Official FW13 support for CachyOS

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

Hello Friends.

I’ve been using FW13 for a while. I’ve tried multiple distros including Ubuntu and Fedora 43. Somehow I always gravitate back to CachyOS. Why? Well:

  • insane performance with packages using x64v3/v4
  • clean distro - no fluff
  • great default customization - very work focused custom Terminal Emulator config
  • KDE as primary DE
  • GREAT Wiki - prob the best wiki for n00bs like me that is easily comprehensible
  • very active community
  • TONS of possibilities when it comes to easy customization - e.g
      • AMD P-State driver (active/guided/passive modes)
      • Energy Performance Preference (EPP)
      • Core Performance Boost per-core control
      • power-profiles-daemon (CachyOS-patched for AMD)

      Sched-Ext Schedulers

      • scx_lavd with Core Compaction
      • scx_bpfland, scx_rusty, scx_fair, scx_p powersave modes
      • Autopilot/Autopower modes

      Kernel

      • RCU Lazy (5-10% idle savings)
      • NO_HZ_FULL tickless
      • PREEMPT_DYNAMIC
      • LTO Clang Thin

      GPU

      • NVIDIA RTD3 udev rules
      • PRIME offload (dGPU sleep)
      • AMDGPU video playback patches

      Storage

      • SATA power management rules

At some point while using Fedora I just realized that I’m trying to make Fedora into CachyOS which turned out to be very time consuming. CachyOS has been on top of DistroWatch hits for a while now, so I think that the interest is there

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Would it be possible for FW13 to officially support it?

Best regards

Marcin

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2

I was loving Cachy on my FW13, right up until an update caused it to freeze on boot last week. A couple of wasted hours got it working again, but it did take the shine off a bit.

Hopefully, the sponsorship will mean Cachy tests updates on FW machines before release.

3

CachyOS doesn’t seem to work very well while Linux Mint had very minor issues. On CachyOS, Bluetooth seems broken, it doesn’t see any devices so I can’t connect my mouse.

4

Whether a distro works on FW hardware or not is generally down to which kernel version is being used, and which linux-firmware version is being used.
Both those are interchangable across all distros.
It is also pretty easy to compile your own kernel, so with that you can have the latest kernel on any distro you wish.
Some distros even have an option to choose a more up to date kernel. E.g. on ubuntu, one installs an “oem” or “hwe” kernel.
So, my advice would be:
If you are having problems with devices in linux, find out which kernel you current have running, and then look for a newer one to try.

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5

After years running Manjaro I decided to give CachyOS a try. Last week I installed it on my venerable FW13 11th gen Batch 5 (now AMD 7840). I tried Cosmic for a bit, but GNOME just suits my workflow well.

I haven’t tweaked much. Suspend worked properly out of the gate, and it didn’t take too much get get hibernate working properly as well.* The system is lightning fast, but I’m most pleased with power management. I’m definitely seeing lower power use and longer battery life. For everyday use (I’m not a gamer), the laptop is even responsive on “powersave” mode, which is pretty nice.

Whether or not Framework officially supoorts CachyOS (probably not), it’s nice to see how well it works on my FW13.

Hibernate: Had to learn how to use limine, but the cachyos docs cover it well. Converted zram to zswap, built and activated the swapfile, added the appropriate kernel parameters, and good to go.

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6

Was this the RDSEED32 issue?

I had an update cause my Framework 13 to freeze in the boot sequence due to Qt-6 needing RDSEED working properly; after chasing it down it turned out to be fixed by a microcode update for AMD Zen 5 CPUs delivered through a BIOS update.

CachyOS was not at fault; the same issue was happening to Arch Linux, Ubuntu and Fedora users on many different PC brands.

As for official support for CachyOS on Framework PCs, that would be nice, but I figure it is not necessary. As James3 says above, it’s really the kernel and linux-firmware that matters, maybe distro-agnostic low-level packages like Qt.

If I were in charge of this at Framework I’d aim most testing/certification resources at the code that is common to all or most distros to get the most bang-for-the-buck.

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7

Bluetooth works perfectly for me on my FW13/AMD7840. For you, it could be a kernel version issue.

8

Didn’t work very well on my Ryzen 5 7640. BT device discovery was inconsistently working and I don’t have the knowledge to troubleshoot this. Went back to Mint which is running an older kernel (6.17) and BT worked consistently.

9

Then most likely an issue with the MT modem software, which never really played well with Linux. I’ve had that off and on with various distros, but it seems to have ironed out over the past year or so.

10

Appreciate the feedback. :slight_smile: Two things:

  • The landing page is refreshed periodically, so while official support is usually pretty static and purposeful, the community supported distros however, expect some refreshed lists to appear in the coming months.

  • CachyOS is (while not listed) a community supported distro at this time. We do work with their team, as well as many others.

Please understand that community support is just that, community supported. We do our best to provide a great experience and also ensure compatibility while working with their teams.

When you reach out to support, my Linux team has experience with and runs with CachyOS along with other distros.

Thanks folks

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11

Thanks Matt. I’ve always found community support and your team to be very helpful.

I’m liking cachyos(gnome) on my FW13 quite a bit so far.

The only problem I’ve identified at the moment is that changing the power state (plugging or unplugging) while suspended or hibernated causes the system to lock up. But I had that on Manjaro, too, so it might be an Arch issue. Or maybe it’s a kernel issue. In any case, I haven’t taken the time to worry about it.

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