OpenBSD on the Framework Laptop

I’ve written up some information on running OpenBSD on the Framework Laptop, as well as a general review of the hardware:

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Great review! I’ve noticed the fan issue as well.

We’re adjusting the firmware to keep the fan on for a minimum period of time even if it could turn off. I agree that it is more annoying for it to cycle on and off than leaving it at minimum speed for longer.

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@nrp Right now there is the category “Framework DIY Edition” - “Linux”. But the “Linux” sub category doesn’t fit non-Linux kernel based OS installed on Framework Laptop, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris like this thread. We may want to adjust categories or tags.

Thanks JCS. I bootstrapped by doing an install onto the NVME drive (in an external USB housing) on another computer (be vary careful to select the correct disk here!). Then, to get started, disable both dwiic and inteldrm in UKC, use an external USB mouse. Disabling inteldrm was because I would always get the black screen with blipping every second or so; you may or may not need that. To get the iwx firmware, use a USB network interface that doesn’t need firmware (wired?), or, on another computer, download the iwx tarball from firmware.openbsd.org onto a USB stick, move that to the Framework, and do e.g., fw_update -p /mnt. Then you can start installing packages.

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The video issue has been fixed in -current (or a snapshot released after today). I’ll tackle the touchpad next.

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I can confirm that JCS’ fix for the video works, and the touchpad fix (which totally unsurprisingly works) is AIUI waiting for approval to be committed into -current. Thanks JCS for getting these fixes in so quickly.

@jcs your write up is awesome, so glad you’ve been able to fix these issues. My AX201 is out for delivery today, so I’m almost ready to jump on board. It looks like the trackpad patch is committed, so I’m looking forward to trying a snapshot soon, thanks for your hard work.

Has anyone got the touchpad working with 2 finger for right click and 3 finger for middle click under OpenBSD?
I added /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf and I can get a right click or middle click, but I can’t drag. So in CWM I can’t resize windows or choose any options in the desktop menu.
I’m not sure if there is a way to simply do it with wsmouse instead of the synaptics driver.

I just share one more article about OpenBSD on the Framework Laptop.

OpenBSD on the Framework laptop - thomas strömberg

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This is a bit of a necro I think, but I’m a bit confused by the touchpad/clickpad behaviour and figured I might just check if someone knows more than me.

I am running -CURRENT (for AX210 support), with xenodm. I have experimented with PS/2 emulation on and off. (And an 11th gen unit, in case the 12th gens are shipping already.)

My problem is that I used to have the touchpad behaving nicely - right-clicks worked, specifically. However, I recently noticed that right-clicking has stopped working. I am unfortunately not sure when that happened, since right-clicking isn’t something I do very often (living mostly in DWM and ST, with NeoVim being where I spend most of my time with this laptop).

Digging through mailing lists, I noticed discussions about whether to work around the detection as a touchpad (vs a “clickpad”) using a quirk or a wsconsctl knob. I believe it was even the same @jcs as in this thread that made the driver in question and was discussing it there. So I understand it’s being looked into - but what seems strange to me is that it “used to work” and these sources I find seem to indicate that there never was anything in place to make it work.

Running doas wsconsctl tells me it is indeed being detected as a touchpad, but I am unable to set it to clickpad (read-only), and being a bit of a noob with *BSD I’m not even sure if I should touch that.

It’s not a massive deal for me, since I only use right-click when in a browser, but it would still be nice to learn which obvious thing am I missing and how did I mess up? :slight_smile:

I’m seeing the same issue on my machine but it looks like there’s already a patch submitted to fix the issue!

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=165980534415586&w=2

I’ve upgraded OpenBSD on the 12th gen Framework laptop first from the 7.1 release to a snapshot (in order to be able to use the AX210) and then to the new 7.2 release. OpenBSD is not my main operating system, I just needed a BSD to check something – so I absolutely don’t have any idea what I’m doing :wink:. I noticed that Firefox stopped working for me with upgrading to the snapshots (first opened window stays empty, second starts with a crashed tab and can’t open any url).

But what makes me really wonder is the power button / fingerprint reader: it’s getting noticeably warmer than in other operating systems (e.g. linux). Is someone else seeing (or rather sensing) this or is something strange going on with my laptop?

See here:

Specifically, post 4.

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Thanks, that’s it (probably). Libprintf is still on 0.8.2 in OpenBSD 7.2 - let’s see if I can compile a more recent one. For linux (with recent kernel etc), it seems installing libfprint (1.94.x?) or not doesn’t make a difference in regard to the temperature, the fingerprint reader always stays cool. In OpenBSD, it’s getting warm, with and without libfprint (0.8.2) installed :person_shrugging:.

Is anyone able to test the latest OpenBSD on the AMD 13? I’d really love to know how it fares on that.