A lot of people probably won’t agree with me on this, but I would actually prefer a lower resolution 1080p panel on my Framework 16 compared to the 2560x1600 panel it ships with. The screen it comes with looks great, but honestly I’m just not a fan of HDPI screens. It’s a lot more work for the GPU to render games at this higher native resolution, and even though you can of course lower the resolution - that will never look as good as simply running the game at the native resolution of the display.
And secondly many Linux desktop environments have terrible support (or none at all) for fractional scaling to make the UI look decent on a HDPI screen. I personally use MATE and it doesn’t even have fractional scaling built in, and when enabled manually through some config files it’s pretty clunky and not the best. I’m considering switching DE’s to XFCE just to have the fractional scaling option built in.
Of course a lot of people (probably most lol) do like the HDPI screen this laptop comes with, but it would be pretty awesome to at least have the option for a lower resolution screen if you don’t need/don’t like the stock one!
In Ubuntu with GNOME desktop environment, I found that reading was sometimes a bit challenging at Framework 16 screen’s highest resolution. I was not happy with fractional scaling either.
Finally, I found a good compromise by enabling Large Text in accessibility settings, located in Settings > Accessibility > Seeing
You may find a similar setting in MATE or XFCE desktop environments.
Personally I very much appreciate a 16:10 aspect ratio on a laptop, as it gives just a bit more editing space (I do a lot of coding on it). For me a 1920x1200 screen would have been ideal, as it is as high as you can go on a 16" screen without it becoming unreadable without HDPI settings. As such I very much understand your desire for a lower res panel.
When going for a HDPI panel, my preference would have been a 4K screen, that can easily downscale to 1920x1200. I don’t know if a 16" 3840x2400 panel exists though.
I guess that screen/gpu wise I’m not really the target audience for this laptop, as it is aimed at gaming, for which the screen/gpu seems to make sense, with it’s high refresh rate.
As it is, I think the 2560x1600 panel is not a bad middle ground to start with, it offers a good choice for gamers and developers alike, even if it is not the very best for either.
Nevertheless I do hope that in the future there will be a wider range of panels to choose from.
I’m using Tumblweed with XFCE4, and instead of bothering with fractional scaling and the like, I’ve simply set the resolution to 1920x1200. The picture quality (moire and such) might be slightly better with a matching native screen resolution, but I doubt I would even notice.