I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 Edge and, so far (knock on wood), things are working fine. I haven’t run into any huge problems yet. Things seemed to just work out of the box. I’m still transferring stuff over and migrating off of my old laptop so we’ll see if that continues to be the case.
Incidentally, when it says here that we will be missing out on tweaks and improvements like it says here…
What does that mean, exactly? I clicked on the link and it went to a page for FW 13 not 16. I went to what looks like the corresponding page for FW 16 and it looks like there aren’t really any huge tweaks or improvements that we’re missing out on. Maybe the PPD stuff? I haven’t really seen how much of a difference that that’s going to make from my limited usage so far. @Matt_Hartley could you please elaborate a little more when/if you get a chance on what the FW 16-specific tweaks and improvements are that we’re missing out on?
I finally received my Framework 16 laptop. Very excited to get going on it. Has anyone got experience with Installing Linux Mint on the Framework 16 yet? Is there maybe a guide under development for this. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Lodewyk, i would say stay away from Mint. I use it maybe two weeks. Problems are:
Fingerprint doesn’t work, Lightsensor doesn’t work, High Powerdraw when idle (9-10 Watts). I had problems to get Hibernation to work (damaged Files → new installation). Startmenu is buggy (graphical issue), App-Managment is buggy (buttons are not correctly redrawn, pictures are not shown, scrollbar doesn’t work correctly). Tried the Guest-Account, now i find myself in that Account when i boot the machine (disabled it of course, doesn’t help).
Had strange Problems to couple my Bluetooth Headset (now it works). My Scanner can not be found (Network, connected to Router) only when direct connected to USB. Mint isn’t HiDPI-Aware i would say, fractional scaling is experimental. Tried an external Monitor, after disconnecting Taskbar and Startmenu disappeared. Today i had a Login-Loop, battery was nearly empty, don’t know why because i always close the lid → Suspend then Hibernate.
At first i tried Ubuntu. Fingerprint and Lightsensor worked. Maybe you should go with it because they support it.
Btw english isn’t my First Language. Greetings from Germany
I installed Mint 2 days ago (Edge version) and I activated fractional scaling, adapted the Grub font (dual boot) and I would say it’s work quite well.
Not perfect (consumption seems high and some SW have small icons but an AppImage saves QMapShack !) but it’s so ergonomic that for me, the balance is on the right side. I will wait till Mint 22 (with more recent kernel) to see the improvements.
Note :
I have an autologin so the finger print is not really useful for me.
I connected an external screen and then I had to readjust the scale factor
I didn’t mention that i come from Windows (since 3.1). Using Windows 7 on my PC since 13 years i never had an Login-Loop. You wrote something about the Grub font, i don’t know how to change such things. What is QMapShack ? Because i come from Windows i naturally try to run Windows-programs. Using Mono or Wine brings more trouble, like very very small Icons. Btw i am using Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, Kernel 6.5.0-1020-oem. Think that’s the Edge version.
Fingerprint-Sensor: Also for me it’s no real Problem because i am used to login with a Password. My PC never had a FP-Sensor, my Tablet (Win 10) has no FP-Sensor. Autologin is only useful in an trustfull Enviroment. Wonder that you use it with a mobile Device. FP-Sensor would be nice at the console (Sudo) or when starting Programs which need higher rights (Start as Admin on Windows).
Thank you for your reply deLemere! Yes I think I will wait based on all the issues people are talking about. I bought this Framework 16 Laptop with Graphics Module and I need to get started ASAP with a Rhino 3D Graphics project. I will just make the host OS Ubuntu and host Win 11 Pro under VirtualBox that supports 3D graphics… I can always rebuild again later when there is finally a supported version of Mint as I like the fact that you can create a MacOS look-alike user interface. I switched to MacOS in 2011 and never looked back. I will be attempting to get a Mac OS for AMD CPU’s going too under VirtualBox. Man I am impressed with the Framework 16 laptop and equally with the forum for support. Thanks everyone!
Have you looked at Zorin OS? the I believe one version has a configuration that looks very MacOS, I don’t recall if it was one of their pro or standard features, but I’ve been using it on a few machines and happy with the experience overall. It’s based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS so I’m hoping it will sort out nicely using the ubuntu guide but I’m in batch 14, so trying to wait patiently atm!
Thank you all for the engagement, this is great.
For my purposes, web browsing and excel there’s a lot of Linux options available, and with FW16 I just need to find what works best system-wise, so that they play nice with each other. I would want the FP read and other stuff that’s mentioned. I will probably go with what’s recommended by the FW team or just download W11 and office 19. We’ll see. I have another older laptop I can play with Linux on.
I was able to boot on, and install 5.15 but many drivers were not working well. Once I switched to kernel 6.5 the graphics drivers were there, and everything started working very well. This was using Mint 21.3. I didn’t have to do anything special, just installed Mint and then switched kernels.
Got my install of Mint (Edge) fully working now, it idles at about 6.5W at power-saver profile, even lower than my Windows 11
I also got the fingerprint working including login, no idea how since I didn’t do anything different now than the first 10 times enrolling it
I have a couple of older displays I might use to start with on my desktop situation. That would be probably temporary. I will look at an extra wide display purchase.
Wrote linuxmint-21.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso to Live-USBstick with remsu /usr/bin/sparky-live-usb-creator
Booted the Framework 16 from this Live-USBstick
Chose to deny installation of Multimedia drivers, because the installer demanded SecureBoot,
read later that Ubuntu und LinuxMint at the moment (see below) do not recommend SecureBoot, because the UEFI boot shim were deprecated.
Partitioning step failed with ubi-partman failed with exit code 10
For the next Boot pressed F2 to enter BIOS setup and deactivated Enforce Secure Boot
The next Boot from Live-USBstick worked Ok
Changed Partitions to my preference
(Install made a GPT partition table, therefore all partitions are “primary”):
EFI 500 MB (unchanged)
Linux 500 GB → 100 GB (resized)
Home 78698 MB (new)
Data 300 GB (new)
Swap 16400 MB (new), mainly for Hibernate
Migrate the encrypted /home/{username} directory from the Linux partition to the new Home partition
1. `sudo bash` to do this with root permissions
2. Mount the Home partition somewhere, like f.e. `/mnt`
3. I started `mc` with `sudo`
4. With `mc` i copied `/home/*` to `/mnt/`, including
* `/home/.ecryptfs`
* `/home/$USER`
(https://askubuntu.com/questions/17332/how-can-i-move-an-encrypted-home-directory-to-another-partition recommends using rsync:
`sudo rsync -aVP /home/ /media/home/`)
Add the intended mountpoints for the new partitions
Get the partition UUIDs with sudo blkid
In /etc/fstab add lines similar to the one of the Linux partition for the new partitions, only changing the UUID values and desired Mountpoints:
Home mount on /home
Data mount on /mnt/data
For swap, replace the swapfile reference with the relevant UUID={value}.
Enable Hibernation (LinuxMint 21.4 and the matching Ubuntu apparently disabled this)
Prepare the Swap partition for Hibernate resume
Power management/Suspend and hibernate - ArchWiki says that the value in /sys/power/image_size is good estimate for the needed swap space size to hibernate. My freshly installed Linux Mint said: 6307745792
or about 6 GB.
Get the UUID of the Swap Partition: sudo blkid
In /etc/default/grubmodify: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nodmraid"
to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nodmraid resume=uuid=..."
using the found blkid value after uuid=
When the file opens, copy and paste the following content into the file and save it:
[Re-enable hibernate by default in upower]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes
[Re-enable hibernate by default in logind]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate;org.freedesktop.login1.handle-hibernate-key;org.freedesktop.login1;org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate-multiple-sessions;org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate-ignore-inhibit
ResultActive=yes
For KDE and the default GNOME Desktop, there’s a few steps more to do.
Look in the web URL above after “For KDE user, try this one …”.
