 
    Community 39. [0], [1]

There's semi-official Linux support it sounds like!

[0] https://frame.work/linux [1] https://community.frame.work/

"semi-official" is pretty far away from full support.

But just as far away from no official support, which is where we stand with most hardware that I'm interested in.

I don't get why you're not interested in hardware that fully supports Linux, and which comes with great support, but you do you I guess.

because this hardware is uniquely repairable and upgradable and it has better linux support than most of the industry. Unless you just want another rebranded clevo laptop this is very good.

Framework is not that different from System76 afaict. Except Framework has no CoreBoot and no Linux support.

First, "no linux support" is disingenuous. Second, with a Framework you can replace a USB-c port with a 1TB expansion card, or with an Ethernet port, or whatever is in stock. Those who bought the first model can now upgrade to a next-gen processor and/or reinforced lid, without throwing the whole laptop away. While System76 has surprisingly lower prices than I expected, it does not appear to have similar features--you still have to replace the entire system whenever your Pangolin becomes obsolete in 3 years. Framework was always more about sustainability. They didn't anticipate the demand for Linux/FOSS stuff, but they're adjusting for that. Hopefully some future motherboard will have Coreboot, and I can buy that motherboard and pop it in my laptop.

> First, "no linux support" is disingenuous

Nope. If I can't file a ticket or call and get an issue fixed, that's not support.

> with a Framework you can replace a USB-c port with a 1TB expansion card, or with an Ethernet port, or whatever is in stock. Those who bought the first model can now upgrade to a next-gen processor and/or reinforced lid, without throwing the whole laptop away.

Ah, that _is_ a great difference then.

Hopefully they get their Linux act together.

I did say most.

Next time I buy a laptop, it will be System76 or Framework, depending on which offering I like better at the time.

I don't get why the Apple wins? You'd have plenty of issues on a MacBook running an unsupported OS.

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