Got one here, AMA!
Which linux distro did you install and have you had any issues?
Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
31–40 of 105 posts
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#32It's been good for me; I think it'll be great soon. AMD support on Linux is the biggest issue. The upgrade experience from the Intel 12th gen to a Ryzen 5 took about a half-hour, doing only the mainboard and no display or hinge upgrades, and I was already familiar with the internals from assembling it as a DIY. It's not trivially easy, and there were a few frustrating moments that aren't unique to the Framework (ok,…
>> The weird power supply limitations for using the board standalone, requiring at least a 100W supply for still less than full performance unless any battery is attached, also limits the flexibility What? I've been thinking about a VISA mounted PC on the back of my TV. This board seems like a great idea, but 100W for a laptop board? Why? Are there some transients that need more than some caps can supply?
There are community threads with details — there are more things to worry about than just the power supply, but it's the biggest and weirdest one. The AMD boards also don't ship with a RTC battery for regulatory reasons, and they use a two-pin connector instead of a bare coin cell. There are further port limitations for connecting a display when no OS is installed or the mainboard wasn't initialized in the laptop case.
https://community.frame.work/t/recommended-watts-for-amd-coo...
https://community.frame.work/t/resolved-mainboard-standalone...
https://community.frame.work/t/amd-board-solely-in-the-coole...
The Intel boards also recommended 100W if there's no battery; the AMD issue is that _even with_ a 100W supply, performance is capped, and with a smaller power supply you might not be able to boot at all.
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#33I'm in batch 8 for one of these and simply can not wait to get to start using it (my current T460s has really started feeling slow in the last year).
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#34At the risk of sounding negative I have to dissent. Linux on the Framework is great * if* you use GNOME or KDE. Those two DE's specifically support Fractional scaling in Wayland the best I've been using XFCE for the better part of 15 years meanwhile. Its Wayland support is a permanent unfortunate "work-in-progress" (apparently they only have two full-time developers for the whole project?) and I'd assume many other l…
Agreed. I struggled a bit with XFCE on my Framework for a few months before switching to GNOME, largely because Framework's display size is best with fractional scaling. 100% made everything too small, and I could work with 200% and some tweaks (although some applications didn't play nicely at all), but 175% or 150% is perfect. Their choice of display size is one reason (among several) why Framework is really not Linux-first.
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#35Got one here, AMA!
Do the brightness keys on the keyboard work? What's the battery drain like when the laptop is asleep?
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#36Got one here, AMA!
Do the brightness keys on the keyboard work? What's the battery drain like when the laptop is asleep?
Yes they work (plasma 5 KDE on arch). On the 55Wh battery with a 7840U, it loses 2-3% per hour when asleep, so I set up suspend-then-hibernate after an hour (though setting that up was a pain in itself).
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#37It's been good for me; I think it'll be great soon. AMD support on Linux is the biggest issue. The upgrade experience from the Intel 12th gen to a Ryzen 5 took about a half-hour, doing only the mainboard and no display or hinge upgrades, and I was already familiar with the internals from assembling it as a DIY. It's not trivially easy, and there were a few frustrating moments that aren't unique to the Framework (ok,…
I currently have a 12th Gen Intel Framework. How much of an improvement in everyday use do you see?
Most of the improvement is in gaming and GPU-intensive work, which is why I upgraded. Baldur's Gate 3 via Steam/Proton at 1240p went from ~30 fps with settings cranked down on Intel to 40-60 at high/ultra.
I didn't upgrade the battery and the battery life is similar (as in, not great; about 4-5 hours of coding while occasionally maxing all cores, 2 hours or less of sustained gaming), but it's also hard to judge because of all the power/wake problems while in sleep. I've gotten in the habit of just shutting it down instead.
Blender was "usable" on Intel but I can work comfortably with much bigger scenes on the AMD board. I had 32GB RAM on both boards, going from DDR4 to DDR5 by necessity.
Anecdotally, non-GPU single/multi-core stuff (for me, typically GIS-related functions) feels better but not by as huge of a leap.
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#38It's been good for me; I think it'll be great soon. AMD support on Linux is the biggest issue. The upgrade experience from the Intel 12th gen to a Ryzen 5 took about a half-hour, doing only the mainboard and no display or hinge upgrades, and I was already familiar with the internals from assembling it as a DIY. It's not trivially easy, and there were a few frustrating moments that aren't unique to the Framework (ok,…
I am very surprised to hear reports of poor Linux support for AMD devices. I recently purchased a GPD Win Max 2 [1] and a GPD Win 4 [2] for work. Both devices are AMD 7840U with Radeon 780M (and 64 GiB RAM at 6400 MT/s since I saw what appeared to be instability at 7500 MT/s.)
I installed Archlinux on both and the support has been very solid with the `linux-lts` kernel and only one kernel flag (`amd_pstate=guided`.)
The following work: touchscreen; suspend (s2idle, which correctly enters S0ix state giving ≥100h battery life suspended but requiring I disable entries in `/proc/acpi/wakeup`); audio; media keys; game controls; wifi; Bluetooth; USB; SecureBoot (with `systemd-boot`); webcam (available only on Win Max 2.) The TPM2 works, but I haven't done anything with it yet (and it's an fTPM.)
Battery life is quite good (8~10h with the `acpi-cpufreq` `powersave` governor.) If I dial down the TDP, I can eke out even more battery life than that. If I dial it up to performance, I get 1~2h of battery life (and the exhaust from the fan port runs very hot.) I plan to try the `amd_pstate` governor (kernel flag `amd_pstate=active`) once support is available in the LTS kernel, though I like being able to control TDP via the CLI with AUR packages like `ryzenadj-git`. (This sounds like a lot of work, but I have a short shell script where I dialed in the right `cpupower` and `ryzenadj-git` commands optimal for my use.)
Hibernate works perfectly on the Win 4; I haven't tested it on the Win Max 2 (since s2idle works so well!)
On the Win 4, I can't get `xrandr` modes at anything other than native resolution (1920×1080) to work, but I am content with scaling via `xrandr --scale-from`. All resolutions display properly on the Win Max 2. Rotation works perfectly on both devices, but I rotate manually (and I haven't bothered to see if there is a gyroscope sensor.) There is minimal to no screen tearing. The displays present to the OS as landscape (i.e., rotation is not necessary from the Linux console.)
The only hardware that outright doesn't work are the fingerprint readers (but I believe Linux support for fingerprint readers is limited to very few devices.)
In short, my recent experience with AMD 7840U/Radeon 780M has been nothing short of amazing, and these devices have been an absolute pleasure to use.
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#39Until they get a nordic keyboard, I'm out.
They do offer ISO layouts, which afaik all nordic language layouts use.
Re: Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes for a Great Linux Laptop
#40Got one here, AMA!
What's your typical battery life like? The only thing keeping me on my M1 MacBook is only having to charge it ~2x per week.
Luckily there are battery stats. On a 7840U with power-profiles-daemon installed and PCI power saving turned on (but not wifi or audio power saving, or VM writebacks, I don't feel those are worth the power savings), it draws 3W if I'm doing absolutely nothing with the screen on its dimmest setting (I mostly use the laptop in bed at night), and 5-11W while web browsing on Firefox.
It goes up to about 13W while watching youtube, even though it claims hardware accelerated video decoding is on.