That’s really cool. A meta-distribution that makes use of all the others - even Raspbian.
Your comment prompted me to do some reading on the topic and I saw many reasons to avoid Systemd and opt for OpenRC instead.
So because of your comment I’ll try OpenRC distros instead and that “avoid systemd” option on distrochooser was helpful. 
Thanks.
I honestly don’t understand the hesitation around systemd. I use it without problem. I’m not left wanting for anything, and systemd supports newer tech better and faster.
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After being on Debian based distros for a while on other computers, I ended up trying Fedora 35 after trying those same distros on this machine and having issues. I love it! The experience on the Gnome variant has been smooth and fairly problem free compared to my experiences running PopOS/Ubuntu/eOS on this laptop.
Fractional scaling actually works fairly well under Wayland, all the hardware worked out of the box (wifi, fingerprint reader, etc), and all the software I’ve needed has been readily available. Been really stable overall!
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After having used Ubuntu, and later Manjaro, for years, I finally used my Framework to plunge into a pure Arch Install with BTRFS as the filesystem and KDE Plasma for the DE.
Time will tell if that’s what I stick with, but it’s gonna be a hard sell to give up pacman. I’m loving it so far.
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The AUR is a bad sucker, too - I enjoyed building an Arch setup in the past. For now, I’m happy on Fedora - but it is nice to know that folks are happy on arch with the Frame, too. Nice.
pAULIE42o
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Manjaro KDE. The best arch distribution ever. I tried Fedora 34 but I found installing software is very inconvenient. In Manjaro most applications can be installed form aur which saves me lots of time. However the fingerprint reader does not work under Manjaro. It works out of box in Fedora 34 though.
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Is this an issue with KDE integration? Gnome Manjaro works great for me. Installed latest libfprint from AUR and it just worked.
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I had some issues building the libfingerprint software under Kubuntu with the normal instructions on the Ubuntu how-to messages posted here; that kinda pushed me to checkout Fedora - which was much easier and even tho you had to jiggle it a little bit, I think anyone could get all features working properly under Fedora.
After, I WAS able to build the libfingerprint under Kubuntu - but I’m really enjoying Fedora so I’m gonna give it a shot at production for 6 months. I like it. Furthermore, I think that Fedora 35 will support the Frame.work even more…
Another thing, I was so worried about that fingerprint and… like always; it sucks anyway. 
Thats not the frames fault, finger print readers always suck under Linux. You don’t even really need it.
pAULIE42o
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/s
So I have been using Manjaro for a long time and before that Arch. I’ve always used Gnome. For the most part, everything was easy to get working. However I have also tried Pop OS and Ubuntu.
I got into a daily workflow where I will clamshell during the day in a vertical stand and use a dock and grab and go as needed. In this case I was excited to get a thunderbolt 4 dock and play with it. Regardless of which Linux distro I’ve tried none of them have handled clamshell / a thunderbolt dock / suspending well at all.
Sometimes it comes back, other times it doesn’t. Sometimes it comes back and triggers a reboot. Sometimes it will come back but the mouse and keyboard do not work for GDM. However I can switch to a TTY and login but then when I try to sudo it will hang.
The machine will not boot if the thunderbolt dock is plugged in so then you have to open it, unplug, reboot, wait for it to boot, plug the dock back in, hope it lasts through a couple of suspends.
It has been really frustrating so far.
Things seem to work better on Windows (as much as I hate to say it). The machine will still not boot if the dock is plugged in but at least it wakes up more often.
I ended up putting Windows on the internal 2TB SSD and putting Manjaro on the 1TB USB however I wish I didn’t need to.
I’m having another weird error in Manjaro where sometimes the keyboard will stop working when I type and nothing will show, but then every time I click into a text box those characters will be there but they can’t be deleted… It’s so weird.
Anyway this has been my Linux experience so far.
I will say though I had no issues getting anything to work under Manjaro. Bluetooth and the fingerprint reader both work great. The only thing I ended up changing was the fingerprint timeout for sudo before it prompts for a password.
Ubuntu 20.04.3. Works fairly well out of the box so far. Did the WiFi, deep sleep workarounds.
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I’m still waiting for my Batch 4 machine, but I’ve decided to install Manjaro Xfce when it arrives.
I’ve used Windows and Linux interchangeably since 2005. From 2005-2008, I used SUSE because it was the only distro that seemed to support my old laptop hardware out-of-the-box. From 2015-2017, I used Arch (really ArchBang). I’ve also used Debian and RHEL on servers. I was playing with a Lubuntu virtual machine for the past couple of years, and I was planning to put that on my Framework, but then I saw people talking about Manjaro. I gave Manjaro a try (both virtual machine and live USB) over the past few weeks and I’m impressed enough to make the switch.
Exactly, the merge request has been stalled for a year.
I think Iʼll try out Manjaro Gnome when I get my Framework.
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UGH - I read the rest of your post and this kinda stinks… I’ve also thought about a desktop setup but haven’t done anything with it yet. I was thinking a Thunderbolt HUB would work best - but I guess not. 
I’m hoping that Fedora 35 continues to support the Frame.work better, and that time will iron out some more of the Frame issues.
Suck.
pAULIE42o
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/s
Yea it’s been pretty frustrating. I think some of the thunderbolt / wake up issue fixes are going to have to come from BIOS updates. The others seem to be OS specific so they will have to come from Manjaro / Linux fixes.
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This is the reason I switched to GNOME for my framework 
what’s sad is that it’s been nearly ready all that time
@Eric_Putney I may end up switching to Gnome too for that as well as some Wayland issues. A shame since I’m liking KDE a lot.
I wonder if there’s a way to amplify that PR. I know it’s waiting on other dependencies, but there’s dozens of us waiting to use the fingerprint reader on our Frameworks under KDE.
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Learning Arch in a VM while waiting for my Framework.
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I’ve used GalliumOS on Chromebooks in the past, and currently I’m using Brunch (ChromeOS tweaked to run on non-Chromebooks), but when I had to use “other” Linux, I always liked to grab the cmt touchpad configs from ChromeOS/GalliumOS that I think use libgesture? Google put it together and it works amazingly well for most gestures, and honestly the reason I love ChromeOS is they have simpler gestures that work mostly the way you would expect, not 100s of gestures that you can fiddle with to “open left window 2/3 of the screen and hit play…”
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I know my statement won’t be helpful, but:
Do remember that, in my instance anyway, there’s all this fuss to getting the fingerprinter to work - and when you do get it going… Linux/fingerprint readers don’t exactly work awesome together anyway. I wanted it too, and got it working - but now I’m wanting to disable it fully. Lol. Or ONLY use for unlocking at the Lock Screen. All the sudo fingerprint pop-ups are annoying and slower IMO.
Just a thought - but I know you’ll still want to get it working. Same as me.
pAULIE42o
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/s
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