I'm almost ready to sell my DIY Windows framework and go back to mac. It won't go to sleep-- fans always spin unless I shut down completely. Forums aren't any help. Anyone have this issue? Other commenters have similar complaints here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31433556
I really wanted to support this company because I believe in repairability! But repairability is meaningless the software doesn't work... I'm not a 16 year old enthusiast anymore, I don't have the time or patience to troubleshoot drivers, firmware, devices etc. etc. :(
> I'm almost ready to sell my DIY Windows framework and go back to mac.
If you do so make sure to buy the longest extended warranty you can, covering the slightest tiny thing that can happen to your M1 Mac. Mine was a fine machine, zero bug, while the screen worked. These M1 Mac laptops have brittle porcelain screens. As someone put it here: it's the bend-gate all over again. FWIW I've got both a 2013 and a 2014 MacBook Air as well as a 4 years old (?) LG Gram laptop. They all have their screens still working fine and I'm pretty sure I know how to handle a laptop: these new M1 laptops are just fragile.
I suspected there would be a catch preventing me from buying a MacBook.
I damaged the screen in every laptop that I ever owned - either by creating pressure marks or - like in the most recent one - somehow stretching(either via temperature or flexing the surprisingly flimsy cover) the adhesive which kept all the LCD layers in place, creating a diagonal clouding pattern in the process.
My next laptop will be a framework because then at least I will be able to easily replace the screen once the inevitable happens.
After hearing about this issue I went to the Apple store and tried to intentionally crack the screens on the display units. Closed the lids on several units with items between the screen and keyboard. Flexed the screen in several directions. Nothing.
You need to do this several thousand times. Let's say you use your laptop 300 day a year and that you close the screen about 4 times a day. If the laptop is designed to withstand 2000 closes then your laptop will break after less than two years.
The reports were spontaneous cracks after only days or weeks. And the tolerances were blamed because small debris caught under the screen would allegedly put undue pressure on the screen.
As the context of this topic is Australia, this isn't necessary. Warranties don't add much value compared to consumer law, which the vendor must comply with in Australia.
Anything I've ever had a fault not caused by me with has been replaced free of charge years after I bought it, including from large American companies like Amazon and Apple.
I returned my 12th gen Framework and purchased an M1 Pro MBP. It was absolutely the right decision. I just wasn’t ready to accept the lower quality product for such a premium price as much as I wanted to support the company.
Same here, I ditched mac for Framework, tried Windows, nope, fans always on, Ubuntu, battery died when lid closed in < 2 hours and fingerprint scanner didn't work. Fedora, same issue. I sold it and bought an M1 Pro. Nothing wrong with it so far. OK it was 3 times the price, but you get what you pay for.
It's really... not. I've used MBPs for years (three generations of them) and they've literally (like, literally literally) Just Worked.
But I'm sure you'll find stats and horror stories that say otherwise, as if, somehow, Apple (or anyone) is capable of producing hardware and software that's impossible to break, never fails, and lasts forever.
I've been using Apple for a decade now and my experiences with the Apple Silicon machines reminded me of the Windows 95 -> Windows 2000 transition only with no way of actually getting things to work.
It does a lot of things right - especially sleep - however I'm constantly running into problems with buggy software which is unfixable because Apple don't do compatibility.
Also not having a battery which can be replaced or storage which can be user-upgraded is absolute garbage in 2022.
EDIT: if I was still a gamer I'd be laughing the MacBook out of the room.
> my experiences with the Apple Silicon machines ... however I'm constantly running into problems with buggy software which is unfixable because Apple don't do compatibility.
You're aware that the compatibility of any software (that's not Apple software) is the responsibility of the software vendor with regards to making it work on Silicon? Have I misunderstood you here? You can't actually expect Apple to just magically make code designed for one CPU architecture just work on another? There's kernel level translations you can do between opcodes, but that can't be expected to be perfect. The perfect solution is the vendor updates their software.
That's the attitude of Apple and the reason why you should never use Apple for anything mission-critical.
Microsoft on the other hand: Windows is literally full of work-arounds they added to ensure that new releases did not break existing software.
Apple at this point is FAR larger company than Microsoft was in the early 2000s. They're a goliath and should be more than capable of doing what Microsoft did.
I feel like then you are just not the target audience. I haven't had the need to replace storage or battery for a decade. In the early MBP it was nice to change the battery as they degraded quickly but now it just doesn't happen any more and even my old 2015 MBP is still working fine.
2014 MBP: worked well for a couple of years, then developed a fault where it randomly half comes out of sleep, then gets very hot, even when closed in a bag.
2018 MBP: randomly completely crashes, with no warning whatsoever, roughly once a day.
2022 m1 macbook pro here - and i have one from work too. never had either crash, haven't plugged this one in for literally days, and right now i have an ide, vscode, ableton, slack, chrome with like 400 tabs in multiple windows and it's cool to the touch.
For those evaluating the new Framework 12th gen as a Linux laptop, I got a Batch 1 DIY Edition last month, and wrote a big review (includes covering compatibility, performance, and power usage, and some comparison vs my old Ryzen 4800H system): https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...
In your alternatives considered section, you didn't consider a single mainstream Thinkpad or Dell laptop ? At least the gen 3 Thinkpads with Ryzen seem pretty good, although configs and availability are hit or miss.
Most modern ThinkPads only have soldered RAM/max out at 32GB so were basically a no-go for me. They also had 2mo+ delivery lead times for BTO options, which also put it out of the running. I wasn't super happy w/ my last Thinkpad (X250) and general sentiment seems to be that they've continued to go downhill, so unless they release something that hits it out of the park from a design perspective then I'm not so interested. (The Z13 is actually pretty neat now that it's available and discounted, but only 2 USB-C ports doesn't work for me.)
Dell QC has been pretty terrible the past decade, and they're inferior in basically every way (Intel-only, mediocre cooling solutions, meh battery size, expensive, long-standing (like multi-year, basically entire product life cycle) unresolved bugs/incompatibilities even for their dev edition versions, soldered RAM, awful support, etc).
One other thing is that if you are a Linux user, I really don't see much point in rolling the dice/fighting obscure compatibility bugs (most of them being BIOS/ACPI bugs that are hard to impossible for mere mortal end-users to fix) when there are similar (or better) alternatives that are known to work OOTB, or better yet, explicitly support Linux.
Obviously most office workers or casual users don't need that much memory, but I've hit swap before w/ 32GB of RAM just with browser tabs and electron apps, so I bet lots of people with 8GB or 16GB hit swap and get slowdowns and just assume their computers are too slow, when really, more memory would have solved their problems. Also, I'm also sitting at 36GB of wired memory usage right now with a single VM running. Anyone running containers or doing any virtualization will want as much memory as they can get, as would anyone working with any number of data sets - I've hit swap on 64GB working w/ "simple" sqlite databases and doing basic pandas work. I also do video and photo processing (including a lot of large panoramas) for fun on the road and that's another whole class of workloads where more memory is better. As mentioned by others, large compiles also benefit from more memory.
Anywhere, here's the rub. I bought my 64GB memory kit for $250. It cost an extra $125 at retail to add an extra 32GB of memory, which almost all laptop manufacturers have decided not to even allow as an option for segmentation/planned obsolescence purposes. Which is fine, that's their prerogative, but since there are enough decent options that allow more memory, it also means that I, or anyone else who needs more RAM just won't be giving them any money instead.
I actually bought a Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, pretty much for the same reasons as you listed. The lead times for usual contenders were too high and the G14 was easy to get with the specs I wanted.
If it makes you feel any better about your purchase, I don't get great battery life either. I didn't make any attempt to optimize it, and I get about 3-4 hours of dev time out of it (yes, not very scientific, I know).
Your review was great though, I might get a framework as my next laptop assuming they are still good in a few years time.
Besides the short battery life, I hope your new laptop is treating you well otherwise!
I don't know about your workload, but in you case you ever wanted to poke around, one thing that might be worth looking into is to see whether the MUX switch (only accessible in Windows) is on its dGPU-only mode. On iGPU mode, the battery life tests for idle and wifi web browsing seem pretty good in Windows: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-GA402R-G...
On Windows, 3rd parties have been working on a utility called AATU to improve performance and longevity: https://amdaputuningutility.com/
And on Linux, I used https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj all the time for my preferred use cases (eg, setting the temp limit below when fans turn on to get a completely silent laptop on battery, lowering max power limits if I wanted to hit a certain amount of battery life, etc). (TLP has run-on-ac and run-on-bat commands so you can easily set your defaults based on whether you're plugged in or not (udev can see power events too).
I ordered one to New Zealand when they initially released. Had no problem going through a shipping redirection service (YouShop) but did have to pay import duty and some other fees on top of regular GST which wasn't cheap. Also pretty sure I have no warranty coverage because framework wasn't technically selling outside of the USA at the time. Still totally happy with my purchase.
I imagine the purchase experience would be a lot smoother now.
They really bleed us dry, don't they? We get shit all choice for computers and when we branch out beyond noel leeming or pbtech, we get slapped with import duties.
An interesting effect of the DIY model is that you can see just how large the markup is on individual components, and source them otherwise if you desire.
500GB - WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ for $189? I can find that exact item for $139 from quite a few places.
32GB (1 x 32GB) DDR4-3200 for $256? I just ordered one for my current laptop for $149 (+ $11 shipping since I live in the country and can't just drop by a store), though no guarantee on it being the same brand (some start at $20-30 more).
I really appreciate the transparency from them. They even lost out which models of RAM they have tested for compatibility so you can buy on your own. I just ordered a computer from them and I sourced those parts separately for something like $70 savings but I’m actually having second thoughts because
1) if I source from them I’m more positive that they’d be able to help me if I have problems within the warranty period, so maybe saving $70 on a $1600 purchase isn’t worthwhile
2) peace of mind vs the mess of counterfeits from Amazon third party sellers
3) they are a small company and I want them and help them to succeed because I love what they are trying to do (but also, selfishly, I need them to stick around if I want to order parts in the future)
Supporting the company is fine. I truly wish these guys succeed. This is an awesome project. But the bring your own options are great.
How many of use have spare SODIMMs and NVMes lying around from buying base models and upgrading HD and RAM ourselves. You can get a stock Frame Work and shove your spares in there. Or PIF your parts to someone that can't afford a spiffy new machine. You can even reuse your USB-C charger. It's still not "cheap" but saving a couple hundred dollars and reducing electronic waste is nice.
I think the the DIY spec should price in 2 USB-C modules, a HDMI module and a USB-A module though. You really can't use it without a few modules. Or Even 2 USB-C and 2 dummy modules (make dummy modules are release 3D model to print) if you already have a USB-C hub.
Yep! You're welcome to bring your own memory and storage, and we encourage it. The pricing we get on retail memory isn't all that much better than what consumers can buy memory for, and occasionally even higher than when promotions are running, so it is certainly possible to save money on a DIY Edition purchase that way.
can you tell me if a market like India is on your radar? i mean i use an old dell e7440 because the current sold laptops on amazon are basically the same with mostly structural differences and now epidemic of having windows license prices baked in to the product and no way to get without it.
sure, the OEMs have their local websites and you can order from there without windows but your options are seriously limited.
then you have included ram limited to like 8GB for upwards of around 50k inr which is just insane. if one were to do a BOM on these brand new laptops, the markups would be insane.
with something like framework, i could potentially get the products at a same/cheaper rate because it is "upgradeable" and also because i dont have to pay for windows
A little markup like this is not unusual, especially considering the USD-AUD exchange rate is weak and volatile. Plus the labour for someone to install the drive is not free.
At least it's not the Apple markup.
To go from 256G to 512G in an M2 Air is an extra AU$450.
That's where the DIY aspect makes it more interesting: you're putting it together anyway, so the labour aspect is removed and it's pure markup.
And I wouldn't call 30-60% a little, though it's not dissimilar from other non-Apple OEMs (Apple being in a league of their own). (I didn't sample any but those two items. Others may vary.)
It's worth pointing out that for Apple the labor cost is essentially zero. The factory workers in India/China/Vietnam are being paid around $2 an hour¶, and they would be installing RAM anyway. So charging $450 for an extra 256gb of RAM that probably costs Apple around $100 to $150 has zero relationship with the labor cost. It's pure profit.
¶I live in Vietnam and I know Samsung factory workers are paid about $200 a month here. I assume it's similar for Apple. China wages are a bit higher.
Not exactly pure. There's labor involved in getting things packaged up nicely for a good DIY experience. And possibly testing/qualifying them beforehand.
From a quick glance at someone’s unboxing video, they’re shipping these components in their original, unopened packaging for the DIY edition. I therefore reaffirm pure, because what they’re doing is part of standard retail markup and equivalent to what’s other retailers provide.
Tossing up between an i5 and an i7 for someone who does both programming and devops.
Languages used are Go/C/C++. Go builds are spectacularly fast so I don't think I'll notice a difference between i5 and i7. For C/C++ some projects I work on are large, for example the Linux kernel, but again I don't think I'll notice a huge gap between i5 and i7.
I think what interests me in the i5 versus i7 aside from i5 being cheaper is that the i5 might be more energy efficient than the i7; is that even a valid claim?
Also really hoping that some day they'll release a laptop keyboard with the inverted-T layout like Apple laptops.
For laptops, CPU choice often comes down to wait for reviews and thermal tests. An i9 can perform like an i5 if it's on your lap. Or it can perform like an i5 if it's on your desk. All comes down to cooling efficiency.
Typically, higher SKUs within the same power class (eg, U/P/H) are better binned so tend to not only perform better but also more efficiently, since they need to reach higher clocks at the same TDP.
The biggest performance difference between the i5-1240P and i7-1260P BTW though will probably be that the i5 only has 12MB of L3 cache, while the i7 has 18MB:
I gave up on waiting for one with AMD cores, come July.
It was not easy to find an AMD laptop with 4K 16" screen and socketed RAM at 32G... I had to accept one with an Nvidia GPU (3060M) in it I won't use, and which nouveau turns out not to support. So, no HDMI until that gets fixed.
Not exactly shocking is it? He's approximately nobody to them. Why him? I would think AMD sales far more likely to respond to Framework itself, a potential albeit small customer.
Secondly, I think he was giving it a shot as he's probably the largest media personality in the enthusiast PC space, and figured that reaching out to his AMD contacts would yield some results.
Unless Framework thought he would have better luck than them (for some reason?!) and asked him to, that would be different. But based on people here knowing about it, I think it's just arrogance.
Sibling commentor says Framework also didn't follow up, i.e. presumably they don't want to buy AMD chips at the moment, want to keep it 'simple' focus on one for now, or whatever.
More likely, Framework dreads the Osborne Effect, and knows better than to jinx sales of product already in the pipeline.
And no doubt Intel has them by the short hairs; they can't afford to go all-in on AMD, and can't afford to break ranks. You have to be Dell, ASUS, or Lenovo to dare cross Intel. Intel has myriad ways to make life uncomfortable, and uses them ruthlessly.
Even the Big Kids sabotage their own "build-a-laptop" pages to carefully steer you away from AMD machines they do build. Particularly Lenovo.
He's an investor to tune of $250,000 of their $18,000,000 valuation, so about 1.5%. Not buy a board seat level by any means, but not his usual random dude on the internet relationship with manufacturers either.
Now AMD on the other hand, he likely did overestimate the influence AMD marketing (and hence indirectly Linus) had over AMD's business deals planning, but the lack of follow-up is also from the framework side
And AMD has a $134 B valuation. I do not see why they care about some Youtuber asking them to sell chips to a company he gave some pocket change to. There isn't even a business relationship there for them to think it's a serious sales enquiry. And if Framework also showed 'lack of follow-up' (whatever that means? They didn't want to talk to him about buying AMD either?) then it probably wasn't?
I don't know what AMD's valuation has to do with how seriously Framework will take an enquiry from one of their top ten investors.
If you hadn't jumped into internet point scoring mode you would have seen that nowhere did I imply AMD was obliged to care.
Linus certainly has a lot of influence with the AMD consumer marketing folks given that he is arguably the largest media source in that division's target market. He incorrectly assumed that that meant anything else to AMD. You can see how someone thinks "Oh AMD always replies to my emails really quick, they must care what I think", and not familiar with interior workings of corporate politics wrongly extrapolate that out to the entire company, rather than the one division who's job is to care about people like him - he was a PM at a regional retailer, then he was a youtuber, so I think as obvious as this would be to anyone who's worked in a large corporation, it is not his background.
Lack of follow up by framework is from Linus's own description. By the sounds of it his contact at framework was like "yeah we'll think about that, but we're busy right now" and put it on a backlog somewhere.
'Internet point scoring mode'? I don't mind telling you that all my comments (at time of writing) in this thread sit at 1, I don't care, and that the next most recent thread I commented in was a lambasted attempt to correct the use of 'efficiency' in describing heat pumps. I am not doing well if what I care about is internet point scoring, I assure you.
> I don't know what AMD's valuation has to do with how seriously Framework will take an enquiry from one of their top ten investors.
Just as I don't know what Framework's valuation has to do with why one of the contributors to it is justified in taking it upon himself to try to order the company a different CPU.
> He incorrectly assumed that that meant anything else to AMD.
I think we agree there.
> Lack of follow up by framework is from Linus's own description. By the sounds of it his contact at framework was like "yeah we'll think about that, but we're busy right now" and put it on a backlog somewhere.
Right, they did not ask for his help, it doesn't really make any sense that he took it upon himself to try. What was AMD supposed to say, 'sure we will sell if Framework wants to order'? And then what, Framework is just as uninterested/not prioritising it as yesterday?
I believe the founder has dropped hints that they're possibly working on AMD boards, because I've asked this very question and got a similar response from them here on HN.
A 2-in-1 option, similar to the Thinkpad Yogas would be cool as well, because I use my laptop in tablet mode sometimes. But I can see that it might be a niche.
I held off replacing my 2015 MBP for a long time, but a couple months ago I blew out one of the speakers and the quality of all replacement speakers I could find for sale online looked very suspect. I got my new MBA M2 just the other day, I think if this announcement had happened last month I would have seriously considered it but clearly it was not to be. Maybe next time, I’d love to get my hands on a Framework and give it the Ship of Theseus treatment.
The MBA M2 is great by the way, I love Linux on the desktop but it’s been a while since I had working touchpad gestures and sleep/hibernate that didn’t just die sometimes. No moving parts, all-day battery life, and having my computer in Find My is nice too. I know though once the storage starts going it’ll be an expensive replacement or a new computer altogether.
(Also, the Framework is available for pre-order - the turnaround on my new laptop was about 3 weeks but I have no idea how long I’d wait for a Framework, is it still being released in limited batches?)
Did you find a replacement speaker for the 2015 MBP? I have a 2015 MBP 13" that needs a replacement speaker, and I've seen a lot of parts online, but not sure if they'll be the same quality as the originals.
The prices are in AUD for AU, USD for US, and CAD for CA. In the top left corner of the Framework website, we show the locale and currency you are browsing the site on (in the side nav and at the bottom of the page on mobile).
If you go to their site and select a region, it looks like prices are the prices for that region in the local currency. It’s a little bit more expensive to buy a laptop in Australia (starting price on DIY 12th gen is ~$870 USD vs ~$820 in the US, but that’s seems reasonable given tremendous currency fluctuations lately, plus added cost of servicing a smaller market.
If they're actively advertising to Australians, consumer law dictates that the prices must be AUD inclusive of any applicable taxes (which normally just means GST), unless clearly stated otherwise and a permitted exception.
Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
I've come across plenty of overseas online stores that "advertise" to Australians that don't follow ACL, apply GST, etc.
I'm also not entirely certain that ACL dictates that they must advertise it in AUD. A quick browse of the ACL Sales Practices PDF[1] only mentions that currency here:
A price is not a ‘displayed price’ when it is: [...] not in Australian currency, or unlikely to be interpreted as Australian currency. " [1]
> Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
Decades of buying stuff online from other suppliers who advertise as shipping to Australia, just show stuff with a $ symbol and mean USD.
It's not a Framework-specific thing, it's just every online store that isn't clearly Australian I look for that currency code beside the symbol. After it was pointed out (a few times now) that there's an AUD symbol in the top of the page, then it's now clear in my mind.
Whats full size? 16? Yeah I like the 16 or 15 inch form factor but that MacBook Air M2 has stolen my heart and portability feels important to me even though I am usually just at my apt. Does your Framework come with integrated or discrete graphics? Just curious.
Sibling comment covered it, and I only see integrated graphics on the website. I said 'full size' since I've got both 15 and 16 inch MBPs, of various generations.
Personally, I appreciate that Alacritty works well with what I've got on the Framework.
It's all Intel iGPUs, there are no discrete GPU offerings
E: IIRC some in the community have reported that the USB-C expansion slots are in fact Thunderbolt 4 (I'm not exactly sure on this point but my recollection is TB4 rather than TB3) so you could go the eGPU route
Just last week my old Dell XPS died and I was wishing these were available in Australia. Really glad I was a bit slow to pick out a replacement! Got my preorder placed.
You are under the same condition that many overseas people have, and that is expecting to see "price" not correctly stated, depending on many factors, none of which are clearly marked.
I have seen GST added TWICE from some american websites. Dont beat yourself up about it mate.
As answered elsewhere, prices for Australia are in USD and include GST so all-in are actually right around the same as you’d pay in the US (depending on your local sales tax)
Similar here. Got my current laptop exactly three years before Framework launched, and it's still holding out unfortunately (hated this lenovo from the start, but a shame to trash it, and wouldn't wish it upon others so second hand feels crappy also). Then again, the current 13" Framework laptops are too tiny anyway (my old man's eyes can't see pixels that small (I'm 30), would have to do constant zooming and UI scaling...). Very much hoping they've got a regular 15.x" offering by the time this laptop finally gives up the ghost because I'm almost certainly getting one of these Frameworks!
The only annoyance is the battery connector where you need to be extra careful not to bend a pin (I wonder why they couldn't do like other connectors with more plastic guide length to avoid angled insertion).
- 64GB RAM is really nice on a laptop
- also nice to be able to add "internal"-like storage with their 1TB NVME extension card.
Note: I run debian 11 on it with GNOME, fingerprint reader supported by installing two tiny debian testing packages.
Compare the 'Performance' model (i7-1260P, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) $2269AUD with a similar StarBook with Linux and choice of firmware (Am' Megatrends vs Coreboot) at $1831AUD, and the StarBook has plenty of ports too. The 400nit display is also very enticing to me.
Great to see. Although it just makes me more sad that I think I can't live with the screen size / resolution. I buy laptops as portable workstations and for me 14.5-15 inch is the threshold where the screen becomes sufficient to work for full productivity. The new 16" Macs are amazing in this regard.
But I'm excited nonetheless and perhaps at some stage I could see this being a nice companion to my full size laptop for other purposes.
How does 16" screens work on planes? I'm in the market for a new laptop (any ETA on Norwegian support for frameworks?) and the 16" screens of the new Thinkpads are looking very nice.
Haven't travelled for a few months but in the case of the 16" macbooks, they have the same external profile as the older 15" models because the bezels are so small and the camera notch is embedded into the screen space. I don't expect it will be highly usable on a plane, but it won't be worse than 15". Not sure what the screen design on the Thinkpads is but unless they've done the same trick of implementing a notch that protrudes into the screen for the camera, I couldn't see how they'd be as good.
Super anything that this notebook is not really linux-friendly, from time to time something didn't work. For example, latest Qubes OS won't work with wifi making Qubes almost useless. You also can't replace it with another WiFi module since there are no list that could be compatible with framework.
Beware if time-sensitive in US, said it would ship out in August so I ordered one for school. Still hasn’t arrived yet, though now finally has a tracking number.
he's making sure the battery life is enough, not buying it specifically for the battery life. It having the lowest battery life of the 4 tested doesn't matter as long as it meets his minimum requirement, considering none of the other laptops are taking framework's approach to design either.
I would not consider that an easily swappable battery, and while I might get a spare battery, I wouldn't casually change the battery since it requires opening the laptop up and unscrewing it.
Yeah - I'm a big framework fan but the battery is not easily swappable (if you define easily swappable as being able to do it without tools on the go between meetings). To me easily swappable is like that dell or the lenovos which had two batteries and the second one was hot-swappable.
While I still feel that swapping the Framework battery is easy, I completely agree with your comment and the preceding comment that it isn't "hot swappable" in any sense (nor swappable without opening the innards). My apologies for implying otherwise.
Yeah that toggle in newer distros is managed by power-profiles-daemon which ships with modern versions of Gnome. From what I've read you're better off only running one of these power management apps as they can conflict with eachother.
Sounds like you're getting totally fine battery life though so I wouldn't stress about it!
I'm about to give Fedora a whirl. Hoping I can get close to your numbers.
I'd recommend making sure you have thermald (2.3+, current version is 2.5) installed. It's the best way to load/use the proper adaptive DPTF tables from the BIOS.
Also, it's important to make sure you're running the latest kernel. Basically every release since 5.15 (up to 5.19 now) has had pretty important perf/power fixes for Alder Lake.
I don't know if it's my spec, or if it's because I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.1, but my i5-1260p model with 32GB of RAM is only getting about 3-4.5 depending on if I'm in video calls or just web browser/VS Code.
I eked maybe an extra half hour out by disabling the built-in power-profiles-daemon in favour of autocpufreq, but from the forum posts I've read if you need 6-7 hours reliably you may have to run Windows :(
I managed to have the same battery life if not better than on Windows 11.
I own a 3 years old Dell XPS 13, i7 16GB of RAM and run it on the latest Fedora (arch btw before).
It is a personal laptop, I mainly use it to browse the web and occasionally work on personal projects (Python,Typescript,Rust), mostly on neovim, vscode otherwise.
For power management, I use TLP instead and also disabled power-profiles-daemon (I don´t know autocpufreq).
The key point especially for my usage was to enable as much as possible video hardware acceleration for every app especially the browser (firefox for me).
Archwiki is your friend for that.
Also for intel graphics you should make sure that the graphics micro controller is used (Guc) for media decoding. It is also well explained on the intel graphics Archwiki page (guc/huc firemare loading).
I did a lot of testing on battery life testing on my new 1260P Framework recently. It has a 55Wh battery, so you can back out any of the calculations for battery life:
* On my Arch install (5.19 kernels, tlp and thermald installed, but default settings, running Sway WM), it idles at around 4W at 200 nits (if nothing is plugged into the USB ports and it's able to spend almost all its time in C10), otherwise you're looking at idles of around 6W. Overall, it should get about 10h doing "nothing."
* Light usage, including playing (VA-API hw accelerated) videos like YouTube will get to 8-12W.
I haven't done a lot of rundown tests, but I suspect for average usage (web browsing, basic productivity, light dev, but not monster compiles) you'd probably expect like 5-7h, but it's not going to give you 8h+ like you would expect with the best modern thin and lights.
A few other battery related notes:
* From Intel 11th-gen on, S3 suspend is no longer supported, just S0ix or s2idle ("modern standby") - I wrote a test script and for me, this uses about 0.7Wh when suspended, or about 1.3% of battery/hour - Windows machines automatically hibernate at 5% battery usage, and you'll probably want to setup suspend-then-hibernate for any newer Intel machine.
* The Framework 11th gen had some RTC/power off battery drain issues, but those are supposed to be fixed for 12th gen (I haven't tested as rundown times are in the weeks if its a problem).
If you're looking for maximum battery life for a Linux laptop btw, Tuxedo and Slimbook (shared TongFang chassis) recently released two recent models that would do better than the Framework. An AMD 5700U 15" model w/ a 91Wh battery which is a lot more power efficient (and can be made more efficient with RyzenAdj) - I used the last version of this laptop (and wrote a review on that as well) the past two years and can attest that it's good, and the improvements on the refresh fix just about everything I didn't like about the first version, but the 5700U is sadly using older Zen2 cores that are outclassed at high-end performance, and suffers from retbleed mitigations as well. The second model are 14" Intel 12700H systems with 99Wh batteries (at the same weight as the Framework, very impressive). While a higher power consumption chip, you can tame it with thermald, auto-cpufreq, or manual RAPL settings and make it perform pretty close to a P chip I suspect, and you have almost twice the battery capacity to play with. (Obviously, get the version w/o an Nvidia dGPU if you care about battery life.)
Are the bring-your-own-OS editions not available in Aus? I'm seeing some right below this press release, but I'm browsing from Canada.
I also received a Framework just today, and it had no preinstalled OS.
RE: discrete GPUs, I'd expect those to be available on substantially later or substantially different model; the thermal needs are significant, and it's usually unnecessary on Framework's current target market of workstation-class laptops.
I really wanted to support this company because I believe in repairability! But repairability is meaningless the software doesn't work... I'm not a 16 year old enthusiast anymore, I don't have the time or patience to troubleshoot drivers, firmware, devices etc. etc. :(