Framework Laptop 16

Omarchy treats the Framework Laptop 16 as a named machine. It has its own detector script, its own install hooks and its own keyboard theming path, which is more than most laptops get. That enablement is narrow, though: it is entirely about the swappable keyboard module. Everything else falls back to the generic AMD and hybrid GPU handling.

Verdict

Silver. The machine installs and runs, nothing in the tracker points at a dead subsystem, and the distro ships model-specific enablement for it. Two things keep it off gold. First, the evidence is thin: the tracker index attributes six issues and four discussions to this laptop, only five of those issues were actually filed from one, and none of them exercises fingerprint, audio, webcam or sleep, so most subsystems here are marked unknown rather than working. Second, two live bugs are open on 4.0.4, and both are Omarchy bugs rather than hardware faults.

Checked against the v4.0.4 and v3.8.4 source snapshots on 2026-09-16.

What works

The Ryzen AI 300 configuration drives its displays from the integrated Radeon 890M through amdgpu, reported directly by the owner in #11184 on Omarchy 4.0.3 with kernel 7.2.3. Wi-Fi connects on a fresh 4.x install; the only Wi-Fi report, #10406, is about the panel refusing to forget a mistyped network, not about the radio, and the reporter got online through nmtui on the same hardware.

Keyboard RGB follows your theme. That landed in v3.4.0, contributed by @godlewski, and still runs in 4.0.4 through omarchy-theme-set-keyboard-f16. The qmk-hid tool it needs is now carried in the Omarchy package repository at 0.1.13-1 on the stable, rc and edge channels.

Subsystems with no Omarchy-specific report either way: fingerprint, webcam, audio, Bluetooth, touchpad, hibernate and system suspend. Nobody has filed on them from this laptop, so they stay unknown here.

What breaks

Install fails with error: target not found: qmk-hid. Reported by @bsl in #6423 against the 3.8.4 ISO. The Framework 16 hook asked pacman for qmk-hid, but the package was never listed in the ISO builder’s sources, so it was absent from the offline mirror. Commit edce5809 by @ryanrhughes added it to install/omarchy-other.packages; it was written in May and cherry-picked onto the main branch on 2026-07-30, nine days after the 3.8.4 release. That file has no qmk-hid entry in the v3.8.4 tree and does have one from v4.0.0 onward, so 4.x installs are clear. The issue is still open on the tracker, but the cause is gone.

omarchy theme set and omarchy update hang forever. #8243, open, filed by @ykzird against 4.0.1. The report did not come from a Framework 16. It came from a desktop where qmk-hid had been installed by hand for a Keychron K8 Pro, and it matters here because install/hardware/framework16.sh installs that same package on every Framework 16. The script it implicates is omarchy-theme-set-keyboard-f16: its whole precondition is that qmk_hid exists and the theme has a keyboard.rgb, after which it runs qmk_hid via five times with no time limit and no check that the device on the other end is a Framework keyboard, or that it answers at all. With the Keychron attached, the first call never returned. A 4.0.1 migration (1787481315) re-stages the current theme through omarchy-theme-refresh, so omarchy update sat on that step until the keyboard was unplugged, after which it finished immediately. The reporter suggests wrapping the calls in timeout; that has not shipped as of 4.0.4. Whether the Framework 16’s own keyboard module can trigger the same stall is unreported.

Opening Activity wakes the discrete graphics module. #11184, open, on a Laptop 16 with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and an RTX 5070 module. Omarchy’s config/btop/btop.conf sets shown_gpus = "nvidia amd intel" on line 254. Because nvidia is in that list, btop 1.4.7 loads NVML as soon as it starts, and it does so whether or not you have a GPU panel showing. The reporter watched the card’s runtime_status: it went from suspended to resuming about two seconds after Activity opened, stayed active for as long as the window was up, and dropped back roughly fifteen seconds after it closed. With shown_gpus = "amd" in a private btop config, the card never left suspended, even with a GPU box turned on.

keyboard.frame.work could not open the input modules on 3.2.3. Discussion #4073 by @liancheng, from January 2026, predates every piece of Framework 16 enablement in the tree: the udev rule, the detector and the theming script all arrived with @godlewski’s PR #4524 on 2026-02-18. Back then the browser configurator got NotAllowedError on both the keyboard module (32ac:0012) and the numpad module (32ac:0014), and the recipe was QMK’s 50-qmk.rules plus two uaccess rules for those IDs. The discussion also notes that 50-qmk.rules fails udevadm verify on Omarchy because it references a plugdev group that does not exist. On 4.x, the shipped default/udev/framework16-qmk-hid.rules is a single line granting uaccess on hidraw devices with vendor 32ac and product 0012, so the keyboard module is now user-accessible, but nothing covers the numpad module, and no one has reported whether keyboard.frame.work works out of the box on a 4.x install.

Stuck on 3.8.5 during the Quattro upgrade. #6890 by @zorzysty was filed from a Framework 16 on release day and closed within four minutes. Nothing model-specific; see upgrading 3 to 4.

What Omarchy does for this model

Detection is bin/omarchy-hw-framework16. It requires /sys/class/dmi/id/sys_vendor to read exactly Framework, then calls omarchy-hw-match "Laptop 16", which greps product_name and product_family case-insensitively. A hardware probe of a 7040-series unit reports the product name Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series) and the family 16in Laptop, so the match lands on the product name.

Two install hooks use that detector, both run from install/hardware/all.sh:

• install/hardware/framework16.sh adds the qmk-hid package.
• install/hardware/framework/qmk-hid.sh copies default/udev/framework16-qmk-hid.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/50-framework16-qmk-hid.rules, granting uaccess on the keyboard module’s hidraw node so RGB control works without root.

At runtime, omarchy-theme-set-keyboard calls omarchy-theme-set-keyboard-f16, which converts the theme’s keyboard.rgb hex to QMK HSV and writes it through qmk_hid via.

If you fit a discrete module, install/hardware/nvidia.sh installs nvidia-open-dkms for any GSP-capable NVIDIA card (PCI device ID 0x1e00 or above, which includes the RTX 5070), sets nvidia_drm modeset=1 and adds the NVIDIA modules to the initramfs. omarchy-hw-hybrid-gpu then counts GPUs and unlocks the hybrid GPU toggle. None of that is Framework-specific; see hybrid GPU laptops.

3.x versus 4.x. Mostly the paths moved. On v3.8.4 the hooks lived at install/packaging/framework16.sh and install/config/hardware/framework/qmk-hid.sh; on 4.x both sit under install/hardware/. The detector, the udev rule and framework16.sh are byte-identical between the two trees. qmk-hid.sh changed slightly: the 3.8.4 version ran udevadm control --reload-rules and udevadm trigger after copying the rule, and the 4.x version does not, so the rule takes effect at the next boot.

Variants

Mainboards come in Ryzen 7040 Series and Ryzen AI 300 Series. Both are seen in Omarchy reports, 7040 in #10406 and AI 300 in #11184. Graphics modules are integrated only, Radeon RX 7700S, or GeForce RTX 5070.

Prefer integrated graphics if you can. It is the only configuration with no hybrid GPU surface, and the one open GPU bug on this machine is specific to having a discrete module fitted. The RTX 5070 module additionally pulls you into the proprietary NVIDIA stack, covered on NVIDIA drivers on Omarchy 4.

There is no evidence either way about the RX 7700S module under Omarchy. Nobody has filed on it.

Before you install

• Use a 4.x ISO. The qmk-hid install failure is a 3.x problem and there is no reason to start there.
• If you own another QMK or VIA keyboard, unplug it before your first omarchy theme set or omarchy update until #8243 is fixed.
• If you fit the RTX 5070 module, edit shown_gpus in your btop config before you start trusting the battery estimate.
• If the Wi-Fi panel gets stuck on a mistyped password, nmtui gets you online. The reporter of #10406 hit this on 4.0.0 install media and found the panel’s lock icon handles it after updating.
• For keyboard.frame.work, expect to add a udev rule for the numpad module, 32ac:0014. Omarchy’s rule covers only the keyboard module, 32ac:0012.
• Check your BIOS version against Framework’s own releases first.

Related

Framework Laptop 13 shares the vendor but not the enablement. For the graphics module, read hybrid GPU laptops and AMD GPU. For the battery cost of a wakeful discrete card, battery drains fast. The manual chapter on keyboard, mouse and trackpad covers input configuration generally. If you run this laptop, add what you find at hardware submit.