I have been using Fedora on a Framework 13 for about 3 years as a work laptop. Primarily used for software development and CAD/CAE work. I will be due for an upgrade soon, so I have been looking into new parts on the marketplace.
Overall, the experience has been pretty great. My main areas for improvement are:
Battery life
It is miserable. I know this is an issue with Linux on laptops in general, but wow it’s bad. Yes I have followed the battery life improvement guide, which helped.
Keyboard
Two of my key caps have the paint wearing off. One of the keys is bubbled up and peeling. It’s gross.
I have always had an issue with the left Shift key not being very sensitive
Trackpad
I sometimes really have to hit the trackpad for clicks to register. Especially seems like off-center clicks are not registered well.
Display
No specific issues, it is totally fine. But especially for editing text all day, I prefer the sharpness of my 4k desktop display or the 4k display on the Dell XPS I had at my last job.
I am just hoping to get a sanity check and any advice people may have on this plan. I am pretty out of the loop on laptop hardware these days so hopefully my plan will ameliorate a couple of the issues that I’ve had. Maybe I should get a battery too? Or omit the 2.8k screen? Would replacing the entire Input Cover Kit help with the trackpad?
Thanks in advance!
Current specs
i7-1185G7
2 x 32GB DDR4-3200
2TB NVMe
Planned purchases
Ultra 7 165H mainboard
2 x 32GB DDR5-5600
Framework Laptop 13 Keyboard - International English
Hi and welcome,
I think your plan looks reasonable. Just a note on the touch pad. I have the same 11th gen FW13 and a FW16, and the touchpad on the FW16 is noticably better in that they’ve tuned the force required for a click. I didn’t know whether the same changes have been made to the FW13, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’ve rolled in some changes to the touchpad without mentioning it.
I hope your upgrade goes well.
Yours,
Jeff
okay first, talk to support about your KB/trackpad issues
for the display, get the 2.8k display if you want more pixels
in terms of battery life I would get a ryzen chip as those chips are more power efficient (run cooler, more battery life, higher clocks)
with the money saved in getting a last gen board, also get the 61 whr battery.
fw13 ryzen user here, I think as the production of FW13 laptops has gone on, FW has gradually improved their parts without necessarily making a huge announcement about it. I haven’t heard much complaint about trackpads from non 11th gen users.
I had a batch 5 I think it was i5-11th, then upgraded the entire unit to the i5-13th, so that I could sell the old one to a friend who really wanted a Framework but couldn’t afford new or refurb directly from FW. I also have an i5-11th bare main board running as my home router, file server, etc.
FW did a lot of little improvements between the two. Touchpad was much more solidly mounted with far better physical click experience in the 13th, for example. 80db speakers are far more clear at a similar volume level. Stiffer top cover and 2nd Gen hinges are night and day improvement over the original. Keyboard feels about the same, possibly a little less quality actually (I have a group of about 4 keys that are getting physically “numb” in switch action). Matte screen is excellent for eye strain vs glossy, but I don’t need the 2.8k resolution (which I expect will cut battery life if you go that route).
The BIOS, USB-PD power intake management, and TB4/USB4 system is significantly improved on the newer board. Obviously the newer CPU with more threads really helps with software that can utilize it. FreeCAD, Onshape, OrcaSlicer, QGIS, etc are all significantly faster with the 13th. You’ll probably get even better results with the Ultra, or the AMD board.
Battery life I find to be highly variable with of course use case, screen brightness, but unfortunately also kernel and mesa drivers efficiency. With a 55Wh battery, I was getting a solid 10+ hours of general Internet use on kernel 6.6-ish, it’s down closer to 8 with the same use pattern on 6.11/6.12 at the moment.
its not too significant, but I’ve heard in direct comparison that the ryzen processors are more efficient than the intel core series as well as having more performance cores, the 7840u is probably the most performant processor that framework offers, but if you want intel quicksync and other intel quality of life features, intel more is the way to go
Thanks for all the info! I’ll consider changing the whole keyboard panel if the manufacturing has improved that much. I’ve never had a huge issue with the hinges. I suppose the screen could wobble a bit less but it has never really bothered me.
I would love to be getting 8 hours of battery life! I think the best I’ve ever managed to achieve was 6 hours. Usually, I’m only getting around 4.
I looked into this a bit more and found some results on Notebookcheck that seem to indicate the Ryzen’s power efficiency is better but not significantly.
Given that the biggest gap is when the external display is connected, I suspect that the GPU perf/watt between RDNA and Arc is the root cause.
The OpenBenchmark results would suggest that the 7840u is significantly more performant though.
Would be curious to see other results or hear from those with firsthand experience though!