Introduction
Once you have your Framework Laptop set up following the Quick Start Guide, you’re ready to install your preferred OS. The Framework Laptop is running some very recent hardware, and we’ve worked with the team at Fedora to improve support. Fedora 37 is one of the Linux distributions we recommend most, as it has full hardware support with very little setup required, and it offers a great user experience overall.
One note on Fedora is that the distro follows a fairly aggressive update policy on new kernels. This means that if you have the most recent generation of hardware, there is a higher risk that a kernel update could have a driver regression. On older platforms, this is less of a risk. To avoid this risk altogether, you can use a more conservative distro like Ubuntu LTS.
Tools
No tools specified.
Parts
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Fedora has a fantastic tool called Fedora Media Writer to create USB installers. It's available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. For Windows and OS X, you can download it here: https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/dow...
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Insert your USB drive (2GB or larger). Note that it will be reformatted, so make sure you are ok with erasing any data that is on it.
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After installing Fedora Media Writer, run it. Click Next to go to the "Select Fedora Release" screen. We'll proceed with the Official Fedora Workstation release for this guide, but there are a range of other options available. No click Next.
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The latest version of Fedora will be selected by default. Make sure the correct USB Drive is selected in the drop down, and then click Write.
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Once the USB drive creation is complete, you can click Finish, close Fedora Media Writer, eject your USB drive, and if you'd like to, delete the downloaded ISO file.
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Insert the USB drive into your powered off Framework Laptop, and then power on. If you have an existing OS installed on the Storage drive in your laptop, you'll need to tap F12 as you boot to bring up the Boot Manager screen. You can then select the EFI USB Device item with your arrow keys and hit Enter.
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Hit Enter again to test the media and boot into Fedora.
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After a few seconds, you're in! If you just want to try Fedora out, you can click on the Try Fedora button and browse through the live USB version of it without touching the internal storage drive. If you do want to install Fedora to the internal storage drive, go on to the next step.
Note if you are installing linux on a framework that had windows on it previously, you will want to erase the fingerprints that were stored in windows first. The fingerprint reader stores these in it’s hardware and it will conflict with setting up the fingerprint reader in linux.
Similarly for if you were dual booting and wanted the fingerprint reader to work on just linux. It does not seem like you can have 2 OSs on the same ssd both using the fingerprint reader. But an OS on the expansion card or an external ssd will work
If you didn’t do that, then there is a script you can use here that will remove all the stored windows fingerprints for you.
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Click on the Install to Hard Drive button.
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Select the keyboard language you'd like to use. On the next screen, click on the Installation Destination button to choose the disk. Note that you can install Fedora onto a USB drive or a Storage Expansion Card as an alternative to installing it onto your internal drive.
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Click Finish Installation and then reboot into your new Fedora install!
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Click on Start Setup button. This begins the process of completing the initial setup of your Fedora installation.
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Connect to Wi-Fi or Skip. If you wish not to connect to wireless just yet, you can skip this and return to connecting to Wi-Fi later on.
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Choose your Privacy settings. Here you can decide if you would like to allow Location Services using Mozilla Location Service or not.
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Click on Enable Third-Party Repositories. Unless you have a specific reason for not doing so, it's recommended that these repositories are enabled for access to additional drivers and applications.
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Connect Online Accounts or Skip. Connect to Google, Nextcloud or Microsoft online accounts to access your email, calendar, contacts, documents and photos.
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If you have not done so already, follow the on-screen instructions to connect to Wi-Fi, configure some basic Fedora settings, and create a user account using a strong password you'll remember.
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Once the user is created, make sure to update your packages using "sudo dnf upgrade" or the Software application to get the latest kernel version, which includes further improvements for the latest Intel CPUs and for the Framework Laptop specifically.
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That's it! Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, touchpad gestures, media keys, and just about everything else works right out of the box on the latest Fedora.
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Install TLP for improved battery performance. Simply install and reboot, the default settings are recommended for most individuals.
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Install and run PowerTOP in a terminal to monitor your overall power usage.
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sudo dnf install tlp Then reboot.
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Please see notes on enabling TLP and Gnome power profiles at section 3.3 of the Getting started with Linux guide.
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sudo dnf install powertop
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sudo powertop --calibrate (Allow to sit for a bit, this will take some time, screen will flicker, computer will do odd things.)
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powertop --calibrate: Allow to sit for a bit, this will take some time, screen will flicker, computer will do odd things.
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There's one issue that is specific to systems with 12th Gen Intel Core. The ALS (ambient light sensor) & the brightness up/down keys conflict on some current kernels. You can disable the ALS to restore brightness up/down functionality with the following command (making sure you've first updated your packages to get the latest kernel available):
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sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="module_blacklist=hid_sensor_hub"
As of Dec 2022:
- Fingerprint reader section updated.
- Current kernel/packages appear to have wifi working well without drops in our testing.
- Details on ALS are added.
Page is updated. All suggestions here were part of the update. I did not include changes to wi-fi lockups yet as I have not experienced them on F37 as of yet.
I would add to this page the tweak to get the fingerprint scanner working, instructions are here
https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buil...
Also, there’s a tweak to prevent the wifi card from just stopping intermittently; Framework support directed me to this Reddit post
https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comme...
… to fix it. In there a post from redditor “brokenbottle” with a fix to prevent wifi lockups. The good news is that it seems to have worked, but I would recommend this Guide be updated appropriately.
It would be great if the guide could be updated to include that information.
In the last step, “ALS” means “ambient light sensor”.
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Framework Ethernet expansion card on Framework laptops with TLP installed. If you notice the card isn't working on resume from suspend, please run the following in a terminal:
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sudo lsusb
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Look for ID 0bda:8156 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 10/100/1G/2.5G, we want 0bda:8156.
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Now back in the terminal:
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sudo grubby --update-kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r) --args="usbcore.quirks=0bda:8156:k"
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Reboot.
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In the past, various tweaks made to the TLP config worked. During my testing, this was not longer the case and grub changes above are recommended instead.
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Enjoy using Fedora on your Framework Laptop! If you have any questions or run into any issues, we recommend bringing them to the Community in the Fedora 37 topic. Members of the Framework team and sometimes the Fedora team as well participate in discussions there.
Enjoy using Fedora on your Framework Laptop! If you have any questions or run into any issues, we recommend bringing them to the Community in the Fedora 37 topic. Members of the Framework team and sometimes the Fedora team as well participate in discussions there.
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23 Comments
Fedora 37 works better than the windows 11 install.
Hi mitesh,
Let's have you open a support ticket so it can be sent to me and we can gather logs from there. This will allow me better tracking of everything (as comments aren't that great for this sort of thing).
I appreciate it.
Agreed - support ticket opened. Thank you
mitesh -
TLP sounds like it was putting the ethernet cards to sleep. I'll be testing the ethernet card out myself to see if I can duplicate the issue.
Was anything showing up in PowerTOP in the tunables section mentioning ethernet by chance?
TLP often performs a little smoother in terms of extended battery life in my experience. However, either on its own is fine if you prefer one to the other. But together at the same time usually is a problem.
The ethernet card stops working after a reboot.
mitesh -
Hi @matthartley,
This is the only line I see in in the 'Tunables' section of powertop related to ethernet:
>> Good Autosuspend for USB device USB 10/100/1G/2.5G LAN [Realtek]
The one difference from this time and last time was that this time the ethernet cables was connected when I installed tlp and ran powertop --calibrate.
The ethernet card appears to be working this time. I'll test it a bit more and report back if I notice anything out of the ordinary.
mitesh -
I'm curious as to why you recommend TLP instead of using power-profiles-daemon that is built into Gnome?
I've found more complete power saving takes place in my own testing.
Hey all,
I just performed a clean install of fedora 37 on my framework following this guide. I ran I to an issue where the framework ethernet expansion card stopped working. Removing tlp and powertop seemed to resolve the problem. I have not had a chance to look into this further but wanted to call it out just in case other ran into the same issue.
-MP
Regarding the use of TLP, it seems we should also disable power-profiles-daemon as well as enable the service (from TLP 1.5 documentation for Fedora https://linrunner.de/tlp/installation/fe...).
Fedora 35 and higher as well as Rawhide
Uninstall the conflicting power-profiles-daemon package:
dnf remove power-profiles-daemon
To complete the installation you must enable TLP’s service:
systemctl enable tlp.service
I noticed a big improvement in the sound quality on Linux using this guide on the forums.
If anyone is having issues with freezing on the 12gen chips I found that updating to Fedora 37 Beta was helpful. There is also a forum post working on other workarounds.
Also, I’ve noticed some people mention having issues using the fingerprint scanner on both windows and linux but I never had any issues with that. When I set it up I did Linux fingerprint enrollment first then windows. Hope that helps some folks!
Are you going to replace that outdated Fedora logo?
Updated. Thanks for the heads up.
Not yet on Frameworks, but I may use FedoraOS though I would prefer to use the Fedora CoreOS Stable version and would see this as a reasonable option. Fedora OS is a point release while the Fedora CoreOS option allows for a rolling release. It does not have the rapid download option while on Windows or Mac, but can be downloaded as an option to plain FedoraOS for those who do not want to deal with the point release schedule and the three flavors of Fedora CoreOS are available including Stable, a more aggressive Testing verson and a most aggressive Next version.
I do think that while these are not noted here that some people may be interested in using one of these alternate rolling versions. I would not imagine that the compatibility with Frameworks is any much the different and that even the upgrading would remain more or less similar.
If anybody has a contrary idea or experience with this, I would like the feedback.
Some may find this option a more desirable one to a point release.
I have put the .iso on the usb drive using the Fedora Writer application. I then ejected the drive from the machine used to create it. I plug it into my brand new DIY Framework and the Boot Option Menu shows no options. I am trying to run Fedora 36. I’ve tried re-writing to the usb drive to see if I did it wrong, and got the same results. After I press escape, I get a message that reads “No bootable device — please restart sysem”
First make sure you're using F12 to boot to the boot menu. If the drive isn't showing up, you need a new flash drive. If it shows but present the error, see the next steps.
Please try using https://www.balena.io/etcher/ and also download a fresh ISO of your prefered release. 36 is fine, 37 is current.
I have put the .iso on the usb drive using the Fedora Writer application. I then ejected the drive from the machine used to create it. I plug it into my brand new DIY Framework and the Boot Option Menu shows no options. I am trying to run Fedora 36. I’ve tried re-writing to the usb drive to see if I did it wrong, and got the same results. After I press escape, I get a message that reads “No bootable device — please restart sysem”
I have also tried removing the 2 other bays to only have the battery and the usb-a slot filled to see if that helped. No effect.
Yep, I second that comment from ‘bond’. My future laptop will be the one from framework. :) It might take a while but will be done. We moved to Europe around the time this modular laptop was in development. I got me an older Dell Latitude 15.6” here again, and run fedora 35 Workstation on it.
I’m happy with it and both hardware and software are reliable. But the laptop is a bit older of course, and the various configuration options of framework are excellent.
Great to read that fed35 runs flawlessly on your framework. Now it’s just a question of time until you offer it here in Europe too. Thanks for all the work, guys. :)
I’ve only ever used mint, Fedora, and Ubuntu. I have only tried Fedora so far on the Framework, so far it works flawlessly! Of course, I would recommend following the guide on the Linux support page for Framework to save on battery power.
Can you provide the link to the information about the battery recommendations ? thanks
Martin -
I think it would be most appropriate to recommend turning on “Large Text” in settings>accessibility first (which will probably resolve the issue for many people, including me). Then recommend installing gnome-tweaks and changing the font manually. Lastly, recommend the fractional scaling setting, and make it exceptionally clear that it is an experimental setting and can (and most likely will) lead to rendering issues. Since Framework is a company that takes transparency so seriously, I believe this should be just as transparent.
The link to https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fed... is broken; the link in the item above that does work and is sufficient for Linux users.
Christopher Beland - Reply
Thank you for sharing your thought. It hit me hard “The latest version of Fedora will be selected by default. Make sure the correct USB Drive is selected in the drop down, and then click Write.”
John Smith - Reply