3:2 Display and Customizable Bezels

Thanks, Nirav. Can’t wait to try it out in August!

Since I switched from macOS to Linux, I’ve secretly been hoping that Fairphone would release a laptop. Then I came across this project, and it felt like a dream come true; it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. A upgradabe/repairable 13-inch laptop that’s powerful enough for my day-to-day work and has a trackpad at the centre of the chassis. Perfect!

Then I had a chat about it in the elementary OS community, and @cassidyjames pointed out that the resolution (2256x1504) may be an issue. At first, I wouldn’t believe him. I figured that some combination of HiDPI scaling and/or font scaling would make it workable. Sadly, after trying many combinations, I think he’s right. The resolution will be a blocking issue. For me, at least, but I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Currently, I’m using a 13 inch Dell XPS 4K with an external 27 inch 4K monitor. I chose the XPS with a 4K display because that would allow me to work at 2x scaling on both displays, as using different scaling factors doesn’t work well with X.

Let me summarize some possible options.

1. 1128x752@2x
Everything is too large, and there is not enough space to work comfortably on the laptop display. This setting does play nice with the external 4K monitor, though. Using a smaller global font size makes it better on the laptop screen but worse on the external monitor.

2. 2256x1504@1x
Everything is too small on the laptop screen. An external 4K monitor also wouldn’t work, so it should be replaced with something that’s okay at 1x scaling. Like an ultrawide monitor at 3440x1440, for example. Using a larger font size would help the laptop screen, making it worse on the external monitor.

3. Using fractional scaling
Fractional scaling on Linux is not very well supported. Some distros are doing better than others, but there are still many issues. Ubuntu considers it a Beta feature, and by the looks of it, it’s more like Alpha. And with fractional scaling, an external monitor becomes unusable unless it’s a massive 4k monitor.

4. Using a different distro
Choose a distro that’s doing a decent job with fractional scaling. Yes, that’s probably the best option, but also my least favourite one. And while KDE is considered best at it, there are still many problems with scaling in applications.

Cassidy is right to suggest the 2880×1920 (1440×960@2x) or 3000×2000 (1500×1000@2x) resolutions. Having the option to choose a higher DPI screen would be the ideal solution, even at the expense of battery life. And I’d gladly pay a premium for it too.

I may be wrong, but I think Linux users are a substantial part of the target customers for this kind of product. And with the current resolution as the only option, it feels like support for Linux is an afterthought.

Again, I adore this product, I really love it. But unfortunately, the resolution is a massive deal-breaker.

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Can anyone at Framework say whether alternate bezels or other options which are not currently available will be available prior to ship? My order is in batch2 so I’m wondering whether any options can be modified prior to shipment if they become available.

We will most likely not have the alternate bezels in time for Batch 2 shipments, but we should have them available before the end of summer.

The ultimate fix for this is OLED screens (already drooling thinking about it).

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With a bit of skill and some metallic spray paint (ones designed specifically for plastic), one should be able to paint the bezels to look like the rest of the laptop.

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It’s honestly pretty disappointing to hear that there aren’t any current plans to offer alternative displays, was really hoping for a matte display. seems like a deal-breaker depending on the performance/glare in high-light conditions/outdoors.

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People have suggested a matte screen protector, put the edges inside the bezel so there are no lifting corners.

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I’ve used Slackware on the Intel Macbook Pro. Scaling was not a problem. It requires setting 2 or 3 things. I can find a link if you need help.

There is also now Raspberry Pi OS for Intel computers. On the Pi it provides a global scaling feature; I assume it’s the same on Intel.

My concern with scaling is not so much on the laptop itself, but the addition of an external monitor. You don’t want a 27" 4K monitor with @1.5x scaling. :smile:

But, yeah, I’d love to get the link if you can find it. Thanks!

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This company has been around for like less than 2 years. I’m sure the display customizations will come. We can’t have everything day 1 :grinning:

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Have anyone consider of these options?

  1. 16:10 screens, maybe 1920x1200 or 3840x2400

  2. 90Hz instead of 60Hz

With tons of accessories coming out in foreseeable future, it would be great if you guys can come out some kind of accessory storage product with features like dust proof and splash proof.

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That makes it trickier.
I know that Xfce (which I use) only has one font DPI setting for all screens. On the Framework’s LCD I assume you’d want to use 200 DPI fonts. That should also be fine on a 24" 4k display as it happens, thus:

sqrt(2256^2 + 1504^2) / 13.5
200.84255993695703321671

sqrt(3840^2 + 2160^2) / 24
183.57559750685819298491

sqrt(3840^2 + 2160^2) / 27
163.17830889498506043103

I actually found a decent workaround for this on elementary OS. It turns out you can manually specify a 3000×2000 resolution and a 1500×1000 resolution for when connected to external displays.

You are still effectively getting 1.5× scaling and the slight bluriness that implies, but it’s the least-bad solution I’ve found on this hardware. Better in my experience than the experimental non-integer scaling in GNOME on Ubuntu, which caused screen tearing and weirdly-sized window decorations.

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That’s fabulous news, thanks! I’m really looking forward to elementary OS 6. An now I really can’t wait to get my hands on a Framework laptop. :smiley:

In multiple GNOME based distros I actually find just turning on “Large Text” in Accessibility options does the trick. The UI scales pretty well to the font size. Tested in Pop OS 20.10, Fedora 34 and elementary OS on a laptop with a similar panel (Acer Spin 5).

I have tracked the panel down: BOE095F Uses eDP so should not be hard to mod.