Framework Laptop First Thoughts

 I mentioned recently that my Framework laptop would be arriving soon in this post about the storage and memory I had ordered.  

Although that was less than week ago, I have spent enough time playing with it to be able to give some pointers.

About the Operating System Selection

Being that I usually use OS X, and I like Debian/Ubuntu okay on the server side the OS X like Ubuntu based Elementary OS was a natural choice - but that's not what I used.

Basically, by switching from OS X to Linux, I lose access to most commercial apps (Things like Microsoft Office, Garmin Updaters, Kindle Reader, the Jira app, etc.), even as Apple and Microsoft expand their libraries by integrating iOS and Android respectively - but wait a minute!  Isn't Android Linux based?  In fact it is, but the user space is quite different from the average Linux desktop like Ubuntu or Fedora.  

There was an excellent Android distribution which had PC style window management and could run basically all Android apps fast on a PC, but it has two issues:

1. It is no longer developed

2. It could run only Android apps, not normal Linux apps.

I searched for how to efficiently run Android apps in desktop Linux and came up with two options:

1. AnBox

2. WayDroid

To put it simply, these are container based approaches, so that there is basically a separate distro set up that has the Android user space.  WayDroid is so called because it uses the WayLand window manager and is much more performant.

While I was waiting for my Framework, I spent a fair amount of time trying to get WayDroid running in Elementary without much luck.  Elementary OS 6 does not support Wayland.  So, for this reason, I decided to try Pop! OS on my Framework instead.  

Honestly, given how much Android software can expand your base of available applications, I think it should be installed and enabled by default on desktop distributions.

Unboxing and Hardware Setup

There's honestly not much to say here.  The laptop arrived, I opened it up with the included driver by undoing only a few screws.  I put the memory and SSD in the appropriate slots, and installed the WiFi module they included.  The WiFi module was the toughest part - which is not to say it was tough at all, the antenna cable plugs are just microscopic and finicky.  

Then I turned it on using the power button. This takes a while!  You need to plug in the power, and press the power button and wait a good 30 seconds or more.  I suspect they use the BIOS "Disconnect battery" option before they send it by mail, because this causes the same effect.

I installed the 4 modules I had ordered without too much trouble either.  Two USB-C, one USB A, one HDMI.  I may never use the HDMI port, but just in case...

Once you are in the BIOS, you should disable "Secure Boot" if you are using Linux.

Installing Pop! OS

I had downloaded Pop OS (the non-LTS version) to a Windows machine, and "burned" it to USB using Etcher.  (I did this on Windows because I discovered that Etcher has issues with burning from non-Admin accounts on OS X).

Upon booting my Framework from the USB stick, I received some message message about corruption, but then after a few minutes of scratching my head and thinking "but Etcher verified it...", I realized it must have been secure boot.  Sure enough, disabling Secure boot made it work fine.

A word of caution: To most of you reading this in English, this won't matter - but do not select Japanese in Pop! OS when installing.  It can get in a strange state after you reboot where you can't enter your login password correctly as it is stuck inputting Kana characters.  If you want Japanese, you can enable it later.

I installed Pop! OS from the USB stick onto the SSD and rebooted.  Surprisingly, it found my WiFi (and bluetooth) without issues.  I plugged in a USB C to Ethernet dongle I had purchased for my Macbook to see if that would work, and it worked fine as well.  

The touch pad worked fine, but only the "tap to click", not the "push down to click" option.  Interestingly, I have since noticed that on the GDM (login) screen, the reverse is true.  I don't care about this, as I only use tap to click.  Two finger scrolling and two finger right click works fine, and thankfully the asinine "natural" scrolling is not enabled by default.  Apple should seriously fire some people for coming up with that abomination of an idea.  

I was entertained that the Pop! Shop seems to be "borrowed" from the Elementary OS app store, though there are a lot more selections shown by default.  It would also seem that the same as Elementary 5, if you install Flatpack Apps, they only install for the current user.  (This has been changed in Elementary OS 6).  

Notifications: I really don't like the notifications in Pop! OS, they show up right in the center of the screen and stay there too long.  If you are trying to watch a video or something like that, they ca be quite annoying.

The dock is okay, and the virtual desktop implementation is okay.  These are Pop! OS things, though, not Framework specific.

The laptop seemed slow for the first day, but there is a good chance that this was caused by Resilio Sync synching all the stuff from my cluster of ARM based Qua Station NAS servers.  By the way, for anyone who says I should use SyncThing or similar, the functionality is not even close at this point in time.  

in fact, I didn't just install resilio sync, I have a string that I copy-paste into new machines that looks something like:

apt install -y mc htop nmap uptimed mosh dselect resilio-sync dssh avahi ...

and installs the stuff I usually want on Linux machines in one go.

One thing I noticed right away is that even after making sure Avahi was installed, things like ssh quastation0.local don't work (even though they worked on WSL Ubuntu and OS X), so there is something wrong with the DNS configuration.  Looking at /etc/resolve.conf shows that is is autogenerated, normally I remove all traces of anything like network manager and other things that go bump in the light, but in this case I will try to work with them since it is a desktop distro.  To be continued on the desktop front.  

Other Tweaks

Japanese IME Support

In Elementary OS, you go to Control Panel -> Languages -> Keyboard -> Input sources

The input system is separate from the keyboard layout because, well... those are different things.   

This is an area where the control panel is very different in Pop! OS, and I eventually found out that I had to manually install mozc you have to add another "Keyboard" which uses that in order to get Japanese input working.

There are parts of the Pop! OS GUI that show in English even if you are logged in using Japanese - again they are a US based company who originally made the distro just for their own machines, with probably not a lot of users in Japan yet.  

About Screen Resolution

There is a post on the Framework Community page from the Elementary OS people saying that they recommend adding a new fake 3000 x yyyy resolution so that you can select that and then select HiDPI and get it to scale down from that resolution to your actual one, or something like that.  

The idea is that fractional scaling is as much of a dumpster fire on Linux as it is on Windows, so it is better to take the OS X Retina approach and either "do it" or "don't do it", hence setting to 100% or 200% at the user level.  Their post claims that with HiDPI on, everything is too big, and with HiDPI off, everything is too small.  Hence, to get an in-between option without fractional scaling, they decided to use a fake resolution and HiDPI mode at 200%.  

Okay, that's all fine, but the display looks fine to me out of the box.  Nothing seems to be huge or cramped.  A few apps, such as Steam and DaVinci Resolve do show up way too small, because presumably they don't know about HiDPI.  I don't know if this is just me being less picky, or if Pop! OS and Elementary actually handle the resolution differently somehow and so look different out of the box.  

By the way, DaVinci doesn't work for me, but they officially only support Fedora, so not a huge surprise.  Hopefully they will change that to Flatpack sometime soon.  

I had heard that the laptop doesn't go into deep sleep mode by default, and so it burns up a fair amount of battery while sleeping.  After a few moments of Google searches, I was able to change this behavior quite easily.  It should be in the GUI control panel, though!

Switching to Wayland

This was also a quick and easy change, but the hardest part was figuring out how to actually use it.  There is a very small gear icon on the lower right-hand corner of the screen in GDM.  From there you can select "Pop Wayland" once it is enabled by editing the appropriate configuration file.  

Wayland just feels much faster, but with occasional glitches while scrolling in Chrome, etc.  

Playing with WayDroid

This was easier than I expected, with a few minor hiccups.  Getting WayDroid up and running was easy, but it did not include the Google Play store or Google Play Services.  Getting those installed took a little more time.  The performance is very good, but at the moment there are three issues I face:

1. The scrolling is super fast/slow.  Like it won't move until it does and then it suddenly moves 10 pages.  It also uses the "natural" direction, which makes some sense, since it was designed for a touch screen originally.  

2. It seems ARM emulation is not working for me, which means some apps may not install or run at all.  (Most do, though: For example, I have Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, YouTube, and some others).

3. The Multi-window mode does not work for me.  Trying to use it results in freezing near the end of the "phone" boot-up for some reason.  

Anyway I have it basically working, and it is useful to me right now.  For apps that exist for Linux basically I will use the Linux version, where there is only an Android version I can use that or the web version if there is one.    

Touch Pad and Sleep

Some people have reported that after deep sleep, the touch pad doesn't work, or doesn't work well.  In my case, it worked, but the two finger scrolling stopped working.  A little investigation with the acceleration speed settings in the control panel proved that this was due to the touchpad being recognized as a mouse instead of a touchpad after waking up from sleep.  

I turned off the Mouse emulation in the BIOS, which seems to have solved that problem entirely.  

Fingerprint Reader

This does not work out of the box.  There are some guides on how to get this working, which I tried, but still did not succeed.  

Basically, you have to download, compile, and install the latest versions of fprintd and libfprint.  This is the background service that waits for fingerprint reading events and the library that actually knows how to read them.  Why do you have to do this?  Because the versions included with most distributions are too old and do not know about the relatively new hardware used in the Framework PC.  

Once these are compiled and installed, you need to change a PAM setting to enable it to use fingerprint reading as a way to authenticate.

Then you have to restart some services or reboot for all of this to take effect.  

After I rebooted, the login screen got super slow, the authentication button in the control panel got super slow, and sudo got very slow.  They were all taking over 20 seconds before asking me for my password, because they were somehow having an issue with the fingerprint reader.

Taking a look, the fprintd did not start up properly.  

If I install the Debian package with apt, then of course it starts, but it's the old one that won't work.  

I did some searching and apparently the issue is caused by a regression in the libgusb library.  That's enough fun for me, I'll wait until it is officially supported by Ubuntu or Pop! OS.  

Getting back into the BIOS

The BIOS on this machine is surprisingly difficult to get into!

First of all they have the timeout set to zero by default.  There is also no text boot screen displayed by default.  Annoyingly, if you do turn on the full display, there is still not a count-down like "Press F1 in 5..4..3..2..1..", and there is actually a bug that prevents the boot device selection from working.  

Honestly the best way is to use this command when shutting down:

systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

This reminds me a bit of the similar option in VMWare.

There is a newer beta version of the BIOS, but... it's a beta version, and it can only be installed via Windows at the moment.  

Overall Impression and Conclusion

First of all the hardware looks reasonably nice, and feels high quality.  

The keyboard also feels nice to type on, better than my 2019 16 inch Macbook Pro.  (The MacBook is a bit more rattly, whereas the Framework is slightly spongy).  

As for the screen, I don't mind the 3:2 aspect ratio, but I don't love it either.  I would just arrange my desktop differently to accommodate the different.  I think for media use, wide-screen is better, but for average office work, the 3:2 (or even portrait!) may be better.  

I would rather have seen an i9 chip with a 4K OLED screen, but we know that would have added to the cost and made the battery life worse. 

I could also rather have a larger touch pad.  

The battery life is apparently not great even in Windows, and is worse in Linux.  Part of this is just based on the fact that it is using an Intel chipset.  There is just no way to get M1 Mac level of performance from Intel chips.  Apple knew that, and that is why they made the switch.  Apple won't sell the M1 chips to other manufacturers, and nobody else is really producing similarly powerful and cheap ARM chips at the moment.  Samsung or Qualcomm might come out with something soon, and that would be fantastic, but at the moment, you have to choose speed+battery life with no upgrade or repair path or vice versa.  System 76 has been working on ARM machines for a while, but with no major modern releases because there has not been a generic ARM chip available with the required specs.  

State of Desktop Linux

Hardware Compatibility

For the most part, hardware compatibility is going to be determined by the drivers in the operating system.  In some cases, Linux is actually better, for example my Logicool touch pad works better in Linux out of the box than it does with Windows.  The Windows drivers are out of date and finicky, the Linux drivers work perfectly.  For other things like the Frameworks built-in fingerprint sensor, you need a bleeding edge setup to use it in Linux.

The Memory and SSD follow industry standards, so compatibility should be essentially perfect, but bear in mind that using socketed RAM does preclude LPDDR4 at the moment, which means there is a trade-off with battery life.

I have tested my YubiKey security devices, my cheapo HDMI monitor, and external SSD devices.  All of these work as expected, which is hardly surprising.  

I have read on the forums that headsets with microphones are not working out of the box on some versions of Linux, but it seems to be a very easy fix.  

I have not tried connecting BlueTooth devices, but I assume they will work since the Bluetooth sectin of the control panels shows a listing of devices.  

I tested my Philips 499P 19 inch 5k monitor with the USB input and it works without issue out of the box.  (Which is better than the support on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which used to support it until a BIOS "upgrade" disabled the 5k resolution), or my 16 inch Macbook, where I had to download SwitchResX to force OS X to recognize the monitor properly.  

Who would I recommend a Framework Laptop to?

Honestly? Everyone.  

Don't get me wrong, some people will buy a Mac because they want the sweet combination of power and battery life that the M1 models offer, or they just love Mac OS.  Some people will want to buy a Thinkpad to get the damned TrackPoint device, and some people will want to by a Surface for the touch screen, etc. - but for your average user, a Framework Laptop (Running Linux or Windows) will work just fine.  

They might not see a huge benefit of the Framework at first, but one day when they crack the screen and the repair bill is $200 instead of $800, they will be happy they followed your advice.  

In a few years when they are running out of space or the system feels sluggish, you will be able to remind them of the option to upgrade RAM, slap in a USB storage module, or even upgrade the SSD without buying a whole new laptop.  

When they spill coffee or soda into their computer and the keyboard or motherboard is destroyed, it'll be possible to swap out those parts for much less than the cost of a new PC.  

When their toddler pries off some of the keys with a fork, you can buy a new keyboard for $40.  

Basically, there are very few people who wouldn't benefit from owning a Framework laptop.  

Common Complaints

So people will never be satisfied, and here are some common complaints/requests I have seen:

1. Please add a ThinkPad style TrackPoint, please?  No offense, but the number of people who use the TrackPoints is fairly small from what I have seen.  Everyone at my company uses a ThinkPad and almost every person always has a mouse plugged in.  I am one of the few people who actually does use the TrackPoint - and you know why?  Because the touch pad is so damned awful!  that, and I have been using Thinkpads on and off for over 20 years.  Most people find the TrackPoint a pain and the TouchPad awful, and so they plug in an external device.  The TrackPoint's original reason for existing was really for machines that did not have enough space for a touch pad, like the ThinkPad 701c (which I used for about 3 years).  It was ingenius, and it was cool!  But it was not without its' issues, and it still isn't today.  Do you ever have that issue where the mouse starts dragging towards one side os the screen? Of course you do, everyone does.  You just need to take a break and wait for a few minutes until it stops.  That has happened occasionally on every ThinkPad I have had the misfortune of using.  People grow to like the TrackPoint much like kidnap victims grow to love their captors. It's just sick, and they need to be enlightened.  The TrackPoint hasn't really evolved over the years either.  Sont created an optical version of it for their Type P laptop, but I haven't seen any more of those since.  Comparing a TrackPoint to a modern TouchPad is like comparing a Ford Model T to a Tesla Roadster.  You can easily zoom in and out, move windows, click and drag without actually clicking, rotate objects, and more easily and effortlessly with a touch pad.  Whenever I am stuck using a computer without one I feel like I am back in the stone age of computing...."I want to zoom in.. now let's see.. Menu... Display... Zoom... 120% is that big enough? Not Quite.  Menu... Display... Zoom.. 130%..."

Even people who love the Thinkpads and the Trackpoint are lamenting the drop in quality since Lenovo took over, and even IBM has switched to using.... Macs!... with their big touch pads.  I know at least 1 person who quit IBM over this, but in general user satisfaction has gone up, which may be in part due to having decent touch pads.  

I understand you want what you want, but Framework's mission is to make repairable PCs, not to cater to every fetish.  the good news is that by making things easily replaceable, they are making it easy for one of you to come up with a design with a trackpoint that at least 10 people will buy.

2. I want POWER!! Give me a 2 inch thick laptop with 5.25 desktop hard drives, a dedicated GPU, and extra toppings.  I'm sure you do, but those are already available from a number of vendors, and tend to be more reparable than ultrabooks already.  Remember, Framework's mission is to show that they can build a small and light PC that is also reparable.  Apple and others have been saying for years "We can't make it thin and also have removable RAM or SSD...", and Framework is trying to prove them wrong.  Nobody doubts that you can have removable RAM in a 2 inch thick machine.  Also, Framework is just getting started which means they need to sell the most popular form factor, which is a 13 inch Ultrabook.  I personally would like to see a 17 inch model with like 5 M.2 slots and a more powerful processor, and a 10 inch model perfect for just always keeping in my bag, but neither of those are going to be created soon because Framework needs to focus on getting economy of scale with their existing machines.  Bear in mind the Framework is not designed to be gimmicky, it isn't for hobbyists, it is designed to be a mass market computer so that