Billiam

Since you all defederated from lemmy.world I don’t see any posts from Beehaw, so from a practical standpoint leaving the fediverse wouldn’t affect me in the slightest. On a personal level, you all should do what you feel is best for you community and I wish you good health, good fortune, and good luck with whatever you decide.

Yep, run Linux in a virtual machine first, or create a bootable USB drive and run it from there. You should be able to get a good feel for how things work that way.

If you do decide to dual-boot, you’ll need that bootable USB drive because you can’t resize a mounted partition. You’ll need to be careful because you can bork your Windows install if you’re not, but I’ve found most instructions are straightforward and easy to follow.

Also, depending on which version of Windows you have, you might have to disable the TPM which means authenticating your Bitlocker key once you’re done and you re-enable it.

But hey, the fun of Linux is figuring these kinds of things out. Good luck and have fun!

You heretic! I want you to know that if I could discriminate against you for putting pineapple on pizza, I absolutely would!

Yep, there is that too. However, I expect that if Framework ever goes under, nobody else would build the parts because there’s nothing stopping any other company from making them right now.

The memory modules are standard laptop SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 for the 13th Gen Intel (though the AMD version launching later this year will support DDR5). The storage slot is a standard M.2.

Do you absolutely need to buy the USB-C cards? Probably not, since the motherboard connections are USB-C. But you’re gonna have four gaps on the bottom of your laptop, it won’t be easy plugging or removing cables, and as someone else already said, the weight of a cord will put strain on the slot whereas the expansion cards put that strain on the case itself instead of the motherboard.

But they’re also only $9 each. The laptop itself is $1000+ and you wanna skimp out on $36 for expansion cards? If that’s where you’re looking at saving money, I’m seriously gonna suggest you look at other laptops that are much cheaper.

Hi, Framework laptop owner here!

I love my laptop. I got it back in June (13th gen Intel) and have used it near-daily ever since. It’s got a nice build quality, I like the way it looks, and the modular slots are a nice concept (though I haven’t seen a need to swap out mine- I elected for 2 x USB-C and 2 x USB-A. You also need to pay attention to which ports go where because not all the slots support USB charging). I bought the barebones laptop, and added my own RAM and SSD to it which was significantly cheaper than getting it from Framework. I currently dual boot Linux Mint and occasionally Windows 11 and have had no significant issues with either, but there are a couple of little annoyances with Mint- the light-sensor to automatically adjust the brightness and the brightness keys conflict, so one or the other or both may not work correctly.

To your real question, is it worth it? Honestly, if performance is your sole metric, then no- there are cheaper alternatives out there for comparable performance. The premium you pay for a Framework is an investment in repairability and customizability- investments that may not pay off if the company doesn’t exist in the long term. All the promises and commitments in the world to letting users have the right to fix or modify their own hardware mean nothing if there’s no one to supply parts. I was aware of this before buying mine, so I was fine accepting that risk- after all, at one point in time Tesla was risky too but now it seems they’re poised to be the charging standard for EVs- and there are a couple of higher-ups at AMD who like the concept and are invested in Framework, which means it may be around for a while. But that’s still something you should keep in mind.

That said, you said you were looking for a $500-ish laptop, and are now asking about one that will cost you over double that? It’s not for me to tell you how to spend your money, but it sounds like you saw a cool idea and want to jump on the bandwagon. You should be extra sure that what you’re looking for fits your needs within your budget and you’re not just trying to “keep up with the Joneses.”

TL;DR: If you have the money, and are okay with the risk of a small company existing long-term, and it has the performance you need, then yes, I think they’re good buys.

The too long, didn’t watch version:

1. Americans, particularly the right-wing, took 9/11 very seriously- to the point that anyone who was against war/American military expansionism in general and Iraq/Afghanistan in particular, were branded as equivalent to the terrorists who flew the planes.

2. The rise of flag-waving bro-country America uber alles nationalism which more or less flooded the airwaves.

3. The difference in the origin of the conflict. Even though both conflicts had a sense of “doing one’s patriotic duty” and a pervasive view that opposition to military intervention was unAmerican, the fact that the public had a clear perception (accurate or not) as to why we intervened in the Middle East meant that opposing views had a harder time getting mainstream traction. By contrast, no one knew why America was in Vietnam- so even though you were expected to “support the troops” and go if you got drafted, war opponents could safely point to the muddy origins as a solid basis for their views.

4. Finally, the widespread nihilism among GenX and Millenials. Everything sucks, nothing is going to get better, so just fuck it all.

Smash all of that together, and what you’re left with is a music scene that’s full of either “If you don’t literally fuck this flag right now you’re a dirty Muslim terrorist!” or milquetoast “Hey W sucks and war is bad but the troops are kinda okay we guess”

Until, of course, Green Day.

Lindsay Ellis did a great video essay on why protest songs in the early 2000s were so different from the protests of the 60s and 70s. In my opinion, American culture hasn’t shifted to make her points less valid today.