Replacing the mainboard on a 13" requires reinstallation?

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

Hello all,

So I have an intel based framework 13 running Ubuntu Noble as my daily driver for work. I was thinkng on upgrading the mainboard to Framework | Fix Consumer Electronics.

This is, and sorry my unawareness on this topic, but other than doing a backup has anyone that did this upgrade was able to keep the current installation (keeping the same architecture) or will a new system installation is required/recomended?

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Not on Linux. All drivers are built into the kernel. You do not have to reinstall anything when moving to a different CPU/motherboard with the same architecture.

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Arch Linux user here, but I’ve swapped SSDs between mainboards many times. Never had to reinstall just because I moved the SSD.

That being said, I do not use Secure Boot at all. I use rEFInd as the bootloader on all of my machines, so there’s no BIOS NVRAM boot entry change occurring in my setups…

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4

The boot sequence is stored on the mainboard, you might need to change that after switching

5

For linux, you most likely do not need a re-install.
That said, a few important things are stored on the mainboard, that may be cause for some issues that you may need to address:

  1. TPM keys, this means for instance that keys for drivers that were manually built to work with secure boot are lost, and these need to be either transferred or re-created in the new TPM storage. The same goes for any keys that are used to decrypt a filesystem (e.g. LUKS). If you don’t have secure boot enabled, and don’t use encrypted file systems, you are probably safe here.
  2. EFI boot entries are stored on the mainboard, they will be lost when you replace it. Your os may still boot if it is the ‘default’ one on the drive, but you may need to boot with a live installer and re-generate the boot entries.
  3. UEFI settings: Any customization that you may have done, is lost. Not only that, your new mainboard may have substantial different options due to the switch from intel to amd. If you’ve customized some settings previously, you need to re-do that the amd way. If you did not customize anything before, chances are that the new defaults will work just fine.

Also keep in mind that any intel specific kernel arguments that you may have added need to be replaced with their amd counterparts.

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6

I’ve moved drives around machines with little difficulty. It’s worth paying attention to whether you installed ‘all drivers’ or ‘targeted drivers’ when setting up Ubuntu, and also to make sure you have firmware-amd-graphics installed ahead of migrating to the AMD mainboard.

K3n.

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7

just pull the m.2 drive out of the old mainboard and plug it into the new one, should boot fine!

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Thank you for the replies!