Six days ago, upgradeable laptop maker Framework tried to convince its fractious user community to live in a “big tent” after a Debian developer objected to the company’s sponsorship of Hyprland and its social media promotion of Omarchy, with both projects associated with politically polarizing viewpoints.
Antoine Beaupré, aka anarcat, demanded that Framework clarify its political position with regard to these two projects.
Hyprland, a Wayland compositor, is led by a “toxic and hateful community,” Beaupré observed, and Omarchy, a Linux distribution, comes from David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH), a controversial figure in the Ruby and Linux communities.
It was a yellow flag when Framework invested heavily into an affordable non-repairable, non-upgradable desktop designed for AI developers. “Let them make money,” they said, as Framework positioned itself as a Trojan Horse to the ubiquitization of harmful AI.
This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I was saving up for a Framework 16, but I’ll just stick with my Thinkpad and get the next Steam Deck for gaming. It’s really a shame that such an important company would support transphobia and white supremacy, not just rhetorically but financially, as Hyperland gets ₤600 a month from them and DHH gets ₤24,000 via Rails.
I know this will be a controversial take since Framework is so beloved, but that is just how I personally will choose to spend my money.
I agree with your conclusion and I abhor Framework promoting either of these two projects.
But the APU in the desktop has, I suspect, a real reason for having nonreplaceable RAM. If I understand correctly, they can’t achieve 8000 mt/s memory speed or the wider memory bus with replaceable RAM. And since that memory is shared with the GPU, that speed becomes important for gaming or other GPU tasks. Hence why 6400 mt/s seems to be the max memory speed for a lot of the zen5 desktop chips, at least in prebuilts
I have that chip in my laptop (the “AI” Max Pro 395+) and I don’t ever use it for LLM shit. It’s a very performant and efficient CPU, and shockingly good for gaming too.
So even tho I hate the “ai” branding it’s actually a very very good CPU and GPU
What I’m hearing is that Framework chose power over user-replaceability, and that really seems to go against their mission. The specs sheet on the Framework Desktop is something par for the course with another company.
I don’t doubt that the Desktop is good for LLMs and gaming, but that’s beside the point for me personally.
Framework tried to design a version that worked with SODIMM with AMD but the performance was seriously hampered, and the plan was dropped.
yeah, like… They genuinely tried.
I got several beefs with framework, but this isn’t one of them.
I have a similar experience. I was saving up for a framework 13 for a general more ethical option, but that AI mini PC was extremely disappointing and got me more radicalized into free (libre) software as a consequence. Could you clarify the white supremacy and transphobia? I usually concern myself with strictly free software, so I’m unaware of such controversies.
Hyprland is the project associated with Transphobia. To put it delicately, the original developer was so cringe to the point that others didn’t want to work on the project.
DHH is the developer who is associated with White Supremacy, as he started making overtly white suprematist comments on social media.