I'm typing this on my Framework now and I have to say it really is a special device. The prevailing culture of treating technology as disposable is something I personally don't vibe with - I always keep all of my tech and have collected machines over the years that most people would probably consider obsolete and uninteresting (there's an Amiga 1000 and iMac G3 currently in my field of view). Having a fully open machine that I can customize, upgrade and repair for the foreseeable future is just so cool and makes me feel like this is my personal computer in the truest sense of the word!
A few takeaways from using it for around a month now:
1. This is the most "premium" feeling non-Apple laptop I've ever owned. Most of the laptops I've ever daily driven are Macs or Thinkpads so take that for what it's worth, but I think most people will be happy with the fit and finish of this device.
2. The swappable port system is actually a lot more useful than I expected. I initially thought it would be something I set up once and didn't bother with again for a while but there are a lot of random moments where it comes in handy. I'm kind of a messy, hyper person that periodically reorganizes my desk and I like to move between different workspaces when I need a different setting to feel creative. Being able to move my HDMI or USB-C ports around for better cable management is so nice and yeah I could use an external hub but I've always found those to be annoying on-the-go and just "feels bad man". Also I don't use Micro SD cards as much as other people but there are times when I do and being able to swap that in is really kewl.
3. Linux support is amazing but there are still a few hiccups. I use Arch Linux and everything works perfectly except for one minor inconvenience with Bluetooth: on a soft restart, the Bluetooth is disabled and I have to do a hard restart to restore it (can be mitigated by a kernel downgrade and should be fixed in a future update). It's not a deal breaker for me as I usually just close my laptop and put it to sleep, but just know that it's like running Linux on most other computers - you're going to have a much better time if you're fluent in tinkering and configuring your OS.
4. The 3:2 display is awesome for programming and content creation, and I don't know why more devices don't adopt it. My only criticism is that it's not a touch screen but with how modular this laptop is it's only a matter of time before that becomes an option.
> 4. The 3:2 display is awesome for programming and content creation, and I don't know why more devices don't adopt it.
The display on the FrameWork laptop needs to be scaled fractionally (about ~1.6x) which is a deal breaker for me. It would've been far better if it had resolution of 3000x2000 or 3200x1800, which would've given it a PPI of ~270 and integer scaling at 2x.
Linux support for fractional scaling with multiple monitors is unstable, even on Wayland. Applications like Firefox and Qt apps behave abnormally (pop menu positions are incorrect, they often flicker). There's also a subtle loss of quality in fonts and images.
Totally agree. All these reviews are conveniently ignoring this. Some of them I’ve seen even just left it at 2x scaling and did the whole video with a giant cartoonish UI that had no actual usable space.
For Linux users this display needs to be either 1500x1000 or 3000x2000.
> Some of them I’ve seen even just left it at 2x scaling and did the whole video with a giant cartoonish UI that had no actual usable space.
Either that or they keep it at 1x scaling and just scale the fonts instead which is a pretty degraded and compromising experience if you use GUI apps and not just the terminal.
But this is conveniently omitted when singing praises about Framework. The laptop has a broken display that'll give you nothing but headache if you enable fractional scaling and if you disable it, you're compromising after spending potentially thousands of dollars.
> Either that or they keep it at 1x scaling and just scale the fonts instead which is a pretty degraded and compromising experience if you use GUI apps and not just the terminal.
Is it? Because this is exactly what I do on mine (w/ GNOME + PaperWM) and it's fantastic having so much space. I don't even scale the fonts, either.
> Is it? Because this is exactly what I do on mine (w/ GNOME + PaperWM) and it's fantastic having so much space. I don't even scale the fonts, either.
Good for you I guess. I, for one, can't read text at size 6 or 8 and I know most people can't either. The only case where this might make sense is if you're using your display to watch movies and play games and have minimal or no involvement with text.
Even if it does work for you, I think it should obvious that most people can't use their laptops/desktops like this and anyone who sings praises for a laptop like Framework should mention the flaws as well.
Maybe I'm weird, but the 2x scaling on my Framework looks fine to me; not cartoonish. Xfce requires a few manual settings to get it right (which did frustrate me for the first week), while GNOME and Cinnamon appear to handle it well by default.
2x scaling on a display that needs 1.5x scaling would look cartoonish. Every GUI element — titlebars, headers, icons, menus etc would be bigger than they should be.
You could scale down the fonts to make the text bearable and not look like it was written for advertisement banners but then you've basically got a weird and broken setup that would be impossible to use with an external monitor or any other display.
Kinda hoping this motivates some movement towards stabilizing fractional scaling on Linux. It feels like this has worked in macOS and Windows for ages.
To be honest, I can’t say that this has been an issue for me on the Framework with Wayland and GNOME. Or at least I haven’t noticed it. My external monitor is 3840x2160, not HiDPI so maybe the issue is with multiple HiDPI displays of varying pixel density? I’m also using 1x scaling on both displays which perhaps simplifies things.
> I’m also using 1x scaling on both displays which perhaps simplifies things.
I'm sorry if I sound snarky but this right here is the problem. Using a display at 1x scaling which needs at least ~1.5x scaling for text and images to be legible isn't really feasible so I expect you've scaled just the font size instead?
If yes, you've basically chosen to compromise because all GUI apps will look out of place and odd with buttons and icons still at 1x. If you've neither scaled your display nor your font size, your eyes are exceptionally good to be able to read tiny fonts but most people don't have such eyes.
I've been told by people that they don't use GUI apps and just use the terminal but if that's the case, they should point out this caveat about their workflow being unique when singing praises about Framework laptop so that others don't get misleaded into a buying a laptop with a display that's basically broken.
Thank you for posting this! I run linux on two XPS 15s and I love them but after manually repairing one and not being able to easily find parts for it it left me a little salty. My next laptop will most definitely be a framework one!
Your second point about the swappable ports finally made me realize it's not a gimmick. I don't know why but I think just because it's different I was a little apprehensive about it. The thought of being able to reconfigure it to avoid a dongle or hub is great.
> 2. The swappable port system is actually a lot more useful than I expected.
I'll second this. I was momentarily annoyed earlier in the week when I reorganized my desk, and found that the USB C port was on the "wrong" side for my cable-management. It took me a moment to realize that this was (for once) a solvable problem.
I've been running Linux on mine for about a month now and love it. It's easily my favorite laptop I've ever owned.
> 4. The 3:2 display is awesome for programming and content creation, and I don't know why more devices don't adopt it. My only criticism is that it's not a touch screen but with how modular this laptop is it's only a matter of time before that becomes an option.
Really strongly agree with both points here as a new owner of a framework laptop. My old personal laptop had a 16:9 (not 16:10) screen and wow the difference is so stark in terms of usability for anything that benefits from vertical orientation. Suddenly I wish you could still get 4:3 desktop monitors again. I kinda filled that gap with rotatable 16x10 monitors but honestly I just kind of miss 4:3.
The 16x9 laptop is still nice for watching videos though.
Yes I found my old ThinkPad T42 recently and fired it up and got sucked in looking through my old files for a couple of hours. Its screen felt so useful and big.. 4:3 is great.
It only had a 1024x768 screen but apps really made way better use of screen real-estate back then. Much less unnecessary whitespace.
How does it compare when opening two windows side by side? Is there still enough horizontal screen real estate for things like a browser and a code editor to still be able to see enough content on both?
Having a USB-C port on each side of the laptop has been _so nice_. I have an M1 Macbook Pro for work and it only has USB-C ports on one side of the laptop. I'm not sure who designed that thing, but it's awful (they finally fixed this on the newest models).
I'm running Windows on it, using WSL2 for any development, and it's been great. I'll second that the display is amazing (also wish it was touch but... maybe someday)
For number 3, the bluetooth issue, I also encountered this on NixOS but it seems to have been fixed with kernel 5.15.0 I upgraded to this week. But maybe I've just been lucky :/
A few takeaways from using it for around a month now:
1. This is the most "premium" feeling non-Apple laptop I've ever owned. Most of the laptops I've ever daily driven are Macs or Thinkpads so take that for what it's worth, but I think most people will be happy with the fit and finish of this device.
2. The swappable port system is actually a lot more useful than I expected. I initially thought it would be something I set up once and didn't bother with again for a while but there are a lot of random moments where it comes in handy. I'm kind of a messy, hyper person that periodically reorganizes my desk and I like to move between different workspaces when I need a different setting to feel creative. Being able to move my HDMI or USB-C ports around for better cable management is so nice and yeah I could use an external hub but I've always found those to be annoying on-the-go and just "feels bad man". Also I don't use Micro SD cards as much as other people but there are times when I do and being able to swap that in is really kewl.
3. Linux support is amazing but there are still a few hiccups. I use Arch Linux and everything works perfectly except for one minor inconvenience with Bluetooth: on a soft restart, the Bluetooth is disabled and I have to do a hard restart to restore it (can be mitigated by a kernel downgrade and should be fixed in a future update). It's not a deal breaker for me as I usually just close my laptop and put it to sleep, but just know that it's like running Linux on most other computers - you're going to have a much better time if you're fluent in tinkering and configuring your OS.
4. The 3:2 display is awesome for programming and content creation, and I don't know why more devices don't adopt it. My only criticism is that it's not a touch screen but with how modular this laptop is it's only a matter of time before that becomes an option.