Core Ultra Framework Laptop and OpenBSD

ure0 ethernet card works iwx0 wireless works

Here is a list of what does/doesn’t work:

I assume the webcam, mic, and fingerprint reader still work since they have worked on older Framework models according to other OpenBSD blog posts about OpenBSD on the Framework laptop

I’ve been using the new Intel Core Ultra Framework laptop for a few weeks by now, and so far it has been both better and worse than I thought.

What surprised me was I was able to get the Anker 553 USB-C hub and have everything work off of it. I have 2 HDMI monitors plugged in, power delivery, a USB switcher plugged in, ethernet, and it all works. All off a single type C port on the laptop. The downside is, unplugging this doesn’t result in friendly experiences. I have to hard power off the laptop if I unplug it from the laptop. Not the biggest deal since my setup requires I reload some stuff anyway when I go from many monitors to just the laptop one.

The other downside right now, which may more be the Intel driver’s fault, is that I get very bizarre graphical glitches, mostly when I have multi monitors hooked up. I noticed that graphical issues with this Intel iGPU is nothing new, so I am hopeful that the next driver pull (kernel 6.12?) will have fixes for all these oddities.

Still a little bummed that I have to deal with weird xhci interrupts really messing with my USB input/output. I can lose keypresses sometimes and audio will cut out on occasion. Scrolling can be laggy. All of this is over that single xhci interface. It’s all going over xhci1, so I may see if I can get some of that stuff plugged into xhci0 (assuming that’s the right side of the laptop) and see if spreading the load out will help. Maybe also since video is pretty demanding it is really making the interrupt count very high.

Despite all that though, I am pleased that everything is working, even if some of it isn’t providing me the best experience. I found it is best to keep the apm setting at auto. When driving my displays on performance mode, the Framework gets quite toasty and the fan runs a lot. Auto is actually quite good. And the laptop stays around 65C with fans off most of the time on auto.

Battery life has been good? I don’t expect good battery life if it isn’t macOS or perhaps even Windows. I haven’t done a proper test but I think I could be getting 6 hours of battery off this with regular use.

Sleep works some times, and doesn’t work other times (like me).

I’ve tried Wayland some and was happy that Wayland could handle the hidpi display very well with my 1440p and 1080p display. But Wayland on OpenBSD (maybe Linux too, haven’t tried) just isn’t there and I was ready to get back on Xenocara after a day of using it. I just keep my laptop display off and have the dpi at 96 and use my 2 monitors. That makes the laptop display unusable since the text is SO tiny unless the dpi is set to 192.

The Framework lets you set the max charge capacity. Since I have this as a desktop replacement, I set the max charge to 80% and it works. What is really cool too is if I had it at 100% before and set it to 80%, it will drain my battery back down to 80%. Very nice. Doing this within OpenBSD doesn’t work. I understand it is very vendor-specific. So it’s something that Framework would have to provide some sort of driver compatibility for? Either way, I am perfectly fine having that feature in the BIOS.

Overall, I am actually very happy with this laptop. I don’t regret my choice. It does sadden me that I am putting up with these audio stutters again. I solved that issue on my desktop by having my USB DAC connected via SPDIF and that has worked incredibly well. Maybe I’ll get tipped over the edge with the stuttering to the point where I say enough is enough since I am listening to something all day, every day. But I really do believe that I have the most easy, comfy, and manageable setup having OpenBSD on my laptop all other things considered. I just have to take some occasional copium with the audio stutters.