Wanted to share for those who might be interested of my trials, tribulations, and successes as I progress down this road.
I received my Frame work (frame.work) laptop on Friday 11/12/21. Was wiring my garage and that took two day priority over my itch to get it up and running. After watching a youtube installation comparison of 6 distros (Best Linux for Framework? 6 Distros Tested! - YouTube) I decided to try Fedora, as it was the only one that was not going to take custom scripts to get critical services to function. The reason I did not instantly go with Zorin was due to it getting the lowest hardware compatibility rating of the six. I did install Fedora and it worked as stated, but the GUI is not my cup of tea. So today I paid for and downloaded 16 Pro, after previously paying for 15. An Etcher install later and ripping the ISO to the USB stick, I started installing Zorin.
All went well, until I restarted the laptop and it asked to run Zorin Connect and upgrades. Nothing worked, and for a couple seconds I was confused, largely because I forgot that the 6E AX210 WiFi vPro radio does not work out of the box.
If I were new to Linux, which I'm not, I would throw my hands up and ask WTF. While I'm not excited to have to script in a functional driver, I understand that in dog years Frame Work is a relatively new hardware offering, and sometimes the Linux development for drivers lags a bit. This is one of the reasons that Linux is not generally or more widely accepted among the average computer user. Apple exists for those people, and the longer Windows is around, they too have given more focus to newer users having to install the OS themselves.
Since I'm not able to access the internet from the laptop to get updates, I'm on my Zorin desktop to find a solution and provide incremental updates to the community.
On a very positive note, Zorin does come up properly on the Frame Work, with a fairly large icon and text display, but that can be changed in settings.
I'll follow up once I get the drivers for the radio fixed. If anyone else has encountered the same issue with the wifi card, and even better, has a link to functional drivers, that would be a great help and cut my Where's Waldo driver hunt. I really don't want to have to drop a dual boot Windows 10 version on there so that I can get Zorin working. Not going to bash (pun) to hard on Windows, because I lived in that world professionally for almost 30 years. Zorin does not want to, nor should it have to use Windows as a crutch to get the most basic wifi functionality.
My Frame Work config is as follows:
Intel i7 1185G7
The 6E AX210 wifi card
Two 32Gb Patriot modules (purchased from Amazon for $107 each)
One Samsung 970 Plus 1 Tb M2 card