Comment by nrp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nrp | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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. :(

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.

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).

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!

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