Enjoyed reading your experiences of using this. I have been aware of them since they started and it’s good to see it’s a viable business, shows that people want repairable tech, but i just wish i could bloody afford one and i’d be all over it. Cory often talks about his experiences of the one he owns and seems very enamoured with it - Pluralistic: 13 Nov 2022 The Framework is the most exciting laptop I’ve ever broken – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Oh, there is a numpad for the model 16!
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I have a draft that’s been sitting unfinished for several weeks now, about how actually Linux is mostly great now, but I wanted to share a quick anecdote that disproves my thesis.
I got a notification the other day that there was a firmware update for my laptop. I went ahead and installed it, but chose not to reboot at the time. Later, I got a notification about software updates, and I was wrapping up for the day, so I went ahead and installed them and rebooted. Everything seemed to go smoothly, and then on reboot I saw the boot log up until gdm, and then it just stopped. No error, just stopped. I could switch to other virtual terminals, but no GUI. Thinking something had gone wrong with the update, I rebooted again. This time, I couldn’t get the display to come up at all, even after a hard reboot. I probably spent at least an hour trying to troubleshoot this, and then finally gave up for the night. The next day, after a few more reboots and some patience, I was able to get back to the boot log stopped at the same place. Searching around online, I stumbled upon a slightly related StackExchange question, and there it was. Someone mentioned that they had exactly the same problem, and it was all caused by them installing the FUSE package, which forced uninstall of gnome-session, breaking GNOME in the process, but only after a reboot. That’s when it clicked. I had installed FUSE in the last week or so, although I can’t remember why any more. I must’ve missed or ignored the list of packages it said would be removed when I did so. I switched back to a virtual terminal, uninstalled FUSE, reinstalled gnome-session, and rebooted back into a working GUI. An easy fix, for sure, but the effect of the mistake was so delayed as to make it entirely counterintuitive.
To recap: Linux is great, except for the exact moments when it is absolutely not. This is not at all dissimilar from Windows. Also, don’t install FUSE. You probably already have FUSE3 installed anyway.
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I keep going back and forth between dropping the not inconsiderable 
on a Framework, or going with something like a Pine64 Pinebook Pro for 1/10 the price and just using it SSH’d to my servers. I do love everything about the Framework.
Linux (or occasionally OpenBSD) have been the only O/S’s I’ve used on machines I’ve owned since ~1998. That’s probably also why ThinkPads have been my go-to laptops for a while; fewer surprises. But the last couple have been harder to fix.
The upside of the Pinebook is that if I cross the wrong border with it, I can biff it. The downside of the Pinebook is it comes from 
, so I don’t trust it to start with (I’m in the business of not trusting things) and don’t have the time to vet it.
If anyone knows a “something like a Pinebook Pro” from somewhere other than mainland autocratistan, I’d love to hear about it.
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That was my experience when I used Linux daily. Most of the times I had no problems, then an update broke the LUKS login and I had to boot off of a flash drive to recover the files I wanted and re-install the OS from the stable branch.
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Yeah, i’ve read many examples of some update somewhere breaking things like the microphone or bluetooth and having to delve into seemingly endless forum threads of arcane Linux knowledge from 2008 to find that one command line to fix the damn thing. Once upon a time you could rely on Windows updates not to brick anything but those days are long gone after they got rid of their QA testers and barely a month goes by without another update borking something.
Cory talks about this, those were his Go To machines for Linux for years but they have become increasingly locked down and difficult to do anything non-spec. So i really, genuinely hope the Framework is long term and others take up the baton.
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Can confirm: the current work-issued Thinkpad T16 has clips holding it together, and you will need a spudger to get into the thing before breaking out the tiny screwdriver kit. Same with the T460 I acquired from work from the asset recovery pile.
By way of comparison, the ancient T410 that I have for a drive testing laptop is exceptionally easy to open up and work on.
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I found this while looking into laptop options:
So I don’t think Framework would work for me.
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You should be able to install a privacy filter to a laptop, it’ll bring down the brightness but downside is that viewing angles will be more limited because it’s a privacy filter. Alternative is to install a neutral density filter/film like this
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It’s about as repairable as a mac mini too: memory failure? replace the entire system board. No ports for an external GPU, and the CPU/GPU are on the same die so neither can be upgraded without having to also replace the other. (oh wait, the CPU’s non-swappable, so that’s also a system board replacement.)
But you can 3d print custom tiles and put them on the front! /sarcasm
Not much in the way of ‘easy to repair’ unless you count chucking a dead system board in the eWaste pile and putting a new one on, unless they provide repair houses with schematics to make board/level repairs…
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And there’s a version of the mini PC that is for AI use/development, which i think is some kind of red flag 
I do believe in Framework’s vision for the laptops but i don’t know what to make of the mini PC
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I really feel like the design of the mainboard is constrained by the AMD AI 3xx chipset, but nothing stops them from creating a different mainboard later based on a chipset that allows normal CPU and memory upgrades. I think its primary value in the current configuration is as an inexpensive Windows or Linux AI workstation. I think the gaming angle is largely an afterthought, and was driven more by AMD marketing than anything else. If all that makes me sound like a Framework apologist, so be it, but I’m seeing a lot of takes online that basically boil down to “It’s not built for my use case, so I don’t understand why it exists.” This is not a product for me, even if I think it has some neat features. I’m not the kind of person that would generally purchase a $300+ case, and I tend to find ITX to be too small for my needs. For other people, it may be exactly what they’re looking for. For AI use cases, I think it makes even more sense to set these up in a rack of some sort, which they showed a prototype of during the event. I’m not an AI developer either, so I can’t say for certain whether this adequately meets those needs for the price.
Just imagine if Framework had announced an entirely bog-standard ATX desktop? I can’t imagine they’d have an easier time justifying its existence.
Not mentioned in the video above is that they also announced The Framework 12, a 2-in-1 tablet/laptop hybrid. That does interest me, as a possible replacement for my daughter’s Pixelbook. If the price is right, it could be viable alternative to iPads and Chromebooks in schools as well.
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Yeah, that 12" has piqued my interest; when I started freelancing, I bought a 15" Lenovo Thinkbook, which in all fairness, has done sterling service.
But when I’m going into machine rooms, I could often do with a smaller form factor, and the flip-over tablet idea has always struck me as being advantageous in those scenarios.
I’m inevitably cradling my Thinkbook on one arm while trying to read the screen in cramped spaces, so something smaller that can also act as a tablet, therefore taking up half as much space again, seems like a no-brainer.
Edit: Ack, sorry, this was actually in response to this post of yours.
I also wanted to respond about the Fairphone bits; I have both the Fairphone 5 and the Fairbuds XL, and am really pleased with both. I’ve not had to replace anything in the phone yet, but it’s got a nice tear-off back like the ancient Galaxy S2, which makes everything immediately accessible, and is a nifty way to quickly show interested people how repairable it is.
The Fairbuds actually had a manufacturing flaw in the plastic used for the arms, and both have snapped on me, but been replaced without charge by the good people at Fairphone.
Replacing them was easy, with videos showing how to do it being accessible directly in the Fairphone app.
One really nifty touch that I love about the headphones is that the cable connecting the left and right speakers is USB C.
When the second arm snapped, I went back to using my Sony WH-1000XM4 while waiting for the spare part to arrive, widely regarded as being one of the best noise-cancelling bluetooth headsets available, and I actually now prefer the sound of the Fairbuds, despite their frequency range not being quite as good as the Sonys.
As an aside, I went to town last week to meet up with my step-mum and step-sister (who’s over from Australia), and gave them a guided tour of Soho. Realising that my Fairbuds are a little bulky for that, and not wanting to lug around a backpack, I broke out my old Pixel Buds Pro (first edition).
I was pleasantly surprised at how well they performed!
I’m not a fan of in-ear headphones usually, which is ultimately why I stopped using them originally. But they served their purpose perfectly, and were easily popped into my pocket when not in use.
And to be honest, the sound quality wasn’t a massively noticeable step down from the Fairbuds; they didn’t fair as well when crossing the windy park on the way to the station, but they worked just as well once I was on the Elizabeth line.
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I’d like to get a pair of these for my daughter. Unfortunately, I can’t find anywhere that will ship them to the US, plus even if I could there’s the problem of getting parts later. Hopefully they’ll expand their market, but I’m not holding my breath on it happening anytime soon. She’s on her second or third pair of Logitech wireless headphones at this point. I suspect they are failing simply due to the battery degrading, but they are not intended to be serviceable, and I haven’t found the time or energy to try and get around that.
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I don’t know about in the States, but Sennheiser have pretty good spares availability over here. They’re always pretty damn good; I’m using a pair of their wired headphones on my PC right now, and I’ve bought spare earcups and headband cushions for them.
I’ve tried other manufacturers, from Astro to Audeze, but I always end up coming back to Sennheiser for the desktop.
In case you’re interested, the Audeze headphones were overpriced and under-engineered, with a non-cushioned, metal headband, making them really uncomfortable, as well as having under-sized ear cushions.
Not what you expect from supposedly “audiophile” quality gear for almost a grand.
The sound quality also wasn’t noticeably any better than my Sennheisers, and the boom-mic was frankly embarrassingly bad.
I ended up returning them in disgust before I’d even had them a week.
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She uses headphones primarily to listen to music, watch videos, and play games on her phone. As such, I can’t imagine getting her to consider a wired option.
Still wired, but an intriguing option is these headphones from Ploopy. Open source hardware and software, plus 3D printed parts would maximize sustainability. Worth keeping an eye on if they ever make a wireless set. I stumbled upon them when I was looking for a trackpad to go with the mechanical keyboard I bought my wife. We’ll see how that goes… They also have a mouse and several styles of trackball, all Open source and relatively inexpensive.
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