- New Framework laptops are available using Intel 13th Gen and AMD 7040 series.
- New 61Wh battery, new matte display option & a Cooler Master mainboard case for $39.
- New 16 inch Framework laptop. Allows you to have a number pad or not, up to you and customizable. If I understood the livestream correctly, there are upgradable dedicated GPUs that connect to the 16 inch laptop.
If this is anything to go off of, then it seems like they are going to support embedding full QMK enabled input devices. Extremely exciting!
The interface for input modules to the rest of the computer is "just" USB 2.0, so you could put just about anything there that'll fit in one of the input module form factors. Although high resolution, high frame rate touchscreens are probably out because of bandwidth constraints (since it is only USB 2.0).
I wonder if we'll see a Kickstarter for it soon...
Unless one can come up with a way to produce a custom keyboard with the same height restriction, using something like a Thinkpad keyboard which is considerably taller would essentially require a custom taller chassis.
Not impossible, but relatively hard I would say.
Though my Thinkpad can still handle another 5 years of wanton abuse I'm sure, so I have all the time in the world.
Man my next laptop is gonna be awesome. Literally everything I want in a laptop, which has never existed until now(well, soon).
Looking forward to purchasing the 16 regardless though. Keep up the amazing work / mission with Framework. Fantastic work to the team.
(Preferably a proper version with thumb clusters.)
At least for me, that would make this laptop a must-buy.
Honestly, I see the biggest problem that people have entering the ortholinear/ergonomic keyboard market is cost: the obvious choice is to target mechanical keyswitches, but you quickly realize your consumer base would rather pay more (in parts cost and construction effort) to get exactlty what they want.
But what if you went as cheap as possible instead? What if you made flat rubber dome boards that cost next to nothing to manufacture; and sold them for $40 a pop? You would probably broaden your target audience by a factor of 100, and have huge profit margins.
Doing that for an integrated laptop keyboard would be even easier to sell. I would gladly use shitty rubber dome switches if it meant having a split ortho layout that I didn't have to lug around separately from my laptop. I would buy that yesterday.
That being said, the company was acquired by Apple and turned into the iPhone and iPod Touch. The keyboards were effectively museum pieces at that point. I wonder if the patent situation would allow for third parties to revisit the design. It'd be interesting to see what could be done with by borrowing ideas from the programmable keyboard community and mobile touch hardware.
On the Framework 16, I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes that: it looks like the design would accommodate a left/right-hand side narrow input module with the keyboard still centred.
On keyboard layouts like Framework's, I still have trouble trying to touch-type the right control key with my ring finger-nail. I prefer a "75% keyboard" with an navigation/editing column which provides room for the right ctrl key further right. (And full size arrow keys. And makes shift-End easy for selecting rest of line.)
Maybe we can hope a Kickstarter keyboard maker will make a Framework version in a few years. Main limitation is the thinness, only 3.7mm.
I've had similar cursor problems with those keyboards that have page-up and page-dn next to the up-arrow key. Just a little finger displacement when trying to left-arrow and the cursor is suddenly inserting my subsequent typed text far from the intended location.
And my hands are a little big. Not crazy big though.
This sounds fantastic, I very well may buy a Framework laptop later this week/weekend.
EDIT: Their site came back up, after reading the blog post I pre-ordered the Ryzen 7 13" to be my new Linux laptop.
"For the AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series processors, we’ll be sharing more detailed specifications as we get closer to shipment."
Source: https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/framework-laptop-13-with-13th-...
On previous generations: the 4000 series starts to hit a relative performance wall at around 35W. The 5000 series clocked higher and hence gained more moving from 15 to 35 and 35 to 45.
Not sure about the 6000 series, but you can see for yourself: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Processor-Be...
Another point: you can throttle the 35W HS series to 15W, and get the laptop to run fanless or almost fanless since it is designed to cool a higher TDP.
Shipping estimate is Q3.
I'm guessing they don't want to officially support any specific distro, and offering support for multiple distros is probably a bit outside their wheelhouse at the moment. [e: this is perhaps not the case]
> Officially supported
> Fedora 37
> Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-13-with-13th-gen-in...
Optimized for Linux
We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that Fedora 38 and Ubuntu 22.04 will work fantastically out of the box for both the 13th Gen Intel® Core™ and AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series models. We have thorough setup and troubleshooting guides and will continue to provide official support for these two distributions. Manjaro XFCE 22.0 and Linux Mint 21.1 are also working great, and we’re detailing the documentation for those as well. You can check compatibility with popular distros as we continue to test them on our Linux page or in the Framework Community.
I might find myself ordering one of these.
Not shipping with Linux installed gets Framework out of the business of managing distros and images themselves. They also dodge a neverending barrage of "But what about my favorite distro X?" that would surely come for them as soon as they picked some fixed set of distros.
If you are uncomfortable assembling computer components and installing an OS yourself then linux is probably not for you. This acts as a filter for people who are serious.
It's a lot easier to support newbie computer users on windows, and they are a lot more likely to get support from friends and family.
They would be shipping a DIY edition anyways, this vastly simplifies their inventory.
These may offend your Linux-maximalist sensibilities, c'est la vie.
Personally, I kind of wish System76 would sell framework laptops with a generalized configuration and PopOS pre-insalled.
Including any linux distro would be better, because it would show a growing linux desktop market share.
In the second case, you have to pass through SLIC and MSDM ACPI tables from host to guest. For example, like this: https://gist.github.com/Informatic/49bd034d43e054bd1d8d4fec3...
They are checking all my boxes now. Outstanding.
The 7040 series is good, but its not dGPU class like an M1/M2 Max. I think AMD has been scared to make one because OEMs won't want it.
But I do use the CPU from time to time, so a beefier part would be useful. I would rather not pay for a dGPU which I'd use maybe 1% of the time, and which would cost more and weigh more and possibly be a PITA to manage under Linux.
But what it sounds like you want is an E-core mad part from Intel. I always thought they should sell a 20-30 core laptop part with only one or two big cores as a compilation monster.
Indeed. I've been looking at the 12th gen laptops we're getting at work, but those were underwhelming. I don't remember which model CPU it was, but it only had 2 P cores (those are basically for "office work", so no one cares about performance). For compilation (Rust) it was in the same ballpark as my 11th gen i7 (so 4 "regular" cores + HT). For basic day-to-day work, they both felt the same.
As you say, I'd expect a part with more P cores to be interesting for my use case, which is exactly the same as your sibling's [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vladvasiliu#35280246
i spend most of my time in firefox and in terminals. i do use virtual machines quite a lot to test stuff around, so high cores count and high memory would be a plus for me.
but an nvidia gpu is a deal breaker for me. I just don't want it. I don't need it, i don't use it, it just makes the whole thing less usable. and it draws a lot power that i'd prefer using otherwise.
the intel integrated gpu is not only sufficient for me, i actually WANT it. it just works under gnu/linux and i don't have to mess with drivers.
I cannot stress enough how much i hate having to deal with proprietary drivers.
and last time i played a videogame, it was openarena, and it ran beautifully on the intel hd 600 my work laptop had (dell latitude 7390, great little machine).
edit: regarding amd gpus... i'm not sure. i've been told they work with open source drivers, but still it's a power usage i would happily avoid.
That being said, Firefox and Chromium use the integrated GPU more than you think, and they feel faster with a stronger IGP. Just try disabling some of the gpu acceleration and see how it feels.
For example, I could disable the nvidia card on my ThinkPad W530, but then i'd lose the use of the external video output (because it was wired to the nvidia card).
and yes i know it depends on whether the laptop has a mux or not... it's not always easy to determine, not all reviews go explicitly over this detail...
I just don't want a discrete graphics card. Not an nVidia one for sure.
i have strongs doubts the doxygen webpages i spend time on will get any faster with an nvidia 3090.
They actually feel similar to Firefox running on Linux on an i5-6500's IGP.
It probably depends on the websites you visit. The only thing better on the newer ones is video decoding for YouTube or the like. I usually actively avoid websites with animations and other similar stuff as I find them very unpleasant to use. But I've noticed those typically tend to use the CPU, even on a Zen3 or Intel 11th gen IGP, even on Windows + Edge.
The old unibody MacBook Pro comes to mind as an example of this.
Traditionally yes; the machine is designed to only run the dGPU under heavy load, not all the time, the BIOS setting just disables doing the thing that you did in the "heavy load" condition. I guess there might be machines it wouldn't work on but I've never known any.
I have an RX5600 and an AMD Zen3 with integrated GPU (in separate computers). Both work perfectly under Linux with AMD's in-tree drivers.
I don't have a multi-GPU PC, so I don't know what the switching situation is.
It’s often the first thing people upgrade on a desktop (it’s much more impactful than a RAM and CPU upgrade over the same timeframe), but is rarely an option for laptop users.