The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

I'm happy to answer any questions around this! We've been working on this since update since we launched the product last year, so we're excited to be able to share it today.

Any chance of ortholinear (grid) keyboards happening?

We've gotten requests from a couple of ortholinear keyboard makers on it. With our current Input Cover design, it is technically possible to do, but would have fixed costs that would be extremely difficult to amortize over the number of units we could realistically sell. Because of that, we don't have any active plans for this.

Is there any way a hobbyist can make a custom one that would fit?

The problem is mainly getting switches (and their keycaps) that are thin enough. All the switches that are available to be used by hobbyists (Cherry MX, Kailh Choc...) are way too thick.

I'd hope for a thicker laptop frame, then.

I think a frame thick enough for PCB + Chocs would then allow both a premium mechanical keyboard in a standard shape, as well as allowing for swapping this out for whatever more niche arrangements.

Whereas, for a thin, non-mechanical keyboard, the manufacturing cost would be too high to be feasible for anything but standard, presumably.