Which Linux distribution do you want to use on your Framework Laptop?

I just ordered. I’ll test it with rhel8, almalinux and rocky.

Voted for Debian, however using Mint LMDE (debian based Mint) tweaked to run bullseye testing. Note, my delivery is scheduled for October, sorry no practical advice.

Manjaro and Arch will be my choice. But Manjaro’s default kernel is 5.13 which has been said not supporting the wifi card.

I want to use my framework as a client and manager for Nvidia Jetson NX and AGX devices.

  • The SDK manager only runs on ubuntu 18.04 to date (8/2/2021) so I’d like that on the framework
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Arch for my real answer, but I’ll probably toss on Qubes for a lark.

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I plan on Pop_OS as main distribution, but also will install Arch or Manjaro.

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I plan on using ParrotOS as my main distro, but keeping Ubuntu on a storage expansion card as a kind of guest os, if anyone else needs to use my laptop. At the moment, I’m waiting for a german keyboard layout before I order, so no practical feedback rn.

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For those tracking this thread still,

I did end up testing Pop!_OS 21.04 with the COSMIC desktop and LUKS encryption - works flawlessly.

I also did a live test with Manjaro KDE latest - everything also worked without a hitch!

I had a DIY edition shipped - the RAM, storage, and WiFi card only took 20 minutes to put in - another 10 for OS install. I am absolutely in love with this laptop! The keyboard is great, the touchpad fantastic. If you’re on edge about buying this - do it. Just buy it.

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I’ve got Rocky Linux up and running on mine. Not convinced it is stable yet. The wifi worked OOB which surprised me, but I guess thats backporting for ya (the ax210 on kernel 4.18). I had a tab freeze a few times, and it has also on one occasion failed to resume from suspend-to-ram. I think it runs pretty hot as well, but I have it sitting on a blanket, so perhaps not a fair test.

maybe we should argue emacs vs vi. waste of time.

is there a narrow forum for us debian heads? i am particularly worried about the wifi driver and any other pitfalls. mine is in the september batch; so not panicked yet

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is there a narrow forum for us debian heads? i am particularly worried about the wifi driver and any other pitfalls. mine is in the september batch; so not panicked yet

No. there is no narrow forum (thread) for Debian right now as far as I know, though there is a thread for Debian based Linux and Ubuntu.

I’d love for the Qubes team to get their hands on a device for certification. This would be a perfect Qubes device!

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Qubes certification is probably a lot of work. I understand the only reason they could certify the Thinkpad is because someone figured out how to use a JTAG connector to replace the BIOS with CoreBoot and wipe Intel’s management engine, not that those are bad ideas for anyone who doesn’t trust Intel.

Is there a single distro that is or will be “recommended?” I presume one of these (and frankly I assume Ubuntu long term), but I want to see if the framework teams has plans to “officially” recommend any distros.

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We don’t have an official recommendation at the moment, but based on the feedback we’ve seen so far, Fedora 34 Respins or Fedora 34 with all packages updated likely have the most complete support.

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I am probably going to use CentOS8 or Kali. I was honestly surprised that CentOS did not make the list.

@Russell_Kerr CentOS8 is going EOL at the end of this year. Rocky Linux is the community replacement. I can confirm that it works quite nicely on FW, even the ax210 wifi card. Only thing is that it doesn’t have secure boot signatures from microsoft yet, so you’ll need to turn that off in the BIOS.

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CentOS8 is going EOL at the end of this year. Rocky Linux is the community replacement.

As other alternatives of CentOS 8, there are also CentOS 8 Stream and AlmaLinux.

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Alma Linux looks interesting. I’ll say, however, CentOS Stream is not an alternative to CentOS. I would describe it as “Fedora, but with Arch Linux’s continuous releases, but not quite because major releases require full reinstallation.”

@Vince_Hodges same here, I’ve heard great things about Solus. I’ll be giving it a spin once the laptop comes in