Framework Laptop's mainboard is now open source and available for purchase separately
Framework Laptop's mainboard is now open source and available for purchase separately
The Framework Laptop Mainboard is now available in the Framework Marketplace!
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Framework:
- doesn't offer Linux preinstalled
- doesn't ship fully assembled laptops without Windows (only the "DIY" edition you must assemble yourself can ship without Windows)
- just now (April 2022, over two years late) finally put up a Linux compatibility page which currently describes Ubuntu 21.10 as "🤔 medium difficulty"
- doesn't have a free software BIOS or EC firmware
Meanwhile companies like Purism, System76, and Starlabs are shipping modern laptops with various distros preinstalled, never shipping windows, shipping coreboot, and (in the case of the first two, at least, and especially the first) funding the development of free software.
And the 'modular' features are just USBC adapters in a fancy case. I dont see the appeal.
They are swappable ports using thunderbolt. + the screen, bezel, keyboard, touchpad, battery, wifi module, mainboard etc. are basically all easily accessible.
Most of that is already easily swappable on any laptop granted it isn't soldered to the board. Not to mention most of that is stuff you would never really need to swap out unless it broke. The keyboard and trackpad on most lenovo laptops ive worked on come out with two or three screws. Its not a big deal to work on.
Framework seems to be solving very few actual problems with mobile computers. The USBC adapter crap just seems like a gimmick to sell computerst to people who apparently need to change their ram and keypads all the time.
They're not doing anything really interesting especially when it comes to modular GPUs inlaptosps as the only modern spec for that seems to be mxm and honestly I haven't seen any current gen laptops with an mxm socket.
You clearly haven't bought an ultrabook recently.
Not to mention most of that is stuff you would never really need to swap out unless it broke.
That's the whole point
It's listed as "medium difficulty" due to newer hardware in the laptop not being fully compatible with the kernel shipped in that old version of Ubuntu. I believe 22.04 is compatible out of the box.
I had to use a Debian sid nightly installer to set up Debian on my laptop, no big deal for me but for someone new to Linux I can see why that might be off-putting.
Framework wasn't founded to push free software, but rather repairable hardware. I don't know what you were expecting.
Plus if you were following them, you would know they had linux info from the beginning, it was just not put in a simple page like this yet.
(And why is it two years late)?