Black Screen on Framework 16

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Hi everyone,

I’m having a bit of an issue with my Framework 16 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 - Radeon RX 7700S. Currently I am running Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS on it, but yesterday I tried changing my desktop environment to KDE and when I restarted my laptop the screen stayed black. This laptop is brand new so I’m super confused on why it’s acting this way.

the funny thing is that the framework/ubuntu loading screen still pops up once it is booted up and the keyboard also lights up, but after a few seconds the loading screen goes away and the screen stays black. For testing purposes I put one of my USB-A drives into the laptop and on the top left there is some small text about how there is an unknown error with the USB-C? (Even though it’s a USB-A drive). So the display definitely still works, but for some reason it’s not responding to the keyboard and it’s not letting me access the rest of the computer.

I tried a couple of things to fix it. One was waiting a whole night before trying to boot it up again (I had heard for new DE you need to wait 15 mins before booting up again). When that didn’t work I re-seated the ram and also waited. Then as a last resort I tried to factory reset the computer, but it didn’t seem to properly reset. I’m wondering if I did the factory reset wrong? I switched the chassis open switch 10 times and it didn’t seem to do anything. I’m so baffled by this issue and I’m wondering if anyone might have a clue to what went wrong? I’m hoping the issue is fixable and not something related to permanent damage.

Edit: I solved the issue! I did some commands in the root grub to uninstall KDE and it worked like a charm.

2

It sounds like you’re having operating system issues - not a problem with your hardware. Something was likely amiss when you tried to switching to KDE. I can’t say what that problem likely was or the easiest way to fix it, but at worst you should be able to reflash your SSD.

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Thank you! I’ll look into more solutions involving the OS then. I have been able to access the GRUB Menu and try and go into recovery mode, but nothing worked there either. Right now it doesn’t let me type in the terminal, so I might have to reflash my SSD then. Thank you for giving a better direction to go in!

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Quite welcome!

5

I have the same setup as you tried, so same hardware and Ubuntu+KDE.

In 24 and Wayland it quite simply didn’t work, showing the exact same symptoms, so I switched back to X.

Surprisingly, once Ubuntu updated to 26 the new Plasma started working normally with Wayland.

Of course Wayland’s gotta Wayland, so I get occasional visual artifacts, but overall it can be made to function.

6

maybe related but when I installed kde on arch the display manager (sddm) had some bug that also creates a black screen during login. changing the display manager (plasmalogin) fixed the issue for me.