Images for the Framework Laptop

[bmp]

Hello,

I came across Universal Blue on the forums of Framework Laptop. This looks really exciting, I have a Framework 13 (11th generation Intel) and had a few questions that I was not able to find the answers for on the documentation page on the Universal Blue website.

1. Is there support for the 11th Generation? The site seems to suggest it is only for the 13th Generation so far.
2. I am a KDE user and would like to know if there are plans to have a KDE version (the current bluefin-framework image seems to be KDE).
3. If I were to use the KDE spin (kinoite-main?), can I just run the command just framework-13 for the kernel paramaters? If not what would I need to change? Please do point me to the correct documentation and I'd be happy to look it up myself.
4. Does the power profiles (as indicated on the knowledge base) hold true for the 11th generation in the provided image?
5. Would it be possible to create a KDE or Sway image with the customizations that are described in the documentation?

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post, I am unfamiliar with the naming conventions with Fedora spins, I am coming from Slackware (almost about a decade and a half ago) and more recently from Void Linux (I was on a Mac in between).

[castrojo]

Welcome! I am not sure on the 11th gen (I have a 13 which is why we started there) but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work fine.

The reason only bluefin is available is because that was the one I tested on to see if there would be interest. Now that people like you are showing up it helps us! Here's where you can track that progress of just enabling framework images for everything we have, then you can try anything:

ublue-os/main#288

Here's the commands that are run with framework-13: https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/blob/418c2e44496aee75a0b5835a8beab65f986a6d6b/usr/share/ublue-os/just/custom.just#L107

You'd need to run that once on any ublue image and then you should be good to go. I routinely switch between framework and non-framework images and the kernel parameters stick so no need to mess with it after.

I am not sure if the parameters apply to the 11th gen but we're basically copying the exact recommendations from their guide.

You could build this yourself with a custom image or wait for someone to finish the issue above (you can always switch between images without reinstalling). Setting it up yourself is totally doable. Level of difficulty depends on your knowledge of containers and github actions but there are plenty of people making custom images now so hopefully help isn't too far away.

Over 50% of our image pulls are KDE, it's just a matter of finding the right person to help fix the issue above and then it would enable framework for all our DEs.

Thanks for your questions!

[bmp]

Thank you for the quick response! I'll give it a shot and report back here!

[bmp]

I have settled on bluefin for now so that I can make sure I understand immutable better. Most things seem to be working out of the box apart from codecs for firefox and a but of heating. I need to fix them for now. My workflow requires latex, emacs and R, is the recommended way to do this using toolbx or distrobox? Or would rpm-ostree would be better for righter integration?

[castrojo]

Yeah I would install those things in a distrobox using whichever distro you prefer, do just distrobox- and then hit tab and it should list them out, then pick the one you want.

[bmp]

Thank you!

[bmp]

Outstanding issues for me so far,

1. Firefox codes as documented on the website doesn't seem to work. The about:support does not list the codecs even when they are installed through flatpak as described in the document.
2. There is some heating of the laptop (which I did not have on Wayland and Void Linux)
3. There seem to be double entries in the grub menu whenever rpm-ostree install is used.

[bmp]

Just noticed this for the bluefin-dx-framework, I have the following parameters for GRUB,

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia-drm.modeset=1 rd.luks.options=discard rhgb quiet"

Is this intentional to include Nvidia module?

@castrojo Please let me know if it is better to open an issue for this rather than post here

[castrojo]

Can you file an issue on this in the bluefin repo? We don't set kargs in the images (it's a known issue), so there are done post-install via shortcuts. To remove them do a rpm-ostree kargs --editor and cut them out, then save and reboot.

[bmp]

Done! Posted it the issue and I'll update some other things there too.