RISC-V Motherboard For Framework Laptop Pricing Starts At $368 In Early Access

[ehansin]

Post is a bit of a tangent, but anyone know how the dispaly and "ergonomics" are on this thing? Not going to get one, just curious.

Had to do some stuff at work on a Windows-based 10th Gen Core (so not that old) Dell Latitude 5410 laptop. Wow, really starting to realize what junk so many laptops are. My 2017 Air I'm writing this on is so much better from an "ergonomics" perspective. To be fair, have an 8th Gen Core series Dell Precision 5530 laptop with a 4K display running Arch and so much more fun to be working in.

Looking forward to more quality low-power (ARM possibly, but okay with X86) laptops that I can run Linux in. Windows really starting to become no fun for me, especially on crappy laptops!

[Almindor]

I think one more generation to go. My main concern at this point is less if the performance is worth it, more if it's going to be fully open (which this isn't).

By which I mean the boot process, any "embedded" subprocessors and firmware etc. Sadly that aspect does not seem to be any better than arm or even x86.

[M@yeulC]

Does anyone know whether the board will provide UEFI? Or is it a "bring your own device tree" approach?

[Luke_Wolf]

Post is a bit of a tangent, but anyone know how the dispaly and "ergonomics" are on this thing? Not going to get one, just curious.

Had to do some stuff at work on a Windows-based 10th Gen Core (so not that old) Dell Latitude 5410 laptop. Wow, really starting to realize what junk so many laptops are. My 2017 Air I'm writing this on is so much better from an "ergonomics" perspective. To be fair, have an 8th Gen Core series Dell Precision 5530 laptop with a 4K display running Arch and so much more fun to be working in.

Looking forward to more quality low-power (ARM possibly, but okay with X86) laptops that I can run Linux in. Windows really starting to become no fun for me, especially on crappy laptops!

Unless you're going to get uppity about some fit and finish issues that come as a result of them being designed so that everything is easily replaceable Framework Laptops are in the really good category.

[rmfx]

I wish it was made with SiFive latest gen core and all, but it's great to see real risc-v product hitting the shelf.

Arm solution is not as bad as x86, it's better engineered, and it's not trapped inside a duopoly, but the true future-proof answer to ISA needs is RISC-V.
RISC-V features the best assembly to date, the best license, and the best potential for optimizations.

[Espionage724]

...Had to do some stuff at work on a Windows-based 10th Gen Core (so not that old) Dell Latitude 5410 laptop. Wow, really starting to realize what junk so many laptops are. My 2017 Air I'm writing this on is so much better from an "ergonomics" perspective. To be fair, have an 8th Gen Core series Dell Precision 5530 laptop with a 4K display running Arch and so much more fun to be working in.

I used a Latitude 5591 as my main computer for years (and today) 8th-gen that works pretty well; the default 1080p eDP screen is tiny at 100% but ideal at 125% (I dock 1080p HDMI 100% usually). Built-in keyboard is fine. Overall it's the best thing I got atm and it works!

I've used C2D with 8GB+ RAM tolerably, and imagine the base $300 Framework RISC-V model would be fine to replace it for my use as long as it can run a desktop Linux distro well, and Fedora being mentioned makes it sound pretty good!

[milkylainen]

Maybe now when ARM fudged Qualcomm on the IP licenses, we can have some effort going into a performant RISC-V solution?

[Alexmitter]

For what is essentially a Visionfive 2 stuffed in a notebook, thats an insane price. Go grab a visionfive2 from Amazon for 100 bucks, slap a cheap NVMe onto it and you got a decent headless riscv machine running mainline which of course excludes the GPU but thats clear.

[Quackdoc]

Does anyone know whether the board will provide UEFI? Or is it a "bring your own device tree" approach?

iirc "generic device tree" for the JH7110 is entirely upstream in linux now, so that wouldn't be an issue for most things, but iirc starfive vision 2 had a working edk2 port

How long before the first offering comes that is in any way sane for normal use and not only developer tinkering? This is about 3 times too expensive considering what you get.

there are some upcomming laptops that have promising cpu, but rather weak gpus the more promissing one will be the lichee pi5a which is a compute module, that will go with the lichee book (tho you may need to buy them seperately)

[Alexmitter]

Does anyone know whether the board will provide UEFI? Or is it a "bring your own device tree" approach?

What has one to do with the other? You can boot your system by directly loading the kernel via uboot's fatload mechanism yet still pass on the device tree from uboot tho that one is usually outdated compared to what the kernel has. The same of course is true if you boot your system via grub.efi or whatever.

I guess you want to ask if it has a ACPI table, the answer is no.