I have been looking at them a lot recently and they have a premium price is it worth it?
What does it look like when you want to upgrade? Like can you just swap out all parts over time and essentially it’s like having a custom desktop, but in small form factor.
Can you buy a base model and upgrade components over time?
Would it suit my use cases for it? Which are to run Linux, I have to use Windows as a Software Dev and so can’t do it on my main. Can I run Minecraft on Linux? I know, but I like that game it makes me happy to unwind.
I want to get more into cyber security related tasks and most likely increase my Darknet activities using Tails.
I have one (FW 16 AMD), I don’t have any complaints so far. It comes mostly assembled but you put your RAM, SSD, screen bezel, keyboard, touchpad and all the port modules yourself. The machine is well built and genuinely very easy to work with. You can swap the keyboard and touchpad without touching a screw.
For the most part it seems like they’re holding up to their promise, you can buy a new motherboard for a CPU upgrade, remove the old one, put the new one in, and you’re good to go with the rest of your existing stuff (as long as it’s compatible, if the new board needs DDR5 instead of DDR4 then you need new RAM too but that’s expected). So far everything I’ve disassembled as part of the firs assembly has been a breeze. It’s a very nice laptop to work on and swap parts that’s for sure. You get the assurance that you can swap the battery, input modules, IO modules for the foreseeable future.
Where I’ve been disappointed is the third-party ecosystem for it is not what I was hoping it would be, there’s not a lot of third-party modules for it. But the designs are all open-sourced so you can 3D print parts for it. Maybe in the future we’ll have more modules. Overall though, it’s not like you could even think about that on any other laptop brands, you get the laptop and it’s what it’ll be for the rest of its life.
Runs great on Linux, most of the company actually uses Linux so support for Linux is very good. All of the models will run Minecraft very well, Minecraft in particular has been known to run significantly better on Linux to begin with, especially on Intel graphics where the OpenGL drivers on Windows are terrible.
One neat thing about swapping the motherboard is that you can easily just 3d print a case for it and use it as a server! I saw a post on the homelab community where FW was selling older model MBs for cheap, and people snapped them up for that. Someone sells a slim case for it, but they also have a printable model for it online
Yep and there’s even a BIOS option for that use case! I really like they they go “oh, people use the parts for that, we’ll add a feature for it!”
I have been running one for 2 years and next generation am going to do the thing they were designed to do and upgrade my laptop without throwing away the whole laptop. So for less than $1000 I will be upgrading to something that is faster than my desktop, and it’s portable.
The price tag is premium, at first, then it actually saves money.
Probably turn it into a dedicated mini pc for the 3D printer. It’s still decently powerful I just don’t need it anymore. I might gift it to someone as a mini pc, depends on if I see someone who needs a computer but doesn’t have one.
Thanks for the reply.
That makes sense on it being premium at first but then the options are there to upgrade and repurpose old parts.
Totally, I’m not buying a new monitor, keyboard, speakers, webcam, or chassis. Just a new CPU and in this case RAM, as we made the switch from DDR4 to DDR5.
Imagine having to buy a new keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers, every time you wanted to upgrade your desktop. It’s the same thing.
You can indeed run Minecraft on Linux. In my opinion, it’s even easier than running it on Windows, since you can use your package manager to install openjdk instead of fishing around Oracle’s website to get the Java 17 graphical installer. I use Prism, which is a 3rd party launcher, and I’m loving the experience.
I’ll answer what I know:
Yes, you can run Minecraft on Linux. There are both official and unofficial, paid and free versions.
For Java Edition, there’s an official launcher.
For Bedrock, there’s an unofficial bedrock launcher that uses a Google Play account with a Minecraft License.
For Java for free, there are cracked launchers that download as jar files and work great.
For Bedrock for free, I just wouldn’t bother. I’m big into piracy, and even I just gave up and bought a license from Google Play Store. If you want to give it a shot, you can find a launcher that takes x86 apks, but it’s near impossible to find x86 apks that work, and the only ones I found were from super old versions, like pre-1.16.
Thanks. I already own Java Edition and someone else said you can get a third party launcher too which is cool.
Prism Launcher is easily the best third-party launcher, hands down. It’s really useful and intuitive, with instances (basically it lets you make seperate game installs for different modpacks or versions or whatever) and lets you easily install any mod, modloader, modpack, resourcepack, or shaderpack from all the major platforms (CurseForge, Modrinth, FTB, Technic, etc.)
I prefer MultiMC as it does the same while being extremely lightweight. Or does prism have any special features that multimc doesn’t have?
