laptop

Sprout is the name of my new machine that just arrived. The crowd-funded laptop. Since this beauty is graciously sponsored by a large crowd of people I felt I should share a little bit of its journey and entry into my life.

First I needed a name for it, and since it is small and is meant to grow with me a bit, I think Sprout feels apt.

The crowd-funding

Starting the initiative on a Saturday afternoon might not have been the most clever thing to get widest possible reach, but it seems it did not matter. We reached the goal of 3,500 USD within 90 minutes and people have kept on donating even after that and the counter is now at 7,000 USD. Amazing.

As mentioned: all surplus ends up in the general curl fund and will be used solely and exclusively to cover expenses that benefit and favor curl and its development. That is a promise. The curl fund is also completely open and transparent so everyone who wants to can in fact monitor our finances to verify this.

Specs

I decided to go with a Framework laptop because I like and want to support their concept of modular and upgradable laptops. After the overwhelming funding round, I decided to go with the top of the line AMD CPU alternative they offer, 96GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. This should make the laptop last a while I think.

CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Up to 5.1 GHz. 12 cores, 24 threads.
Graphics (integrated): AMD Radeon 890M. Up to 2.9GHz. 16 Graphics Cores
Wifi: AMD RZ717 Wi-Fi 7
Display: 13.5″ 2880×1920 120Hz matte display (3:2 ratio)
Memory: DDR5-5600 – 96GB (2 x 48GB)
Storage: WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe – M.2 2280 – 4TB
Laptop Bezel: Framework Laptop 13 Bezel – Black
Keyboard: Swedish/Finnish (2nd Gen)
Dimensions: 15.85mm x 296.63mm x 228.98mm
Weight: 1.3 Kg

Outputs

The laptop has four slots available for ports. I have USB-C, USB-A, HDMI and external Ethernet modules. I bought a few more than four, because I don’t know which exact setup I will prefer and they are interchangeable so I can change them according to the situation I’m in.

Dimensions compared to the old

My old laptop was a Lenovo T470S 14″.

Dimensions: 18.8 mm x 331 mm x 226.8 mm
Weight 1.32 kg

So the new one is 3 mm thinner, 3 cm narrower and pretty much the same depth (+2mm) and pretty much the same weight.

Assembling

Ordered without Windows installed (of course), this thing arrived like an IKEA flat-pack and there was some assembly required. The necessary screwdriver comes included and I could complete the task in under ten minutes. Not at all complicated.

Linux

I noticed two different Linux distributions offered as “easy installs” with guides from Framework, but as none of them were Debian I opted to take the more complicated route.

Debian

I downloaded a DVD iso image for Debian testing, copied it onto a USB stick and booted up Sprout with it. The installation went like a breeze and it detected the Wifi networking just fine.

Once the system came up for real without the USB stick, I edited the necessary files and took it up to current Debian Unstable over wifi with no problems.

Initial glitches

I experienced some glitches (X or the keyboard or something would stop accepting input after 5-15 minutes of use), which I first thought was due to an older Linux kernel as I had friends tell me that I might need 6.15+ for proper hibernation support and Debian unstable only has a 6.12 one just now. I switched to the Debian experimental kernel (6.16-rc7) but the issue remained. Hm?

I then remembered I hadn’t upgraded the laptop BIOS to its latest version yet, and after having invoked

fwupdmgr refresh --force

fwupdmgr get-updates

fwupdmgr update

and done a reboot, it first seemed to have fixed the problems but I was wrong. Is it X11 related? I have now switched my desktop to Plasma/Wayland to see if it fixes the problem. I might switch around a little bit more if I see it again because it is clearly a software glitch and not a hardware problem. Hardly Framework’s fault but instead more of a thing that happens occasionally when you run bleeding edge stuff. I’ll sort it out.

Console

Having a small but high DPI screen and trying to use the console with its default (tiny) font is next to impossible, at least with my aging eyes, so I spent a few minutes to figure out how to use setfont and then to invoke dpkg-reconfigure console-setup.

I find it a little curious that the Debian installer doesn’t have any easy provided option to do this already at install time.

A message

A few days after I had received my laptop I received a package via FedEx, and as I opened it I found this lovely note and some presents from Framework!

I know some of my followers tagged and mentioned Framework during the crowdfunding campaign but I of course didn’t expect anything from that.

The thing that looks like a CD-R among the gifts is actually a mouse mat, slightly larger than a CD. The small packages are USB-C modules for the laptop.

This little message still holds and shows more appreciation than what I have received from most companies that ever used my Open Source. It’s not a high bar. I truly appreciate it – said entirely without sarcasm.

Impressions and Performance

Just to give you a small idea of the performance difference, I decided to compare a simple but common operation I do. Build curl. It basically requires three command lines:

autoreconf -fi

This invokes a series of tools to setup the build.

Sprout: 4.8 seconds

Old: 9.3 seconds

Diff: 1.9 times faster

configure –with-openssl

A long series of single-threaded tests of the environment. Lots of invokes of gcc to check for features, functions etc.

Sprout: 10.4 seconds

Old: 11.1 seconds

Diff: 1.1 times faster

make -sj

This invokes gcc and forks off lots of new processes. The old machine’s 4 threads vs the new 24 threads probably plays a role here.

Sprout: 8.9 seconds

Old: 60.6 seconds

Diff: 6.8 times faster

(My desktop PC does the same in under 4 seconds.)

Keyboard

This is not a full-time development machine for me and I have never been fully productive on a laptop and I don’t expect to be on this new one either. I don’t think a laptop keyboard exists that can satisfy me the way a proper one can.

The Framework one does not have dedicated page up/down keys for example. The keys still feel decently fine to press and I think I will adjust to the layout over time.

Stickers

I offered everyone who donated 200 USD or more for the laptop sticker space on my cover, but so far not a single one has reached out to make this reality. To honor my promise I intend to wait a little while before I put my first stickers on it.

For reference this is what my old laptop looks like.

I work in my home office which is upstairs in my house, perhaps 20 steps from my kitchen and the coffee refill. I have a largish desk with room for a number of computers. The photo below shows the three meter beauty. My two kids have their two machines on the left side while I use the right side of it for my desktop and laptop.

Many computers

The kids use my old desktop computer with a 20″ Dell screen and my old 15.6″ dual-core Asus laptop. My wife has her laptop downstairs and we have a permanent computer installed underneath the TV for media (an Asus VivoPC).

My desktop computer

I’m primarily developing C and C++ code and I’m frequently compiling rather large projects – repeatedly. I use a desktop machine for my ordinary development, equipped with a fairly powerful 3.5GHz quad-core Core-I7 CPU, I have my OS, my home dir and all source code put on an SSD. I have a larger HDD for larger and slower content. With ccache and friends, this baby can build Firefox really fast. I put my machine together from parts myself as I couldn’t find a suitable one focused on horse power but yet a “normal” 2D graphics card that works fine with Linux. I use a Radeon HD 5450 based ASUS card, which works fine with fully open source drivers.

I have two basic 24 inch LCD monitors (Benq and Dell) both using 1920×1200 resolution. I like having lots of windows up, nothing runs full-screen. I use KDE as desktop and I edit everything in Emacs. Firefox is my primary browser. I don’t shut down this machine, it runs a few simple servers for private purposes.

My machines (and my kids’) all run Debian Linux, typically of the unstable flavor allowing me to get new code reasonably fast.

My desktop keyboard is a Func KB-460, mechanical keyboard with some funky extra candy such as red backlight and two USB ports. Both my keyboard and my mouse are wired, not wireless, to take away the need for batteries or recharging etc in this environment. My mouse is a basic and old Logitech MX 310.

I have a crufty old USB headset with a mic, that works fine for hangouts and listening to music when the rest of the family is home. I have Logitech webcam thing sitting on the screen too, but I hardly ever use it for anything.

When on the move

I need to sometimes move around and work from other places. Going to conferences or even our regular Mozilla work weeks. Hence I also have a laptop that is powerful enough to build Firefox is a sane amount of time. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad W540 with a 2.7GHz quad-core Core-I7, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD. It has the most annoying touch pad on it. I don’t’ like that it doesn’t have the explicit buttons so for example both-clicking (to simulate a middle-click) like when pasting text in X11 is virtually impossible.

On this machine I also run a VM with win7 installed and associated development environment so I can build and debug Firefox for Windows on it.

I have a second portable. A small and lightweight netbook, an Eeepc S101, 10.1″ that I’ve been using when I go and just do presentations at places but recently I’ve started to simply use my primary laptop even for those occasions – primarily because it is too slow to do anything else on.

I do video conferences a couple of times a week and we use Vidyo for that. Its Linux client is shaky to say the least, so I tend to use my Nexus 7 tablet for it since the Vidyo app at least works decently on that. It also allows me to quite easily change location when it turns necessary, which it sometimes does since my meetings tend to occur in the evenings and then there’s also varying amounts of “family activities” going on!

Backup

For backup, I have a Synology NAS equipped with 2TB of disk in a RAID stashed downstairs, on the wired in-house gigabit Ethernet. I run an rsync job every night that syncs the important stuff to the NAS and I run a second rsync that also mirrors relevant data over to a friends house just in case something terribly bad would go down. My NAS backup has already saved me really good at least once.

Printer

Next to the NAS downstairs is the house printer, also attached to the gigabit even if it has a wifi interface of its own. I just like increasing reliability to have the “fixed services” in the house on wired network.

The printer also has scanning capability which actually has come handy several times. The thing works nicely from my Linux machines as well as my wife’s windows laptop.

Internet

I have fiber going directly into my house. It is still “just” a 100/100 connection in the other end of the fiber since at the time I installed this they didn’t yet have equipment to deliver beyond 100 megabit in my area. I’m sure I’ll upgrade this to something more impressive in the future but this is a pretty snappy connection already. I also have just a few milliseconds latency to my primary servers.

Having the fast uplink is perfect for doing good remote backups.

Router and wifi

I have a lowly D-Link DIR 635 router and wifi access point providing wifi for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and gigabit speed on the wired side. It was dead cheap it just works. It NATs my traffic and port forwards some ports through to my desktop machine.

The router itself can also update the dyndns info which ultimately allows me to use a fixed name to my home machine even without a fixed ip.

Frequent Wifi users in the household include my wife’s laptop, the TV computer and all our phones and tablets.

Telephony

When I installed the fiber I gave up the copper connection to my home and since then I use IP telephony for the “land line”. Basically a little box that translates IP to old phone tech and I keep using my old DECT phone. We basically only have our parents that still call this number and it has been useful to have the kids use this for outgoing calls up until they’ve gotten their own mobile phones to use.

It doesn’t cost very much, but the usage is dropping over time so I guess we’ll just give it up one of these days.

Mobile phones and tablets

I have a Nexus 5 as my daily phone. I also have a Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 that tend to be used by the kids mostly.

I have two Firefox OS devices for development/work.

daniel.haxx.se

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Hello Sprout