Framework Laptop, PopOS and Hardware Compatibility

 I've had my framework laptop for a few months now, and had the opportunity to try it out with various hardware.  Most everything has worked well out of the box.

Printer

The first item to mention would be my Epson EcoTank printer.  For those who don't know, the Eco Tank is about the only InkJet printer that doesn't try to rip you off.  Instead of an artificially cheap printer with artificially cheap ink, the EcoTank is more expensive, but the ink is super cheap.  It has little tanks on the side, and the ink comes in bottles, not cartridges.  When you start to run low on ink, you buy a bottle of ink  for something like $10, and you fill up the little tank on the printer, much like you fill up a gas tank on a car.  You might think "Well, $10 for a single color of ink is around what I pay for a cartridge" - but bear in mind that instead of a picoliter or something of ink, the color bottles contain 70ml.  The black bottles contain 140ml.  

    To give you an idea of how long it lasts, I have been using this printer for over two years.  The printer came with a set of ink, and I bought one additional set.  When I bought the printer, I loaded it up with the original ink, and I just recently opened the other set to top it off.  

It's true that I won't print thousands of pages per month, but that is precisely why this printer is cheap for me.   If you don't use an ink jet printer for a few weeks, and then you try to use it, you will often run into a situation where you need to do print head cleaning multiple times.  This print head cleaning alone can use up an entire $60 cartridge!  With the EcoTank models, it's trivial.  

Anyway, I was able to print to this printer without any driver installation or other hassles in Pop OS, which did not surprise me given that it is a proper printer, not a "WinPrinter" or anything like that.  I have not tried the scanning capabilities in PopOS yet.  Since it is a network printer, I didn't expect to have any hardware compatibility issues.

Next up, I tried my Sony XM4 earphones.  Having never used bluetooth in Linux, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it worked just as easily as it does in OS X.   I put the headphones into pairing mode, went to the bluetooth section of the control panel, and added them.  From there, they work fine.  The only issue I have found is that sometimes the machine will connect to them even if they are in the case.  To prevent that from happening, I simply turn the bluetooth off.

Speaking of bluetooth devices, I have an Apple Magic Trackpad 2.  This works perfectly in Pop OS, although the default acceleration is a bit slow.  Unlike in OS X connecting it by USB does not automatically paid the bluetooth, but otherwise everything works.  (It can be used via bluetooth or USB, and the multi-gesture and two finger scrolling functions work fine).  

I also have a Logicool G913(Clicky)  keyboard, which works perfectly fine in PopOS.  I don't care about the silly RGB light function, but if you do, then you would need to see how that could be set up in Linux, if it can ta all.  (I set the backlight mine to be a solid color).

I am using this keyboard via the LightSpeed connection with the USB dongle, but I expect it should work via bluetooth as well, since everything else has.   

The special keys like the volume roll bar and mute button work fine.  I have not tried to configure the G1..G5 buttons in Linux any way.

I have an Apple Magic Keyboard with number pad, which I have not tested yet.

Display

Next up is the display.  This is where I  suspected I might run into some issues, given the glitches with other laptops I have with my Phillips 499P9 (all using USB-C for video):

1. Apple Late 2019 16 Inch Mabook Pro - Technically can work in 5K mode, but it doesn't work out of the box.  You need to install some additional utilities, or you will be stuck in a blurry interpolated 3k mode.    

2. Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 - This used to work until I upgraded the BIOS.  Apparently, 5K was not officially supported, and they decided to remove it via the BIOD update!  So now it can only do the blurry 3k mode.  I am not sure if the BIOS can be downgraded.  

3. Macbook Pro 13 Inch M1 - This woks fine out of boxwith 5kj  mode out of box.  

4. Framework - Happy to report that this works in 5k mode out of the box.  PopOS put it into 3k mode by default, but fixing it required only going to the control panel and changing the resolution.  No other tinkering required.  

This monitor has built in audio, which also functions in Pop OS on the Framework, though I had to select it in the control panel.

The monitor can supply power to the laptop, which seems to work without issue, as the laptop has stayed at 100% while plugged into the monitor and used for days.  

The monitor also has a built in Web Cam.  While I never actually use this, I decided to test it anyway, in case anyone is interested.  I used the "Cheese" application to test it, and it does work, but it actually shows up as two different cameras.  One works normally as you would expect.  The other one is Infrared or something, and shows a strange black and white image.  (I think this is for use with Biometric login).  

The USB Hub built into the monitor also works fine.  

Audio

As mentioned above, Bluetooth Audio and audio on my monitor works fine.  

I also have A Sound Blaster Katana X, which I tested using USB audio without issues.  This of course makes sense, as it is a common standard. 

Other?

Probably the biggest area where I expect weakness at the moment is my Garmin 3D ccamera.  The Virb Edit software for Windows and OS X is not available for Linux.  While there are a variety of video editing packages for Linux, the 3D video has to be stitched first, and most video editing software doesn't know about 3D video.   

Chargers

So far, I have used several different USB-C chargers, but mainly Apple Macbook Pro Chargers, without issue.