Thanks for posting this. IT comes along at a perfect time for me. I am investigating linux laptops for one of my children, still in college. I have been looking for machines that come out of the box with linux and Framework was up there on the list. Others include Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and Tuxedo.

I like the apparent upgrade ease of the Framework since I have a pile of old laptops, tablets and netbooks dating to late 1990's already. If I can find one that is long-term upgradable then that is a big plus.

I had almost convinced myself that Framework is the way to go with their hot-swappable ports and easily replaced internals.

I found Tuxedo not long ago. They seem to be a valid competitor in that space. I know they're a German company but I think they ship to the boondocks in Texas.

I read that BIOS recovery procedure and was reminded of all the times I had to flash and then recover on desktops or laptops and how much fun it wasn't. The fact that Framework treats you like a second-class citizen after the warranty expires is very valuable information in a case where your problem is caused by their recommended procedure. The hack of their partner company feels so relevant today when companies can still leave PII open in public datasets and suffer no consequences.

I will more strongly consider Dell and Tuxedo. I have long experience with Dell workstations and have found that even though a lot of their components like Mobos are proprietary formats requiring a Dell part to repair, that those parts are identifiable and generally available thru Dell or eBay.

I don't know enough about Tuxedo so if anyone has experience I would appreciate some insight. The use case for us is typical document authoring, programming in python with maybe Jupyter notebooks, complicated spreadsheets, photo documentation of field sites, and GIS work maintaining project map resources using ArcGIS most likely. Gaming is probably another option but it is not necessary for it to run top games though it does need decent graphics.