For those who’re currently looking for a nice new device: shown are (from Top Left to Right):
- NovaCustom (NL)
- Star Labs (UK)
- System76 (US)
- Juno Computers (US)
- UbuntuShop (BE)
- Slimbook (ES)
- Tuxedo Computers (DE)
- Entroware (UK)
- MiniFree (UK)
- Nitrokey (DE)
- Laptops with Linux (NL)
- Purism (US)
Not mentioned but also selling Ready-to-use Linux computer:
- Dell
- Lenovo
What Ethernet chip do they use?
I’ve got a Framework 16 and all components work on both Fedora and Debian without installing custom drivers, so I’m surprised it’s still an issue for some laptops.
The model that I have uses the motorcomm yt6801 chip. There is apparently some work going on to upstream the driver by the OEM, but it largely stalled with the last comment being from a kernel maintainer 7 months ago
https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/11/23/33
I wonder why they didn’t go with something more supported, like a Realtek chip. They’re not the best (I’d prefer Intel or Aquantia), but they’re cheap and widely supported. The Framework’s Ethernet expansion card uses a RTL8156 which is supported practically everywhere.
They don’t design all of their laptops, so it’s not always up to them. They order off-the-shelf designs with their logo from Clevo or some other ODM and tweak the firmware.