Cannot wait for that review. I am seriously considering framework for my next laptop after they get a few more generations into the process. I was very surprised by fedora having those issues after your initial chart about the intel chip test. This normie is definitely looking forward to your 16 inch laptop review.
With that big of a difference it feels like a bug, I wonder what Ubuntu is doing so differently from Fedora that it results in that battery life disparity doing the same tasks with mostly the same stack.
@@Chaosinfinity100Always wondered why it has such a cult following. I originally installed Fedora on my Framework and it legit gave me flashbacks to Windows. Installing packages is insanely slow, updates take forever and for some reason take place at boot time like Windows update, bad battery life, slow boot times among other things. When I switched from Fedora to NixOS, my boot time literally went from about a minute to 10 seconds.
@@Chaosinfinity100 how does that make it a POS distro? A single random bug with a random laptop makes it POS? this especially since you don't the actual cause. get help.
That's only a problem with Nvidia drivers, AMD/Intel works out-of-the-box. However it is possible the Firefox flatpak version didn't have complete support for it.
@@ElevatedSystemsNo it's not a nvidia issue, it's a legal issue, Fedora being US based can't ship the h264 codecs, so your UA-cam video was probably using CPU the whole time. It doesn't matter what GPU you have.
@@ManuaL46 Don't think youtube defaults to h264 anymore, but VP9, which is open and hardware-supported, so doubt it'd be disabled. In fact, if it was h264, Manjaro would definitely have taken a hit as well, since they also use software decoding for it due to licensing issues (one of the main reasons I'm intending to switch to Endeavour soon from Manjaro).
Did you install the hardware decoding and encoding drivers on fedora? I also wonder if you used regular packages on all distros or if you used snaps on ubuntu as It's the default packaging there
You could (should?) check which distro allows the cpu pkg to reach deeper C-states. A simple check with powertop will give you that. It's likely that Fedora won't allow deeper states. This is a significant test for laptops and different distributions.
Really hope framework ships to my country one day. The upgradability is reassuring and it’s the only way I would finally buy my own laptop with my own cash instead of trying to do everything with my desktop.
Its likely you were hitting the wifi bug in several Kernel releases (6.7.x seems to have improved things a lot for me) Its a lot better now but some of those ISOs have to old or bugged (part of the 6.5.x series were horrible) kernels out of the box. Power and compatibility is a bit mixed on Linux. Not based on it being linux, but because different kernel releases can be dramatically different. Still the battery life is improving considerably since the 6.4.x series and I wouldn't be surprised if it met or exceeded Windows 11 in the next LTS/Fedora/etc release.
The lighting in this video looks so good! Keep up the good work. I've been planning on testing out a couple distros on my 13; right now it's just unregistered Windows.
I am a legally blind software engineer and your review was very helpful and well explained. None of the nerdiness nonsense, just plain simple easy to understand experiences.
I recently switched to Tumbleweed KDE with Plasma 6 because I have got a new laptop. What a great experience! Everything worked out of the box and I got even updates for the firmware and bios directly in KDE. I was never using KDE that much but it's really impressive and very stable so far!😊
Have you tried to switch to the latest kernel within Manjaro? The distro is rolling and a pretty good match for new hardware. Newer kernel usually means newer drivers. Video encoding and decoding can be hardware accelerated via the GPU and usually helps with the battery life (keyword vaapi). TLP is great, but to get the most out of it, the amd-pstate and frequency governor needs to be set up manually. Using amd-pstate also helps with standby.
I really enjoy your informative content, especially on the Framework 13 AMD. I should have mine this week! I can't wait! Keep the great content coming!
I'm running Fedora/KDE on AMD Ryzen 7 7840U with the AMD RZ616 card. I have been connecting to 5GHz Wifi without issue, though I haven't got a new 6GHz Wifi access point with which to test. Am enjoying watching your content but AFAIK framework doesn't sell a Ryzen 9 chip for the 13 that you mentioned in the video.
I've been running Fedora and NixOS on my 12th-gen Intel Framework 13". Fedora was my daily driver for about a month, and NixOS for the past two months. There's a nixos-hardware repo where you can get device-specific configs! But all the core features worked out of the box anyway. Battery life was only slightly worse than on Windows 11. Probably also because I'm booting Linux from the SSD expansion card.
@@ElevatedSystems You called out Ubuntu specifically when you said that so it wasn't clear if that was the case or not....thank you for making that clearer.
This was a great video. I was debating about my next laptop for Linux/OpenSuSE and I was not sure about what models to pick. I was thinking about the AMD model here you have but now I am not sure, I was also looking closely at a Thinkpad x1 which has good Linux support as well.
The wifi issue has to do with openssl update removing old encryption keys by default. You can allow those for the network using the cli and everything will work just fine. 6:17
I have been running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma on all of my computers (They are not dead until dead as a door nail!!) since 2019 when Endeavour first came out and in testing before that, and was on Antergos with Plasma before Endeavour. Manjaro was a hassle back then and still is now, and why so many Manjaro users switched to EndeavourOS (way closer to pure Arch). I never liked XFCE, because it's "Light weight" is for a lack of features and functionality and that's where KDE Plasma shines, and still is not a resource hog by any means.
I mean it is possible to equal Windows or do better in battery life under Linux look at the steam deck. So I wonder how pop os would fare since System 76 produces laptops themselves.
The Wifi trouble on EndeavourOS is interesting since I also suffer from constant disconnects and multiple second connection lags on my Framework. I always thought that was a router issue since it also disconnected with a USB-C to Ethernet adapter. I guess that is a Wifi 6 issue since my Raspberry Pi Radio does not suffer from this at all, which confused me even more. But than the Ethernet issues do not fit in the picture. All very confusing.
If you have the MT7921 card, try cloning the linux-firmware got repo and replacing your distro's copy of /etc/firmware/mediatek with the repo's /mediatek folder, then reboot. Someone on the framework forums suggested it and it solved my issues as a lenovo ideapad user that happens to have the dame wifi chipset
@@Mr.JesseR I have 2.4 and 5Ghz bands on my Wifi, but my steamdeck is totally fine with the latter. Ubuntu actually updated their copy of linux-firmware today and it reverted my local copy of the linux-firmware repo, which in turn broke my Wifi again. Managed to replace the same files which again fixed the issues.
I think this is a easy to understand video for the beginners to get into linux on their Framework laptops. Thumbs up for that. The battery results are surprising, considering I expected baad from all of them, but everything except Fedora did well, and Ubuntu even beating Windows. I'm not using Linux as of now only because of my stupid Asus laptop's bios. That bios is not unlocking Legacy mode that I need to make my dual boot and run my OS on the external harddrive while using Windows from the SSD of the laptop. UEFI mode doesn't work well either, so I can't use Linux while keeping the Windows on the laptop. I don't see a fix in the near future of the laptop, so I'll wait till I get my own PC/laptop for using linux and windows on the same device, because, let's face it, Windows is pretty much needed at this point.
To my knowledge, powertop only flips the switches to enable runtime power management and changes one parameter that maybe influences performance. It doesn't change schedulers or scaling or anything that would hurt performance unless runtime PM is broken
In all my testing on the framework the battery life is basically unaffected with powertop. The percentage gain is essentially within the margin of error.
Last year, when I purchased my Framekwork 13 with Intel 13th Gen, and it had never seen a Windows install. I installed Linux Mint on it at first, but found the scaling to be weird. Did a bit of searching, discovered Garuda Linux, and installed it onto my Framework. The scaling features on Garuda are great, and it's been the OS of choice for my laptop since!
I'm using Linux Mint 22 with Framework 13, AMD and the 2.8k display. 200% scaling factor works great! If you don't have the 2.8k display either consider upgrading. Or use Cinnamon with the fractional scaling factor (which is under the other tab to enable the experimental feature for fractional scaling).
"AMD"/Mediatek Wifi chipset aren't the best on Windows either. At the time I couldn't find a driver download on the AMD or Mediatek website for the problems I had, and I still think there isn't any. I tossed it out of my AM4 motherboard for a Intel Wifi chip. Rock solid ever since. If you want the best Wifi go with Intel, that's my opinion.
and it was watching this very video that I found out multi-finger swiping to scroll on my Fujitsu T937. That feature has never worked on my older linux-swapped laptops, so I honestly hadn't bothered to try it. now the wacom tablet on the other hand, half works in Mint 21. And I can also confirm that Mint (Ubuntu based after all) also improved battery life for me even on this weedy ultrabook. It's good to see that Framework at least offers some support for Linux, given they are an open manufacturer..
addendum: Wifi has always bene a bit odd for me in Linux. some chipsets are great, some not sso much. Clearly AMD needs to work on their kernel module contributions in that area.
I'm using a framework mainboard in the coolermaster case as a home lab machine. My main goal is to run apps in containers, not a NAS. It would be cool to do a series of home lab videos that detailed using these distros for home lab use but focus on apps that don't need a NAS (ie: not plex or sonar). Network security/monitoring, VPN, PiHole, VSCode Server, local wikipedia, and local open source LLMs are some things I'm interested in.
@@ElevatedSystems Very cool. I tried Unraid but got frustrated with the tight USB drive restrictions so addressing that would be nice. I also tried TruNAS but got frustrated with its storage expectations (it didn't like a single SSD drive for OS and storage).
Very minor chance of this happening but I would love if you were to include the Solus distro in your next Linux test on the Framework. It's not based on anything else, comes with a choice of 4 DE's, is very stable & has updates (at least) once a week; more people need to know about it
I installed and tested each distro 3 times. I used the framework Ethernet expansion card during one of the test cycles and it worked perfectly on each distro.
What Bios version had you while testing? Mine Shipped with 30.3.2 and i updated to 30.3.3 what solved every single issue i had with linux. I tested Majaro, Fedora and Ubuntu. I encountered never Wifi Issues. But i had various scaling issues. Thats the reason why i am on Fedora KDE right now. KDE works best for scaling in my so far that i have tested.
I don't have that wifi card but with ubuntu the way I got my wifi ax 101 card to work was to use tethered usb internet with my phone and updating the kernel. Maybe the framework laptop might solve this wifi problem this way. I'm on kernel Linux 6.5.0-15-generic
Really nice test, I've been thinking about buying a Framework but they don't ship to my country yet. But I want to put my money in companies that do things I like, and their right to repair and open hardware policies are something I stand behind. It is true that Linux compatibility is still not ideal, but it is getting better than a few years ago. It's only because Spyware (Or like some like to call it, Windows) is preinstalled on most machines and people don't really care to seek for alternatives that Linux has a miniscule market share on Desktop systems. We need to educate people on the fact that Windows is stepping on our privacy and doesn't care about it's users.
I wasn't expecting the ax210 to be at the top of the list for Linux. I had major issues getting that specific model working on Linux about a year ago. Thanks for video, have you tried Debian bookworm? That's the OS I want to try first.
I got my framework 13 amd 7840 u 2 weeks back with 32gb 5600 ddr5 and 1tb gen 4 ssd running ubuntu is great as cybersecurity uni student I get whole day battery for normal use and whenever i use vm i just plug in and use it. In ubuntu with battery i run balanced mode and it gave me whole day battery at 60 hz refresh rate at 120 it gave me 7 to 8 hours.
Thanks for going through these tests. I am way too poor to afford a Framework thus I stick with 2nd hand ThinkPads but having WiFi issues must no longer be a thing in 2020v4. This would be a downer for me. Still, it sounds like Frameworks are still great machines (except for the silver chassis which I dislike).
For consistency sake definitely should have run GNOME across all distros. Your fractional scaling issue on XFCE is a known problem without tweaks, whereas GNOME & KDE have good support for it (barring Fedora needing a tweak because 'Just Fedora Things'). Rather than the RJ-45 jack, I'd probably recommend a USB-A or USB-C to Ethernet adapter instead. The wifi issues are most likely a result of picking distros with older kernels to pair with newer hardware, I'd never recommend that for a new user. That's just a guess as ISO versions used for install media aren't listed for EndeavorOS & Manjaro. Criticisms aside, still an informative video for newbies launching head-first. Points are concisely explained and elaboration given when needed, have a like man.
I had good luck with Fedora for this processor on mini PCs, so I went with Fedora's KDE spin on Framework. BAD MISTAKE. I've had nothing but trouble - battery drains randomly even with the laptop switched off - I am talking about going from 90% to 0 in 2 days with the laptop powered off. A decent Plugable USB 4 dock that works perfectly with multiple laptops and mini PCs running Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu doesn't work with the Framework. I have two Framework 13s, one that I upgraded from 11th Gen Intel to Ryzen 5 and a brand new one with the Ryzen 7. Both have the same issues. I put the old motherboard into their Cooler Master case and that works perfectly. It goes to sleep, wakes up from sleep, connects and works with the dock. I guess I'll have to wait for a few more months to find stability. I'll give Kubuntu a go. If that doesn't work well, I'll just switch to Windows. I prefer Linux to Windows 9 times out of 10, but I'd rather use WSL on Windows than have to deal with Gnome lol
The battery life doesn't really compensate the huge and constant issues with ubuntu. I can do all the whoops it take to eliminate snaps and replace them with flatpaks, but i could never recommend it to anyone considering how much tinkering it needs to function properly
Elementary OS and Linux Mint are good ones to test next. Elementary is Mac OS-esque so it'll be what a Mac User might install. Mint is just common enough that it is worth a test.
@@ElevatedSystems you're right, but some problems you mentioned like fractional scaling is only a issue on XFCE, thus why EndearvorOS started using KDE by default.
I like my FW AMD. I've had several with issues. NixOS was my smoothest experience. Worst to best: Gentoo, PopOS, Mint, Artix then NixOS. The bottom two, my favorite, not working that well Gentoo was painful. I could only get a tty running. No GUI really.
The MT7921 chipset for the wifi is absolutely atrocious. I've had nothing but issues with it on my Lenovo Thinkpad 5. Tbf theyre fixing it in newer kernels but it's annoying. Possibly a dodgy patch for some power management stuff apparently? You can get some better support by cloning the linux-firmware repository and copying the entire mediatek folder into your /etc/firmware/mediatek folder. Now I'm no longer losing connection randomly.
I just installed Fedora 39 on a 13" AMD which was purchase 1 week ago and wifi has been perfect. I think it's possible it's somehow related to your unit?
11:17... sorry but that's not heavy usage... especially for 16 core.. if you were a developer, or maybe someone who worked on modeling, and stuff like that... but all that you mentioned barely scratches a 8core machine... let alone 16.
@@ElevatedSystems ahaha apu for number crunching, browsing, media playing... how heavy... dude is watching youtube at 12k while calculating fast fourier transform with gigabytes of data. it's funny to watch these UA-camrs trying to sound important and busy
@@kalelalves Well I'm a developer and managed to kill a bit lesser machine of a sales colleague with a VM running Docker in it etc. It works perfectly fine on my machine. The difference is i5/8GB RAM vs i7/16GB. None of these are new, though. But people tend to plan using their machines for years to come. So it all depends on the use case. Of course, for really serious calculation heavy development I got a desktop... I'm not saying his example was very heavy right now, but keeping at this rate, it will be in 2-3 years.
I just recently jumped from ubuntu to manjaro (gnome) on my amd framework and it's been good so far (maybe a bit less battery life). Only issues I've had so far are some errors on journalctl caused by the hdmi expansion card as well a weird bug that happens when I connect the power and the laptop is on sleep. When turned back on, the battery icon shows that no cable is connected (though based on the amount of battery left it was charging). Just wondering if you experienced something similar :)
Hi CJ. I use linux fulltime and am currently on a Framework 12 (Intel). I first subscribed to your channel back when I ordered it actually. I just switched my home PC from NVIDIA to AMD gpu and it was very worth it. At least on hyprland, everything just worked so I want to go AMD on my laptop as well. That being said, I have a question: Do you know If I can upgrade my framework 12 to the AMD mainbaord? I feel like it should be possible given the framework philosophy but I couldn't find anything about it online.
Manjaro n EndeavourOS are Arch. Different flavours of arch, but, still just arch linux. Not sure why those 2 were included instead of, idk, Zorin, but I digress. Great video c:
But then Zorin is just a flavour of Ubuntu. but in my experience even two derivatives of the same base distro can be very different in performance, reliability, and user experience
Lots of things can affect battery life, the OS base absolutely matters but you can't assume that Manjaro will get the same performance as Arch, which tends to be completely customized on install. Hell, even 2 Arch installations could have immensely different battery life and performance depending on what the user is doing
manjaro is not just a arch flavour, it uses different packages by a bit. i'd be really interested which WM he tested for Endeavour. maybe it would make sense to test different WMs on x11 vs wayland too.
I never had Wifi problems in Ubuntu. The fact the tested laptop Wifi had problems but Windows didn't, doesn't mean there's a problem with Wifi support in general in Linux. I'm sure there are Wifi devices not working by default in Windows without specific drivers or thinkering. Laptops will never be a reference of performance. Sometimes the specs of CPUs (etc) are very nice on paper, but the OSes need to limit hardware a lot to be able to save battery. Sometimes the HW is even limited by the BIOS/Motherboard.
Wifi SHOULD be improved with the default Mediatek chip, as theres some incoming fixes for a bunch of bugs that were reported by framework community members apparently.
@@RubberDentist Hard to follow as it involves checking a bunch of different threads. I'd check sites for debian/ubuntu/framework firmware discussion on the MT7921 chip. If you're having trouble right now, though, I'd clone the "linux-firmware" git repo to your device, and copy over the entire "firmware/mediatek" folder within said repo over your "/lib/firmware/mediatek" folder before rebooting. Ubuntu might have already backported it by now but I've kept the repo installed locally just in case an update doesn't overwrite my fixed firmware files by mistake.
Sounds like intel is the way to go for now? Sounds disappointing. The WiFi disassociating is a major pain it seems. I’m sure it could be fixed but I don’t see any other YTers covering this topic to expect an update when it does. Can someone reply to this comment if they find that FW has fixed this on AMD + Linux even months later? lol thanks in advance (I really want the AMD model for the battery life and performance)
No, in just battery life alone AMD has a huge advantage over Intel. The WiFi issue is hit or miss dependant on the Access Point used. I'm digging deeper into it and ordered various routers to test. I'll be following up with some other distro testing.
Sounds awesome! The intel WiFi adapter you mentioned seems like a cheap work around and I’d be ordering a DIY edition anyway so if I have to just get that and call it a day then I will be fine going amd
I don't understand this video. The Kernel is the issue. If you run an old kernel then the hardware won't work right. I think the better video would be to see if you could get the distro to work with a newer kernel as a new user.
Wifi issues on Arch, what a surprise! The wifi issues on Fedora and Ubuntu were a bit of a surprise, though, especially since Framework works directly with them for hardware support. Oh well
WiFi on this is crap. I own one and run it with Fedora and Tumbleweed, and on both it would behave as the video shows, i.e. as if I typed the wrong password. It's improved since a recent mediatek firmware update, tho
@@irg008 Because Intel boards ship with Intel AX210 chips, not the crappy Mediatek ones that AMD boards ship with. I could have replaced it with an Intel AX210 as well, but since now the issue seems gone I'm sticking with the one I got. Plus I got some instabilities with an AX200 card on my previous Dell XPS running Linux before getting my Framework 13 AMD, so it's quite the lottery...
0:27 The AMD main board is the Ryzen 7 7840U, I misspoke when I said Ryzen 9. Guess I got my soon to arrive framework 16 on my mind.🤷♂️
Cannot wait for that review. I am seriously considering framework for my next laptop after they get a few more generations into the process. I was very surprised by fedora having those issues after your initial chart about the intel chip test. This normie is definitely looking forward to your 16 inch laptop review.
I was not expecting that difference in battery life between Ubuntu and Fedora. Thank you for the comparison!
With that big of a difference it feels like a bug, I wonder what Ubuntu is doing so differently from Fedora that it results in that battery life disparity doing the same tasks with mostly the same stack.
I noticed the extreme battery usage on my AMD 13. Simple fix i did was to install auto cpu freq. It's much more usable now
Fedora always being a POS distro. Nothing new there.
@@Chaosinfinity100Always wondered why it has such a cult following. I originally installed Fedora on my Framework and it legit gave me flashbacks to Windows. Installing packages is insanely slow, updates take forever and for some reason take place at boot time like Windows update, bad battery life, slow boot times among other things. When I switched from Fedora to NixOS, my boot time literally went from about a minute to 10 seconds.
@@Chaosinfinity100 how does that make it a POS distro? A single random bug with a random laptop makes it POS? this especially since you don't the actual cause. get help.
About the Fedora's battery life, check hardware video acceleration.
I think it's not installed/enabled by default, that should make a huge difference.
That's only a problem with Nvidia drivers, AMD/Intel works out-of-the-box. However it is possible the Firefox flatpak version didn't have complete support for it.
@@ElevatedSystemsNo it's not a nvidia issue, it's a legal issue, Fedora being US based can't ship the h264 codecs, so your UA-cam video was probably using CPU the whole time. It doesn't matter what GPU you have.
@@ManuaL46 Don't think youtube defaults to h264 anymore, but VP9, which is open and hardware-supported, so doubt it'd be disabled.
In fact, if it was h264, Manjaro would definitely have taken a hit as well, since they also use software decoding for it due to licensing issues (one of the main reasons I'm intending to switch to Endeavour soon from Manjaro).
@@vocassentbf you shouldn't be using Manjaro in the first place, given it's 'proclivities'
@@Ebalosus I don't usually go out of my way to learn about such things, I just happened to notice this one and was annoyed. Care to inform me?
Thanks!
Did you install the hardware decoding and encoding drivers on fedora? I also wonder if you used regular packages on all distros or if you used snaps on ubuntu as It's the default packaging there
A verry important question.
That’s the final straw that pushed me to pre-order the 16” Framework. Thanks!
You could (should?) check which distro allows the cpu pkg to reach deeper C-states. A simple check with powertop will give you that. It's likely that Fedora won't allow deeper states. This is a significant test for laptops and different distributions.
As far as I’m aware, Powertop hurts amd performance and battery life.
Really hope framework ships to my country one day. The upgradability is reassuring and it’s the only way I would finally buy my own laptop with my own cash instead of trying to do everything with my desktop.
Its likely you were hitting the wifi bug in several Kernel releases (6.7.x seems to have improved things a lot for me) Its a lot better now but some of those ISOs have to old or bugged (part of the 6.5.x series were horrible) kernels out of the box.
Power and compatibility is a bit mixed on Linux. Not based on it being linux, but because different kernel releases can be dramatically different. Still the battery life is improving considerably since the 6.4.x series and I wouldn't be surprised if it met or exceeded Windows 11 in the next LTS/Fedora/etc release.
The lighting in this video looks so good! Keep up the good work. I've been planning on testing out a couple distros on my 13; right now it's just unregistered Windows.
I am a legally blind software engineer and your review was very helpful and well explained. None of the nerdiness nonsense, just plain simple easy to understand experiences.
I recently switched to Tumbleweed KDE with Plasma 6 because I have got a new laptop. What a great experience! Everything worked out of the box and I got even updates for the firmware and bios directly in KDE. I was never using KDE that much but it's really impressive and very stable so far!😊
Have you tried to switch to the latest kernel within Manjaro? The distro is rolling and a pretty good match for new hardware. Newer kernel usually means newer drivers. Video encoding and decoding can be hardware accelerated via the GPU and usually helps with the battery life (keyword vaapi). TLP is great, but to get the most out of it, the amd-pstate and frequency governor needs to be set up manually. Using amd-pstate also helps with standby.
Awesome video! This is really useful as a linux enthusiast that's been eyeing Framework for a while. Thanks a ton!
I would have loved to see the Linux Mint Edge ISO tested as well.
I run Linux Mint 22 without any issues! love it.
Thank you for taking the time to do this!!
I really enjoy your informative content, especially on the Framework 13 AMD. I should have mine this week! I can't wait! Keep the great content coming!
Watching this video, did you made your choice?
I'm running Fedora/KDE on AMD Ryzen 7 7840U with the AMD RZ616 card. I have been connecting to 5GHz Wifi without issue, though I haven't got a new 6GHz Wifi access point with which to test.
Am enjoying watching your content but AFAIK framework doesn't sell a Ryzen 9 chip for the 13 that you mentioned in the video.
It’s not 6ghz it’s wifi 6
I've been running Fedora and NixOS on my 12th-gen Intel Framework 13". Fedora was my daily driver for about a month, and NixOS for the past two months. There's a nixos-hardware repo where you can get device-specific configs! But all the core features worked out of the box anyway. Battery life was only slightly worse than on Windows 11. Probably also because I'm booting Linux from the SSD expansion card.
Did switching out to the Intel AX210 fix the WiFi on the other distributions??
You should have probably mentioned that....
AX210 firmware support has been incorporated since Kernel 5.10 or 5.15, so it works out of the box with essentially every currently maintained distro.
@@ElevatedSystems
You called out Ubuntu specifically when you said that so it wasn't clear if that was the case or not....thank you for making that clearer.
Love the video I liked and subscribed can't wait to watch more content
Great video!
Thank you for hitting both what worked, and perhaps, more importantly, what DIDN'T work.
I appreciate that.
This was a great video. I was debating about my next laptop for Linux/OpenSuSE and I was not sure about what models to pick. I was thinking about the AMD model here you have but now I am not sure, I was also looking closely at a Thinkpad x1 which has good Linux support as well.
Great video! I was looking for something like this!
The wifi issue has to do with openssl update removing old encryption keys by default. You can allow those for the network using the cli and everything will work just fine. 6:17
Great video! Was waiting for this!
I have been running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma on all of my computers (They are not dead until dead as a door nail!!) since 2019 when Endeavour first came out and in testing before that, and was on Antergos with Plasma before Endeavour.
Manjaro was a hassle back then and still is now, and why so many Manjaro users switched to EndeavourOS (way closer to pure Arch). I never liked XFCE, because it's "Light weight" is for a lack of features and functionality and that's where KDE Plasma shines, and still is not a resource hog by any means.
You should try auto-cpufreq, it keeps turbo boost while minimizing power usage to sub 10 watts when running non-intensive tasks.
It does the same thing as PPD in balanced mode, but I found the PPD does a better job with AMD APUs.
Thanks for so much detailed testing!
I mean it is possible to equal Windows or do better in battery life under Linux look at the steam deck. So I wonder how pop os would fare since System 76 produces laptops themselves.
Would like to see the Mint results.
I run Linux Mint 22 without any issues! love it.
Thanks for the video! I was already leaning towards Ubuntu for when I get my Framework. But now I'm sure about it 😁
The Wifi trouble on EndeavourOS is interesting since I also suffer from constant disconnects and multiple second connection lags on my Framework. I always thought that was a router issue since it also disconnected with a USB-C to Ethernet adapter.
I guess that is a Wifi 6 issue since my Raspberry Pi Radio does not suffer from this at all, which confused me even more. But than the Ethernet issues do not fit in the picture.
All very confusing.
If you have the MT7921 card, try cloning the linux-firmware got repo and replacing your distro's copy of /etc/firmware/mediatek with the repo's /mediatek folder, then reboot.
Someone on the framework forums suggested it and it solved my issues as a lenovo ideapad user that happens to have the dame wifi chipset
do you have wifi 2.4ghz enabled by any chance?
enabling 2.4 makes the steam deck do this as well
@@Mr.JesseR I have 2.4 and 5Ghz bands on my Wifi, but my steamdeck is totally fine with the latter.
Ubuntu actually updated their copy of linux-firmware today and it reverted my local copy of the linux-firmware repo, which in turn broke my Wifi again. Managed to replace the same files which again fixed the issues.
I think this is a easy to understand video for the beginners to get into linux on their Framework laptops. Thumbs up for that.
The battery results are surprising, considering I expected baad from all of them, but everything except Fedora did well, and Ubuntu even beating Windows.
I'm not using Linux as of now only because of my stupid Asus laptop's bios. That bios is not unlocking Legacy mode that I need to make my dual boot and run my OS on the external harddrive while using Windows from the SSD of the laptop. UEFI mode doesn't work well either, so I can't use Linux while keeping the Windows on the laptop. I don't see a fix in the near future of the laptop, so I'll wait till I get my own PC/laptop for using linux and windows on the same device, because, let's face it, Windows is pretty much needed at this point.
To my knowledge, powertop only flips the switches to enable runtime power management and changes one parameter that maybe influences performance. It doesn't change schedulers or scaling or anything that would hurt performance unless runtime PM is broken
In all my testing on the framework the battery life is basically unaffected with powertop. The percentage gain is essentially within the margin of error.
Last year, when I purchased my Framekwork 13 with Intel 13th Gen, and it had never seen a Windows install. I installed Linux Mint on it at first, but found the scaling to be weird. Did a bit of searching, discovered Garuda Linux, and installed it onto my Framework. The scaling features on Garuda are great, and it's been the OS of choice for my laptop since!
I'm using Linux Mint 22 with Framework 13, AMD and the 2.8k display. 200% scaling factor works great! If you don't have the 2.8k display either consider upgrading. Or use Cinnamon with the fractional scaling factor (which is under the other tab to enable the experimental feature for fractional scaling).
Ey, Linux Format! One of my fav magazines from the UK.
"AMD"/Mediatek Wifi chipset aren't the best on Windows either. At the time I couldn't find a driver download on the AMD or Mediatek website for the problems I had, and I still think there isn't any. I tossed it out of my AM4 motherboard for a Intel Wifi chip. Rock solid ever since. If you want the best Wifi go with Intel, that's my opinion.
@10:32 light stroke? ;-)
and it was watching this very video that I found out multi-finger swiping to scroll on my Fujitsu T937. That feature has never worked on my older linux-swapped laptops, so I honestly hadn't bothered to try it.
now the wacom tablet on the other hand, half works in Mint 21. And I can also confirm that Mint (Ubuntu based after all) also improved battery life for me even on this weedy ultrabook.
It's good to see that Framework at least offers some support for Linux, given they are an open manufacturer..
addendum: Wifi has always bene a bit odd for me in Linux. some chipsets are great, some not sso much. Clearly AMD needs to work on their kernel module contributions in that area.
I'm using a framework mainboard in the coolermaster case as a home lab machine. My main goal is to run apps in containers, not a NAS. It would be cool to do a series of home lab videos that detailed using these distros for home lab use but focus on apps that don't need a NAS (ie: not plex or sonar). Network security/monitoring, VPN, PiHole, VSCode Server, local wikipedia, and local open source LLMs are some things I'm interested in.
I have a framework powered Unraid server project on the drawing board
@@ElevatedSystems Very cool. I tried Unraid but got frustrated with the tight USB drive restrictions so addressing that would be nice. I also tried TruNAS but got frustrated with its storage expectations (it didn't like a single SSD drive for OS and storage).
Great overview!
Ah yes, good ol'Manjaro at it again.
Great video
Very minor chance of this happening but I would love if you were to include the Solus distro in your next Linux test on the Framework. It's not based on anything else, comes with a choice of 4 DE's, is very stable & has updates (at least) once a week; more people need to know about it
i find that in some distros i have to use an external linux friendly wifi adaptor
I installed and tested each distro 3 times. I used the framework Ethernet expansion card during one of the test cycles and it worked perfectly on each distro.
Im new to this and curious to know if debian is possible on the framework 16 ryzen 7940HS
What Bios version had you while testing? Mine Shipped with 30.3.2 and i updated to 30.3.3 what solved every single issue i had with linux. I tested Majaro, Fedora and Ubuntu. I encountered never Wifi Issues. But i had various scaling issues. Thats the reason why i am on Fedora KDE right now. KDE works best for scaling in my so far that i have tested.
I'm on the current BIOS Version 3.03
@@ElevatedSystems Ok then thats not the issue...
I don't have that wifi card but with ubuntu the way I got my wifi ax 101 card to work was to use tethered usb internet with my phone and updating the kernel. Maybe the framework laptop might solve this wifi problem this way. I'm on kernel Linux 6.5.0-15-generic
Wait so in officially supported distros WIFI does not work? WIFI !!!?? On a laptop???
Really nice test, I've been thinking about buying a Framework but they don't ship to my country yet. But I want to put my money in companies that do things I like, and their right to repair and open hardware policies are something I stand behind.
It is true that Linux compatibility is still not ideal, but it is getting better than a few years ago. It's only because Spyware (Or like some like to call it, Windows) is preinstalled on most machines and people don't really care to seek for alternatives that Linux has a miniscule market share on Desktop systems. We need to educate people on the fact that Windows is stepping on our privacy and doesn't care about it's users.
I wasn't expecting the ax210 to be at the top of the list for Linux. I had major issues getting that specific model working on Linux about a year ago. Thanks for video, have you tried Debian bookworm? That's the OS I want to try first.
TY for the video, good to see Ubuntu being better than it usually is. eGPU tests coming?
I got my framework 13 amd 7840 u 2 weeks back with 32gb 5600 ddr5 and 1tb gen 4 ssd running ubuntu is great as cybersecurity uni student I get whole day battery for normal use and whenever i use vm i just plug in and use it. In ubuntu with battery i run balanced mode and it gave me whole day battery at 60 hz refresh rate at 120 it gave me 7 to 8 hours.
Thanks for going through these tests.
I am way too poor to afford a Framework thus I stick with 2nd hand ThinkPads but having WiFi issues must no longer be a thing in 2020v4.
This would be a downer for me.
Still, it sounds like Frameworks are still great machines (except for the silver chassis which I dislike).
For consistency sake definitely should have run GNOME across all distros. Your fractional scaling issue on XFCE is a known problem without tweaks, whereas GNOME & KDE have good support for it (barring Fedora needing a tweak because 'Just Fedora Things'). Rather than the RJ-45 jack, I'd probably recommend a USB-A or USB-C to Ethernet adapter instead. The wifi issues are most likely a result of picking distros with older kernels to pair with newer hardware, I'd never recommend that for a new user. That's just a guess as ISO versions used for install media aren't listed for EndeavorOS & Manjaro.
Criticisms aside, still an informative video for newbies launching head-first. Points are concisely explained and elaboration given when needed, have a like man.
I had good luck with Fedora for this processor on mini PCs, so I went with Fedora's KDE spin on Framework. BAD MISTAKE. I've had nothing but trouble - battery drains randomly even with the laptop switched off - I am talking about going from 90% to 0 in 2 days with the laptop powered off. A decent Plugable USB 4 dock that works perfectly with multiple laptops and mini PCs running Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu doesn't work with the Framework. I have two Framework 13s, one that I upgraded from 11th Gen Intel to Ryzen 5 and a brand new one with the Ryzen 7. Both have the same issues. I put the old motherboard into their Cooler Master case and that works perfectly. It goes to sleep, wakes up from sleep, connects and works with the dock. I guess I'll have to wait for a few more months to find stability. I'll give Kubuntu a go. If that doesn't work well, I'll just switch to Windows. I prefer Linux to Windows 9 times out of 10, but I'd rather use WSL on Windows than have to deal with Gnome lol
Awesome & Thanks :)
I wonder if the new Intel wifi 7 non vpro cards would work well as an upgrade
Man, what a great video. Thank you. Yeah, mediatek wifi chips are godawful on Linux. Intel is plug and play.
Could the difference in power drain be due to windows streaming av1 video vs linux streaming vp9 or MPEG in Firefox?
Love it!
The battery life doesn't really compensate the huge and constant issues with ubuntu. I can do all the whoops it take to eliminate snaps and replace them with flatpaks, but i could never recommend it to anyone considering how much tinkering it needs to function properly
Huh, i had a different Wifi experience with the same mainboard/cpu on Fedora. No problems at all
What WiFi access point do you use?
It's an old (non 6) Google Nest Wifi
@@noisycarlos it seems the mediatek card has issues with newer tri-band routers.
@@ElevatedSystems ahh, gotta
I love that red Micro Center 32GB flash drive. I feel like I get one every time I go through their checkout line 🤪
Elementary OS and Linux Mint are good ones to test next. Elementary is Mac OS-esque so it'll be what a Mac User might install. Mint is just common enough that it is worth a test.
Does anyone know what laptop riser is used in the video?
Wonder if it is a WPA3 incompatability/bug?
How old is this video? Because EndeavourOS ships with KDE by default for some time now
You can choose any DE you want at install using the online installer.
@@ElevatedSystems you're right, but some problems you mentioned like fractional scaling is only a issue on XFCE, thus why EndearvorOS started using KDE by default.
will it run entpeise systems like openindiana?
Linux Format!!! You have great taste in magazines! :)
I like my FW AMD. I've had several with issues. NixOS was my smoothest experience. Worst to best: Gentoo, PopOS, Mint, Artix then NixOS. The bottom two, my favorite, not working that well Gentoo was painful. I could only get a tty running. No GUI really.
I've seen a lot of people say that, which is interesting since tbf to it, NixOS is still kind of a niche distro.
The MT7921 chipset for the wifi is absolutely atrocious. I've had nothing but issues with it on my Lenovo Thinkpad 5. Tbf theyre fixing it in newer kernels but it's annoying. Possibly a dodgy patch for some power management stuff apparently?
You can get some better support by cloning the linux-firmware repository and copying the entire mediatek folder into your /etc/firmware/mediatek folder. Now I'm no longer losing connection randomly.
I just installed Fedora 39 on a 13" AMD which was purchase 1 week ago and wifi has been perfect. I think it's possible it's somehow related to your unit?
What type of wifi access point do you have?
@@ElevatedSystems I use Unifi U6+ over 5 Ghz. For whatever reason my system behaved just fine with this setup and no special configuration.
Fedora here too. No problem with the wifi
Where did you go to set up the fingerprint reader for endeavouros?
Nice warping effects at the beginning. DaVinci Resolve yes? On a Linux OS? 😊
Wait, you can upgrade the damn CPU ??
11:17... sorry but that's not heavy usage... especially for 16 core.. if you were a developer, or maybe someone who worked on modeling, and stuff like that... but all that you mentioned barely scratches a 8core machine... let alone 16.
It is when you cut the APU performance in half with power saving tools. And the 7840U is an 8 core CPU.
@@ElevatedSystems ahaha apu for number crunching, browsing, media playing... how heavy...
dude is watching youtube at 12k while calculating fast fourier transform with gigabytes of data.
it's funny to watch these UA-camrs trying to sound important and busy
@@kalelalves Well I'm a developer and managed to kill a bit lesser machine of a sales colleague with a VM running Docker in it etc. It works perfectly fine on my machine. The difference is i5/8GB RAM vs i7/16GB. None of these are new, though. But people tend to plan using their machines for years to come. So it all depends on the use case. Of course, for really serious calculation heavy development I got a desktop... I'm not saying his example was very heavy right now, but keeping at this rate, it will be in 2-3 years.
Does it suspend correctly when you close the lid?
Yes, I liked this video... but you skipped Pop!_OS
I now wonder if the Ubuntu support continues into Pop!_OS
You should be able to install the Ubuntu OEM C kernel in Pop OS and have very similar performance to Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu support explicitly does not include Pop!_OS, apparently there have been more issues reported with Pop!_OS than with any other distro.
my like supports various cucumbers? beck yeah!
please test pop_os too next time!! though it's not officially supported, their power management daemon is like black magic
Please try with lubuntu, mint and LocOs. Greetings!
I just recently jumped from ubuntu to manjaro (gnome) on my amd framework and it's been good so far (maybe a bit less battery life).
Only issues I've had so far are some errors on journalctl caused by the hdmi expansion card as well a weird bug that happens when I connect the power and the laptop is on sleep. When turned back on, the battery icon shows that no cable is connected (though based on the amount of battery left it was charging). Just wondering if you experienced something similar :)
How does it work on Linux mint?
can u do an arch install or a gentoo install? :)
Hi CJ. I use linux fulltime and am currently on a Framework 12 (Intel). I first subscribed to your channel back when I ordered it actually. I just switched my home PC from NVIDIA to AMD gpu and it was very worth it. At least on hyprland, everything just worked so I want to go AMD on my laptop as well.
That being said, I have a question: Do you know If I can upgrade my framework 12 to the AMD mainbaord? I feel like it should be possible given the framework philosophy but I couldn't find anything about it online.
Yep: ua-cam.com/video/fo_8geZ9EuI/v-deo.html
You absolutely can, I think Linus from LTT made a video where he did just that.
Edit: You will have to buy new RAM, the AMD board needs DDR5.
Manjaro n EndeavourOS are Arch. Different flavours of arch, but, still just arch linux. Not sure why those 2 were included instead of, idk, Zorin, but I digress.
Great video c:
But then Zorin is just a flavour of Ubuntu. but in my experience even two derivatives of the same base distro can be very different in performance, reliability, and user experience
Lots of things can affect battery life, the OS base absolutely matters but you can't assume that Manjaro will get the same performance as Arch, which tends to be completely customized on install. Hell, even 2 Arch installations could have immensely different battery life and performance depending on what the user is doing
manjaro is not just a arch flavour, it uses different packages by a bit.
i'd be really interested which WM he tested for Endeavour. maybe it would make sense to test different WMs on x11 vs wayland too.
I never had Wifi problems in Ubuntu. The fact the tested laptop Wifi had problems but Windows didn't, doesn't mean there's a problem with Wifi support in general in Linux. I'm sure there are Wifi devices not working by default in Windows without specific drivers or thinkering. Laptops will never be a reference of performance. Sometimes the specs of CPUs (etc) are very nice on paper, but the OSes need to limit hardware a lot to be able to save battery. Sometimes the HW is even limited by the BIOS/Motherboard.
does this laptop allow a front facing speaker config?
can't wait to see if 24.04 improves any of this when it comes out
Wifi SHOULD be improved with the default Mediatek chip, as theres some incoming fixes for a bunch of bugs that were reported by framework community members apparently.
@@merthyr1831 That's good to know! Do you know where I can see mentions of fixes upcoming for the Wifi card?
@@RubberDentist Hard to follow as it involves checking a bunch of different threads. I'd check sites for debian/ubuntu/framework firmware discussion on the MT7921 chip.
If you're having trouble right now, though, I'd clone the "linux-firmware" git repo to your device, and copy over the entire "firmware/mediatek" folder within said repo over your "/lib/firmware/mediatek" folder before rebooting.
Ubuntu might have already backported it by now but I've kept the repo installed locally just in case an update doesn't overwrite my fixed firmware files by mistake.
You can use SAME desktop in linux for a logic comparison ?
It's to shoot two birds with one stone. If Endeavour gets worse power efficiency with Xfce compared to Ubuntu GNOME, it's scuffed anyway.
@@DanielClear2 well, for a linux comparison you are need to use same desktop. More or less similar like Windows 10/11 UI .
Does the webcam work?
my laptop is AMD 7840hs ,fedora 39 is the best!
Sounds like intel is the way to go for now? Sounds disappointing. The WiFi disassociating is a major pain it seems. I’m sure it could be fixed but I don’t see any other YTers covering this topic to expect an update when it does. Can someone reply to this comment if they find that FW has fixed this on AMD + Linux even months later? lol thanks in advance (I really want the AMD model for the battery life and performance)
No, in just battery life alone AMD has a huge advantage over Intel. The WiFi issue is hit or miss dependant on the Access Point used. I'm digging deeper into it and ordered various routers to test. I'll be following up with some other distro testing.
Sounds awesome! The intel WiFi adapter you mentioned seems like a cheap work around and I’d be ordering a DIY edition anyway so if I have to just get that and call it a day then I will be fine going amd
I don't understand this video. The Kernel is the issue. If you run an old kernel then the hardware won't work right. I think the better video would be to see if you could get the distro to work with a newer kernel as a new user.
Wifi issues on Arch, what a surprise! The wifi issues on Fedora and Ubuntu were a bit of a surprise, though, especially since Framework works directly with them for hardware support. Oh well
It might be a chip issue.. by switching the wifi card, he was able to fix the problem... so it just doesn't run well with Linux....
WiFi on this is crap. I own one and run it with Fedora and Tumbleweed, and on both it would behave as the video shows, i.e. as if I typed the wrong password.
It's improved since a recent mediatek firmware update, tho
whats interesting, i have the 12th gen Intel version and i have never had any problems with wifi 🤔
Simple fix for all this..... use Intel wifi with Linux.
@@irg008 Because Intel boards ship with Intel AX210 chips, not the crappy Mediatek ones that AMD boards ship with. I could have replaced it with an Intel AX210 as well, but since now the issue seems gone I'm sticking with the one I got. Plus I got some instabilities with an AX200 card on my previous Dell XPS running Linux before getting my Framework 13 AMD, so it's quite the lottery...
Buy the new 2.8k display! And you have a nice 2x scaling factor. No need for fractional scaling anymore!
5:48 how disappointing
so, still it would be better For Linus User to get an Laptop from a Company that sells specific Linux Laptops with Full Linux Hardwaresupport...