hi,
pretty much the subject… I am trying to choose my next laptop and I am tempted to buy a framework 13 AMD. I saw this post from one year ago : https://www.phoronix.com/review/framework-13-amd
and while the review is impressive, comments are not. how things have evolved since then? any experience?
EDIT: you convinced me, I just ordered mine. Thanks for the incredible answers !
NEW EDIT: I use arch (btw), and Gnome. For the answers, I do not think this will pose a problem but… what do you think?
(and yes, I ordered mine before reading last comment of paequ2 who doesn’t like it… for reasonable reasons, maybe. I hope I will have more luck ;) )
I have the AMD edition and overall the laptop is nice but since I received the laptop about 9 months ago the screen broke 4 times. I only got it back 2 or so weeks ago from the repaircenter so I have only been able to actually use it for a few weeks. So my experience is pretty terrible so far. I honestly have no faith the screen is durably fixed this time but let’s see, I’m pretty done with it.
Does anyone have experience running the 13 with linux and an eGPU by any chance?
I can confirm the Intel version of the Framework 13 works amazingly with an eGPU (Fedora). 11th gen was my daily driver until I upgraded to a Framework 16 😎
Via TB4? If I’m not mistaken Oculink eGPU adapter is only possible with the Framework 16. It may worth waiting to perhaps get the new Arrow Lake with a discrete TB5
yes, that would be via TB4 for now…
I’ve been using a framework since the first edition they’ve released and it worked great. Theyve only gotten better since.
Yay, It’s always gonna be Yay
Yes, of course. Check for a refurb on sale though from the official store. No sense in paying full price for a 2 year old reference.
I’ve had one for a few months now and it works really well. The only issue that I’ve had was that I expected Linux to run well on it, but it seems like AMDs Linux support has been overstated, and gnome would crash entirely when browsing certain websites like Tumblr, I assume because of some poorly supported video format. Everything runs fine on windows and it’s been a solid laptop so far. Obviously it’s not going to be the best for gaming, but the integrated graphics will handle lighter workloads fine and I’m hoping that it’ll save me money in the long run from the much cheaper cost of repairing vs having to buy a new laptop after 5 years.
What distro has given you trouble on gnome? I’ve had mine a couple weeks and it’s been pretty solid on fedora (gnome)
I’ve mostly tried Fedora 40, I gave it another quick go after 41 with no improvement. Given that most other people haven’t experienced it, and I’ve only had this issue with Tumblr specifically and no other website, I’m guessing that it must be an uncommon codec.
Huh, yeah… I’m running fedora, whatever the latest is. Maybe my smoothest Linux experience yet. I don’t use Tumblr but I think that codebase is probably ancient and also doesn’t it do an infinite scroll? That could be part of the problem, that’s a hard thing to perfect. Curious – were you using chromium or Firefox? For me it’s Firefox all the way. Seems to work great so far
I was using Firefox. I don’t expect Tumblr to be well coded, but at most it should be able to freeze a single browser tab, if a tab can crash the entire desktop then that’s a greater issue. I haven’t had issues with tumblrs infinite scroll on other desktop situations, and while the crash happens at random I’ve had it happen within 30 seconds of opening a site if there’s a video first thing. The dmesg logs indicate that the GPU driver gets upset about something and resets itself at the time of the crash.
Trying the Firefox flatpak, or not installing the nonfree drivers didn’t make any change for me.
When looking at past reports of the crash I’ve seen some people report that things are fine on chrome but I’m not willing to make the change to see if that helps haha. It’s not a massive deal but it bugs me that I have to remember what websites to ignore and I want an expensive laptop to be a stress free experience so I’ll stick with windows and maybe give Linux another try every year or so to see if they can tempt me over yet.
Yeah you’re right that a website shouldn’t be able to cause that issue. I’m wondering if it’s a hardware issue. I’ll try to reproduce this later on and will report back. You said you have the current amd chip, framework 13 right?
Yep! The Ryzen 5 7640U. It’s never immediately, it generally takes several minutes, maybe just bringing up a Tumblr page with a video and letting it loop for several minutes might hopefully do it, though, I’ve had a crash when Tumblr wasn’t the active tab so you can multitask if you’re fine with suddenly getting booted.
Yeah same machine I have. Forgive my ignorance – I’ve actually not used Tumblr very much. Could you link me to a page with a looping video? Somehow I’m having trouble finding a non-gif video at the moment.
You could also try using KDE Plasma instead of Gnome, which survives GPU resets.
Don’t think you’d regret it. I can’t speak for that one in particular, but I’m still running one of the DIY Kickstarter versions. Will probably replace it with another Framework (or maybe even just upgrade the components if I can).
I bought one last summer and the only problems I’ve had were some display issues which were solved by adding kernel parameters to disable all of the amdgpu power management (which as far as I can tell doesn’t even increase power usage noticeably). Other than that it has been basically perfect and way better than any other laptop I’ve had. I wish it had real suspend, but that’s just not possible on modern CPUs so that’s not Framework’s fault
I’ve seen an S3 option in Smokeless_UMAF, so maybe you can enable real suspend, but I haven’t tried on my Framework 13 AMD.
Have had one for about three weeks no (13" and), and it’s fabulous. Habent had any issues. Running fedora 41. I love it.
Describes my experience exactly! I’m liking Fedora
I’m super picky with laptops and have a bunch. Thinkpads, Macbooks… Framework 13 AMD is my daily driver that I prefer over all of those. It runs brilliantly with NixOS. I would buy it again in a heartbeat.
Hey, funny that you mentioned the Thinkpad. I’m between getting a Thinkpad and the Framework 13. Would you perhaps share things that for your personal preference were downsides in the Thinkpad?
So I have a Framework 13 AMD with Mint. Framework on older firmware isn’t the best, but with Mint 22 and by extension 24.04 it’s fine.
Got mine back in December and had no issues with the installation process. Games play fine though the fan goes to 100% after a bit. But with power profile in 22.1 it can quiet the machine down.
Other than that and the occasional hiccup. Compared to other laptops it’s the best machine I’ve used. So far no issues with only a few times of opening the terminal to fix minor issues.
I can speak to longevity - I have a gen 1, batch 2 (humble brag?) - and absolutely love it. Got me to switch over to linux, and the quality is there. Minor gripe about the trackpad sticking intermittently, and had to have the hinges replaced (both known issues, resolved). 10/10 great laptop
Minor gripe about the trackpad sticking intermittently
Aaaah!!! It’s not just me! I used a track pad on another computer and realized the Framework’s stickiness wasn’t just in my head!
Oh dude no, it’s a headache! I wrote to them once and they said it was an issue with the balance plate/sensor.
Apparently the quick fix is to click the bottom center of the trackpad 5x, then test it (I do so by clicking top corners). I find it hit and miss haha. Going inside, you can adjust the placement of that plate, but I never found that useful.
Did you notice if it seemed to improve a bit with time?
Did you notice if it seemed to improve a bit with time?
Mmm… no. I just more violently drag across the trackpad until it works and then resume what I was doing. 😅
I recently picked up a Framework 16 (AMD with GPU to replace an aging gaming laptop used for travel) and love it. Linux (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) works wonderful. Thinking about picking up the 13 when I need to replace my other laptop when it’s time for that.
I got mine last January and it’s been pretty much flawless on Arch with KDE and Wayland. No regrets whatsoever. Battery life is probably the only weakness, but I also push my stuff hard. Overall, I’m super satisfied with the choice.
I have had that laptop a couple weeks and have been loving it. On fedora, everything pretty much just works flawlessly with no effort. I had a small issue figuring out how to turn off secure boot at first (f2 at boot time I think?) because that menu was separate from the rest of bios.
Other than the speaker not being great (not surprising) and the battery life being meh, it’s a very impressive machine. Mac laptops for me have always been the gold standard for smooth operation but I despise apple, so when I got this machine and it felt mostly like the smoothness of a MacBook pro with the freedom of Linux, I was super stoked about this laptop. It feels very snappy and the keyboard and touchpad are great.
