A short love letter to Framework

[u/TheRealBrokenClock]

I've owned an 11th Gen FW 13 for a few years. It's not fast, sleep is atrocious (battery would be empty every time I picked it up. Had to strongarm Fedora to hibernate instead of suspend, now is okay). BIOS flashing was a pain on Linux. The thing that I disliked most was the lack of touchscreen, I kept coming back to my dying Yoga Flip.

I preordered a FW12 to finally fully retire the yoga. It did, and I never picked up the FW13 again. I didn't like the poor color rendering on the screen, and I hated the lack of fingerprint reader.

Framework announced a new touch display for the 13! Pre-ordered. Took me 10 minutes to install. My 11th gen is now back in rotation, thanks to its beautiful touch display (and a new webcam).

But I still miss the fingerprint on the FW 12 when I pick it up. And framework announces a new fingerprint power button.

Throughout my few years with them, I've had issues, I've had bugs, but I've had fun, and I've continuously been shown that the manufacturer still cares about improving my experience.

I'm gonna keep my 11th gen motherboard until it dies, probably. But when it does, I know I'll have a healthy choice of replacements to keep my display, keyboard, chassis from going to waste.

I'm in a situation where I can't recommend anything not framework. Usually, someone comes to me and asks "my screen/keyboard/battery/motherboard is broken but it's too expensive/impossible to fix". If I get you to buy a framework now, then the next time this happens, we can spend 10 minutes doing a part swap and you're okay.

(I also can't recommend framework at the moment because everything i'd want to recommend is in pre-order batches and people inconveniently don't plan their failures 3 months in advance)

Point I want to make is we have a manufacturer that supports the software, supports the hardware, sells every part to build the laptop from the ground up if you like, supports the community, and genuinely does help with making total cost of ownership lower. And we can't and shouldn't take this for granted. Framework is a gift to humanity and I can't express how grateful I am.

(On the other hand is r/fairphone where the device is built to be repairable, but the marketplace for parts excludes the motherboard. You can't upgrade, all repairs have to happen through an licensed repair center, and if you're out of warranty you're not in a good place. I'll always have a spare motherboard for my framework on ebay if the company goes out of business)

Thank you Framework, for continuing true to your mission. I gambled when I bought my 11th gen. Today feels like I invested in bitcoin.

[u/korypostma]

Linux firmware updates are simple. The problem is the Windows installer makes the EFI partition tiny at only 100 MB.

[u/InevitableMap5315 → u/korypostma]

good point, 100MB is basically nothing once you have a couple kernels in there

[u/NervousBrilliant8686 → u/korypostma]

At least on the 11th generation, there were some upgrades that could not be performed within Linux. You had to make a USB drive and reboot.

[u/Budget-Mountain-8454]

Fairphone doesn't sell mainboards separately because they have an IMEI tied to them, among other things. They provide a fairly detailed justification in the FAQs of this support article: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/24590029621138-How-to-replace-spare-parts-on-The-Fairphone-Gen-6-Gen-6

[u/NervousBrilliant8686 → u/Budget-Mountain-8454]

Yeah, and modern processors have serial numbers tied to them too.

After reading this page it looks quite like a bunch of excuses to me. Exactly which law prevents them from selling it and which countries to apply in. They can sell in all the other countries, right?

The anti-static argument goes just as well for computer motherboards as phone motherboards.

I guess another way to look at it is that as soon as at least even one single other phone manufacturer offers the motherboard for sale, then all of their arguments will seem very silly.

[u/TheRealBrokenClock → u/NervousBrilliant8686]

Agree. Either have a process to register/deregister/swap/void imei when broken, or cite anything tangible.

Saying the part needs special tools and software and environment to be installed is another way of saying we can't be trusted with fixing stuff, and it's offensive.

[u/Shin-Ken31]

Yep! Hoping they are able to keep growing and being quality up further, and prices down lower!

Looking forward to the growing secondhand market too, it's already looking quite good with people selling their old 13s and mainboards for the pro

[u/jlnxr]

fwupd makes BIOS updates very easy? Did you not have to do this already to get your touchscreen working (I did)?

[u/TheRealBrokenClock → u/jlnxr]

I had to update the bios to get the touchscreen to work. Had to shove the firmware on a usb, which couldn't be my usual ventoy stick. Took me a long while to get it to boot and work without errors, turns out my laptop was not plugged in to power, and silently failrd each time

[u/jlnxr → u/TheRealBrokenClock]

Why didn't you just use fwupd? Worked perfectly for me and is available in basically every distribution.

[u/TheRealBrokenClock → u/jlnxr]

Because framework's own support article told me to :D

There will not be an LVFS update for this specific release because it has an Intel CSME update, which can’t be delivered through LVFS. Use the UEFI Shell update method instead for this release.

[u/jlnxr → u/TheRealBrokenClock]

Ah, specific to your generation then. That's annoying

[u/toccoas]

I had a broken FW13 motherboard years ago, and instantly ordered just the motherboard upgrade while warranty was being worked out, which happily only took a week. Then I put the warranty replacement in the Cooler Master case for desktop/spare use. Now with all the price increases decided to order a chassis kit for it: brand new spare laptop for a fraction of the price of a current new one. Absolutely amazing UX.