It’s made for user reparability/upgradability and has great linux support.

I did just order one to replace my MacBook, so I’m interested in hearing from others as well. The upgradability was a big plus for me beyond being able to have a mobile Linux machine for dev work.

I have one (FW 16 AMD), I don’t have any complaints so far. It comes mostly assembled but you put your RAM, SSD, screen bezel, keyboard, touchpad and all the port modules yourself. The machine is well built and genuinely very easy to work with. You can swap the keyboard and touchpad without touching a screw.

For the most part it seems like they’re holding up to their promise, you can buy a new motherboard for a CPU upgrade, remove the old one, put the new one in, and you’re good to go with the rest of your existing stuff (as long as it’s compatible, if the new board needs DDR5 instead of DDR4 then you need new RAM too but that’s expected). So far everything I’ve disassembled as part of the firs assembly has been a breeze. It’s a very nice laptop to work on and swap parts that’s for sure. You get the assurance that you can swap the battery, input modules, IO modules for the foreseeable future.

Where I’ve been disappointed is the third-party ecosystem for it is not what I was hoping it would be, there’s not a lot of third-party modules for it. But the designs are all open-sourced so you can 3D print parts for it. Maybe in the future we’ll have more modules. Overall though, it’s not like you could even think about that on any other laptop brands, you get the laptop and it’s what it’ll be for the rest of its life.

Runs great on Linux, most of the company actually uses Linux so support for Linux is very good. All of the models will run Minecraft very well, Minecraft in particular has been known to run significantly better on Linux to begin with, especially on Intel graphics where the OpenGL drivers on Windows are terrible.

I have been running one for 2 years and next generation am going to do the thing they were designed to do and upgrade my laptop without throwing away the whole laptop. So for less than $1000 I will be upgrading to something that is faster than my desktop, and it’s portable.

The price tag is premium, at first, then it actually saves money.

Framework 13. Had to RMA the first one I had for a battery issue. The one I currently have has a bad memory controller, so one of the ram slots periodically fails. I decided it wasn’t worth it to RMA the second one. So I’m living with a single stick of RAM.

Overall I’m impressed. It’s a good system. You can upgrade RAM, hard disk, and the motherboard/cpu combo if you want.

It’s a sturdy device, I’ve had no issues with the battery life, Wi-Fi is good. It’s a good laptop. Great compatibility with Linux and qubes

I’ve had my fw 13 since early Feb 2022. So far, I’ve replaced the hinges and upgraded to a new mainboard. (11th gen i5 to 12 gen i7 when it became my main PC).

I’ve redone the thermal paste on the 12th gen 2 times already to clean the fan out and have not had any problems opening things up. I open it up so often to tinker that the pull loop on the keyboard cable finally broke on me a few weeks ago.

My old mainboard is currently running my entire homlab. Opnsense, pihole, Plex, Kavita, audiobookshelf, foundry vtt, *arrs, unifi controller. I threw it into a 3d printed case and its been running fine without any issues.

I thought about upgrading to the fw16, but it’s too expensive for me to justify it. If I want to game I just plug into my eGPU. I don’t need my gaming system to be ultra portable.

I’ll probably upgrade again when they release a new ryzen mainboard that has USB 4 2.0 support so I can take advantage of the additional pcie bandwidth for my GPU.

I would reccomend the fw13 to anyone who is into customizing PCs or is passionate about repairability in the electronics they own.

I have a framework 13. Bought it with 12th gen intel mainboard, upgraded it to AMD when that came out. Also upgraded the battery, RAM, and soon the screen when the 120hz one ships. It’s super easy to get into, just five screws and then pop the trackpad/keyboard cable off. I honestly love it.

Framework has fantastic support for windows and Linux. There used to be some minor fixes needed on certain models but they’ve since resolved them and my experience on Fedora and Arch have been plug and play. On windows they have a driver install script that installs everything in one go, that’s nice too. And yes Minecraft does run on Linux, at least the Java version does. Idk about bedrock though

I love the idea of Framework and I buy laptops that do what they do. But from MegaVendors™

For example my Dell has socketed RAM, now with 128GB in it. It has a socketed CPU and GPU “card” with a mobile Xeon and Quadro rtx 5000. 5 M2 drives inside and a 2.5in area. Battery is pluggable and changeable. The trackpad and keyboard are held in place by a few screws and ribbon cables like everything else. With a small Phillips screwdriver I can replace anything. WiFi card is socketed. Antennas are SMA connectors. I’ve replaced the shell even after a security inspection dropped and damaged the metal enclosure…

I buy it because I can upgrade it within limits as long as the upgraded parts play nice with the main board. A framework promises to do the same except allow a mainboard upgrade. But at that point you’re probably buying everything. How many times, going back to desktop days, have you upgraded the entire system’s motherboard and not the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc…

And at that point you’re really only reusing the shell and screen and battery. The stuff you interact with everyday that will deteriorate or get dirty. And battery has a finite lifespan. Makes sense to upgrade the package when those need upgrading.

I view the framework as a great solution for a picky system user. It’s not for upgrading. It’s for customizing while you have that system. Allowing the maker of 2 or 3 SKUs to sell 1000 different laptops. Versus a Dell that sells 1000 different SKUs doing that internally and some of them allow you to do it externally like mine.

I wish them the best and I may buy one next time I need a beefy laptop. But their current specs don’t come close to matching what I can do. And their parts don’t work for my use like physical 3 button trackpad for example. When they do, awesome. But then, why not just go with the Dell? Who will send a guy to me anywhere in the world for free to fix or swap hardware… ANYWHERE. And no it’s not a corporate purchase, I own it personally and the warranty is standard.

I may buy one to support them once their margins go up and the demand cools. But until then, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to solve an actual consumer problem. It solves a corporate SKU problem that fixes itself as you become a big company.

I have a first Gen core i5 Framework 13. I’ve upgraded a couple components that weren’t so great on those units (hinge and speakers) and the upgrades were easy. Otherwise I’ve been pretty happy with it and haven’t felt a need to upgrade the mainboard yet

Just got my Framework in the mail today. I’ll report back soon and let you know how it is!

The Framework laptops can be easily upgraded and/or repaired by just about anybody who can watch a YouTube video. It is indeed possible to buy a base model and then upgrade it later.

Keep in mind however that you can’t just replace the CPU, but you have to replace the whole mainboard. Other components can be swapped at will, like RAM, SSD, Display, camera and microphone module, hinges, … Then of course there are the modules that you can easily swap without even opening the laptop, and can give you different ports, card readers, storage or custom modules (diy projects for example).

The build quality is quite solid on my FW13, the keyboard is decent and the trackpad is quite good. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another one if the need arises…

I don’t know about the framework laptop, but about the Minecraft question:

Yes, you can absolutely run Minecraft on Linux. It runs on top of Java, so it doesn’t really see the difference between the 2 OS. In fact, I’ve found that Minecraft runs faster for me on Linux than on Windows. The only thing that might not work is the official launcher, but that can be easily replaced (with the added benefit of improved functionality). I can recommend Prism Launcher, but really anything works.

About Bedrock, that’s a different story. Microsoft revamped the PC port of Bedrock, and now calls it “Minecraft for Windows”. It’s fully compiled, and it won’t run natively on Linux. However, I still believe it can be made to work with some Wine trickery.

I’ve got an AMD Framework 13. I love it. I don’t like how most linux distros don’t upscale well to its hidpi screen but as long as you stick with x11 everything is clear and sharp. I don’t like how the usb c modules are so flush that it’s impossible for me to pull them out. Not that I have any need for it but maybe one day…

I’ve got a 13 at home and a brand new 16(?) At work. On the 13 I’ve replaced the hinge and the mouse trackpad. It’s been great and it’s running windows 11. The swappable ports are a GD GAMECHANGER I keep a set in my backpack and I can’t count how many times a swap has saved the day.

The 16 at work is way nice, and I love the custom keypad. I installed Debian on it and I struggled a bit at first getting drivers installed… but with the help of the Debian wiki and llama3 I got it sorted. I haven’t tried installing Minecraft just yet but I’m confident it would work as I’ve used Minecraft on Ubuntu before and it was fine.

I believe you can replace anything that’s not the mainboard/cpu on the 13. I believe the GPU on the 16 is upgradable which will be nice for gaming.

The only critiques I had about owning the 13 for so long is that there were lots of weird firmware glitches that have been solved over time and it’s become a very reliable, usable laptop.

I got an Intel 12th Gen laptop but wanted an AMD 7040 gen CPU. I was going to live overseas for a while so shipping laptops via air is questionable.

So I bought the 12th gen and then a year later upgraded the main board. No issues other than VeraCrypt being annoyed.