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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
Upgrading my Framework 16 took about three hours, but was otherwise painless. Windows did need me to re-set-up my fingerprint and pin after changing the entire motherboard, and I had to re-enter my bitlocker recovery key. But that process was accessible.
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Dickson Tan @neurrone@mastodon.social
6mo
@fastfinge I always thought the BitLocker prompt was inaccessible. How did you navigate that? Curious what you changed with your Framework and what the process of disassembly and upgrade was like accessibility wise. For example, I figure the instructions are in the form of videos which may not be the easiest.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@neurrone I upgraded the motherboard and video card. You can find an accessible description of the framework here:
community.frame.work/t/framework-16-visually-impaired-owners-case-mid-plate-and-mainboard-orientation-guide/51168

And step by step instructions are here:
guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard/283?lang=en

Between these two things, you have enough to get the job done.

When you have to re-enter your bitlocker key, it boots into a recovery version of Windows, where you can load narrator, enter your key, and restart.
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clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social
5mo
@fastfinge @neurrone Great to know there exist Framework guides for the blind.
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Dickson Tan @neurrone@mastodon.social
5mo
@fastfinge Wow this is neat. Wished Framework would ship to where I am, but that'll probably never happen.
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clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social
6mo
@fastfinge Please have you already written any Framework 16 review? I'm interested in things like whether the keyboard has keys distinguishable enough, whether keyboard sections are clearly split, whether it lacks any important key such as right control which has been replaced by Copilot key on newer laptops, how about audio quality, if there are problems with any hardware driver for Windows, etc.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@clv1 I haven't written any review. But to quickly answer your questions:
* no critical keys are missing, at least on the North American keyboard layout, and I also have the number pad module. The only missing keys from a full keyboard are the six pack (home/end, page up/down, etc.)
* the keys are fine, though there is no gap between the function keys, and no dot on f4, f8, etc.
* However, the laptop runs hot enough that I prefer to leave it on a table and use a wireless keyboard, instead of holding the laptop on my lap
* Audio quality is fair, once you enable the NVDA or jaws feature that stops the sound system from falling asleep. It's just the standard real tech audio chip that's on pretty much all laptops these days
* Framework updates the driver bundle regularly, and the driver and bios updaters are fully accessible
* The only problems come if you allow Windows Update to install driver updates. Sometimes it installs incorrect drivers and you have to use system restore to roll back an update
* If you live with others: the fans are extremely! loud when the laptop is busy. If someone was trying to, for example, watch TV or listen to music while you were gaming on the laptop, they would get quite annoyed
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clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social
6mo
@fastfinge thanks a lot! I use an USB keyboard with my 14" laptop as well. I would only buy a 16" if I was going to use its own keyboard, otherwise I don't find worth the bigger size. From your description, the keyboard is close to the Dell Inspirons before the Copilot key, except that the Inspiron has the six keys pad, albeit disposed in another layout.
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clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social
5mo
@fastfinge I have a curiosity from your answer to me yesterday: what are the manufacturers that put dots on the f4 and f8 keys on their laptops? So far, I owned two laptops by Dell and one by HP, and no one had such dots.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@clv1 Lenovo and Toshiba used to. I don’t know if they still do.
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clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social
5mo
@fastfinge Ah OK, thanks.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge how's entering the bitlocker recovery key accessible? I thought that happens in the preboot environment
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer it happens in a cut-down version of Windows, where narrator is available. I don't know how it works, but I assume Microsoft has an unencrypted boot partition with some sort of recovery Windows that it boots to. You enter the key in there, then reboot. If I were running Linux, you would probably be correct and it would be inaccessible.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge O yeah, I forgot windows doesn't actually have full disk encryption per say, but it's approximate enough. I heard there's an equivalent mode to FDE, but that's actually inaccessible. It's possible to do that under linux too, encrypted home with ecryptfs, signed or encrypted /usr with the TPM, and if the TPM decryption fails, the /usr is replaced with a base one since that part of the system is immutable anyway, which would still allow you to boot to a graphical application with wayland and orca, where you can perform recovery.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer I'm sure it's possible. But it almost certainly involves a lot of undocumented hackery, and the sound drivers probably don't work, because sound drivers on Linux never work without endless babying. Accessible disc encryption on Linux is, I suspect, not the default, and not easy to set up.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge correct! regular encryption that we have under linux is full disk encryption, which is more effective than anything else for sure, but then it assumes everything in your disk can be mutated at any time, and therefore it's of value. That's why the way of doing it I described can't be done unless we're talking about immutable systems. Gnome OS has this way of doing things as a future plan, so watch this space, I suppose
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge also re, sound drivers: not exactly, that'd be true if we're talking about the initramfs or even grub, but in this case we're talking about your full /usr, which definitely has the sound drivers. If it didn't, you wouldn't have sound in that computer at all
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer You're assuming that when I actually need my replacement base /usr, whatever mechanism that's supposed to keep it up to date with kernel and driver changes is working. I'm not even sure what that would look like. Hooking into apt somehow?
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge it's a base /usr, that's on a different partition and that's what gets updated as part of the immutable system's updates. Everything in there is signed though, even if it's not encrypted. Another alternative would be a /usr that's still in another partition, but not regularly booted to, a recovery environment which updates only when you reinstall the whole OS.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer Right, but these days, OS updates are rolling. What happens when the kernel updates? The kernel isn't in /usr...but I think the dkms modules are? So then you get kernel/driver mismatch and ugly things happen.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge nope, this is a unified kernel image(UKI), in your boot partition. And also, that all updates in lockstep, because that's how immutable systems work. To get an idea of how that's like, I recommend trying gnome OS
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer Okay, you're assuming some special brand of OS that nobody else runs. I was assuming standard Debian/Ubuntu/the thing the rest of the world uses. It's just not possible to do accessible disc encryption there.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge ah yeah, I meant they're trying that on their OS, and if it actually works as expected, I'm pretty sure the other immutable distros will do the same eventually. I don't think mutable operating systems would be able to do this, like your run of the mill debian, unless we're gonna normalize recovery partitions, which is a better outcome imo. But yeah, actual full disk encryption can never be accessible, unless the key for the disk is encrypted with the TPM, at which point it's not really useful FDE anymore.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer Also, unified kernel images cause a bunch of other annoying problems. Remember the days of speakup?
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge I dk, speakup and espeakup still work over here, in a vm with a UKI, but that's because I built that module in with it
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer Exactly. Compiling your own kernel isn’t something everyone should have to do every update.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge wait a second, you mean package hooks don't trigger automatic kernel updates? this happens with arch transparently without me having to do anything
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer They do in theory. But theory and practice often do not align.
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the esoteric programmer @esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club
5mo
@fastfinge ha, weird, I never had issues with that part of the stack, but then again that might just be me having luck
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
5mo
@esoteric_programmer The issues happen an update fails for whatever reason.
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