Been pretty involved with Framework, having the first gen and waiting for the AMD upgrade kit to ship.
They've been pretty transparent about these bios issues to the backers, they've been sending emails on the updates and resolution steps between Framework, the bios manufacturer, and AMD.
So yeah, this looks bad from the outside, but all of the stakeholders are on the same page and they're really setting the example for how a company should treat their customers.
There's one of the AMD Framework laptops in the lab for Linux testing and benchmarking but unfortunately no review for launch day due to being held up by a BIOS regression and thus unable to properly utilize accelerated graphics until a new BIOS revision is made available in the coming days.
After installing an Ubuntu 23.10 snapshot to the device, there was no working desktop and when connecting via a VT, there were AMDGPU issues.
A pre-6.5 kernel can be booted with the regressed BIOS to a working desktop but will be producing AMDGPU errors.
In any event once the BIOS issue is addressed, it should be fun to see how well the AMD Ryzen powered Framework laptop works under Linux and the same level of upgradeability seen from the prior Intel model.
Those interested can see my prior Ryzen 7 7840U Linux benchmarks from an Acer Swift Edge 16 if wanting an immediate idea over the performance capabilities of this Zen 4 laptop processor.
Long story short, in a week or two should be the Linux review and benchmarks for the new AMD Framework Laptop.
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I’ve been waiting for a ryzen framework laptop since spring 2021. I’m in batch 1 and can’t wait to get my hands on it. I’m sure they will have these BIOS/firmware issues sorted out by launch, and I’ve been waiting this long so a couple more weeks isn’t that big of a deal.
It means a functionality that used to work stopped. It's used in software development. It's common for software to go through "regression testing" to see if everything old still works after a new feature is added.