Bugs and issues that 99.99% of Framework owners do not experience. If you don’t know enough to dig in and figure out for yourself that of the remainder, a large portion of the issues are likely end user related, or niche corner case issues related to hardware compatibility.
I am not saying that some of these firmware issues do not exist, but that for most people they will never become a problem, or even show up. Some of those Linux related items are almost always kernel related. Just had a recent bug for several months where boot to a graphical target would get delayed by two minutes when using a dock. I immediately realized this was a kernel regression not a firmware issue on the part of the laptop. Several months later (i.e. earlier this month) the regression was fixed and now my device boots to a graphical target normally.
When it comes to linux it often helps to wait six months after the hardware becomes available for all/most of the bugs to work themselves out through updates. So if you buy a device in the batch release or soon after it becomes available use a rapidly updating distro like Fedora, and if “stability” is a fear (I have used Fedora on all my machines since Fedora 28 with no stability issues and very rare hiccups) then use Fedora Silverblue and always have a working OS. Upgrades between versions are seamless.
I have had a 12th gen i7-1260p for 2.5 years now and the only issue I have had is my battery recently became slightly spicy…I will replace it for $45-$65 as soon as they are available. Also their BIOS updates, and the notifications around them seem to be improvinig. Just upgrade to 3.17 for the 12th gen Intel boards and it was seamless, and headache free. Also the documentation has improved for the procedure so their is next to no confusion. I expec thtis trend to continue.
Yes $2000 for a laptop is not cheap, especially when you are used to off lease business laptops a quarter the price like me. Buying 1-2 year old Thinkpads was my bread and butter. The concept of the Framework is that I can fall in love with a device and keep it as long as I like while making sure the heart of it is modern and meets my needs, without having to deal with changes in the layout or new quirks of design I have to get used to. The promise of consistency and repairability with new OEM parts instead of third party parts, is what sold me, so much so I got two. Both have had zero issues and look brand new even after 2.5 years of daily driving.
So only you can decide if it is the right move for you. My only recommendations are 1) Go Fedora and update freqeuntly, update through any regressions, and or performance issues, they usually don’t last. 2) Don’t buy a first gen platform product, and especially don’t buy them in the batch release timeframe. Someone who is impatient can be the crashtest dummy (yeah harsh, and Framework has improved its batch releases, but if you can’t afford to be a test case, simply wait.) not your. 3) Do your due diligence understand the state of the kernel support for the device. Last I checked the latest AMD processor were mostly supported some features are still not working (NPU) but are incoming. 4) Read all the reviews you can, and analyze any user complaints carefully. Many will be user error. I say simply because this is what I have noticed across hardware reviews, virtuallization platforms, software, and OS issues, 9 times out of 10 someone uses the technology improperly and expect different results. If you want detailed examples I can provide them.
Anyway good luck. I am fairly confident that as long as Framework is in business, this is probably the last laptop I will ever need, as long as they keep making compatible upgrades.