Look, we know System76 laptops are based as fuck. I mean, Coreboot, Open source firmware, PopOS, and a fucking open source mobo in the works, just so fucking based.
But man, these framework laptops look cool too. Completely modular and easy to work on. Looks like the company has proved it isn’t going to go under anytime soon.
I’m debating what to get once I feel like upgrading from the trusty ol ThinkPad. What would you buy?
As someone who has been plagued by broken, hard to repair laptops before, I went for the Framework Laptop. Of course, your needs and wants might be different.
System 76 laptops are probably a bit better for Linux considering they were built specifically for it. They also have more variety in what kind of laptop you can get, whereas the Framework only comes in a 13 inch “ultrabook” form factor and a future 16 inch gaming laptop. And battery life I believe is a bit better than the Framework.
However, Framework still works really well with Linux (I use Linux Mint on mine, and it works great.) And the flexibility in being able to repair, upgrade and customize your laptop is really nice. Plus, the battery thing is slowly but surely getting fixed, and while it’s still not entirely great, it has gotten me through the day as a computer science student.
Framework selects components that work well with Linux. They’re acutely aware how many Linux users they’ve got from the activity in their forum. We’re very loud.
I didn’t know they were planning a gaming laptop. That would be nice because I do some gaming but bot enough to want to buy a whole new rig every couple of years. Having a modular means to upgrade it would hopefully make it more affordable.
I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this. In 2018 I bought an Oryx Pro specifically because of this and because at the time JB was advertising them as “machines born to run Linux”. However, this was not the case. The machine would constantly fail to resume from sleep and when it did, the wired network adapter would sometimes stop working until you rebooted the machine. This was on Pop!OS. The wired network adapter issue did not occur on Debian Testing at the time, but at this point I was just doing all the same workarounds on a System76 machine that I would have to do on any other machine, which completely defeated the point of buying a machine “born to run Linux”. I ended up returning the machine despite this meaning that I would lose $1000 AUD in shipping (roughly $500 AUD each way). System76 did refund the cost of the machine as promised though and I appreciated the honesty and professionalism from their support. I believe the network issue was due to a regression in the kernel which had not yet trickled all the way down. To be fair, maybe System76 have ironed these issues out on their new machines.
Don’t buy a machine from a manufacturer because they specifically sell Linux laptops hoping that it means you won’t run in to any issues. Do some research on the model you’re looking to buy for any issues with the distro you want to run and make your decision from there. The Ubuntu computer certifications are really useful here. I believe Ubuntu tested the ThinkPad P52 I bought afterwards and said everything but the fingerprint sensor worked, but to NEVER turn on one of the BIOS options because I would brick the machine, so I knew this before buying the ThinkPad and could make an informed decision.
The one advantage you might get with a Linux manufacturer is that they might be able to help if there is an issue, where-as you might have to hide the fact you run Linux from other manufacturers.