Debian 11 on the Framework Laptop

I’d agree. I can’t say I particularly like the idea of installing a kernel compiled by another distro. When does it stop being Debian and become Ubuntu? Who knows what options they’ve enabled. I’d most likely either grab the source for 5.14.21, pull the config from my current Debian kernel and compile it myself, or go with pinning and install the kernel from testing.

I’ve gone to Ubuntu (21.10) as Debian 11 (still) required a lot of tweaking for HiDPI support and with external monitors I couldn’t find an acceptable configuration. This needs constant tweaking for each new app and breaks with upgrades (custom .desktop files, gconf fiddling etc.).
Blurry apps (including Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Telegram which I use the most), long boot time (often required because of the battery issues-still doesn’t last >1d on suspend) were all dealbreakers for me. Having heavily outdated browser and email applications also means keeping those installed manually - not practical anymore for me on this system as a daily driver.

@Darrel_Hunt I suppose you do have the backports repository enabled in Debian ? Otherwise you won’t be able to install any “bpo” packages.

See Instructions

You can trivially find out all the patches and compilation options they used.

Anyway I pointed out to what works perfectly, if you prefer to compile your own version, or wait for Debian to make a new official backport, or just suffer the old one, fine by me…

I have identified, that image: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/daily-builds/sid_d-i/20220115-3/multi-arch/iso-cd/ works great! :wink: just so you know, pals. :wink:

By the way, setup says, that it cannot install kernel, just skip it on base install step and proceed. When setup wants to reboot after software and grub install, select ‘go back’ and select ‘exec shell’ from main menu, and when you are in a shell:

chroot /traget ; apt install linux-image-amd64 -y ; exit ; exit and now select reboot/finish installation…

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Just for your information, here are the threads to Debian unstable (sid) and testing branches

To understand Debian’s 3 kind of branches: unstable (sid), testing and stable branches, you can see the following documents.

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Does anybody else has problem playing netflix on either chromium or firefox running a backported debian 11?

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Works fine for me in Firefox, but I always install the main Firefox binaries directly from Mozilla:

https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox

The Debian Chromium doesn’t have the necessary DRM decryption code for netflix, I haven’t looked into it any more as I daily-drive Firefox anyway.

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Ah, cheers. Stupid me forgot to check DRM settings. Apparently they were off by default.

On another note: Does anybody have difficulties with the function keys? (I am using KDE Plasma) and sometime the use of the function keys with “Fn” continues even after I let go of the keys themselves. E.g. it just decreases volume indefinitely until I hit ESC or any other key.

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Check this thread.

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Just switched to Debian 11 from Ubuntu 20.04 on my old machine. Thanks @neurology_equator for sharing your steps!

I was actually able to get the AX210 wifi card to download updates, including kernel backport, after initial install using the non-free iso. The wifi worked after I renamed /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm to /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm.bak and restarted the machine.

The original filename needs to be restored after updates and kernel backport, otherwise the wifi will stop working again. Also, the backport is still necessary for bluetooth to work.

Initially stumbled on this solution here https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=989777#71.

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I am using pipewire/wireplumber on my Debian Bookworm. Initially bluetooth audio was not working. I fixed that by manually installing libspa-0.2-bluetooth which is needed by wireplumber.

The line in the logs that led me further was:

wirelumber[966]: SPA handle 'api.bluez5.enum.dbus' could not be loaded; is it installed?
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Anyone else having problems with not being able to pair bluetooth devices on a backported debian 11 (5.16)?

I see a lot regarding wifi, on the 2nd gen I was able to get Debian 11 running, I have tried a couple different kernels and settled on 5.18. What I do not see is anyone getting the GPU to work, I have not, am I missing some posts? I tried Fedora, but I have requirements that forced me back to Debian and I would like to stay away from Canonical if I can.

So please reply to this thread if there is a good workaround to GPU.

Sorry to jump in here, but I’m wondering if you’ve seen any progress on this?

In general, everything works well on my 12th gen, with Debian testing/bookworm. Except Signal Desktop. Firefox, everything else works fine under i3 with a composition manager (compton), but there’s tearing/shearing in Signal, and I don’t understand why. Interestingly, I’m seeing the same problem in Chromium… It’s pretty nasty!

I probably should try under Wayland but ugh, another thing!

Update: turns out the fix is simple, just pass the --disable-gpu-compositing command-line switch to signal-desktop or chromium, see also this post. This can be made persistent by adding a file in /etc/chromium.d/disable-compositing:

export CHROMIUM_FLAGS="$CHROMIUM_FLAGS --disable-gpu-compositing"

That, obviously and unfortunately, doesn’t work in Signal, which I run from Flatpak, which doesn’t support such overrides. Arghl. I had to fix a wrapper scrip to have this work. See also this commit.

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Just yesterday (Oct 22) I got my Framework Laptop and installed Debian 11 using debian-11.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso from debian dot com. My suggestions for those, like me, that are familiar but not expert in linux:

  1. Read up on UEFI if you don’t know what that is. I didn’t.

  2. I have had issues with “Graphical Install” on other systems so I always use “Install”; YMMV

  3. Initially install only a base system; no desktop environment.

  4. See this first post and this second post At the end of installation but before rebooting I suggest adding the instructions of the first post into the instructions of the second post. I did not and upon reboot my console was spammed by error messages from the bluetooth module. If that happens to you, log in as root, use dmesg -n 1 to stop the spam, and blacklist the kernel modules bnex, btusb, bluetooth, btintel, btbcm, btrtl as described on the debian wiki. Then reboot. Then apply the instructions on the first post. Then reboot. Then un-blacklist them. The rebooting between the kernel installation and the un-blacklisting procedure is superstition on my part because I don’t know how they might interact with each other through the init-ramdisk stuff.

  5. Once the laptop reliably boots run sudo tasksel to install the desktop environment(s) of your choice same as you would have from the installer.

I am still getting a warning that I have no video acceleration although my desktop environment works for all the basic stuff I’ve tried so far.

I had an additional problem that my wired ethernet dongle that worked perfectly during the install did not work on my installed system. I did have an older wired ethernet dongle that the laptop seemed to identify more easily. Still I had fun learning about the new way of naming interfaces and manually configuring networking.

That might be because you’re missing some firmware files, which are still not in Debian. See Framework 12th gen laptop review - anarcat

That drives me nuts and I disable it, in grub, you add net.ifnames=0 to the kernel commandline. :slight_smile:

My Framework Laptop gets really hot playing YouTube videos and during Zoom calls. I’m running both in FireFox. Fan is going constantly and yet the bottom of the laptop still gets uncomfortably hot. This starts shortly after the video starts and stops shortly after the video stops. Does anyone else have that experience? Does it happen on Windows?

Installed Ubuntu 22.04. I’m now watching YouTube and the laptop is no longer trying to fry my lap. This suggests (to me at least) that there may be some serious issues with the video drivers Debian 11.5 (with backports) is using.

Hi–

I followed the directions in this thread and installed Debian 11 on my Framework.

I chose Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE, and LXqt, during the install in order to give me a spread of environments to try. Long story short, I am on KDE Plasma at the moment and not getting the “hardware acceleration missing” error I got in Cinnamon, the same thing @Greg_Deitrick seemed to encounter–along with the enormous heat and my battery being murdered by the lack of video acceleration.

So far though, the machine is running smoothly.

Thank you all for your efforts in writing out how you got Debian installed and what you’ve run into. In the meantime, I will add power optimizations as seen elsewhere and get an idea of how the battery runs with Debian.