Can I move a HDD from a Framework 13 Intel laptop to a Framework Desktop 300?

Framework Desktop Linux
1

Apologies if this question is addressed somewhere in the forum that I haven’t located.

I know that the HDD in my Framework laptop will fit in the Framework desktop, and that I could do a fresh install of Manjaro in it and everything should work fine. What I’m wondering is whether I could simply move that same HDD “as is” into a new desktop and have it boot/run successfully. Would the difference between Intel and AMD architectures cause problems? Are there other hardware differences that would make that a bad (or at least a complicated) idea?

I’m on the verge of buying a Desktop and trying to figure out the best way to re-create my existing setup on my laptop without having to reinstall and reconfigure everything from scratch (unless, of course, that really is the best way).

Thanks in advance!

2

Ultimately it depends on your distro… but, for almost all of them, if it doesn’t work perfectly then that’s really weird.

Like, if you’re custom compiled and optimized to the teeth on Gentoo, then yeah, swapping over probably won’t be great. But for any off-the-shelf distro, it should be fine.

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Thanks. I’m using Manjaro (KDE, testing branch), and haven’t done anything radical enough with it to count as “compiled and optimized to the teeth.” If HDD prices hadn’t gone through the roof, I’d just buy a new HDD for the Desktop, do a fresh install, and copy my /home directory and some other settings from one machine to the other. But a new 8TB drive isn’t in my budget right now, so…

4

Did you actually mean a SSD?

You can’t fit a HDD in the Framework Desktop case.

You could buy only the motherboard and install it in your own case if you really want to use a HDD.

5

It is safe to assume that somebody who is booting their laptop off of of the type of device they are asking about, intending to move it into a desktop, does not need to know exactly what the technology is that powers that device.

7

I did, yes. I also figured that, in context, this distinction (which I get, but was also admittedly imprecise with) would be obvious in context, since the drive I’m talking about (sorry! writing about! soooo much imprecision!) was already specified as coming from a Framework 13 Intel laptop, so it could only be an M.2 2280 SSD anyway.

8

Then you can do what you want, with a couple of caveats:

  1. The mainstream distributions use generic kernels that work on both Intel and AMD machines. So no problem here.
  2. You might have (fixable) problems with the drivers for wired and wireless networking, sound, graphics and any other specific devices that differ from your laptop to your new desktop. Anything related to those in your /etc directory will need updating. Two examples are the files /etc/systemd/network and /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. And possibly any customized files you might have in /etc/modules-load.d and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.
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Thanks. That all sounds manageable. If the Desktop will boot properly from the Laptop drive, despite the Intel->AMD shift, I can roll with those kinds of minor adjustments.

10

With linux the only thing that would determine if a ssd from an old machine will boot in a new machine is the linux kernel version.
Try to make sure you have the newest possible linux kernel installed on the old system before moving the ssd to the new system.

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11

Thanks. I’m using the most recent LTS kernel (6.18.55-1), and if a newer LTS kernel appears before I’m ready to make the move, I’ll update first.