Im looking at Lenovo’s since they have Linux support… but trying to find one with ram that isn’t soldered on the board. There is System 76, tuxedocomputers
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Funnily enough, someone here went Lenovo and came back and said the support there was trash. Pick your poison I guess as @Eric_Putney was saying.
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I am conflicted… is the fix to buy another mainboard and hope framework get their act together and supports it more than a couple years
I really don’t want to support this company when it seems like pumping out new laptop models is the priority… because it will all be e-waste much sooner than later with this support model.
I’m not, I’m waiting. Every time I resign myself to another vendor, Framework does something that gives me the tiniest bit of hope but really, I’m not in the market for a new laptop until next year so Framework has a year to win me back personally.
But no, I wouldn’t buy another mainboard on hopes and promises. Let them prove they’ve got their act together first and then make a decision. That’s the only rational choice.
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I could be that someone, sorta. I found out about FW on a Lenovo forum while in the process of rage-quitting my 25-year ThinkPad habit. In addition to the general over the years slide of what ThinkPad once was, at that particular time a - wait for it - firmware debacle pushed me over the edge.
I too am looking forward to 3.19 and also, more importantly, to coreboot (I know that wait will be much longer).
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Definitely a risky bet. The best fix right now is to follow the user-defined process for updating the bios and CSME. Folks had some success with updating both higher up in this thread
and maybe a few others even higher up. It’s nice that users can find these workarounds and that there’s an option, but it’s a massive risk. Otherwise, follow @Matt_Hartley 's guide which is the closest thing to official support that we’ve got
Definitely understand the frustration here. Friction points like this will definitely push folks to buy new boards, laptops, etc. Maybe they can’t support every board forever, but it’s only been 2.5-3 years… 
.
That being said, I don’t see them really “pumping out new models” so much as them trying to triage a messy launch for fw16, which was a big financial bet. Best case, both product stacks (13 and 16) stabilize and we can get a nice cadence of support and new board models. Worse case is this kind of support keeps up. Worst case is they go under. Then we won’t have any options 
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I’m curious, what do you guys actually want in your BIOS update?
My 11th gen is working perfectly fine, and I’m quite confused to be honest!
There’s no way you can call a mainboard “e-waste” because there hasn’t been a BIOS update in 7 months?
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That was what they promised last year August with their dedicated teams at the 3rd party companies. Which also kind of admitted that for the first 1.5 years they had nothing in terms of support capable of handling multiple products. But so far we are not seeing the promised improvements. They announced a specific order following the backlog that had built up as well. This was not followed and not mentioned again.
Only FW knows if they are failing because the support teams are not big enough, because they do not feel the need to or because the team is not big enough to handle bug fixes for the new models that seem to have launched with more bugs then previous models. Even the latter does not sound promising to me, as that would mean that they are like 1 year behind in staffing their software support. And by the time they’d have increased the team again, they will have probably added even more products.
Btw, has anybody here considered or attempted to roll their own FWUpd capsule update? It might be possible to just write the metadata and execute all but the ME update with FWUpd. Because that is what FW is doing under Windows and was exactly what they used previously for the updates that shipped via LVFS.
I went a bit over my theories for that in the 12th gen 3.08 beta thread. But I am running Windows and already updated. To me, it looks like updating only the ME firmware with the Windows cmd tool or EFI installer should be easier than having enough of a Windows installation to handle all the capsule updates as well.
Hey @Shiroudan , good question. For me, it’s compatibility with the larger battery! When my current battery eventually fails, I have the larger battery on hand to replace it. Since I run through full charge cycles every day, and it’s being going for about 3 years now, that could be relatively soon. Other folks want other things from continuous bios support, though.
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The promised battery support and fixes to a lot of security problems (including LogoFail).
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I’m not aware of any fixes coming in 3.19, but I’m hoping that some BIOS update modifies whatever USB-PD negotiation thing intermittently screws up the connection between my Framework 13 and LG monitor. I don’t know if that’s a BIOS thing, even.
so yes, as it was mentioned Logo Fail and Battery improvements fixes…
But what does future updates look like… if Insyde is reluctant or non-supportive of creating OS agnostic update tools… what does the future of support for Linux look like… Will i also need to boot into window to get 3.20 if an update were ever to be released?
Unfortunately… i am not going to be taking that gamble any more with framework hardware… and will focus on vendors that have some sort of compatibility ceritifcation.
Also… Framework please remove “Coming soon” from the bios page… i believe that “soon” boat has sailed…
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I bought a 61wh battery for my 11th gen last year and haven’t been able to get any use from it because I haven’t made time to update via a windows USB. Hoping to see Linux update support soon
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Insyde’s UEFI stuff is pretty widely used by laptop and PC vendors, who are all subject to the same limitations and restrictions that Framework is, so I don’t really think its fair to blame FW for issues outside their control.
hi @rstat1, FW formed partnerships and chose priorities…FW has even stated int he past that they chose to work on different priorities at the time…
I really do hope in a fully repairable and upgrade-able laptop… its a great vision… but the execution is sloppy… it saddens me that they touted them self and being linux friendly… took our money then a year and half later tell us to use windows to get a bios update…
there has been no update from the company in months… and @Matt_Hartley hasn’t even commented on this since last year…
so do i think my past comments is “fair”, indeed i do…
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If you want a Linux updater, I packaged it up. while I understand that @Matt_Hartley may not be able to officially comment after the ARS article etc, and I do generally agree that “soon” doesn’t apply as it’s been more than 6 months,
jared@jareds-laptop:~/11th_Framework_3.19$ sudo ./FWUpdLcl -fwver
sudo: unable to resolve host jareds-laptop: Name or service not known
Intel (R) FW Update Version: 15.0.35.1951
Copyright (C) 2005 - 2021, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
FW Version: 15.0.42.2235
https://puck.nether.net/~jared/Framework_Intel_BIOS.3.19.zip was posted above but I have used it and am posting from that device now.
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For what it is worth, if you have a spare M.2 drive (I presume SATA will also work, not only NVME) and a Ventoy key, you can quickly follow the “Install Windows” route. I just did it, it took me 30 minutes in total, and now I am back on Linux.
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I have a question, anyone else having all of the issues with the 11gen system? I’ll elaborate, I used to have the unplugged vampire battery drain (when actually powered off)… That was actually fixed when they release I want to say was it 3.11? Can’t remember exactly, anyways that was great, So I was on that version didn’t have any problems, I upgraded to 3.17, battery drain was still fixed at that time, after a few months, my power button stopped working, to turn the laptop on at all it had to be plugged in, framework knew of the issue and released 3.19 to fix that, I upgraded to that a while back, but when I did, the battery drain came back, and I also no longer can use any of my USB ports, the only time I can, is when I do a full bios disconnect/reset, then they work once, after shutting down, they stop working again, I think re-flashing the bios also makes them work again as well, but only for the one time, anyone else having those issues?
I dual boot Windows 11 and Fedora, always did the bios upgrade from the Windows side, the issues do effect both OS’s
Sounds like you may need to replace the RTC battery. If you reach out to Support and they determine that to be the case, they will send you a new one for free. Be careful when you replace it, as the holder is very fragile.
Agree, sounds like an RTC battery. Support replaced by RTC battery outside of warranty at no cost to me.
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