Look, we know System76 laptops are based as fuck. I mean, Coreboot, Open source firmware, PopOS, and a fucking open source mobo in the works, just so fucking based.
But man, these framework laptops look cool too. Completely modular and easy to work on. Looks like the company has proved it isn’t going to go under anytime soon.
I’m debating what to get once I feel like upgrading from the trusty ol ThinkPad. What would you buy?
I bought a Framework DIY. I live in regional Australia and being able to order parts to install myself and extend the longevity of my system was decisive. The Framework was a compromise on specs and wasn’t my first choice but nothing compares for sustainability and serviceability. I sourced ram and nvme locally and installed Arch.
System76 are a bit of a fantasy for me. I looked at them for years but I don’t want to pay a premium then deal with international RMA on a rebadged Clevo. I always bought whatever looked good in locally available Windows laptops instead before Framework.
Now I am in the ecosystem I very selfishly want Framework to succeed and guarantee my access to upgrades and parts. I respect System76’s mission and understand why people would wish to support them, particularly when their own laptop designs start shipping. System76’s focus on North America and dependence on white box laptops hasn’t delivered as well in my opinion, at least for my needs.
System76 have tried hard to improve openness and repairability but their laptops are still disposable at end of life while Framework have made a huge leap with upgradability that has the potential to reduce ewaste and I want to see how far that model can be pushed.
As someone who has been plagued by broken, hard to repair laptops before, I went for the Framework Laptop. Of course, your needs and wants might be different.
System 76 laptops are probably a bit better for Linux considering they were built specifically for it. They also have more variety in what kind of laptop you can get, whereas the Framework only comes in a 13 inch “ultrabook” form factor and a future 16 inch gaming laptop. And battery life I believe is a bit better than the Framework.
However, Framework still works really well with Linux (I use Linux Mint on mine, and it works great.) And the flexibility in being able to repair, upgrade and customize your laptop is really nice. Plus, the battery thing is slowly but surely getting fixed, and while it’s still not entirely great, it has gotten me through the day as a computer science student.
System 76 laptops are probably a bit better for Linux considering they were built specifically for it. TL;DR: Research the model of computer you’re looking to buy with the distro you want before making the purchase no matter who you’re buying from.
I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this. In 2018 I bought an Oryx Pro specifically because of this and because at the time JB was advertising them as “machines born to run Linux”. However, this was not the case. The machine would constantly fail to resume from sleep and when it did, the wired network adapter would sometimes stop working until you rebooted the machine. This was on Pop!OS. The wired network adapter issue did not occur on Debian Testing at the time, but at this point I was just doing all the same workarounds on a System76 machine that I would have to do on any other machine, which completely defeated the point of buying a machine “born to run Linux”. I ended up returning the machine despite this meaning that I would lose $1000 AUD in shipping (roughly $500 AUD each way). System76 did refund the cost of the machine as promised though and I appreciated the honesty and professionalism from their support. I believe the network issue was due to a regression in the kernel which had not yet trickled all the way down. To be fair, maybe System76 have ironed these issues out on their new machines.
Don’t buy a machine from a manufacturer because they specifically sell Linux laptops hoping that it means you won’t run in to any issues. Do some research on the model you’re looking to buy for any issues with the distro you want to run and make your decision from there. The Ubuntu computer certifications are really useful here. I believe Ubuntu tested the ThinkPad P52 I bought afterwards and said everything but the fingerprint sensor worked, but to NEVER turn on one of the BIOS options because I would brick the machine, so I knew this before buying the ThinkPad and could make an informed decision.
The one advantage you might get with a Linux manufacturer is that they might be able to help if there is an issue, where-as you might have to hide the fact you run Linux from other manufacturers.
Framework selects components that work well with Linux. They’re acutely aware how many Linux users they’ve got from the activity in their forum. We’re very loud.
I didn’t know they were planning a gaming laptop. That would be nice because I do some gaming but bot enough to want to buy a whole new rig every couple of years. Having a modular means to upgrade it would hopefully make it more affordable.
I don’t think you can go wrong with either. But I love that I can swap my ports around on my framework laptop. Especially after my display port got broken last year (cable got snagged). Instead of it being damaged until I replaced the laptop, I ordered a new module for $20.
Eta: I’d love to see a partnership between them in the future.
One thing to keep in mind is that Framework makes it easier by directly selling in Europe. With S76 there’re import fees etc that make it less straightforward. Especially in case of an RMA.
However with Framework you still need to be careful in Europe. It’s an US based company and if you have a defect or problem that Framework for some reason doesn’t resolve, good luck trying to enforce your EU customer protection or suing them in the US.
Framework is also very strict regarding unsupported countries. If you move within the EU to a country that isn’t supported by Framework, you’ll have big problems with support in case you need help or parts or whatever.
About support: I have a Framework laptop. With my initial shipment I received a defective Ethernet expansion port. The failure was difficult to identify, but support was incredibly responsive and helpful. Once it was confirmed the issue was due to a defective Ethernet card (which took some investigative effort), a replacement was shipped immediately.
All this to say that, if you live in a supported country in the EU, I see no reason that people may find their support lacking.
I’m not saying that support is lacking, all I’m saying is that you have to have complete trust in a company on the other side of the globe, because all the warranties and promises they give you are completely based on their good will. If they decide to stop supporting you for whatever reason, you pretty much have no leverage.
I live in Germany near the Netherlands border. Moving between countries is very common here because of different living costs and job opportunities and losing support because you move a few km west or east is not acceptable in my opinion.
I’m not trying to start shit, but someone’s gotta ask:
With all the bad experiences itt from owners of both companies products, why not just get a thinkpad or mbp? You can still get socketed everything in the t and p series and eventually there’ll be Linux on the m1&2.
I could see buying framework or s76 if you were getting a good open laptop but at the place both companies products seem to be why not buy a known good computer and donate some money to whatever group is doing the work you wanna see done?
I’ve worked with both s76 and framework’s support and they’ve been great. Community support for framework is also especially good (for Linux)
I didnt hear a lot about negative experiences with both of those companies, do you have any examples?
MBP are all-soldered these days. Repairability is 0. ThinkPads still have replaceable RAM and SSDs but not motherboards, batteries are expensive if you can even find a genuine one, same with their keyboards. With a Framework, you can get all the parts from the source. They’re cheap and trivial to replace. In my book MBPs are simply not an option, ThinkPads are good if you get them off-lease for cheap. Otherwise - Framework.
I just picked two good computers, one that’s pretty modular. How are thinkpad motherboards not replaceable anymore? I was under the impression they have an fru number and everything still…
I haven’t seen any framework modules up on eBay, but maybe I didn’t use the right p/n search.
ThinkPad motherboards are replaceable per se. However it’s more work and you have to actually find a board. When I said they’re not replaceable I meant easily replaceable, I should have qualified it. Framework’s boards are sold directly by Framework. You know what you’re getting. There’s availability. There’s warranty. The replacement is trivial. Thanks to the internally standardised form factor you don’t even need the exact board gen to get going. Say if yours dies in 4 years and they no longer make it, a later gen board that fits the chassis will be available as a drop-in replacement.
I had a USB port fail on my 11th gen Intel Framework. They sent me a replacement motherboard along with a link to the instructions for replacing it. It took me under 10 minutes to swap it. It was amazing. Just opening up a ThinkPad these days without breaking a plastic clip could take as much.
What are you gonna do when the framework company goes under or runs out of parts?
Most likely the same as what I would do when Lenovo stops making spare boards for the model I have and I can no longer find any on eBay - bin it.
Except in the case of Framework going under, it’s much easier for another manufacturer to release a compatible motherboard since the form factor is published and fairly simple. Similar to why it’s easy to replace my desktop’s motherboard even when the original one is no longer made. If anything, the current OEM making the motherboards could keep making replacements on the same tooling after Framework is gone, so long as there are people buying them.
I wonder if theres a jlcpcb/pcbway/whatever equivalent for board assembly. Like if you have the gerbers getting boards is easy and cheap but the gcode for pick and place and reflow machines is specific and has spin up costs.
What I’m getting at is: does open sourcing the layouts and boms help?
ThinkPads also have that weird wifi whitelist and proprietary firmware
Totally forgot about that. I typically don’t change the WiFi module, but yes.
I know this thread is a tad old but I’ve been considering a framework for the family laptop for a while. Problem is stocking and this recent 16 model run also had 13 orders run too. I won’t pay for a unit months in advance. It ruins certain protections from the merchant (like failure to deliver).
Instead I got a thinkpad t480 for like 400 bucks. It will do fine as a laptop mostly used for chrome, paying bills or zoom calls etc.
I think one thing that is often overlooked is supporting a good idea. I heard/read often enough that people like the ability to repair or tweak their laptops so maybe this is another reason to buy one. In the hope, that the company delivers more and better in the future.
Yeah I get that. What I’m asking is if you’re not getting a decent modular laptop from either company why not pick a good off the shelf big name laptop with or without modularity and just donate money to the group that’s doing work you like?
That would be another option and a win-win scenario, I like it.
Altruistic reasons aside there’s exactly no good reason to pay a premium for a Framework vs the options you listed. The features they have are all nice-to-have at best, gimmicky at worst. They are honestly over-hyped in Linux circles for the price.
It’s a question worth asking, for sure.
I will never choose system76, they are strictly murica-centric (until the name lol) and don’t respect their potential customers from the rest of the world. Almost all of their laptops are simply clevo with another logo, but even then they don’t deign to offer something as extremely basic as keyboards in other languages, even if they are available from their vendor.
Also, in the stores that preset linux there is usually a bad quality-price ratio, but system76 is particularly expert in this. Special mention to the mediocre mechanical keyboard (only for murica, obviously) they designed, 200-300$.
The only good thing I can currently say about them is that they have some open firmware (coreboot, basically), but it’s not even that remarkable. Not only are there several companies in the competition that also do it, but it’s even the case of tiny ones with a couple of employees like novacustom.
While I don’t like their current hardware options, they way they sell stuff, or Pop!_OS, their Virgo laptop could be promising and their new COSMIC desktop environment looks great so far. I hope they start to do other things right, but they have potential to nail both of those and they do contribute back to upstream projects, so I’m still glad they exist.
What don’t you like about popos?
I quite like it. Having used gnome, kde and even things like awesomwm or other des or window managers, pops de is quite nice
I don’t like desktop environments and operating systems tied together so tightly. Their new desktop seems like it will be self contained and fairly OS agnostic. Debian is a great OS. If they wanted to release a distribution with improvements over debian, that’s fine. Then if they wanted to make pop-desktop easy to simply install and have improvements over vanilla gnome, also fine. Then I could judge the benefits of both over the vanilla variants of each. I have similar problems with Ubuntu.
That’s fair. It seems like pop_os is trying to be a DE, the rest of the parts (kernel, drivers, packaging system of choice etc) are just a means to that end.
I wouldn’t consider pop for its kernel selection and immediately want to install AwesomeWM or something. For that I would just go straight Debian.
I didn’t even realise what the ‘76’ in the name was meant to be until that comment, thats really rather cheesy…
I still don’t understand. what does it mean?
From wikipedia:
The number 76 in the company name is a reference to 1776, the year the American Revolution took place. Richell explained that the company hoped to spark an “open source revolution”, giving consumers a choice to not use proprietary software.
That doesn’t sound bad to me at all.
I find it very weird and it feels very nationalist/right-wing. In other countries the USA does not bring the concept of “freedom” to mind and, whilst it may be fine to Americans, doesn’t really make me want to get involved with them as a potential international customer.
Right wingers would have stuck with the monarchy.
Not that I think necessarily the left/right wing divide as we currently know it can be applied to history like that but I’m not so sure we can categorise the hyper-religious separatists as not being right wing at all. Either way, history isn’t the point here, the association many have of the kinds of people that tout “1776” everywhere tends to be the wife-beater wearing, massive pickup toting, 2fa enthusiasts obsessed with tramping people’s rights in the name of “muh freedums”.
Gonna be honest: as an american, with the political situation around here right now, it does make me feel less comfortable with them as a company knowing that
Although I preordered the framework 16", so I’m not exactly in the market for a new Laptop rn anyway
They registered the domain in 2003 and started selling in 2005. I don’t think it is fair to apply current right wing rhetoric to a name selected 20 years ago when it was more neutral (as were flags).
If they start marketing Proud Boy Linux I might reconsider that stance.
I won’t buy from them because their main software guy said some stupid stuff a while ago when he was mad at gnome and it came across as both inaccurate and needlessly antagonistic.
1776 apparently (year of the american revolution)
I have a framework 12th gen. It’s great. Fantastic build quality and when I want to upgrade, I don’t need a whole new laptop, just the necessary internal components. I can even switch to AMD!
Coreboot is cool, and I can’t wait to see the new system76 laptop that is being built in-house, but until that comes out, I don’t think I would ever consider the current lineup of system76 computers.
My main motivations are repairability, upgradability, and specificity of components, and system76 just doesn’t offer that. They don’t tell you what ram or SSD models go into your laptop, they don’t sell replacement parts, and there is no upgrade path.
https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/addw3/README.html
I’m pretty sure if you wanted to know more they’d tell you. System76 supports the right to repair, although their Laptops are probably not as easy to repair as a Framework.
I want to know on the purchase page what exactly is going into my laptop, I want to easily be able to purchase replacement parts from a catalog of in-stock components, and I want documentation for repairs and replacements.
Virgo will get motherboard upgrades.
I believe that they want to, but that laptop isn’t available yet, and it would be the first example of something like that from them, so I’ll wait until they produce a second generation of it to recommend to people.
I believe frameworks firmware is open source as well. If money was no object I’d go framework. Modularity and reparability are unmatched. I love that I can just take the camera and microphone physically out of the laptop with ease. I really wanted to get the 16 but its just simply out of my budget. Hoping the price will come down over the next few years.
@topRamen
@MashingBundle
At the very least you’ll probably be able to get a refurbished one later for cheaper
My Framework Laptop experience was really poor. Battery life was impossibly bad, Linux support was not as stellar as promised, the thing had the loudest fan I’ve ever heard, & my entire mainboard died & it took support 2 weeks to diagnose the issue. I’d go System76. I went with a Mac for Apple Silicon, & I’m going to try Asahi Linux soon
I wish they had 10 inch option. Something like GPD Win Max 2, but without gaming features
There’s not enough thin 10 inch laptops on the market. I’d love to have a simple affordable one without 2010 bezels…
I bought a System76 Lemur a few years ago. It has a pretty standard ultra-book form factor, but is pretty light, and the battery life was phenomonal. I regularly got 20+ hours on a single charge when doing light development work. The IPS screen was good, the trackpad was nice, the keyboard was ok, and the speakers are… well, completely terrible. I never really had any software issues on it running Pop. Maybe it would get stuck coming out of suspend every few months or so? I liked it a lot as an upgrade from my 2013 MacBook Air.
BUT…
Support was pretty awful, and I’m not sure I’d recommend getting one because of it unfortunately. :( Out of the box, the ctrl key was bad and would unclip with a nasty “crunch” noise. I had to send it in to get that fixed, though it was pretty painless. Then a few months later the wifi card died, and I had to send it in again. There was a lot of back and forth to get it fixed that time. Then as it was about to got out of warranty it died again. This time was like pulling teeth. I had to triple check things and send them logs multiple times, each time with a turnaround of several days. It took weeks for them to finally say “sounds like a hardware issue, what would you like us to do?”. I was flabergasted. It was still in warranty, why would you even ask that?! I spent several weeks trying to convince them my in warranty device needed repairs and they wanted to know if I wanted it fixed?! It took 6 weeks in total to get it fixed, and it turned out that it was a bad connector on the motherboard causing the issues the whole time. When I got it back it was missing a couple screws and the power supply. They basically called me a liar. -_- A couple weeks ago it died completely and won’t power on anymore. I chatted with support again, but they just started giving me the same run-around. I gave up.
I pre-ordered an AMD Framework back in March. Now I’m kinda grumpy because I have no laptop and I bought one that might not ship for another month or two. I wasn’t too worried if the AMD Framework had some early adopter issues as the Lemur still worked when I put in the pre-order. Grrr. -_- My old 2013 MacBook Air is still in pristine condition though… Considering just putting Linux on that to use for a few months.
Sorry to hear that. I wanted try a system76 laptop, but this is wicked.
Yeah… I’m really conflicted about it. I think my Lemur was a lemon, and I’d be perfectly happy with it if I never had to deal with support. It’s not secret that the hardware is rebranded, and what they do is to make the firmware/software work well. That part was honestly great! Their also pretty RTR friendly and publish a lot of information about taking things apart and whatnot. On the other hand… I’m not equipped to fix a motherboard, and why would I want to when it’s still in warranty? Spending weeks to convince them that the hardware did in fact fail was… Augh! Having it returned without the power supply and missing screws, then being told I was mistaken was straight up insulting. :(
For as grumpy about RTR as Apple is today, in the past at least I found their service to be pretty excellent. On multiple occasions I got free repairs or battery replacements on machines that were out of warranty and frankly just… worn out. The one time I actually had to send one off for repair it was back on my desk in a matter of days. I haven’t been their customer in 10 years, and it sounds like it’s probably changed though. (shrug)
Does anyone know how much the ability to upgrade a Framework machine in the future depends on the company?
Are third parties free to manufacture compatible parts?
AFAIK they are, but it will only happen if Framework sells enough units for it to be profitable to a 3rd party to manufacture parts.
So if Framework disappears tomorrow, I wouldn’t bet on 3rd party to jump on that niche market. That might change of Framework ships millions of units over the next years.
I believe 3rd party is free to manufacture any of the expansion ports (including the gpu/back expansion port)
I just dont recall if all the mainboard stuff is open, but theoretically a 3rd party could make their own mainboard, theres just no financial incentive to compete against framework doong that as of the moment.
There are third parties (mostly people with 3d printers) selling enclosures to turn an old laptop mail board from framework into a mini desktop.
I think most of their stuff is open source. So the main thing is the barrier to entry to design things like modules etc for the laptop.
Framework definitely. They actually build laptops, S76 are just rebeands afaik
Not just rebrands, they do put coreboot and as much OSS firmware on them as they can. So do contribute quite a lot to software around this, not to mention they maintain PopOS.
But also they have released the motherboard design for their Virgo laptop recently: https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1678891840093978625
Did FW ever solve the issue with battery drain during sleep? I owned one of the original batch and sold it because I couldn’t effectively use it as a laptop. Other than that it was awesome, great build quality, loved the ethics of it and the form factor, but being unable to use it as a portable computer was a deal breaker.
I think it improved by changing the HDMI card thingy and with the new processors.
I feel like it has gotten better for sure. I use Linux Mint on mine, and while I don’t think it’s quite been “fixed” yet, it’s improved enough to be noticeable.
One solution I’ve seen has been to enable “hybrid sleep”, where you can have it sleep for some period of time (30m) and afterward go to hibernate.
I still need to check in on it, but one of the biggest issues with sleep on Framework laptop is that the usb-c adapters (like HDMI) passively draw power. If you use 4 usb-c (or just leave it empty), you have better sleep experience.
Given that Intel no longer supports S3, hybrid sleep or suspend-then-hibernate is the solution indeed. It works pretty well on my end. I’m using the latter with a 3-hour suspend window. Very rarely I end up cold-booting. Hybrid-sleep is foolproof for those that absolutely can’t tolerate lost state.
Hibernate is it’s own challenge in Linux right now as lockdown mode doesn’t work with hibernate (and I think a lot of distros use lockdown mode by default for security). I had to patch the kernel to enable this: https://gist.github.com/kelvie/917d456cb572325aae8e3bd94a9c1350
I was able to get hibernate working on Ubuntu with a few config changes. I’m using a swapfile which is the default these days and it takes care of security when used with disk encryption.
God damn man I wish Framework did the same coreboot open-source firmware…
They do have open-source firmware though. Not sure if all of it is but at the very least released:
- Embedded Controller (EC) firmware for the Framework Laptop
- QMK firmware for their 16" laptops keyboard and input devices
- Expansion cards reference documentation
And it looks like they are looking at coreboot, they have made attempts to port it (unsuccessfully) and given unlocked laptops to people in the coreboot community - though it seems like this is not a trivial task to do: https://community.frame.work/t/responded-coreboot-on-the-framework-laptop/791
This awesome
This is awesome
