Best method for windows on FW13+AMD

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
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I’m using a FW13 with the AMD Ryzen 5 motherboard, happily running Fedora 42.

I’m at a point where I need to have a Windows installation again (for Adobe tools). The goal is native performance, as this is specifically for photography and Lightroom & Photoshop are beasts that want native performance and local disk access.

I have done every combination of Windows and Linux over the years. The best method I found was to have a 2nd SSD installed and choose which disk to boot from using UEFI at boot time. However, this machine has no facility for a 2nd SSD on the main board.

So there are several methods to accomplish this:

  • Use WINE (not an option, the things I want don’t work)
  • Use a VM (tried, slow and fussy)
  • Windows as primary OS, run my preferred OS in a VM (ugh)
  • Windows dual-booted from expansion card (is it faster than a VM?)
  • Windows dual-booted from internal SSD (likely the most performant)

I’m about to pursue the last one unless anyone has a better idea in mid-2025. My dream answer is “oh just buy xyz motherboard with two internal SSD slots”.

thanks

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No reason not to dual boot, in my opinion. Did it for years before I finally gave Windows the boot and it never caused any problems performance-wise. Would be nice to have a second SSD slot in the FW motherboard, but sans that, a dual boot situation should be more than adequate. Only real risk is something happening to the GRUB bootloader. Been told sometimes Windows doesn’t play nice with other bootloaders these days, but I can’t confirm or deny that.

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thanks for the response. My angst is only that dual booting is annoying in practice. I always find that I want some utility or file that only exists on the other machine, so I end up booting back and forth. It is workable and still better than WINE or using a VM, in this case at least.

I’m still questioning whether it is worth it at all. I have been Windows-free for several years and like it that way, but Adobe refuses to natively support Linux, so here we are.

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Have you tried Darktable and Gimp as substitutes?

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thanks - yes, I have. and many others. I’m tired of fighting with it.

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I got dual-boot Windows + Ubuntu working on my FW13 just now, it was a fresh install.

I solved the file sharing issue (kinda) by allocating some additional free space, and creating a NTFS partition there. Both windows and linux can read it, you just need to make sure windows actually shuts down so the drive won’t remain locked. You can also set it as your default path for documents, or treat it as a data drive so you just have files there you’ll commonly need on both. I’m still testing out ways to encrypt it, so it works well with both OSes.

I decided to install windows first, because it’s a bit more picky with partitioning, and Linux doesn’t really seem to care as long as there’s free disk space.

  1. Start fresh Windows install by booting from install medium
  2. At the partitioning stage: Follow these instructions from Arch Linux to create a larger EFI partition, most people recommend 550MB, but you can go larger depending on your needs.
  3. After creating that partition, just press continue to let Windows take care of the rest.
  4. After booting windows, use the partition manager from Windows to shrink the main windows partition and make room for Linux (You could do this with gparted from live boot, but with bitlocker getting in the way, it’s safer to do it from Windows).
  5. Make sure you got your bitlocker recovery key, and suspend/disable bitlocker if needed (i suspended it before installing linux, and i didn’t need to enter my key)
  6. start a Linux install, proceed as normal, but when it asks about installing it alongside windows, i chose custom (the install alongside may work, but i took the safe route)
  7. I created a new partition for /boot, and a root partition on the free space. Not sure if that is neccessary, but that worked for me. Make sure to check that the EFI partition has /boot/efi as a mountpoint!
  8. Congrats, dual boot works now!

If it’s not a fresh install, basically every step is still the same, but it may take some partitioning wizardry to increase the EFI partition size. Windows does 200MB on fresh installs now, which may be sufficient depending on use case, but it used to be 100MB for the longest time which likely isn’t.

And if it’s not a fresh install, backups, backups, backups. Especially when messing with EFI partitions.

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