New Framework 16 user (as of last week) here. I installed NixOS since this is what I’ve been using on my other systems. I have hardware configured using the default configuration from nixos-hardware. I have been running into graphics drivers issues since I got the laptop, first the issue described in this thread. journalctl -b -1 showed the same “MES failed to respond” message. At the time I was running the most recent kernel on NixOS 25.11 (Linux 6.18.9); after running into that issue I reverted to Linux 6.17.8 (linuxPackages_6_17 from nixpkgs commit 46a550ff846732a2f65da6b92743ce49c32885a3).
Today the laptop crashed in a different way, with a bunch of black boxes showing up from left to right, top to bottom. Then a bunch of white pixels showed up. Rebooting using the power button resolved the issue (at least for now). Here’s a photo of the final state:
Nothing useful in journalctl -b -1, here are the last 10 lines:
Feb 16 09:56:19 SABIN wpa_supplicant[1190]: wlp191s0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to <MAC address redacted> completed [id=0 id_str=]
Feb 16 09:56:19 SABIN wpa_supplicant[1190]: bgscan simple: Failed to enable signal strength monitoring
Feb 16 09:56:19 SABIN wpa_supplicant[1190]: wlp191s0: CTRL-EVENT-SUBNET-STATUS-UPDATE status=0
Feb 16 09:56:19 SABIN wpa_supplicant[1190]: wlp191s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=COUNTRY_IE type=COUNTRY alpha2=US
Feb 16 09:56:19 SABIN wpa_supplicant[1190]: wlp191s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=COUNTRY_IE type=COUNTRY alpha2=US
Feb 16 09:56:23 SABIN dbus-daemon[835]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service' requested by ':1.7' (uid=0 pid=957 comm="/nix/store/yx6a7g04jqqbv3nr93mc50p2rqkzc3jq-networ")
Feb 16 09:56:23 SABIN systemd[1]: Starting Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service...
Feb 16 09:56:23 SABIN dbus-daemon[835]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher'
Feb 16 09:56:23 SABIN systemd[1]: Started Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service.
Feb 16 09:56:33 SABIN systemd[1]: NetworkManager-dispatcher.service: Deactivated successfully.
Is there a version of the kernel / AMD firmware that isn’t completely broken on the Ryzen AI boards? According to this thread in the freedesktop GitLab the MES issue has been going back and forth, and I can’t tell if there’s a newer version of the firmware that is fixed. If there is some stable combination of the two (or other patches/compile flags I could try), I’m willing to try setting that up.
Which Linux distro are you using?
NixOS
Which release version?
(if rolling release without a release version, skip this question)
25.11
(If rolling release, last date updated?)
nixpkgs commit 2db38e08fdadcc0ce3232f7279bab59a15b94482 (2026-02-09)
Kernel from nixpkgs commit 46a550ff846732a2f65da6b92743ce49c32885a3 (2025-11-24)
Which kernel are you using?
Linux 6.17.8 (experienced different crashes on 6.18.9 as well)
Which BIOS version are you using?
3.04
Which Framework Laptop 16 model are you using? (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series)
AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series