Framework. I’ve run Debian, Fedora and for a while now NixOS, all of which have worked flawlessly.
I did have to replace the heatsink/fan part on mine because the fan bearing started clicking, but I’m sure that was just a first generation product issue (I was one of the first batches). I was glad to be able to do the replacement myself at relatively low cost and the process couldn’t have been easier (took about 30 minutes).
My previous machine was a 2013-ish ThinkPad X series and the Framework absolutely blows it out of the water. I’m looking forward to upgrading mine to a Ryzen motherboard sometime in the not so distant future.
Influence is a curse in today’s world. I’ve made this final selection of brands based on personal choice and for reasons exposed in this post. But it’s all personal so you may disagree with some/all candidates and that’s perfectly fine. I’ve posted here to actually collect as much opinions as possible so thanks for sharing yours.
Companies always find a way to justify for higher price to sell you not that good hardware or to overprice their stuff for non sense reasons. As anyone else (except fan boys of any given brand) I’m running away from that. In my personal views, companies on this list have reasonable offers considering their history, clients pool, philosophy…
Framework is maybe the best deal here because it has good price and all parts of their machines are replaceable. And again, prices for the parts are fair. So in the long run, users may be winners if the company doesn’t crash. If it does then it won’t be worth than having bought from another company. With all the options to build the laptop you want for your needs it really make me feel like customizing my Linux system but from a hardware standpoint. It’s a big plus for me to pay only for what I want/need and with them you can go even further by physically positioning your ports on the fly. That’s an unseen degree of freedom and it has real world applications.
For an easy GUI way to find these, you can go to the
bottom-left menu > administration > system reports
Then go to the System Information tab.
You should have the kernel i.e. 6.3.0-39-generic at the top
Scroll down, and under network you should have something like Device-1 Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 - that’ll be the WiFi card.
In case you didn’t know, the Kernel contains drivers for things like WiFi and other devices.
An older kernel tends to be more stable (the bugs have been fixed) - but it cannot contain the drivers for devices that didn’t exist at the time.
By default, Mint is likely using the kernel 5.15, from 2022. If your WiFi device is newer than 2022, it won’t work yet. However, you can install a newer kernel (mine, above is 6.3.0). I had to do this to get the WiFi working on my Thinkpad p14s. This is quite simple and safe to do, and completely reversible if there are problems.
There’s a chance if the WiFi card is particularly new or obscure, that it won’t work at all currently. We’re waiting on the company, or more likely a talented volunteer, to write the drivers.
In this case, you may need to buy a USB WiFi adapter, for example TP-Link USB Wifi. I had to do this with my Dad’s laptop recently. Within the next year, he probably won’t need it anymore, as the drivers for the internal one will likely exist.
I’ve never tried to run multiseat the way you do here.
I do however succesfully run multiple computers in one chassi using kvm/qemu with pci-e physical passthrough on gpu and usb controller to my virtual fedora gaming machine (using vfio drivers in the host). Definitely more overhead than multiseat but I do enjoy the easy backup and restore I have on my gaming machine.
Level1techs.com has a ton of good information if you’re interested in virtualizing instead, such as forum.level1techs.com/t/…/119639
I’ve had a framework for 2 years now. It’s run fedora, manjaro (arch based) and Debian with no major issues. Manjaro had some problems with KDE and the high DPI screen. Sometimes the scaling was inconsistent between apps. Fedora just works.
Only hardware issue is the battery life is just not that great. And the trackpad doesn’t always work property, but I think that was a first generation issue that’s been resolved since.
I’m going to add my +1 for framework, I got the batch 5 original framework 13 with pop os on it and a windows 10 copy on a 250gb expansion card. Its been my main work and play laptop and I enen replaced the main chassis after it got smashed (long story) involving the sidewalk. Anyway I love what framework is doing and the decision has arguably already paid off within these last two years.
Don’t know if you plan to use another Arch-based distro on this laptop in the future but I came across this page which has some tips to adjust the Framework 13 including one that may be related to what you mention. They recommend to use 1,5 scaling factor. More details can be found here.
The laptop’s battery during these days would discharge and charge, slowly degrading the battery because only the last ~ 20% would be charged and discharged.
How, tho? Sounds like what we had for e.g. NiCd batteries (memory effect) but do not have for li-{ion,poly} ones.
Also, why would the laptop discharge the battery with ac attached? Sounds weird to me
Lithium-ion batteries these days do not have a memory effect, but will degrade when kept at 100% charge because the internal composition of chemicals will change, destroying the battery in the process. The ideal charge is between 20% and 80%. With (better) battery charge control you can extend the design capacity (the maximum charge the battery can hold when new) and lifespan. With AC attached, the battery will discharge but it will be charged when the minimum charge level is reached.
Huh, apparently some vendors kinda do it themselves (not sure if always, tho) at least for the lower bound: cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/voltage_min_design reports 10.8v for a 3s battery which is about 3.6v per cell instead of 3.2. Also the upper limit is uncertain so far
I don’t really understand that argument, and I want someone to correct me:
If you were keeping your battery at the ideal charge (i.e. 20% to 80%) that means you are really only using 60% of your battery during its lifetime. I’ve been using my phone since July of 2021, always changing it to 100%, preferably only charging when it gets close to 0%. Using AccuBattery I get the battery stats and after 2 years and a half, the battery capacity is at 85%.
I still have 85% of usable battery, this is more than the 60% I’d get if I was using the battery ideally. So I don’t really get this argument about taking care of the battery cause it appears it would take a while before the battery is degraded enough to hold less charge than the recommended rate.
Stopping charge at 80% (and still going down near 0%) should give you roughly 4x the cycle life. So in theory doing that it would take about 8 years to hit the same 85% usable level.
85% left after 2.5 years is a high rate of wear, due to phones really pushing as much as they can into the battery to have longer run times.
85% after 2.5 years is not good. My car battery has guarante of 80% capacity after 6 years. 20% of range is a significant difference so I take car of my battery and don’t charge it above 80% if not needed. It’s the same with laptops. Current models can easily last 5-10 years but having only 50% of capacity after that time would be a problem. Sure, if you’re intending to throw it out after 3 years it doesn’t really matter but if you want to use it for as long as possible you definitely should take care of the battery. It’s pretty much the only part that degrades (except maybe keyboard).
Was this app removed from flathub¿? I wanted to try this after reading about it but can’t find it on flathub. The flathub link given on the project gitlab page also leads to 404 page not found error
Reminds me of the fli4l project. Floppy ISDN for Linux. It used to be an entire Linux installation to use as a router that fit on a 3.5" floppy disc. I had it breath new life into an old 486 PC I had lying around.
Those are both things that a window manager doesnt really do. I havent used i3 much but ill try to point you in the right directions.
For caffeine, depending on your bar, i believe most of them have modules for that.
Then for locking/shutting down, you’d want to look at i3lock, xautolock, xidlehook, and probably many others. Can’t guide you to the right commands, but this forum thread seems to have a lot of the info you’re looking for: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208699
Thankyou. For locking i have i3lock but i havent got round to customising it yet so i still have the defaults and my bar is polybar which has a has some customisation. Ill see if i can find a caffeine moduke to add to it
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