We want to know your preference! Please take a moment to participate in our poll and tell us your primary Linux distribution for Framework Laptop 16. Your input will help us better understand the community’s choices and preferences. If you are dual-booting, frequently switching between different distros, or using a distro not listed here, please let us know in the comments. Thank you for your participation!
Happy to see my beloved Arch as #1. That would be consistent polls ran by The Linux Experiment, where it was also the most popular. I see Mario also put his vote there
I currently have a partial Gentoo install on my secondary drive just for fun.
Arch, it is the way.
I also have Ubuntu and Fedora installed in case any further troubleshooting is needed or a support ticket to Framework. But Arch is my main and I am in it 99% of the time otherwise.
I use Garuda Linux, which is arch for people who have a life and don’t want to fiddle with manually setting up partitions and fstab from a command line. It’s really nice they have all the AMD Zen and GPU drivers working and tuned out of the box, and it’s using chaotic AUR and standard pacman repos that are maintained by arch instead of all the “wheel re-inventing” that Manjaro/EndeavourOS do by attempting to maintain their own separate pacman repos, which are usually out of date in comparison.
I was using Fedora, but Arch makes it way easier to swap out the kernel and add bleeding edge mesa/vulkan drivers, which is a plus. I also have an ongoing feud with canonical for enabling “experimental” kernel features without testing them (so I will never use them in production again), and generally don’t like Ubuntu.
I’ve been checking out Exherbo linux a bit, and it seems promising, but much like Arch without Garuda, they put way too much emphasis on manually setting up the bootloader and partitions which is error-prone and tedious (I really hate copying around partition UUID’s and mount points for fstab/grub/uefi config).
now that i have my fw16, i can vote here too. same install as i was using on my fw13 – just moved the nvme over – so it’s still xubuntu 22.04 lts. i’ll obviously move to 24.04 lts at some point, at the latest when the point release hits. earlier if i decide i have to fix something that’s fixed by 24.04 and am willing to risk upgrading early.
I dual boot between that (on a 1TB 2280 NVME drive) and Windows 11 Pro (on another 500GB 2230 NVME drive).
Windows is really just for some really spooky proprietary software for work. Otherwise, I perfer Linux.
Switched to OpenSUSE tumbleweed today, let`s see how that goes. One remaining hitch is dpms, still trying to figure out how to reliably send the screens to sleep when inactive.
I’ve added Linux Distros as tags under Framework Laptop 13 - Linux and Framework Laptop 16 - Linux subcategories. Right now, we do not have many threads under these tags but in the future it should help us filter distro specific issues and guides. If you have any threads under these subcategories, you can edit your post and add the correct distro for your topic if you want to help. Thank you!!
If you know how to do it, yes.
CentOS and Ubuntu are the only supported by Framework. Even though the Framework team is always trying to help with the others (and the forum members of course).
and Fedora installed in case any further troubleshooting is needed or a support ticket to Framework. But Arch is my main and I am in it 99% of the time otherwise.