Frame.work notebook, 12th gen Intel

This sounds like a good reason to favour AMD hardware (assuming they don't do the same). I prefer giving my money to companies which make life easier for FreeBSD developers.
Makes me worried about wifi - Intel-branded wifi is something FreeBSD plays well with... unlike other brands of wifi cards. I'd hate to get political over THIS, I just want my hardware to work without complaints or complicated workarounds. Well, once I have the hardware working, software (especially Open Source stuff) shouldn't be a pain to properly set up.
 
That is a valid concern. Supposedly you can "upgrade" the wifi module, so you could replace the AMD RZ616 with some Intel module. It kinda sucks that for pre-orders you have to get the bundled AMD RZ616, though.
 
So far I've only been faced with Intel and Realtek wifi cards. The Intel ones were fine while the Realtek ones were cumbersome to setup on BSD or Linux, if possible at all. I remembered not to buy Realtek stuff but I don't know about other brands, is Intel the only company to make decent wifi hardware for use with open source OS? Anyway I'm not planning to boycott Intel, I choose what works best with my software of choice for a given kind of device, if Intel makes the best wireless chips I'll happily buy them no matter my brand preferences for other computer parts.
 
Makes me worried about wifi - Intel-branded wifi is something FreeBSD plays well with... unlike other brands of wifi cards. I'd hate to get political over THIS, I just want my hardware to work without complaints or complicated workarounds. Well, once I have the hardware working, software (especially Open Source stuff) shouldn't be a pain to properly set up.

Yeah my preferred world would be AMD CPU w/ integrated GPU, and Intel NIC. But, I don't see any laptops shipping that config. Intel NIC usually works, others are more finicky, so I go with Intel.
 
Yeah my preferred world would be AMD CPU w/ integrated GPU, and Intel NIC. But, I don't see any laptops shipping that config. Intel NIC usually works, others are more finicky, so I go with Intel.
Yeah, I disassembled my Ideapad laptop and swapped out the Realtek wifi card for an Intel-branded one to get that kind of system. It was reasonably easy because I read the manual for laptop disassembly - but not all laptops are like that, which is why I'm enthused about frame.work stuff.
 
Makes me worried about wifi - Intel-branded wifi is something FreeBSD plays well with
boy, do I have news on that end... unfortunately, iwlwifi is all linux code as well. And as far as I know, it's as much firmware as on the graphics end.

See here for example:

Completely agree - don't want to get political over this, but I'm wondering who's troubleshooting and securing all that firmware stuff? Just waiting for some nice zero day exploits in that area.
 
Completely agree - don't want to get political over this, but I'm wondering who's troubleshooting and securing all that firmware stuff? Just waiting for some nice zero day exploits in that area.

Yes. In theory there is s solution that solves both the driver issue and the security concern: always use a client-mode hub for wifi and connect to it via Ethernet wire.

If the hub gets compromised via firmware bugs then you have no problem unless you ignore certificated/hostkey warnings.

And you only need a working Ethernet driver.
 
The way I see it, firmware is kind of a necessary evil... You gotta manage complexities of the hardware and the circuitry SOMEWHERE. In an ideal world, everything would be just driven by Thunderbolt 3, right? Simple and standard, right? Yeah, just look at what Apple did with that.

Also - the proliferation of the firmwares and hardware designs makes them a moving target for exploit developers who may or may not have access to the kind of information that makes thorough development worthwhile. As an example, I once bought a Netgear router to flash with dd-wrt, I thought I got the correct model, did my homework - only to discover that I got v.2 of that model, and the dd-wrt firmware was only available for v. 1... no amount of tftp flashing over specific wires (whose names I can't recall off the top of my head) helped. After a month of research, I gave up.
 
The 11th generation laptops work just fine with 13.1. Problem is they only have 'em available with German keyboards :'‑(
This might be a silly question, but when you say "works just fine" - does that include suspend/resume? That's one of the things that hasn't worked in other laptops I've tried, including the same 1165G7 chip that comes in the Framework.

Basically I want to 1) run xfce 2) use wifi 3) suspend/resume.

You know, normal laptop usage :) but sometimes people here say "works just fine" to mean "boots"...
 
This might be a silly question, but when you say "works just fine" - does that include suspend/resume? That's one of the things that hasn't worked in other laptops I've tried, including the same 1165G7 chip that comes in the Framework.

Basically I want to 1) run xfce 2) use wifi 3) suspend/resume.

You know, normal laptop usage :) but sometimes people here say "works just fine" to mean "boots"...
I haven't tried that. Poweroff/reboot works fine for me most of the time.

I recently tried the webcam and was surprised it worked, but it did bomb out after about 15 minutes of a Google meet. Made the fan go crazy too.

I installed 13.2 RC5 on it, replacing the ancient 14-CURRENT version I had installed to get it working, and was pleasantly surprised when the internal wifi started to mostly Just Work. I say "mostly" because I was unable to get lagg wifi/wired failover working. I managed to get the iwlwifi driver wedged pretty hard doing that too. I should file a bug.
 
Would you please do me a favor and type zzz at the console to suspend? It takes a couple seconds but should then suspend. Then resume either by hitting some keys, or the power button.
 
I wish FreeBSD had Linux alternative suspend-to-disk mechanism, which is entirely driven by the OS without any help from the BIOS. That's a really cool feature. I even mostly works (not always) in my tests. But when it works it is pretty much perfect in that the machine stays entirely powered down, for maximum battery life while suspended. Even my Macbook failed on that front recently.
 
Run as root, maybe? 😏
Yup, needed root.
  • Suspend with doas zzz - works
  • Resume by hitting any key on the keyboard - no
  • Resume by hitting the power button - works
  • iwlwifi does not resume. This is a known problem
  • rtwn(4) resume worked -- briefly
It was so close with the Realtek driver. It worked briefly but then
Code:
wlan0: link state changed to UP
rtwn0: device timeout
wlan0: link state changed to DOWN
wlan0: link state changed to UP
And then it would not get an IP from DHCP. So frustrating because it still showed as associated to my AP in the ifconfig(8) output. I don't have time to troubleshoot further, unfortunately.
 
Thanks for doing that and reporting the results.

13.2 has some improvements around suspend/resume, I wonder if they affect framework at all.

11th gen framework seems like most promising recent laptop, because some core folks have one and I guess are motivated to get it working?
 
Yup, needed root.
  • Suspend with doas zzz - works
  • Resume by hitting any key on the keyboard - no
  • Resume by hitting the power button - works
  • iwlwifi does not resume. This is a known problem
  • rtwn(4) resume worked -- briefly
It was so close with the Realtek driver. It worked briefly but then
Code:
wlan0: link state changed to UP
rtwn0: device timeout
wlan0: link state changed to DOWN
wlan0: link state changed to UP
And then it would not get an IP from DHCP. So frustrating because it still showed as associated to my AP in the ifconfig(8) output. I don't have time to troubleshoot further, unfortunately.
As long as we're talking 11th gen: I got an AC-9260, suspend/resume works flawlessly including wireless. Even the lid switch does its job, if you correctly set
Code:
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3
 
Thanks for doing that and reporting the results.

13.2 has some improvements around suspend/resume, I wonder if they affect framework at all.

11th gen framework seems like most promising recent laptop, because some core folks have one and I guess are motivated to get it working?
This was on 13.2RC5.
 
The proper way of doing this as a non-root user is to add your user to the operator group. However, this will also allow the user to shutdown the machine entirely amongst other things. As usual: Read the docs before changing permissions :)
I always add myself to the operator group - but when it comes to actual hardware, the results are a mixed bag.
 
As long as we're talking 11th gen: I got an AC-9260, suspend/resume works flawlessly including wireless. Even the lid switch does its job, if you correctly set
Code:
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3

awesome. How did you get that card? Did it come with the laptop, or did you buy it third-party and swap it into the wireless module?
 
awesome. How did you get that card? Did it come with the laptop, or did you buy it third-party and swap it into the wireless module?
Got it on amazon and swapped it; came with an AC201 originally if I remember correctly. I used the iwm driver on my thinkpad and that worked rock solid, so I intentionally looked up what devices were supported by it.
The stock one runs with the newer iwl driver but gave me nothing but headaches. For the lack of other devices to compare to, I can't really say whether that was an iwl or a framework issue.
 
Back
Top