This came up to me while updating the BIOS of my 4 years old Thinkpad E590 to make it work with Ubuntu 22.04. There was a major update in the BIOS of the thinkpad to make it work with latest ubuntu. It is one of the key selling point of professional laptop (with sturdy hinges, good keyboard, mate screen, and spare parts).
Thinkpad give 5 year BIOS update, whereas the same company Lenovo gives 1-2 years for trashable computers. I definitely believe that framework price puts it in the 5 years minimum.
If sustainability is at the hear of the values of framework, this should be logical.
How long do you plane to use your Framework laptop with the same motherboard
1 - 2 year
3 years
4 years
5 years
6-10 years
0voters
This should give us the expectations of endusers on software updates
I have seen the open sourcing of EC. Also this is a very welcome thing. I don t know much about what are the parts of a BIOS. But I guess it is not the “full code of the BIOS” that is open source.
So FW commitment still remains very important
Very interesting.
I hope to have an answer from framework team themself aswell.
It s about “commitment from the framework company”. I guess framework needs also 3)to bre alive to send an update in 5 years
just a reminder that this is a user forum. While the Framework team do answer questions here sometimes, you are more likely to get an answer from the company by sending a message with your question to support and they will hopefully be able to provide you with that information.
I would agree with @Second_Coming though, unless the progress on getting Coreboot running on the Framework laptop moves forward, Framework will have to rely on Insyde for BIOS updates since they don’t have the resources to make their own BIOS at this time.
Dear Azure,
Thanks for your answer. Looking forward to a very stable open BIOS solution for sure.
For now I am waiting for my framework laptop to arrive.
I may be doing a support request on this topic of BIOS commitment , when I receive it .
Also , as a community, I still think it is worth noting it, since in the past I didn t thought BIOS update where so important. In my experience BIOS update in 3-5 years on the framework device is the difference between an unusable device I have to trash after 1-2 years, and a top of the line product I can use for 5-10 years.
The current laptop I am using wouldn t be able to run Ubuntu 22.04 (major freezes) or windows 11 without a BIOS update. This means end of the life of my thinkpad would be much less than 5 years after I bought it (ubuntu lts is 5 years).
Lots of persons in this formum are happy to switsh from Macbooks more than 5 years old, also Mac do provide update for +6 years on their devices. If framework don t , they will be disapointed, because somehow they think they are getting the same device + better stuffs
BIOS upgrades are definitely important, and I also hope that we’re able to get long term BIOS support for the laptop. Framework has already been doing a great job fixing what they can even a year after the 11th gen CPUs came out and now that 12th gen is here it will be important to see if they’re able to support both mainboards as well as they have already.
Seeing as there is a lot of support on the forums for Coreboot and that Framework has sent laptops to Coreboot contributors, I am very hopeful that we are able to get an open source BIOS eventually if interest in the laptops keeps up!
I don’t know if I’m just lucky or you’re just unlucky but, in my experience on at least the Linux side (no idea about modern post-7 versions of Windows), I’ve been able to run derivatives of Ubuntu 22.04 (that being Xubuntu 22.04 and Mint 21.0 beta) on various PC hardware from the early 2010s with the most recent BIOS being… uhh, I had to check it’s been so long - 2016.
It was my impression that Linux is almost the opposite of Windows whereby you want hardware that is older than the initial release of the OS (e.g. the whole “with newer hardware, like the Framework laptop, you need to make sure you’re using a new enough kernel that was released around the same time or after the hardware itself was released”) while, on Windows, it traditionally tends to expect hardware that is newer than the initial release of the OS (e.g. a lot of times device drivers won’t be released for newer versions of Windows, like I have a few Core 2 Duo-era laptops from 2007 that have Vista 32bit drivers but not Win7 64bit drivers for the touchpad in particular).
And those aforementioned Core 2 Duo-era laptops from 2007 have been running Linux Mint 18.x (derived from Ubuntu 16.06) for years now without a hitch to the point that I’ve eventually had to retire each laptop after hardware failures (charging circuit problems on the first, internal clock problem on the second that is unrelated to the CMOS battery, and broken hinge on the third which just happened in the last month).
…that being said, I don’t suppose your existing laptop uses Nvidia graphics? That’s one thing I learned early on over the last 5 years of beginning to more regularly use Linux is that, if you want a painless Linux experience, don’t use Nvidia graphics - especially on laptops with hybrid/switchable graphics! (it’s less painful on older laptops from the mid/late 2000s that predate hybrid/switchable graphics and just always run off of the dGPU and, for similar reasons, less painful on desktop PCs as well - especially if using older Nvidia GPUs where older = less painful).
Interesting question, but I think that it probably reduces to the question of how long Framework will stay in business. Hopefully that will be many years, but I don’t think you can expect a meaningful and realistic answer to this question from a young start-up.
With that said, I had my two previous laptops from 2009-2016 (Toshiba) and 2017-2021 (HP), and I was never aware of a BIOS update for either of them. I’m impressed that Framework has already released multiple updates based on our feedback. That makes me believe that they’ll care about their products and users longer than other big companies do, provided they remain in business.
I d like to emphasise on Commitment.
It means that you commit to do it, if you are still alive as a company. When lenovo commits to 5 years they are saying “if I am alive”.
This is great that some persons in certain case are happy with the original software bios. Also it is one of the selling point of a laptop in the professioal space.
At 1000€ I am expecting a pro expérience.
Talking about toshiba and thinkpad mac, those are pro models you are refering. Chances are that even the first released bios was better than any consumer grade one. Those brands are often very conservative, and release tested device much later.
Talking about 12th gen, I expect many bios update as for any new technology.
I am not asking free beers to FW. I am asking for a laptop that has software update for the duration people use a 1000€ laptop.
