@Paulie420 - Debian is a special breed because, unlike Ubuntu (which is a commercial product) and Arch (which is a rolling release), It has a strict validation and becomes stabilized at release.
Debian 11 JUST came out of its ‘Testing’ phase and is now ‘stable’. That means that included packages will get maintenance updates but not necessarily major feature updates.
This means that it takes a bit more work to get this distro on bleeding-edge hardware (which, arguably, the Framework is).
Ubuntu is in a similar boat, but the upcoming release, 21.10 in October, should ease the remaining issues.
@Paulie420 I’m not speaking from personal experience (I’m in Batch 2 so my machine hasn’t shipped yet), but my understanding is that as long as you install Fedora from the Respin disk images, everything just works, including the stuff other users / distros have issues with (fingerprint reader, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc). If you’re used to Kubuntu, Fedora has a Respin that uses KDE.
Mirroring what has been said before re: Debian - the ‘stable’ version (currently Debian 11) lags behind other distributions that update more frequently (such as Ubuntu and derivatives, or rolling release distros like Arch or Fedora. That said, the current kernel for Debian 11 is 5.10.0-8, and libfprint (included in the biometric-driver-community-multidevice metapackage) is 1.90.7-2. I set up my Framework for my partner to use so I can’t verify Debian 11 works out of the box with the network card but 5.10 has support for ax210 so it should. @Paulie420 If you are a KDE user and you want to stick w/ Kubuntu, all you really need is linux kernel 5.10 to support the WiFi card, and libfprint 1.92.0 or newer for the fingerprint reader. If whatever release you’re using has both of those, you’re all set. If not, you’ll need to install a 5.10 kernel, and build libfprint 1.92 from source.
If you don’t want to build the current version of libfprint from source and/or don’t want to install a custom kernel, you’ll probably have to wait for 21.09 if you’re not using LTS. 21.04 has 5.10 so it should support the WiFi straight away. If you want to use an older Kubuntu version (20.04, for example) a compatible kernel should be available in the backports repository. You’ll still have to build the fingerprint software, as I think all of the Ubuntu distributions are running libfprint 1.90.7-2.
Thanks a lot, Gary S… as much as I think I know about Linux, I’m still a new sysOp. RIGHT NOW, I’m on 5.11.0-25-generic, so I guess I don’t have a ton to worry about… I don’t mind building [any] software from source, but it sounds like I might not even have to. I’m using Kubuntu 21.04.
Sadly, I haven’t yet been able to get the wifi module working on Debian 11 yet. It looks like there’s been a regression of the Intel AX210 driver in the kernel in the latest release: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966218. It’s exactly what I’ve been seeing…
The current Edge ISO image is for Mint version 20.2 and already contains the 5.11 kernel. This will prevent the user from having to connect via Ethernet to upgrade the kernel version after the standard installation process.
In case anyone’s interested, I’ve written up a (somewhat lengthy) post on getting Debian Bullseye up and running. Probably the most interesting bit is I’ve included instructions on how to build actual Debian packages for libfprint 1.92.1 and fprintd 1.92.0, which results in a cleaner install and makes removing or upgrading them later a heck of a lot easier:
As an FYI for folks, Debian Testing has now migrated to Linux 5.14.0, which means PSR should work out of the box now!
In addition, the AX210 should work, though on my own laptop Bluetooth still doesn’t work for reasons I have yet to figure out. It’s especially weird because when I stick the AX210 in my old X1 Carbon with the 5.14.0 testing kernel it works just fine. It’s only when the card is in my Framework that it doesn’t. Hopefully other folks have better luck!
Eh, yeah. I am on Debian Bookworm/kernel 5.14 with the Intel firmware-iwlwifi package - looks like there’s some regression with how the bluetooth firmware interacts with the machine. I was able to get the bluetooth working by replacing the firmware included in the sid/bookworm release (20210818-1, Intel release 28502) with one that was recently updated on the linux firmware git repo (Intel release 31586, checked into the repo on Sep 19th).
Copy the sfi file into /lib/firmware/intel, then power cycle your machine (shutdown, wait about 10 seconds, power it on again). The issue here is that while the bluetooth works just fine right after the power-on, any reboot will make it disappear. Resuming from sleep (not hibernation) is just fine, though.
Yup, confirmed here as well. TBH, this firmware is the first time I’ve seen the AX210 work with Linux 5.14 at all. But I agree, a reboot or resume from hibernation leads to Bluetooth no longer functioning.
A quick update - I tried using bluetooth on kernel 5.14 and, surprise surprise, I ran into the ‘warm boot’ issue with Bluetooth.
So I compiled and installed 5.12.15 from kernel.org and all of my problems have evaporated. I just used the same kernel configuration from my initial install with 5.10 and it built in about 45 minutes (I wasn’t timing and I was sleepy as it was finishing up).
the DPI is … interesting (see xdpyinfo | grep -B2 resolution for more info). To start with, I added this to a file in the same xorg.conf.d folder, again owned by root:
edit: if you’re using steam, you’ll also want to run: echo "GDK_SCALE=2 steam" | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/steam && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/steam to fix its DPI - it doesn’t respect X’s font DPI, just the toolkit’s scaling factor
Thank you! This was the only way I was able to get bluetooth working on my FW running Debian 11. It sucks that a soft reboot borks it, but at least it’s an easy fix.
On debian 11.3 GNOME installs without issue (trackpad recognized, usb-eth for network), annoying bluetooth off/on messages but solved by installing kernel from bullseye-backports (wifi then works).
Installed from sid : firmware-misc-nonfree and firmware-iwlwifi.
Also installed from sid : libfprint and libpam-fprintd and fingerprint was proposed in GNOME and works.
but it does not solve the problem I’ve described here (Debian testing under XFCE4, verified under Debian 11.3. live installer)
Do you have any further hints?
Kind regards, Andreas.