{"id":342,"date":"2024-12-29T06:02:55","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T06:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/?p=342"},"modified":"2024-12-30T04:40:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T04:40:25","slug":"a-new-framework-13-and-fedora-kinoite-bazzite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/?p=342","title":{"rendered":"A New Framework 13 and Fedora Kinoite\/Bazzite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post is being actively updated. Check back every day or two! I’ll keep updating it until I run out of interesting things to say and it becomes “yet another computer”.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I purchased myself a nice used Framework 13 AMD for Christmas, after my poor old ThinkPad had an unfortunate run-in with severe hardware failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s a fun story on its own, perhaps I should write it up as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is more of a “journal”-y post, wherein I’ll write my observations as they come, being that on top of the new hardware I was also convinced to try an entirely new style of OS, the immutable Fedora Kinoite (or Silverblue). The previous owner, who I’m good friends with, used Kinoite during his time with it, and was a fan:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[Luke, 12\/26\/2024, 12:33PM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upside is I never had my system break and I could leave it alone for months and open it and it just worked<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the most stable distro I’ve used I’ll give it that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to say everything was smooth and easy but once it was working it stayed that way<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As someone who spent 2024 on a horrible Windows install due to abhorrent bugginess with late-stage KDE 5 and Arch’s ongoing game of Russian Roulette every time you install a package (will your kernel panic after pacman -Syu<\/code>, as is required every time you install something? Who knows!) the qualities of an immutable OS are extremely attractive: rock-solid stability and the ability to go back if AMDs graphics engineers screw up again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was worth a shot. So how well does all this work in 2024? And at the same time, how does the Framework feel and behave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments on hardware<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been using the hardware for a day now, and some things immediately come to mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a Ryzen 7 7840U, with the integrated Radeon 780M graphics. (More horsepower than a Steam Deck– juicy!) 32GB of RAM is installed, and a 2TB SSD is also included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This thing feels SNAPPY and not just due to the fact that the Windows install I spent most of the year on took literal seconds to Alt+Tab between windows. It’s able to open the most bloated of Electron apps (Signal) in mere seconds, graphical effects are smooth and gorgeous, browser pages load instantly… It’s hard to say how much of this is due to the new CPU and how much is due to KDE Plasma 6’s innovations like triple buffering<\/a>, but the end result is a machine that leaves any other I’ve used in the dust!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1st-generation matte screen is pretty and easy to look at, while power consumption isn’t off the charts like my last 4K 14″ display. Of course, it’s comfortably viewed at 150% scale, so all the usual misery with fractional scaling on Linux is present. Somehow, in 2024, this is still broken, and it’s so bad that Framework made a new panel with an express design goal to work around this mess in hardware<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The input devices are a massive downgrade from my beloved ThinkPads, but I knew this would be the case no matter what I chose as Lenovo gave up on making good keyboards some years ago<\/a>. I’m coming from a ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 AMD, the last unit made before the changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The keyboard is… Fine. I will need to find accommodations for the missing PgUp, PgDown, Home and End keys, which I’ve come to love and rely on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trackpad is OK, about on par with the glass trackpad replacement I put in the T14, and there is no TrackPoint \ud83d\ude41<\/em> I am going to miss this dearly, especially without a touchscreen. I will likely find myself using a wireless mouse much more often. It may, in fact, be a deal-breaker for the hardware in the long run. I’ve come to be totally dependent on it in the last 5 years of using ThinkPads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arch Wiki is, as always, incredibly helpful, and the page for this laptop<\/a> pointed out two amazing facts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n