Seeking advice - Host OS - Linux or Windows?

Hi; I will be Batch 17 in a few days and getting prepared. Since I cannot post in the “Introduce Yourself” Thread, I’ll take this opportunity to do it here before seeking advice.

I’m a semi-retired software engineer and currently dabbling in data science/AI. Lived and worked in Atlanta since 37 years and avid DIY/Home Automation enthusiast.

I’ve fussed with company provide laptop too long and also have an aging MacBookPro - hence the shift to FW as I was intrigued and excited to learn that there is a solution to bloat-ware cheap PC’s

Now the advice part… I have used VMWare WS Pro for several years and like the idea of spinning up a VM for dev or other needs. The question is should the host OS be Windows or Linux. I’d like to know from the experts the pros & cons based one user’s experience.

Usage: I’d like to optimize the FW HW/SW configuration for these use cases

  • MacBook (will be retired) for all things media - photos & videos (travel is my passion too!)
  • Windows for general work
  • Linux for development
    I have some VM’s that are on an external drive and would also like to know from user’s experience what the expected performance would be in this scenario. Also, which (brand) USB-C hub would be best suited; there are too many cheap and unreliable hubs these days.
    Thanks in advance - I’m looking forward to this DIY FW; my last DIY was in 1980’s - lol after the Amiga with Floppy disks - what a sea change in technology!

While I can’t comment on everything, I’ll try to comment on what I can.
For working with VMs I have found Linux to be a lot better than Windows, especially if you don’t mind dabbling a bit with the command line. The performance using KVM, QEMU and libvirt is near-native if setup correctly. If you also have a dGPU you could try setting up GPU pci-e passthrough for even better performance, if the VM you are using has a desktop. There is some additional talk about that here. The Arch wiki also has some great resources on how to setup QEMU, libvirt and everything else.

Since I don’t know what you mean by “general work” under Windows, I assume that is software that doesn’t run under Linux with translation layers like Wine or there are no alternatives for. If your laptop is mostly plugged in, I would possibly even try to use a VM to run that software, otherwise your best bet is just dual-booting Windows using the additional SSD slot the Framework 16 has.

Media consumption is fine on Linux and slowly getting a lot better. Media consumption in browsers other than Chromium-based like Firefox is still heavy on battery, if you are consuming the media in dedicated-clients like VLC or MPV the battery consumption is pretty good, not on-par with Macbooks but still good.

For AI-work I heard, that AMD is making progress on getting RyzenAI to run under Linux, or at least create Demos under Linux.

Overall I find using Linux a lot more enjoyable to use than Windows and try to avoid Windows as much as possible, especially for me as a developer. Linux gives me a lot more freedom and does what I tell it to do and I can decide when to update and what to update. VMs for me run a lot smoother and better under Linux than on Windows, it takes a bit more work configuring it, but it’s worth it.
I personally use NixOS, as I am a huge fan of immutable and declarative systems, but any other Distro should be fine too. Fedora should be a good start if you are unsure about what Distro to use.

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I have a slightly different take on it. I used Windows for my base OS for a number of years, and ran Linux in VMs (first VMware, before there was a VMware Player; later VirtualBox). It worked well at the time, Windows had all the drivers for my hardware that Linux was lacking at that point.

Some years ago, as Linux began to support more of my hardware and/or I got hardware that had better Linux support, I switched to using Linux as my base OS, at first sticking with VirtualBox for my VMs, later switching to KVM/QEMU. I’ve stuck with that setup since.

There might be reasons to use Windows as the base OS, such as particular programs that don’t work well in VMs (other than games, I’ve only run into one), or particular add-on hardware that Windows supports better. If there aren’t, then Linux could be slightly superior: for instance, it won’t update and reboot itself at someone else’s whim. There’s also the slight concern that Microsoft’s forced “telemetry” stuff could leak information about you and what you’re doing that is really no one else’s business; if Windows is in a VM, that may still be a problem when using it, but the things you’re doing under Linux aren’t subject to it.

My initial reasons for preferring Linux as the base OS were based on the time it took to set up each. If Windows crashed, or started slowing down as it did after a time in those days, or otherwise needed to be rebuilt from scratch, it took me two full working days of installing software to get back to 90% productivity. If Linux crashed, it only took me two hours to get back to that point. (In both cases, that’s with scrupulously-updated backups, of course.) So it just made sense to keep a Windows VM that I could just restore and update when that happened. Your mileage may vary: your Windows requirements probably don’t need that many programs, and Windows doesn’t seem to need regular reinstalling these days to keep it relatively fast.

Finally, if you’re not sure which you’d prefer yet, a dual-boot setup could let you play with both. At one point I did that, with VirtualBox (pretty sure it was VirtualBox) set up to boot the “other” system depending on which I was in at the time.

There’s one additional consideration. Everyone appreciates that “free and open-source” software is free, but since switching to Linux as my base OS, I’ve come to appreciate a less-recognized benefit of it: no one can yank it out from under you. The company that created it can’t decide that it isn’t profitable enough and withdraw it from the market, or abruptly cancel the original perpetual license you paid for and turn it into a subscription, or pull critical features for no reason, or sell it to a company that lets it rot or turns it into spyware, or decide to start suing its customers for violating some obscure part of its license because its lawyers say there’s more short-term profit that way – all things that I’ve seen happen with proprietary software. If an open-source project does anything people don’t like, it just gets forked. Over the long haul, that can be a major advantage.

KVM/QEMU is open-source; VMware is not (and was recently sold, with its future still to be determined), and although VirtualBox itself is, the “Oracle Extension Pack” that’s necessary to make it run well is not. And Windows itself isn’t, of course; with Microsoft’s marked lack of enthusiasm for keeping Windows bug-free in recent years, that might be another thing to consider.

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This commentor touches on my opinions regarding the matter:

The two posters above have provided quite a lot of detail, so I’ll keep mine brief. I’m a software engineer/data scientist, and for me it’s not just a matter of software features and such but also one of philosophy. I run linux on my machine largely in part because I believe it gives me more ownership over the device, and as an advocate of right-to-repair who’s willing to spend the extra dollar on a framework for this functionality, linux is naturally more in line with my personal beliefs. I simply cannot endorse Microsoft’s business and cultural decisions, especially for a technically inclined user like yourself. My Windows rig is used for gaming and that is it, and despite having far more horsepower than my FW 16, it is not my main computer, the Framework is.

Linux works great on the FW 16.

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Linux. Easy virtualization with KVM/QEMU, and containers out of the box with Fedora. If it won’t run as a VM or the item can’t be built as a container…well it probably is not worth running. Seriously though Linux, run Windows if you have to as a dual boot.

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Thank you all for the detailed insightful responses - I’m pretty sure the dual boot option is the best for my use case.
Over the years I have appreciated how far Linux has gone to counter the predatory mindset of big companies dictating what & how one operates their system/SW; this is the main reason why I decided to acquire a FW laptop.
I’ll have a lot of reading and planning to do and I look forward to learning some more Linux alone the way!
Once again - Thank you all!

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For those of you who have a dual-boot system; will this OS/Storage configuration work?

Linux: Storage: WD_BLACK™ SN770 NVMe™- M.2 2280 - 1TB Remove Primary Storage
Windows: Storage: WD_BLACK™ SN770M NVMe™ - M.2 2230 - 500GB Remove Secondary Storage

Thanks

As someone who’s gonna be using a laptop with a very similar configuration, it should work.
Install Windows first - GRUB installation should detect Windows automatically and place itself in the EFI partition Windows created.

For what it’s worth, two separate SSDs aren’t required for that. I have a single 2TB SSD on my current laptop, set up to dual-boot Ubuntu 22.04 and Windows 11. It just requires setting up different partitions for each OS, and ensuring that neither OS encrypts its partitions if you want to access them from the other.

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Thanks @Chad_Nelson - point taken.

Seconded. I do have two SSD’s, but I decided to put both OS’s (Fedora and Windows 10) on the 2280, and the 2230 is just mass storage formated in exFAT for either OS to access. The only snag to this plan has been that Fedora doesn’t automatically mount the second drive on startup, but other than that this has worked well for me.

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Dont know if you have looked into this yet or not, but you can automount the drive via fstab. Here is a good link to read to get some info: fstab

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If you want to do desktop virtualisation, Linux + libvirt + virt-manager have you covered. Type 1 hypervisor as well, so performance is as good as it gets.

Whatever base OS you pick, you should be comfortable with it or dual boot. If you’re not comfortable troubleshooting issues on Linux, go with Windows. If you go with Linux, use one of Frameworks officially supported ones to start with. If you are a die-hard user of another distro and plan to go with that, at least have an officially supported one to boot up and test hardware issues.

Beyond that you can make pretty much anything happen on either OS with the right software and some effort.

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Arch user here. I haven’t seen a good use case for the 2230 until you said this. It’s not enough storage for me to justify maintaining another drive, but it could be quite useful as a backup restoration device so I don’t need to keep a flashdrive handy.

Update: This finally gave me an excuse to upgrade my Steam Deck to a 2TB drive, as now I can put the Steam Deck’s 512 into my Framework :). Wins all around.

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Just got my FW 16 Ryzen - and it’s slick; I was apprehensive about some earlier posts re:

  • Keyboard flex - I don’t see that on this build
  • Aesthetics: spaces not lining up - I don’t see significant amounts as I run my hand over the frame & bezel.
  • I have nor check the screen yet as the OS is not yet installed

Getting ready to install Windows & Linux.

Thanks for all the tips so far…

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I’ll continue to share my experience as I complete my setups for anyone else to learn/follow.

  1. Used Rufus to install Windows 11 Pro on partitioned 1TB drive without any issues (uninstalled all unnecessary Microsoft bloatware and adware !!)
  2. BalenaEtcher would not load the recommended Ubuntu ISO to flash USB, so I used Rufus - no issue
  3. Followed the default instruction to install Ubuntu on 2nd partition - biggest issue was reading the (small) text on the screen !!! - time for an eye exam maybe!
  4. Updated both OS’es and configured the Linux desktop.

Initially I could not get WiFi connection since I forgot to restart the PC after applying the FW driver updates !!!

Next on the list

  • Ordered an Anker Dock that hopefully will work for both OS’es
  • Linux QEMU/KVM
  • Setup the 2nd SSD for shared storage

Thanks again for all who have made this experience - a pleasant experience !!

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I see on the buy/configure page the SPECS list Connectivity as AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E.
Maybe it was forgotten to be installed in yours.
Not having built my DIY FW16, I can’t say what is in mine, but to not have a wifi card seems as though there has been a mistaken omission of the card.

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You’re right it’s installed - after applying the FW drivers I must have forgotten to restart windows !! my bad