This post is aimed at Framework 13 users switching to Linux for the first time. Despite knowing very little about Linux, for a long time I’ve thought about switching to it from Windows for various reasons. Having recently upgraded to a Framework 13 laptop from a Dell XPS, I decided to take the opportunity to dive into Linux.
Looking through the available distros supported by Framework for AMD, I decided on Bluefin, because I wanted a system that “just worked” out of the box and had little chance of breaking. After installation, it worked great! Except, after I installed Bluefin, most of the apps I used regularly (Chrome, VSCode, Obsidian, etc.) appeared very blurry.
After a few hours of research, fiddling with settings, and doing online research, I came to find out this issue seemed to be due to fractional scaling on its desktop, GNOME. Because of the Framework’s screen resolution, setting the scaling to a “normal” size requires about 1.5x scaling – setting to 1x made many menu icons far too tiny, while 2x made others far too large. While GNOME does support fractional scaling, it does not work with every application, especially ones that seem to be based on Electron, and there is currently no good solution (at least that I could find) that did not involve manually fixing the resolution for every individual app you install.
So, after some more research, I tried Aurora which, like Bluefin, is an “immutable” distro with an image built specifically for Framework, despite not being featured on the list of supported distros. The difference is that it uses a KDE desktop, which does not have the fractional scaling issues that Bluefin’s GNOME desktop does. For me, it worked perfectly – no issues of blurry VSCode. If, like me, you are new to Linux and just want something that works great out of the box, I would recommend Aurora.