AMD-Powered Framework Laptop Now Working On Linux With Latest BIOS

Earlier this month Framework 13 began shipping out their AMD Ryzen powered modular laptop. Unfortunately though the launch-day testing of the Framework laptop under Linux was hampered by a BIOS issue. It's taken longer, but this week a new BIOS is now available for testing that resolves the AMD Linux graphics issue. Here's how to go about easily flashing the system BIOS with Fwupd and LVFS to get up and running well on Linux.

As noted in the 3 October article, AMDGPU driver issues cropped up due to a system BIOS regression late in the cycle prior to launching this Ryzen 7 7840U (Zen 4) laptop. But it's been an issue seen by the AMD Linux crew previously and was a matter of rolling of Framework rolling out a new system BIOS with the fix. That finally happened this week with a testing release.

Uploaded to LVFS is the 3.0.0.3.2 BIOS for the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 series processors. Thankfully with Framework supporting LVFS/Fwupd, it's very easy to update the system BIOS while Framework also makes available a UEFI-based updating mechanism too if so desired.

First up it was a matter of booting the Ubuntu 23.10 install with "nomodeset" to avoid the AMDGPU kernel driver use to get to a working desktop to easily proceed with applying the system BIOS update. From there it was simply a matter of fwupdmgr enable-remote lvfs-testing to be able to access the LVFS image in testing.

And then from there the usual sudo fwupdmgr update to begin updating the new system BIOS...

Easy as that thanks to the wonderful Fwupd/LVFS.

After the system BIOS update, Ubuntu 23.10 with Linux 6.5 booted right on up to the GNOME Wayland session and without any AMDGPU errors.

Now onto some Framework 13 AMD laptop Linux benchmarking.