A welcome surprise hit me this week with my openSUSE Tumbleweed machine when I did updates. There is now a Framework Laptop kernel module that installed without me having to explicitly add it. I’m not sure the clever work done by the fine folks in the openSUSE community or the efforts put forth by the fine folks at Framework Computers but it has an immediate benefit.
Battery Charge Limit
One feature I noticed was missing on my Framework Laptop 13 was the ability to set the charge limit within the operating system. I could do this on my Lenovo Thinkpad P16s and was a little bummed that it wasn’t available here. I could set it in the BIOS of course but what fun is that? Reboot every time I want to change a thing? What am I, a caveman?
Now, with this new kernel module, I can set the charge limit in the KDE Plasma system settings under Advanced Power Management.
System Settings > Power Management > Advanced Power Settings…
I have it set to 85% because that seems reasonable, based on how much I am docked vs mobile with my machine. It is also easy enough to adjust up if I know that I am going to be traveling and need that extra 15%. I have already gone through one battery in the two years on this machine and I think it is largely from the mistreatment of keeping it fully charged. I hope to do better this time with this battery.
Other Features
According to the Github readme, there are some interesting additional features that may be use to you. There is additional control over LEDs through /sys/class/leds/framework_laptop::kbd_backlight and a fan control module that supports four fans. I only know of the one fan for the Framework Laptop 13 but maybe there are more on other models? Not sure and also outside of the scope of this article.
For more information, visit this github project page:
https://github.com/DHowett/framework-laptop-kmod
Power LED
This is just an aside but if you want to change the state of the power button LED, install this package to control it:
sudo zypper in framework-ectoolAnd you can easily turn it on and off in the terminal like this:
Off:
sudo ectool led power offOn:
sudo ectool led power autoValid colors are: red, green, blue, yellow, white, amber
Blue seems to just turn it off but Green certainly looks pretty great!
Final Thoughts
I am super excited to see that there are new features brought to my beloved openSUSE Tumbleweed for the best laptop I have ever owned, the Framework Laptop 13. I am so excited to have this control exposed to the operating system so that I can better care for the battery health of this machine. I certainly wish this would have been a feature sooner but that takes nothing away from the warm and fuzzy feeling I get now, knowing that there are people out there that care about my user experience for the Framework Laptop 13. Simply mavelous.
Thank you to everyone that made my world, just a little bit better! Also, now that I know I can make the button green, I can give it that openSUSE accent that I didn’t even know I wanted!
References
https://github.com/DHowett/framework-laptop-kmod
https://community.frame.work/t/power-button-led-possibility-to-turn-off-in-future-updates/50260/11
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