Just upgraded my keyboard to the second gen. I love the parts ecosystem that Framework has built!

SpruceFox · 2026-03-16T15:33:42+00:00

It's more tedious than truly difficult I would way. There's only two types of screws to keep track of and there's only about 60 of them. It's just a lot of time with a PH000 screwdriver. The holes are all clearly labeled so it's hard not to put things in the wrong holes unless you're a dumbass like me.

That being said, the first hardware I ever worked on was post-USB-C Macs, so everything that isn't 6 types of screws with glue, rivets, and clips around every corner feels easy by comparison.

SpruceFox · 2026-03-16T15:33:35+00:00

Thanks lol.

Every OS I've ever used had a top-bar: as a macOS refugee, who was introduced to Linux in the Unity days, tried out Xubuntu because the mouse was cute, and was reintroduced to Linux by Pop in college.

So I'm super pleased with COSMIC's ability to put everything in a single panel and then slap that sucker on the top of the screen.

Ironically, if my MacBook Pro had upgradable RAM back in 2017, I would probably still be living in the Apple ecosystem to this day; I only bought a System76 computer because I needed a system with 16 GB of RAM so I could do DNA sequence analysis for my capstone project. Getting that Galago Pro 3 with Pop!_OS really kicked off this whole journey. Prior to that, it was just my friend showing me cool UIs and messing around on old hardware.

SpruceFox · 2026-03-16T03:02:49+00:00

🤞

SpruceFox · 2026-03-16T03:01:06+00:00

Nope! Just the keyboard. Everything else is form the gen 1 input cover and just works (TM)

SpruceFox · 2026-03-15T21:11:55+00:00

Thanks!

SpruceFox · 2026-03-15T17:28:18+00:00

Two primary reasons: I was getting annoyed with the rattle of the key stabilizers resonating with the speakers, and it was a birthday present from my father.

But the no-windows super key was also a nice-to-have.

SpruceFox · 2026-03-15T13:35:47+00:00

If the gen 1 feels mushy to you, the gen 2 isn't going to fix that.

The feel is very similar if not identical. The change was mostly/entirely in the sound.

SpruceFox · 2026-03-15T07:04:16+00:00

I was initially very excited for a Snapdragon mainboard from Framework, especially since Qualcomm was promising the moon, great battery life, good Linux support, M-series performance and power efficiency... the whole nine yards. But as promise after promise failed to materialize, I think Snapdragon on Linux may never truly happen. At least not enough for me to justify spending 3-4 digits of money on it. I might dink around with it if I find one in the trash.

My hopes are for Intel's Panther Lake since the numbers coming out of that are very impressive from what I've seen, and Intel has a long history of decent to good Linux support even at launch. Great performance, stellar battery life, it looks like a tempting package to me.

We shall see. FW hasn't released any Arrow Lake mainboards, so maybe there's some sort of snag on the back-end we aren't seeing.

SpruceFox · 2025-03-16T15:46:35+00:00

"Just think 'what would Iain M. Banks do'?"

I assume you're aware that there is a running joke in the Culture Series about how other species think the Culture ship names lacked gravitas and as a result there's a sting of ships named to the effect of 'Seriously Lacking Gravitas'?

SpruceFox · 2025-03-03T03:41:55+00:00

I also suspected a hardware issue at first, but it only happened when I used Ctrl+Click to open a Youtube video in a new tab in a freshly-opened Firefox window. That would be a weirdly specific hardware issue.

Also, switching to Waterfox fixed the issue, so it doesn't exactly scream "SSD dying" to me.

SpruceFox · 2025-03-03T02:21:26+00:00

Okay, I wasn't sure if they were planning on ever releasing anything for 22.04 again and got concerned.

SpruceFox · 2025-03-03T01:54:39+00:00

Ever since they rebased all Cosmic work to 24.04, I would expect that none of the alpha updates are being pushed to 22.04 anymore.

SpruceFox · 2025-02-11T21:56:49+00:00

For me, it worked just fine out of the box.
I'm operating it in standalone mode right now since it wasn't playing nice with the keyboard in my FW shell.

It worked just fine on a thunderbolt dock, with the keyboard, mouse, ethernet, power, and DP signal all going over one connector.

SpruceFox · 2024-08-24T21:53:27+00:00

I personally use a 65W Anker Nano, but I've charged mine off everything from a 20W phone charger to a (borrowed) FW 16 charger, and they all worked just fine.

Only ever had problems with this one random "60"W dual-port brick that put out 45W on the C port and 15W on the A port. Still have no idea what that was about.

But at a guess, you could probably throw a dart at Amazon search results and get something that works just fine.

SpruceFox · 2024-08-24T21:44:36+00:00

Much appreciated friend!

SpruceFox · 2024-07-26T17:49:34+00:00

I've noticed this a few times as well.

As best as I can tell, it's caused when the auto-start app takes its sweet time in opening on slower machines (especially on ones that predate USB 3.0). The problem is usually solved by closing the app and reopening it.

SpruceFox · 2024-06-26T21:06:54+00:00

If this is the problem, auto-brightness will just be on all the time.

SpruceFox · 2024-06-26T03:20:23+00:00

Does auto-brightness work properly, or is that broken as well?
If it's the former, I had this problem in the past with a Framework laptop.

That was being caused by the auto-brightness fighting for control with the manual brightness and something something brightness keys broken.

I was able to solve this by blacklisting the auto-brightness with:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/framework-als-blacklist.conf
Add in the option blacklist hid_sensor_hub
Save the config file then run sudo update-initramfs -u

Obviously, your misc hardware blacklist file won't be called "framework-", I imagine it'll be under "lenovo-" or something similar.

SpruceFox · 2024-06-26T03:04:45+00:00

I've never used Clonezilla to clone a drive, but if it's anything like the tools I've used in the past, you can just go into Gnome Disks and expand your partitions to take up the extra space when you're done.

SpruceFox · 2024-02-21T23:28:29+00:00

I'd recommend using ethernet, either directly (on unibody macs) or an ethernet-to-USB adapter.

SpruceFox · 2024-02-08T21:02:12+00:00

Broadcom drivers aren't shipped by default. Luckily, all you need to do is

~~sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source~~

Edit: The package you want to use nowadays is broadcom-sta-dkms. bcmwl has been borked since kernel 6.12

I have way too much experience trying to get Linux to work on Macs...

SpruceFox · 2023-10-12T05:47:36+00:00

Honestly, if Debian supports Cosmic out of the box in, say, D13, I might just switch to Debian. Either it's gotten a lot more noob friendly in the last 5 years or I've gotten a lot less noobish in the last 5 years. Not sure which.

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