Hey everyone.
I’ve been using mac for the past ten years, and have been ok with it.
At first I wanted one cause it was cool and windows seemed from the user experience so much worse.
After M1 Macs hit the market - I have been genuinely happy with their offering. However the whole ‘soulless money sucking company’ saying all the right words forced me to consider alternatives.
Over the past 5 years I’ve had one or the other linux distros installed on my main home rig.
Usually as dual boot with windows (which i kept for gaming).
But for about a year now - I’ve had only linux installed and I zeroed in on Fedora, and had very little issues between gaming and light productivity.
At work I will be issued a laptop soon ™ and I can choose which one.
If i go with non mac I will run Fedora on it / windows 11 seems awful, and I’m not savey enough to clean it from all the junk ms puts inside.
I am in EU so the whole tarif fiasco isn’t of big concern rn and price wise these 2 are on par.
The contenders:
- M4 Mac pro (24GB/512GB)
- Framework 13 (new model with middle or top spec amd cpu)
I also considered thinkpad t14s, but they are more expensive here, than both other options considering the channels they are available through.
The only point than makes me pause - battery life & heat dissipation.
Side note: I have to travel, on average I have to spend 12-20 hours in one go (two ways) on planes and in airports every month or two.
M4 - very good machine, I am 95% sure, battery life will be no problem, heat dissipation as well.
- an argument I can’t use at work - it wont game properly xdd
FW 13 - on paper looks good, can even do light gaming. But main questions:
- battery life - can’t find anything substantial online.
- I am not expecting mac levels, but real 8 hours of mixed - videos, browsing and document editing is the minimum I’m hoping for, considering mac has around 10-12.
- cpu heat
- In a review I’ve heard - heat dissipation was criticised on an older (not old mind you) amd cpu.
- this thing will be sitting on my lap during the trips almost exclusively, so I’m pretty concerned…
Would appreciate any real world experience that you might have or just general input about running linux (ideally fedora) on a laptop regularly for some time.
The year of Linux desktop started for me last year, and I love it. Have no clue about the portability…
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The Discord community at frame.work has a bunch of chat about these devices. I’ve not used my AMD Framework 13 laptop (Zen4 with a 7840U/not Zen 5 ‘Ryzen AI’) for long enough to see whether it reaches 8 hours, and tend to sit with the thing on mains power and battery capped by firmware to 70%. I like the screen and the newer screen is higher DPI, and the keyboard is decent to type on. Be warned: after a Magic Trackpad, the touchpad Framework chose is a massive step backwards.
There’s a community guide to power optimisation. There was also a thread about Tracking Battery Life Tuning with a progression as the amd_s2idle.py script was able to take AMD FW13 down to 4-6W. The power-profiles-daemon is a massive help with this.
(Edit to add: not Fedora but Debian user. I’ve only had 3 issues since buying in late 2023: twice having a black screen on wakeup that needed hard reset and once having corrupted graphics RAM on rendering video from a recent kernel/amdgpu firmware combination.)
K3n.
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I have an older Intel framework 13 running Ubuntu 24.04 and the only gripe i have is the standby time is reduced by about half. It doesn’t really bother me as is forces me to shut down instead of just closing it (wont last a full night on standby). The boot time is fast anyway. Other than that all the hardware functions as expected. Framework has nice documentation and driver packages available on their website as well.
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Have a Framework 13 with a 7840, but I can not provide you reliable information about the battery life with this or the new processor generation because my battery is old. What I can tell you the battery life is not nearly as good as on a MacBook.
When the processor is not doing much the temperature is fine but when you crunch numbers the underside near the fan can get hot.
Maybe to add to this the reason I got a Framework is the repairability and upgradability. I already upgraded my laptop once and repaired it once. From my time working with end users MacBooks fail much sooner often with the keyboards failing and costing many hundreds of dollars to replace. But the battery optimization of MacOS is second to none. If you need to work long hours on the go and have no means to charge I think the MacBook is the way to go.
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My anecdote: I’ve compiled and run the tests of systemd from my lap without noticing excessive heat. It’s over inside 5 minutes on this 8-core 7840U with DDR5 and a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, maybe that’s not long enough to accumulate heat.
K3n.
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7640U FW13 on which I type. siduction (~ debian unstable) now, but used with Fedora 40/41 and it’s not drastically different on the 60 (actually 60.6) Wh battery. I think this might actually be the best case for battery on FW13.
I don’t find it to be unreasonably hot on any surface in practice, but I’d note the lower intake spans across the base at the back end of the laptop. That’s a bit less than ideal for noise when being actively covered across the whole of the intake surface, though on a lap (not counting a dress, I guess) it’d probably be ok at both.
But I don’t get 8 hours in a run, outside of the most restricted scenario (really, it’s consistently 4-6 of screen on-doing things, and not a lot of video) and I think that simplifies the answer. unless you need more than 24GB in this question, I don’t think anything is close to the mac.
Do you get to keep the laptop and upgrade it after. Then that might be another part of the calculus.
In the interest of offering oxygen to the 'less than soulless money sucking company' business model, I wouldn't 'not' look at some of the linux makers like starlabs, tuxedo, slimbook et al but I don't think they're close to the mac on battery either, except between them they have more SKU's.
Hey, thanks for the response and checking afterwards about the heat.
Will deffo look into their discord for more hands on expirience.
I like their idea, and I feel comfortable that 99% of the time linux will pull through.
It boils down to those two questions mostly, but when I think about it - since the release of the M1 - battery around 10 hours or more has simply become a major convinience.
I can charge the laptop most of the time, but it is sooo cool not to have to lol
@stin187
which gen intel?
and can you please tell me roughly your experience with the battery under different loads?
@H-i-v-e
Their idea is manly what focused me on framework in particular, and I am ok with certain ’ downgrades’ if the long-term.
Another big deal for me - in ten years I’ve had zero issues with any of the mac’s that we’ve had in the family.
- Once spilled coke over the top of the machine, was quick to wipe it, but one of the keys became sticky - they’ve replaced it for me for free because of the lawsuit with the butterfly keys.
I know people bring up a lot the cost of repairs for apple, but I’ve never had to endure it. For me the point of switch is more based on principle, and that’s why overtime some creature comforts like ‘excessive’ battery life and small apps that you get used to, like alfred are very hard to let go.
@exovert
Thanks a lot for sharing the experience.
I was mainly looking at the top chip (which for work I don’t really need, but would be great for light gaming & emulation), but I didn’t properly consider the battery impact.
Part of looking into buying this laptop ‘for the company’ is for me the fact that it can be serviced, repaired & upgraded down 5-8 years with no problem - so keeping the device is’t part of the equation here, however I would most probably be able to take the ‘old motherboard/cpu’ (the one with wich I’d buy now) for myself and make a little tv retro station of it.
Did you purchase it with the 7640U or was this an upgrade for you?
Also part of what makes me a bit hesitant - is that I think framework will be forced for better or worse to upgrade the chassis.
I don’t mind the different look.
- but the reason to buy the laptop is to get the years of possible hardware upgrades apart from just the repair options and I’m not sure they would be able to pull out full backwords compatibility with a new chassis…
Its an 11th Gen i7-1165G7. I don’t really use it unplugged much but if it isnt shut down at night it wont have any charge in the morning 8 hours later. There is a very good chance this could be fixed in the OS or bios but it doesnt bother me enough to actually devote any time to it. Works fine for the few hours its unplugged for me but it also doent see much heavy use in terms of applications.
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I acquired a FW13 with the 7640U on a basis I don’t perhaps need to buy the now+3 or 4year cpu (or ram) in advance. I haven’t upgraded the board yet, but there’s already an intel/amd next gen available, and a few past generations’ track record.
I guess I don’t think I see any signs that they ‘have’ to replace the FW13 platform in the very near term. They’ve added new platforms (FW16, FW12) while still expanding and refining the FW13 parts, notably e.g. higher res/refresh screen, and smaller changes (keyboard revisions) into even this year.
Also Apple have shipped macbook air’s for longer than this. I don’t know FW’s plans of course.
If I were relying, or flying on it regularly though I don’t think I could talk myself out of a mac option.