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Framework Laptop 16

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Re: Framework Laptop 16

#371

Post by account42 »

psolidgold wrote: post #337
kristianp wrote: post #281

You've got a 16 inch Laptop, why are the arrow keys so tiny! And where's the PgUp PgDn Home End Insert Delete cluster? I wish a design-based shop like Framework would have some leadership in the keyboard area. This is why I have been exclusively Thinkpads for my last 3 laptops. Something more niche is that I also enjoy the mouse buttons above the trackpad, I can move with the thumb and click with a finger.

The keyboards have full NKRO support and are fully mappable with QMK firmware, plus they offer blank key caps AND a macro or numpad input module. That feels like plenty of leadership to me - that's unheard of in any other laptop. Can't please everyone I guess.

> Can't please everyone I guess.

This is such a lame response to valid criticism.

Key remapping is not a feature that you need hardware support for and neither are macros - both can be done in the OS and/or user-space software. Different prints on key caps are also not important at all since you shouldn't need them in the first place and hardly a response to someone being unhappy with the physical keyboard layout. So basically you're saying that because Framework already provides the easy parts that the user could already do in software now no one is allowed to complain about the physical layout that users cannot alter.

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#372

Post by 999900000999 »

account42 wrote: post #370
999900000999 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I want is safe to replace batteries and SSDs. Both are wear parts.

Many laptops just use regular M.2 SSDs which are easy enough to replace. For me this is a requirement not just for repairs but also for the initial configuration - bundled storage options are usually too limited. Batteries are harder because the race to reduce thickness and weight means that they are usually optimized for that rather than being some standard format you can find replacements for.

Macs already don't offer replaceable storage.

The new Surface 12 is in the same boat.

I'm not a big fan of regulation, but it would be nice to see OEMs offer professional battery replacement at a reasonable price.

100$ would be fair.

A lot of really stupid stuff can happen if you try to replace a battery.

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#373

Post by [deleted] »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #347
999900000999 wrote: post #340

I like Framework as an idea, but we're talking about a 1500$ premium over this competing 16 inch laptop. 1200$ https://www.bestbuy.com/product/gigabyte-aero-x16-copilot-pc... I literally can buy 2 of the Gigabyte laptops for the same price. Even if I can swap out some parts, odds are it's still easier( and cheaper) to just buy a new competing laptop ever 3 years. If your motivation is "the environment" you can always…

> If your motivation is "the environment" you can always just donate your old laptop If you care about environment make regulator force companies to make repairable and upgradeable hardware. That could actually have an impact. Putting burden on consumer choices is one of the biggest hoaxes of modern capitalism.

[deleted]

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#374

Post by account42 »

tremon wrote: post #282
trws wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have this largely right, but I need to defend the Radeon driver a bit here. The driver that caused all the problems was the proprietary fglrx driver, not the open source Radeon driver. The issue with the Radeon driver wasn’t stability, it was that it was 2d acceleration only.

it was 2d acceleration only Not completely true either, it eventually supported most of the normal 3d primitives but gaming performance was never a priority because there were few developers and they weren't employed by AMD/ATI -- which also meant that some cards would only reach full feature support after their EOL, sadly. The amdgpu also driver benefits from a lot of the groundwork that has been done since. The rad…

AMD had developers working on radeon (the older open source kernel driver) and radeonsi (the open source user-space OpenGL driver backend for newer cards in Mesa that now sits on top of amdgpu) before the switch to amdgpu (the newer open source kernel driver). While the kernel driver isn't irrelevant for performance, it depends more on the user space portion (radeonsi and r600 before that) which was kept with the amdgpu switch. What the amdgpu driver brought is more sharing of display code with their windows drivers. The main difference in performance is between r600 (mostly developed without financial support from AMD) and radeonsi (mostly developed by AMD). Of course these days the most relevant user-space portion is radv (open source Vulkan driver in Mesa) which is NOT developed by AMD but rather funded by Valve (and at least initially Red Hat). There is also the open source amdvlk Vulkan user-space driver developed by AMD which is the same as their proprietary Vulkan driver except with the proprietary shader compiler swapped out for the same LLVM backend that radeonsi uses. And if this all wasn't confusing enough, AMD also calls the full driver package with the proprietary Vulkan driver and some snapshot of the open source OpenGL Mesa drivers (radeonsi) "amdgpu-pro".

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#375

Post by account42 »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #152
TomLisankie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this because the driver itself has changed in its operation or just from the name change breaking lots of code that referenced the "radeon" name?

It's a completely different driver for a different architecture. The biggest reason it works so much better is that it's open source (with some blobs, of course) and part of the mainline kernel, unlike its predecessor which was developed downstream and fully proprietary.

amdgpu replaced both the in-kernel open-source "radeon" driver, which was already open source, and the proprietary "fglrx" driver.

But the user-space portions are probably more significant for performance than the kernel drivers. Here we have:

- r300 and r600 (open source OpenGL backend for older hardware, sits on top of the radeon kernel driver, not much development happening)

- radeonsi (open source OpenGL backend for newer hardware, sits on top of either the radeon or amdgpu kernel drivers depending on hardware version and kernel configuration)

- fglrx (closed source OpenGL driver on top of the fglrx kernel driver, both obsolete now)

- radv (open source Vulkan driver on top of amdgpu)

- amgpu-pro (closed source Vulkan driver on top of amdgpu) - not sure if there is also still a proprietary OpenGL driver but if there is no one should care since radeonsi works well enough

- amdvlk (open source dumps of amdgpu-pro without proprietary shader compiler on top of amdgpu)

Then you have different shader compilers which also significantly affect both shader compile time and runtime performance:

- internal compiler used by r600

- LLVM (used by radeonsi and amdvlk)

- ACO (used by radv and possibly radeonsi these days)

- AMD's proprietary compiler (used by fglrx and amdgpu-pro)

And for X.org you also have different display drivers (fglrx, radeon, modesetting).

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#376

Post by account42 »

ankurdhama wrote: post #331
rauli_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird to hear people who have problems with NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, because for me it's always been the opposite. I have had problems with AMD but never with NVIDIA.

The problem is not NVIDIA GPU, it is laptops that have iGPU (amd or intel) and Nvidia dgpu. In such a configuration the experience is really really bad in both X11 and wayland.

It's both. With Nvidia you still need a proprietary driver for anything close to full performance which causes all kinds of issues.

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#377

Post by account42 »

lotharcable wrote: post #113
bodge5000 wrote: post #82

I'm glad the AMD GPU option still exists, I don't have great experience with NVIDIA on Linux. The rest of the upgrades, like the new top cover and keyboard, are very welcome

With the advent of Steam deck and Valve putting time and effort into AMD GPU drivers the AMD GPU is really the best option for Linux when it comes to general desktop stuff and gaming. The days of Nvidia proprietary drivers being a safe bet is long gone. Especially for any sort of Wayland desktop, but it still applies to X11. Intel drivers should be good as well, since they use the same Mesa code base. With the ROCm s…

> Intel drivers should be good as well, since they use the same Mesa code base.

They use the same front end but that says very little about the quality of the overall driver. Performance is mostly determined by the shader compiler and other hardware-specific parts which obviously differ between Intel and AMD.

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#379

Post by account42 »

mdaniel wrote: post #314
fooker wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI All current and future Nvidia drivers are open source, since blackwell.

Saying "and future" is like taunting fate Anyway, in case someone was interested it seems the code itself is cited as MIT, however it has a "when it becomes a Linux .ko it becomes GPLv2" clause https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/580.7... and they do go out of their way to say "lol, needs binary blobs" https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/580.7... That XFree86 .run has always stru…

To be fair, AMD's driver also needs proprietary firmware blobs. This is still infinitely better than having mistery sauce running in kernel space directly. A bigger problem is that there is no performant open source user-space counterpart like there is for AMD (Mesa with radeonsi for OpenGL and radv for Vulkan).

Re: Framework Laptop 16

#380

Post by rafaelmn »

IMO Framework is a gimmick company that capitalizes on techie hipsters who buy into their story. The repairability case is very weak - in 10+ years of owning laptops I never had one fail, they are reliable enough that outside the warranty period if they die I am fine with taking the L and buying a new one (and mine spent a bunch of time in a backpack on my motorcycle in pouring rain, getting smushed on bus rides, used in cafes). The only thing that dies eventually is battery capacity and it starts showing signs of use/wear.

Modding and upgrade story is more compiling and worth paying a premium in special cases, but their upgrade story is weak. They lag behind HW releases and they don't even support the strongest CPU chip available on the market right now (Ryzen 395), they just sell it as that silly desktop brick. Meanwhile Asus has it in a 14 inch tablet form factor at a better price.

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