Hello everybody! I have been lurking on this forum for a few weeks now and I am inching closer and closer to buying the DIY edition of this laptop. That said, I want to make sure that I know what I’m getting into. I would like to use either Fedora or Ubuntu on the laptop. I have a few questions about the experiences people have had with this setup.
How is the battery life in these distros? I am hoping to get at least 5 hours while programming, web browsing, and watching videos here and there. I’ve seen people mention TLP & Powertop, but I haven’t seen any aggregated averages of people’s results with those tools.
Is scaling ok in both of these? I saw the post about scaling with xrandr in Elementary OS. It seems good to me, but I am wondering if anybody has had any specific issues. On my current machine, alacritty, Typora, and some web pages look like absolute garbage with font scaling, Ubuntu’s scaling, or both. I have a 1440p external monitor as well and that can sometimes look bad as well unless I undo some of the scaling I apply when using the integrated display.
How hot is the deck when running a linux distro vs windows? My current machine is warmer, but not as bad as some I’ve seen.
Sorry if answers to all of these exist here and there in the forum already. I have done lots of searching and browsing and couldn’t find clear answers or aggregated results.
I get close maybe 6-8 hr on arch under gnome with my own configs. I program, web browse, and do some light video watching.
Scaling is pretty good on most programs. Electron based ones need a (currently beta) launch flag. Haven’t noticed any issues on all but one (postman, which crashes with the flag). I’m under Wayland with fractional scaling enabled, for reference.
Java based programs don’t have a fix. So all JetBrain IDEs look a little blurry.
Top of the laptop gets “slightly warm” during my use.
I’m getting close to 5 hours, depending on what I’m doing / how hard I’m pushing docker. I’ve not done any specific power tweaking. I’d say it’s between 4-5 hours on average for me.
I’d say everything you’ve asked is a positive here. You will get 5 hours minimum on a Linux distro and this is without doing anything. (not even installing and using powertop or tlp)
This forum is a witness to it, but the Framework laptop runs pretty much any modern Linux distro.
As for the temps, mine stays around 39-42C. That is with 14 programs open (including a browser with 18 tabs, WSL2 Ubuntu running, and VMWare Workstation running RHEL) across 5 workspaces on Windows 10.
When I was running Ubuntu or Fedora before I was seeing the same temps.
It should be noted that I disable turbo boosting just because I don’t need the thermal envelope being pushed just for routine computing. I have noticed that it really does help manage the temps.
That said if you are using it on your lap it does get warm, but not unbearable.
It is a near perfect laptop that is just getting better and better.