Would you be able to test with one of the betas on a thumb drive or equivalent? Iāve been reading that 4.1 is a lot more compatible with the framework laptop.
Also, what brand of USB wifi did you find works, if you donāt mind me asking.
Iām planning on buying a Framework laptop very soon. And, ideally, I want to convert to using Qubes entirely on it. Sadly existing equipment doesnāt support it (Mac, and a desktop with Nvidia card). Iām hoping that I can switch over to one machine as a primary machine, being the Framework laptop, and have things generally work without too much fuss. Webcam/mic luckily donāt impact me. But, wifi definitely does. Right click also worries me some, and Iām hoping things are considerably better with the RC.
Thanks for putting this report together, itās really helping people like me who are on the edge on buying a Framework as a primary driver.
I also have a Framework (same CPU and RAM amount as OP). I installed R4.1 Beta (last version before RC1, I think) and have kept it up to date since. Hopefully thatās good enough and I donāt need to reinstall to truly get it up to date.
For the trackpad right-click, Iāve had good luck by clicking the bottom-right corner of the trackpad. Iām interested to hear if that works for others.
I canāt comment on the Bluetooth or internal WiFi because I scavenged the WiFI card from my old Asus Zen. WiFi works great, but that probably doesnāt mean anything to others.
Mine canāt wake from sleep either. I closed the lid, let it sit for a few minutes, and then opened it. The power button was pulsing, indicating the machine was in sleep mode. Pressing the button did nothing. I had to hold it down to force the machine off and then press it twice to get the machine back. The first press caused the power button to briefly light up before going dark again.
I just noticed some questions about Secure Boot at the start of this thread. Secure Boot tends to be troublesome, and often requires a lot of custom support. Just about all laptops come pre-installed with a bunch of Microsoft keys. The more liberal manufacturers might include an Ubuntu key.
I consider reliable support for secure boot to be unreliable for Qubes. You can make your own keys and install them in your laptopās secure boot settings, but then youāll have to manually sign Grub every time you update (on a system that wonāt boot because if Secure Boot).
We could maybe get Qubes to sign their kernels, but then you would need to sign and install their keys and trust them.
Iām not sure if that would really get us anywhere.
What about getting some HEADS compatability with framework laptops?
My understanding is that HEADS is able to be ported to any system that is able to run Coreboot, and that some systems only require minor changes in the code (descriptors).
From what Iāve read, the limiting factor is something called āboot guardā that a lot of laptops have after a certain period of time, but I am also recall reading that any coreboot compatible laptop should be able to run HEADS, so perhaps if there is a community will we can get HEADS compatability for framework laptops.
The only issue is someone has to maintain it. Thoughts?
Edit - SORRY, I was thinking of System 76. Iām not sure if Framework runs Coreboot, my apologies.
Framework mentioned theyāre working on Coreboot, but I get the impression itās a low priority. If you consider the OS support for Coreboot vs. the OS support for UEFI, Iām not too hopeful.
Has any Framework Laptop user been able to get all the hardware behaving correctly in Qubes? I know that I need a newer kernel than the default that I have (5.10), but no matter what I do, I cannot seem to find a newer version that I can understand how to install on my Qubes system. How have you been able to manage that?
I have been using Qubes on my Framework since early March, probably March 5th or 6th when I started to use it as my primary machine.
My kernel is 5.10.109
Definitely disable secure boot in the BIOS, and then it installed without too much pain.
Restoring my Qubes from backup took a while. Changing to a different WiFi card was necessary.
And I canāt resume from suspend.
I think that a newer kernel will improve graphics and suspend, though Iām not sure on this.
Sometimes, I have trouble getting the camera to stay attached to a qube. Sometimes, I end up rebooting before it works. That is a problem I want to investigate.
Sometimes, some of the qubes donāt seem to fully start, and I have to kill them and start them up again.
Is there any other hardware which you want to check.
I really appreciate your quick response. I am having two other issues that I am curious how you addressed: 1. I have a constant cycling in my sys-USB that says ādevice : is availableā, and then after some seconds it says ādevice : removedā. This never stops and there is no name for the device. I saw at least 2 other people on my digging around the Internet who mentioned they had this issue with Framewok and Qubes too. How did you handle that? Or did it not happen to you? 2. The XFCE desktop environment at this resolution is so minuscule that itās almost unusable. Mostly itās the font sizes but I canāt seem to change them. Even better would be to get Gnome on here, but I havenāt seen anyone succeed at that from my searching. What did you find the best solution for that was?
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience.
I have plans to improve my write-up on using Qubes with framework, but I havenāt done it yet. Hope that this description helps a bit.
I had something similar with USB device cycling in and out.
The problem is gone now (except for some issues with the camera).
Iāll explain what I did, and I am curious whether it is your problem as well.
My sys-usb uses the fedora-34-dvm template. Same with sys-firewall, and sys-net is fedora-34.
My first attempt at a Qubes install on framework tried the debian templates. I believe that this was what caused the USB problems. I suspect that sys-usb doesnāt work well with Debian, at least for framework. I chose disposable templates in both cases, just in case it matters.
Fonts
I had been slightly annoyed with this for a while, but hadnāt done anything
I finally noticed something today, after your questions.
Try this
System tools => Settings Editor
change FontName from āSans 10ā to āSans 12ā or something bigger.
See attached image.
This looks interesting, and I am going to dig into the xsettings as you showed in the image.
I can also report, that I did the same thing you did trying to resolve the USB device cycle issue: I installed everything with Debian Templates as default (because I like Debian and am familiar with it), and then when I had some of these issues, I decided to reinstall using Fedora 34 as the default (because I assumed that the developers might have built the system expecting those as default and maybe that would help). Unfortunately, in my system, that seems not to have fixed the strange USB cycling issue.
I suppose that the next thing to do is to try to install the Linux Firmware blobs from the ālinux-firmwareā package, and then try to update my kernel if that doesnāt work. Sadly, I still donāt feel comfortable with how to do the newer kernel process, so I will keep digging. But if anyone knows how to do it, I would be very appreciative!
Perhaps you and I and whomever else is trying this Framework Qubes foray can get some good documentation built to help others to do the same.
