Framework Laptop 13 reviewed, again: Meteor Lake meh, Linux upgrades good(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Framework Laptop 13 reviewed, again: Meteor Lake meh, Linux upgrades good
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/framework-laptop-13-reviewed-again-meteor-lake-meh-linux-upgrades-good/
3 comments
Useful discussion, but I take issue with this statement: "Linux still has problems with "fractional" scaling modes like 125 percent and 150 percent, which was what the old Framework screen usually looked best at."
Gnome on Wayland may still require weird workarounds because Gnome is written by people who hate their users, but on Plasma desktop partial scaling just works, including different scale factors between different screens.
Gnome on Wayland may still require weird workarounds because Gnome is written by people who hate their users, but on Plasma desktop partial scaling just works, including different scale factors between different screens.
Can confirm. For really good fractional scaling and other modern display tech to really shine on GNU/Linux you need to use KDE Plasma desktop. Others are still catching up.
I had good experiences with fractional scaling with Wayland - but as I understand it's still trouble for those staying on Xorg?
I really wish there was more focus on AMD CPUs/APUs with Framework Laptop. With more choice of their offering and especially with more powerful CPUs. Because they did not have something more powerful the last time I bought a laptop I went with KDE Slimbook V and am extremely happy with it.
> Putting Meteor Lake aside for a moment, what's really surprising here is how much better the 12th-gen Framework Laptop does in this test than it did when we originally tested it. It still doesn't last as long as the 13th-gen board in the same laptop, but it's now very close, which can likely be attributed to some combination of BIOS and driver updates. It lasted a few hours longer in the PCMark battery life test than it did before, even with the new screen installed.
> This is one reason why it's important for companies to have robust, consistent firmware and software updates: You can correct and improve upon your products' performance pretty substantially after they release, in addition to providing ongoing security patches (this BIOS update also happens to be the one that makes the 12th-gen Framework's USB-C ports into fully certified Thunderbolt ports). The 13th-generation Intel Framework still improves battery life, but the wide gulf we originally observed between the two models has been mostly closed, and now the Ryzen version of the laptop is the one with the worst battery life (albeit by a narrow margin, and not one that erases Ryzen's CPU and GPU performance advantages).
> Battery life has always been one of the weaker points of the Framework Laptop 13, but a few years of continuous iterations have improved the situation quite a bit. You should be able to make it through a full workday with any of the Framework boards at this point, provided you have a relatively fresh battery.
Still waiting for an OLED screen option - but as long as external video doesn't work under Linux on a MacBook air - I think my next machine will be a framework.