If you’re weighing Framework vs ThinkPad for a Linux laptop, you can relax about the basics. Both brands run Fedora and Ubuntu well now. The differences you’ll live with for years sit in three places: firmware updates, sleep and battery care. This guide compares the current models on those three and names the one to buy for upgrades, for a certified distro and for travel.
We checked both vendors’ Linux pages, the public LVFS firmware metadata and every price on October 19, 2026. Nobody on the team owns a Framework 13 Pro or a Gen 7 ThinkPad yet, so the battery and sleep numbers come from Phoronix and owner reports. The firmware counts are our own, pulled from the same metadata fwupd downloads on your machine.
| Award | Laptop | Why it wins | Price on Oct 19 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for upgrades | Framework Laptop 13 Pro (Intel) | First Ubuntu Certified Framework; the board fits every Laptop 13 | $2,514 DIY with 32 GB and 1 TB, plus charger and ports |
| Best value | Framework Laptop 13 (Ryzen AI 300) | Cheaper, with two SO-DIMM slots up to 96 GB | $1,844 DIY with 32 GB and 1 TB, plus charger and ports |
| Best ThinkPad for Linux | ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 (Intel) | Intel Wi-Fi, RJ45, certified configurations in the family | $1,921.14 with 32 GB and 512 GB |
| Best for RHEL and VMs | ThinkPad P14s Gen 7 (AMD) | RHEL-certified 21X1 in the family, two SO-DIMM slots up to 96 GB | $1,737.88 with 32 GB and 1 TB |
| Lightest | ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 | 0.977 kg, with Fedora or Ubuntu preloaded by Lenovo | $2,906.99 with Windows, or about $2,710 at Lenovo with Linux |
Compare the specs that matter on Linux
The Framework links above go to frame.work, because Framework does not sell laptops on Amazon. Our catalog search turned up only screen protectors and a printed manual. Every Amazon ThinkPad ships with Windows 11, so you’ll install Linux yourself unless you order the X1 Carbon from Lenovo with it preloaded.
Spec sheets also bury the parts that decide how your laptop behaves under Linux. This table keeps only those: whether you can add memory later, which Wi-Fi chip the kernel drives, the battery, and who stands behind your distro.
| RAM | Wi-Fi chip | Battery | Weight | Distro certification | Charge limit from Linux | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Framework 13 Pro (Intel) | LPCAMM2, up to 64 GB | Intel BE211 | 74.45 Wh | 1.44 kg | Ubuntu Certified | BIOS limit (per Framework), no standard sysfs |
| Framework 13 (AMD) | 2x SO-DIMM, up to 96 GB | MediaTek MT7925 | 61 Wh | 1.3 kg | Framework-supported Fedora and Ubuntu | BIOS limit (per Framework), no standard sysfs |
| ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 (Intel) | LPCAMM2, up to 64 GB | Intel BE211 | 60 or 75 Wh | 1.27 kg | Certified configs: Ubuntu LTS, RHEL 10 | thinkpad_acpi start and stop |
| ThinkPad P14s Gen 7 (AMD) | 2x SO-DIMM, up to 96 GB | MediaTek MT7925 | 60 or 75 Wh | 1.29 kg | Certified configs: Ubuntu LTS, RHEL 10 | thinkpad_acpi start and stop |
| ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 | Soldered, up to 64 GB | Intel BE211 | 58 Wh | 0.977 kg | Ubuntu LTS; Fedora or Ubuntu preload | thinkpad_acpi start and stop |
Two columns deserve a second look. Every current AMD model from both brands uses a MediaTek MT7925 card, and the ArchWiki Framework 13 page rates Framework’s version of it as poor support. Framework’s forum also has a long thread on dropped connections with it. The charge-limit column is the other surprise, and it’s a quiet ThinkPad win we cover in its own section below.
Pick the Framework Laptop 13 Pro to upgrade it yourself
Who it suits: you want one chassis for the next five years, and you’re happy to swap the mainboard, memory and SSD yourself. Skip it if you need the laptop this month, because the Intel board was on a December pre-order batch when we checked.
The 13 Pro is a full redesign. It has a 74.45 Wh battery, a 2880×1920 touch screen that runs from 30 to 120 Hz, and four expansion slots that all carry Thunderbolt 4. Memory moved to an LPCAMM2 module of up to 64 GB, so you can still replace it, but it is no longer the cheap SO-DIMM route. The Intel version is Framework’s first Ubuntu Certified system, and Framework officially supports Fedora and Ubuntu on it.
Upgrades are the real argument. Framework says the new Intel mainboard fits every earlier Laptop 13, and it’s listed on its own from $449 as a pre-order. That means a 2022 owner can move to this generation without buying a new laptop. Phoronix does not publish battery hours, but its reviewer wrote that the 13 Pro was definitely lasting several hours longer than the earlier AMD boards.
The one catch is the charger. Phoronix saw the chip capped at 6 W on a third-party 150 W Anker charger, and it behaved once they switched to Framework’s own adapter. With an X7 358H, 32 GB and a 1 TB SSD, the DIY Edition costs $2,514 before the $59 charger and the expansion cards, and the pre-built is $2,699. Framework’s US warranty is one year, or three years for another $179.
Choose the Framework Laptop 13 to spend less
Buy it if you want the Framework approach now, at a lower price, with room for a lot of memory. Pass on it if your Wi-Fi has to be reliable without a fallback, because this board ships with the MediaTek MT7925.
The Ryzen AI 300 Laptop 13 keeps two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots that take up to 96 GB, which matters if you run VMs or local models. Framework said in July that it had this model in stock, while the 13 Pro sells in December batches, so check the configurator’s batch before you order. With a Ryzen AI 7 350, 32 GB and 1 TB, the DIY Edition is $1,844 before the charger and expansion cards.
There are two trade-offs. Framework’s Linux matrix lists Fedora and an interim Ubuntu release for this board, and that release has already reached end of life, so pick the 13 Pro if you want Ubuntu LTS with Framework’s support. Battery is the other weak spot: the pack is 61 Wh, and Phoronix measured the HX 370 version averaging 23 W of chip power in its Linux tests.
Sleep drain is where owners argue most. One Fedora user saw almost 4% an hour, and AMD’s Linux engineer replied in the Framework forum that it sounded high. Another owner logged 98% to 94% over a 12-hour test, then found 78% the next day. If you often close the lid for a weekend, the 13 Pro or a ThinkPad is the safer bet.
Buy the ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 for a certified distro
It suits you if you want a distro vendor to stand behind your hardware, either for work or because you’d rather not debug drivers. Skip it if you want swappable ports or a mainboard upgrade path, because no ThinkPad offers either.
Certification is per configuration, so read this part carefully. The T14 Gen 7 Intel with a Core Ultra X7 368H has Ubuntu certification for the previous LTS with Canonical’s OEM kernel, and the 21WQ machine type is in Red Hat’s hardware catalog for RHEL 10. If a support contract needs the certificate, order that exact configuration from Lenovo. You get Intel’s BE211 Wi-Fi instead of the MediaTek chip, an RJ45 port on Intel’s I219 controller, and one LPCAMM2 slot for up to 64 GB.
iFixit gave the T14 Gen 7 a provisional 10 out of 10 for repairability, though it discloses a business relationship with Lenovo and says the Wi-Fi isn’t modular. Amazon sells the 21WN00BWUS with a Core Ultra 5 325, 32 GB and 512 GB for $1,921.14, the cheapest current ThinkPad we found sold by Amazon itself. That unit isn’t one of the certified configurations, but it has the same Intel Wi-Fi and chassis. Lenovo’s PSREF spec sheet lists Fedora and Ubuntu as preload options, but the Amazon unit ships with Windows, so plan on a fresh install.
Get the ThinkPad P14s Gen 7 for RHEL and VMs
Choose it when you run RHEL or a lot of VMs and want 96 GB of memory you can add later. Look elsewhere if Wi-Fi stability matters more than RAM, because the AMD P14s also uses the MediaTek MT7925.
Lenovo lists RHEL as a preload option on the P14s Gen 7 AMD, and the 21X1 machine type is RHEL 10 certified. It has two SO-DIMM slots up to 96 GB, an RJ45 port and a Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 470 option. iFixit’s device page gives it the same 10 out of 10 as the T14.
On Amazon, resellers list new Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 units with 32 GB and 1 TB from $1,709 to $1,749, and the linked BestComputers unit is $1,737.88. Those listings come from resellers rather than Lenovo or Amazon, so confirm the warranty terms with the seller. The best factory configuration we saw was in Lenovo’s own store: $1,849 for the same chip, memory and storage. Lenovo’s unit is a 21X0 and the reseller listings don’t name a machine type, so order a 21X1 from Lenovo if you need the RHEL certificate.
Take the X1 Carbon Gen 14 if weight comes first
It fits you best if you travel with your laptop every week and want Linux preinstalled by the vendor. Avoid it if you might need more memory later, because the RAM is soldered and the configuration you buy is the one you keep.
At 0.977 kg it’s the lightest of our picks. It’s also the only ThinkPad we priced on Lenovo’s US store that offers Fedora or Ubuntu in the configurator, and choosing Linux knocks $94 off. Adding up the configurator’s line items for a Core Ultra 5 335 with 32 GB and 1 TB gives about $2,710 with Linux. The Amazon unit is $2,906.99 with a Core Ultra 7 365, 512 GB and Windows.
Like every Lenovo entry, the X1 Carbon’s Ubuntu certificate notes that standard Ubuntu images may not work well, so keep Lenovo’s preload or use a recent Fedora. The optional 10 MP camera is the other trap. It works on Fedora with libcamera, but it’s still a confirmed bug on Ubuntu, so pick the standard camera if you live in Ubuntu.
Update firmware with fwupd on either brand
Both brands publish BIOS updates to LVFS, the service fwupd and GNOME Software pull from. Neither forces you to boot Windows when you flash firmware. The difference is volume, so we downloaded the same stable metadata your laptop fetches and counted it by vendor:
curl -sSLO https://cdn.fwupd.org/downloads/firmware.xml.zst
zstd -dqf firmware.xml.zst
grep -o "<developer_name>[^<]*</developer_name>" firmware.xml | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -8The file we pulled was last modified at 12:28 GMT on October 19, and the top of the count looked like this:
2601 <developer_name>Lenovo</developer_name>
891 <developer_name>Dell</developer_name>
330 <developer_name>Linux Foundation</developer_name>
124 <developer_name>HP</developer_name>
92 <developer_name>Intel</developer_name>
46 <developer_name>Star Labs</developer_name>
44 <developer_name>Framework</developer_name>
37 <developer_name>Wacom</developer_name>Each line counts firmware entries, and Lenovo has more of them in the current stable metadata than any other vendor, about 59 for every one from Framework. Counting the individual releases inside those entries gives 4,708 for Lenovo and 68 for Framework. That gap covers more than the BIOS, because Lenovo also ships EC, Intel ME, NVMe, Thunderbolt and dock firmware there. The LVFS vendor list also shows Lenovo with a product security response team, which Framework does not have.
Framework’s 44 entries still cover a BIOS stream for every current board, and its newest update is dated August 20, for the Laptop 12 13th Gen board. Its release pages say the firmware is published to LVFS and updates through fwupd. Lifetime totals look different, because the LVFS vendor page credits Dell with more firmware files overall, so read these numbers as current coverage.
Updating works the same way on both brands. Run these in order on a new laptop:
- You refresh the firmware list with fwupdmgr refresh.
- You see what’s waiting for your hardware with fwupdmgr get-updates.
- You plug in the charger, then apply everything with fwupdmgr update.
Docks need updates too. The Lenovo USB4 Smart Dock 5500 at $230 has its own LVFS firmware stream, so it updates from Linux with the same command. Our Thunderbolt dock guide covers the other docks that work on Linux, and the programming monitor guide pairs with any of them.
Expect s2idle sleep, not S3
The old reason to buy a ThinkPad for Linux was its BIOS switch for S3 sleep, and that reason is gone. We searched Lenovo’s BIOS Simulator data for 12 current models and found no sleep-state option on any of them. Owners of the current Framework 13 and 13 Pro boards report only s2idle too.
Run cat /sys/power/mem_sleep on a new laptop and you’ll see the modes its firmware offers. The kernel docs explain why a machine can default to s2idle even when deeper sleep exists in principle. That makes measured drain the thing to compare, and we found no lab figures for any current ThinkPad or the 13 Pro. These owner reports are what you have:
| Laptop | Drain while suspended | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Framework 13 Ryzen AI 300 | 98% to 94% in a 12-hour test, 78% the next day | Framework forum |
| Framework 13 Ryzen AI 300 | almost 4% an hour on Fedora | Framework forum |
| ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 Intel (previous generation) | 1.3% an hour on Fedora, 0.3% on Ubuntu | Fedora discussion |
The spread inside one model is the useful lesson. The same ThinkPad drained four times faster on one distro than on another, which points at software more than at the brand. Framework found HDMI and USB-A cards draw the most power in suspend on its Ryzen 7040 laptops, which is worth testing on yours. If your laptop loses too much overnight, work through these before you blame the hardware:
- You’ve installed every BIOS update fwupd offers.
- You’re on the newest kernel your distro ships.
- You’ve tried a USB-C to USB-A adapter in place of a Framework USB-A card.
Set a charge limit to protect the battery
A laptop that sits on a desk all day keeps its battery healthier if charging stops around 80%. On a ThinkPad that works through the in-kernel thinkpad_acpi driver. The kernel documentation lists charge_control_start_threshold and charge_control_end_threshold under /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0, and TLP can set both for you.
Framework is the weaker side here. Framework has added a battery charge limit to its BIOS on earlier boards, owners report it misbehaving on the Ryzen AI 300, and framework_tool can set a limit from Linux. But the TLP vendor page says recent Framework EC firmware broke the cros_charge-control kernel module, and framework_tool does not expose the standard sysfs files TLP needs. If you want an 80% limit that standard Linux tools manage, that’s a real reason to pick the ThinkPad.
- You can confirm the threshold files exist with ls /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/ before you install TLP.
- You should run only one power manager, because the TLP FAQ warns that TLP alongside power-profiles-daemon gives unpredictable results.
- You should charge the 13 Pro from Framework’s own adapter, after the 6 W cap Phoronix saw on a third-party charger.
ThinkPads with 65 W USB-C ports, such as the X1 Carbon, work with the Lenovo 65W USB-C charger at $29.74 as a spare for your bag.
Compare battery life on Linux
Nobody publishes a controlled Linux battery-hours test for these models. Phoronix says it avoids hour figures because workloads vary too much. What it does publish is average chip power during its Linux benchmark runs. The test suites differ between reviews, so treat this as a rough guide to efficiency:
| Laptop (Phoronix, Linux) | Average chip power |
|---|---|
| ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 AMD | 14 W, lowest of 11 laptops |
| Framework Laptop 12 Core 7 350 | 16.69 W |
| ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 | 20 W |
| Framework 13 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | 23 W |
| Framework 13 Pro X9 388H | 27 W; the reviewer saw several hours more battery than on the HX 370 |
Average chip power is not runtime, so you shouldn’t read the 13 Pro’s 27 W as a weak battery. Phoronix’s reviewer still saw it last several hours longer than the older Framework boards, and the 74.45 Wh pack helps. Both ThinkPads in the table are the previous generation, because we found no Phoronix review of a Gen 7 ThinkPad or the X1 Carbon Gen 14.
Notebookcheck’s Wi-Fi browsing test is the only like-for-like runtime on the current models. It runs on Windows 11, so treat it as context rather than a Linux number. It measured 23 hours 13 minutes for the X1 Carbon Gen 14 with a Core Ultra 5 325 and 18 hours 5 minutes for the T14 Gen 7 with the same chip. The 13 Pro with an X7 358H ran 19 hours 18 minutes, and the Framework 13 HX 370 ran 8 hours.
Check these before you order
A few details catch Linux buyers after the box arrives. Run through this list against the exact configuration you’re about to buy:
- You’ve picked an Intel model if you can’t live with a flaky Wi-Fi link, or budgeted for a USB adapter from our Linux Wi-Fi adapter list.
- You’ve bought the X1 Carbon Gen 14, T14s Gen 7 or X13 Gen 7 with all the RAM you’ll ever need, because it’s soldered.
- You’ve chosen a distro with a newer kernel than the current Ubuntu LTS if you want the Laptop 12 with Core Series 3, which Framework sells with Fedora.
- You’ve checked the shipping batch on frame.work, because the 13 Pro and the Laptop 12 were on December batches when we looked.
- You’ve priced a warranty extension into the total, because both brands give one year in the US.
The Laptop 16 is the Framework to choose for a dedicated GPU, with an RTX 5070 module, but it weighs 2.4 kg with the GPU fitted and has no new mainboard this year. If you’d like to look beyond these two brands, our Linux laptop picks and the local LLM laptop guide cover other shapes.
Match the laptop to the distro you run
Start from the distro, because both brands support Fedora and Ubuntu well and the choice turns on what else you need. If you run RHEL or need a certificate your support contract will accept, order the certified T14 Gen 7 Intel or P14s Gen 7 machine type from Lenovo. They’re the only picks here with entries in Red Hat’s catalog. If you run Fedora or Ubuntu and plan to keep the laptop for years, the Framework 13 Pro gives you the upgrade path no ThinkPad has.
Once it arrives, run fwupdmgr update before anything else, and set a charge limit if you’re on a ThinkPad. If the touchpad misbehaves on a fresh install, the touchpad fixes cover the usual causes. Then work through the Fedora post-install steps or the Ubuntu install guide. If your laptop has a fingerprint reader, the fprintd and PAM guide sets it up for sudo and the login screen.
