I have one with Fedora. No driver issues. Hardware-wise, a Framework is as good a laptop for Linux that I know of.
I installed a Crucial P5 SSD in mine, and it caused Linux to crash on waking from sleep. I switched to a different brand and now it's fine. There are several mentions of this problem in the Framework forums, and one of them is from me.
The battery life is not great. I haven't run Windows on the laptop to compare, but I've heard Linux is less good at managing laptop battery life.
What frustrates me the most is that Gnome and KDE have no way to control the trackpad scroll speed under Wayland! Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. It's a really weird thing to have missing from a desktop environment in 2022 and the default speed is annoyingly high.
KDE also still does not support the fingerprint reader for logging in. Apparently this has been a known issue for years.
I've been using a Framework 11th gen for work since I think May with Fedora (currently using Fedora 37 beta).
For context, half of the time I use my laptop for meetings and video calls, the other half it sits on a stand plugged via USB-C to a LG 4K monitor where I've plugged my keyboard and mouse (it also charges my laptop).
The two major downsides of this device in my opinion:
- the battery life is terrible. If I'm on a video call not plugged in the battery lasts 2h at most and doing basic work (writing on Notion, using Slack, etc) it's at most 5h. Compared to my coworkers with M1 laptops it's just terrible.
- the CPU and device gets way too hot without even doing much. I can't recommend a Framework laptop if you intend to type on it, I can't see myself using it to work without an external keyboard. Also, when I'm on a video call the CPU fan is spinning fast which is annoying.
For video calls I'm usually plugging a Logitech thing via USB-C which acts as a webcam, a microphone and an external monitor (which is a TV for me). This works surprisingly well.
Sometimes I use a simple USB-A microphone and my laptop webcam, which also works.
Right now with Fedora 37 beta I can't use my bluetooth headphones because something crashes with pipewire.
When the laptop is plugged into the LG monitor everything works fine and it's basically a workstation at this point. It's fast enough for what I do which is Go and Java mainly (I have a 1165G7, 32G of RAM and 1TB of SSD).
One annoying thing with an external monitor is that _something_ causes Gnome to move my windows to random workspaces when I unlock Gnome. I have no idea why; it doesn't happen when I'm not plugged in.
If you have more specific questions I'd be happy to answer.
Are you on the latest firmware? People are saying the overheating was patched around 3.06/3.07, but it'd be good to know if that didn't fix it for you.
I use debian myself, I ran into some self caused issues because i migrated from a thinkpad and copied the data over (I had a bunch of thinkpad specific quirks setup). A fresh OS install should do fine, but if you've done any ACPI stuff to your grub config to deal with something weird from a previous laptop you may find that the trackpad doesn't work properly.
Aside from that I'm currently doing TB4 with a Caldigit TS4 dock and putting out over a single cable 2.5GbE, USB3, two displays (1920x1080@60Hz HDMI, and 5120x1440@120Hz DP) and charging the laptop without any issues at all from linux itself.
I did end up going to 5.18 and above kernels for some better linux intel alder-lake tuning/tweaks but it wasn't strictly necessary. You will probably need the binary blob for the intel wifi 6 adapter, not entirely sure I had it from my old laptop already.
The screen resolution is a little weird, but nothing has had any trouble with it.
Edited to add: I've got the 2nd gen laptop with an i7-1280p and 64gb of ram.
I'm on the 11th gen board running Fedora 36 and everything worked fine out of the box. The UX for upgrading the BIOS was a little clunky, but that goes for all Linux distros. The only issues I've experienced have involved the mechanical components on the keyboard, and support was quick about sending me replacement.
I've only run linux on my framework laptop. I'm on a rolling release distro and there have been some issues with regressions that seem to get fixed pretty quickly. Early on I had some graphics issues (I don't remember specifics) that got resolved with a kernel update. I also got a bad RAM stick early on which took me a while to figure out. :-) Recently the intel graphics bug in 5.19.12 took me out of commission for part of a day until I downgraded my kernel. It's been fixed since.
Overall, coming from linux on older thinkpads I wasn't used to kernel regressions like that, but this is my first time using linux on brand new hardware, too.
Search around for user experiences w/r/t battery life on Framework. My sense from a little over a year ago was that they built a windows machine that runs Linux pretty well but the battery life is abysmal. May be totally fixed by now.
I have been running Fedora (35 I think) for about a year. I'm happy with the battery life while in use -- not blown away, but happy -- but it does still drain with the lid closed unless shut down. Everything else is perfect.
I'm an arch user on my Framework, and it's going very well for me, aside from the Intel Graphics fiasco a few days ago (Wasn't exclusive to Arch or Framework).
Can't really speak to Fedora but Ubuntu 22.04 works almost perfectly on the 12th Gen (there's a driver you have to blacklist to get the media keys to work).
I installed a Crucial P5 SSD in mine, and it caused Linux to crash on waking from sleep. I switched to a different brand and now it's fine. There are several mentions of this problem in the Framework forums, and one of them is from me.
The battery life is not great. I haven't run Windows on the laptop to compare, but I've heard Linux is less good at managing laptop battery life.
What frustrates me the most is that Gnome and KDE have no way to control the trackpad scroll speed under Wayland! Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. It's a really weird thing to have missing from a desktop environment in 2022 and the default speed is annoyingly high.
KDE also still does not support the fingerprint reader for logging in. Apparently this has been a known issue for years.