5 months in, how is it?

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

tldr; pretty good, but there’s some issues

i got my framework 16 right as i was recovering from a medical emergency (in case you’re wondering, i’m doing fine but i’m going to be on a pricey medication for the next 6 months), so i had a lot of time to spend with it, and overall i’m in love. booting up linux has been as much as a “it just works” experience as you could hope, and the battery life isn’t too bad (4 ish hours seems to be my average). i have had a couple issues and some things i’d love to see, so i’ll just list them out here:

  1. occassionally, after extended periods of silence, i hear a loud pop coming from the speakers and what sounds like an unhealthy amount of dc offset sent through the speakers for a second or 2. it’s an inconvience, and probably a driver issue of some sort, but i don’t have much to work off of in terms of troubleshooting

  2. i’ve found that certain peripherals (notably: the trackpad and camera) need to be attached, or have their privacy switch turned off, at boot or the os just won’t pick it up properly. in the case of the camera, i have confirmed that the usb device does in fact show up in these cases (by show up i mean grepping for its id in lsusb gives back results) but v4l2 just doesn’t pick it up.

  3. i personally want to see more customization options for the 2 trackpad spacers, and more variety in bezel colors. i may be an outliar but i really love stupid neon colors. maybe painting is an option, but i don’t know. unlike other laptops, 70 bucks to ruin a bezel is a decent price to channel one’s inner middle schooler. also an rgb numpad (not macropad!) would be nice, and when the stars align and the qmk rgb protocol sees the light of day, openrgb support

edit for a secret 4th problem: do NOT watch youtube videos while in a call with someone, the mic picks up the speakers like it’s nobody’s business

2

Thanks for your post, I actually remember when you received your laptop but did not see any posts of messages from you after that, hope you recover soon.

Also, thank you for the feedback!

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what OS. ( aka what Linux distro and version)?

i’m on fedora 39 here and haven’t experienced 1 or 2… and i flip the privacy switches on mic and camera when i am getting on a google meet and switches off afterwards. and OS gets the camera fine.

edit: just saw the other thread on the speakers saying F39. although that was OP in that thread and maybe not your OS.

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arch linux, it’s been happening since febuary (so linux 6.7 or something like that)

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F39 is currently on 6.9.5 so yeah could be a driver diff easily on the USB hot plugging. maybe try a fedora live boot to see if it is software/hardware on the camera hotplugging?

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I’ve had a similar experience. As a lucky batch 1 customer I’ve had mine about as long as anyone could’ve, and as hyped as I had been about this device it has yet to let me down. There are a couple hiccups here and there, but those are all attributable to me running an unsupported OS (Arch). I’m at the point right now where the chances of me upgrading/building another desktop once this one goes out (RTX 3090 | R9 5950x) are becoming slimmer and slimmer because I just enjoy my Framework more.

7

linux: it just (sorta) works!

i also forgot to mention that sometimes when opening the lid it can lock up but a reboot always fixes that

8

I’m not sure if it’s me, Linux, or the Framework, but sleep has not been reliable for me. On Arch my boot time is less than 5 seconds, so I just shut down now. It’s more battery efficient anyways.

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sleep on linux is infamously finnicky, shutdown doesn’t really work for me because i’m a scatterbrained mess but it happens rarely enough that i can tolerate it