But time is the main reason I bought the machine in the first place. Reviews about Ubuntu support were glowing. Linux support was touted in the website significantly.
I'm really not trying to do anything extraordinary with the machine, so I thought it would be better just to spend the money and get one that works than it has been trying to do things like run Lubuntu on my old Chromebook Pixel.
I'm doing basic things like research things in a web browser, scan documents with xsane, or occasionally record audio in Audacity. I'm not trying to do anything extraordinary or complicated.
I just wanted a machine that would do those things without tracking me everywhere (Windows) and where I could fix pieces rather than having to replace the whole device if something broke or wore out.
I paid more than twice as much as I ever have for a computer so that I would NOT have to help you develop the product, do quality control, or troubleshoot it. I wanted it to be ready to use for my run-of-the-mill needs.
And it wasn't, and that's why I wrote this review here.
If time is your valuable commodity then buying a first gen "revolutionary" product was never going to be a good move. In your case, buying "known good" was the direction you should have gone and let others cut themselves and bleed out on the edge. Sorry for your bad experience, chalk it up to lessons learned. It's ever the case with tech: the vision is far, far ahead of reality.
It doesn't sound ridiculous to me that someone might decide to target the Linux market really well even though others haven't. I had hoped that was what had happened. Maybe I wanted to believe it more than I should have believed it.
But that's the motivation behind my posting here, to save anyone from making the same mistake.
I have a $1700 paperweight. Oh well. But that doesn't mean I want anyone else to make the same mistake.
Truly best of both worlds in my experience- incredible battery life and everything ‘just works’ for normal workflows on the MacBook, and can ssh into the headless Ubuntu box directly or from anywhere with internet. Depending on your dev needs, this anecdote may be useful: I’ve exclusively used vim and VS Code with a remote server extension to target the Ubuntu box for builds and I haven’t touched the setup for 6-8 months.
Also, if you’re willing to spend some time learning, getting into Nix ends up saving time in the long run as your nix shell definitions should provide replicable user / build environments on top of whatever Linux flavor you happen to be running at the time, for the headless dev box
TBH, then I think you should have bought an Apple or Windows computer, and put up with whatever the downsides of such things are (such as the tracking you mention).
Not saying that the extremely poor performance you describe is your fault or that the manufacturer should be absolved or anything, just that this is precisely the point of paying for conventional computers and putting up with their bullshit (real or perceived).
I'm glad yours does; that does sound convenient!
Given all the very positive press out there about Framework products, and the forum where this conversation is happening, I would have expected an answer more along the lines of: "your experience is unacceptable to us. Let us send you a box to return the laptop for an exchange or a full refund."
I realize that this might be more appropriate for a private communication with he customer, rather than a public HN post. Maybe you've done that. I have no way of knowing. But from what I can see, it seems like OP is being told that its on him to figure out how to fix a laptop that he just paid $1,600(?) for and that, from the sound of it, never worked properly.
I get that this product is aimed at folks who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. But I would not have expected that to mean a customer would be relegated to the forums to address such major issues. The fact that some of your employees may help him do this on the forums is very cold comfort. It is still going to burn up a lot of the customer's time.
Edit -- Just to refine my thoughts here: it's not a bad thing that Framework has an active forum that can help a customer resolve issues like this, nor is it a bad thing to invite a customer to participate there if they want to. On the contrary: that's all to the good. At the same time, though, I'd expect a company like Framework to evince a greater sense of their own ownership of the customer's problems, rather than exclusively suggesting ways that the customer can find a fix for themselves.
But that's kind of framework's go to market: an open ecosystem. Which includes troubleshooting in public so other users can see what the problem and solution is. Vs. the magic bullet being locked in some internal KB. It also would do no good to run through troubleshooting here, clogging up a thread on HN trying to solve one users issue.
So - you say: immediately return the laptop! I say: nothing he's described immediately indicates a hardware problem; it mostly looks like software configuration issues. So why on earth would they replace the hardware as step 1?
I don't mean to tell them exactly how they should communicate with their customers, but communicating some sense of ownership over the problem would have gone a long way.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that I'm just not the target market for these laptops. I certainly have no problem with fixing my own tech problems as a general matter, but I wouldn't want that to be my only recourse on my daily driver. If that's just not what Framework is selling, then I'm glad they've communicated that!
As a general matter, I have seen this kind of sentiment a lot, and I don't think it's particularly helpful. This subthread OP clearly feels let down and potentially betrayed. Why would you respond by suggesting that the conversation goes private onto a forum Framework controls? Shifting the forum of the discussion to a place where one party has more power seems inherently questionable.
I say that even though I have no reason to believe you all would do anything inappropriate, and my general view of your project is highly positive.
AFAIK it will not go private, it will still be available for everyone to follow. HN is not exactly convenient place for user support (unless it's Google or Apple).
At this point, when a client of mine that is technically litterate has such a bad experience, I pay them a visit.
They would probably learn a ton by having the setup at hand.
i mean, for a top-down approach i would probably also choose redhat because they seem to have structures for a streamlined b2b communication and commitment, but on the other hand i absolutely know nobody who uses it apart from the odd researcher and enterprise-it guys.
I believe it's the other way around: no other Linux distribution has a higher overlap with the target market of the Framework Laptop than Fedora.
Because unlike Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation has been specifically design for developers, hobbyists, and early adopters[1].
Personally, I only recommend and install Ubuntu for non-technical people, who don't need or care about always having the most modern OS features.
Things like mock and fedpkg make modifying upstream/bundling your own stuff up super easy. Then add in COPR (like PPAs) and it's a feedback-loop friendly setup
You either get stuff sooner or get stuff more stable, you can't have 'rock solid' stuff sooner.
Its where the new fun stuff goes first... not so new that it will bite you, but still new enough to be fun to play with. That seems perfectly in line with the marketing I see from framework.
Nice to hear that Framework plays well with Fedora, it will definitely be the next laptop I buy (if they ever start shipping to Norway).
but ime it is unpopular for personal use esp. in the enthusiast/dev/ops/hacker demographic that i consider to be a sizeable portion of the framework target market.
public opinion here also seems to suggest that my experience is less trustworthy than your feeling and tbh i mostly don't care wich flavor of unix is running my wm and browser.
In the meantime, we've been recommending Ubuntu 21.04 because it does have full support and good stability with all updates applied: https://community.frame.work/t/ubuntu-21-04-on-the-framework...