This is a new Framework 13 Pro with Intel chipset. I have a Thunderbolt monitor which also acts as a dock with power delivery and USB. It also has internal speakers and a headphone jack which I use to connect to desktop speakers.
PD and the USB devices all work out of the box, but unfortunately I can’t play audio through either the TB cable or straight through DisplayPort.
This has been tested on Debian forky (which is my daily driver) and Fedora 44 which I have installed on a partition to help with support requests such as this one, seeing that it’s an officially supported distro.
I have opened a ticket upstream with the xe driver which is used by the GPU and have also contacted Framework support - who, as far as I can tell, have simply filed it as “reported upstream” and gave no second thought about engaging with the upstream to help deliver with the promise that it “just works” on Linux:
Framework Laptop 13 Pro is designed and tested for Linux compatibility from the ground up. We validate hardware support across major distributions, contribute upstream where possible, and provide firmware that integrates cleanly using LVFS. We select components based on Linux compatibility such as Wi-Fi, Fingerprint reader, audio, and power management so it all works reliably out of the box for a first-class Linux experience.
Is routing your audio directly from the analogue an option for now? I’ve no doubt this can be fixed, but putting a workaround in place will mean you don’t need a fix urgently.
If you prefer a single docking line from the laptop to the monitor, then a £20 DAC dongle would also get you out of the woods. I appreciate it would be nice for stuff to always just work, but I tend to favour pragmatism.
Appreciate your suggestions but I’m not actually looking for workarounds. I have a few of those in my pocket which I use depending on *factors.
I posted here mostly to bring it up to the community, in case others come looking for this issue, and in the hopes that Framework see it and hopefully act on the issue, maybe contributing upstream with more debugging or other information they might have, or ideally by actually implementing the missing functionality!
FW are maxed out at present with the 13 Pro batch rollout, and given they almost certainly will be swamped in the next 6-12 months with the hardware issues specific to this new line, I would be surprised if they get around to it, given that workarounds are available.
I hope that someone upstream is able to look at your ticket - it feels odd for a major piece of functionality to apparently be missing. I’d say that is another reason that FW might not work on it - they are likely to prefer ironing out kinks peculiar to their hardware, rather than filling in functionality gaps that would not work on any distro/machine at all.
I have a few of those in my pocket which I use depending on *factors.