I am not looking for software alternatives. Is the best method still to dual boot?
You must log in or register to comment.
install lightroom, disable updates then run it with wine. you will only know how well it works or if it needs fiddling if you attempt to run it. it will most likely work in some capacity.
Wine, Bottles, Lutris…etc
Edit: this was a different kind of solution someone else sent me: https://medium.com/@pascalwhoop/how-to-get-lightroom-running-on-linux-with-webassembly-and-nativefier-a69dd9d9f647
Will performance still be comparable to native windows install?
I was thinking about using windows as a docker container
Docker containers share host os kernel - can’t be used to run a different os.
Your options:
- Run windows in a VM. You assign some of your PC resources (ram, CPU cores, storage) to vm. That windows VM is going to be within 1-2% of a PC with the specs matching resources assigned to VM. You won’t get GPU acceleration unless you pass the entire GPU to VM, but it doesn’t matter for Lightroom. Will run perfectly.
- Run Lightroom with Wine. It runs as just another Linux program via a translation layer. It will get access to all resources your PC has and it won’t waste resources running entire 2nd os in a VM, but there is a performance impact of the translation layer. Performance impact varies depending on specific piece of software and sometimes it even runs faster.
Edit: it turns out it does like GPU acceleration, so performance impact without GPU passthrough will be noticeable at least when opening images. Running it on wine is possible, but a pain - it requires manual workarounds and it doesn’t run perfectly even with them.
How do you run Windows in a docker container. Isn’t the point of docker containers that they share the kernel of the host system?
You don’t. That comment was misinformed. No idea where they heard that from.
They might be thinking about Winboat, which, as I understand it, is basically running a VM in a container, and then running Windows in the VM.
We’re all running high performance games through the same thing all the time now. Benchmarks best Windows in most cases.
You’ll be more than fine.
The Adobe installer doesn’t run on Wine; someone got a recent version of Photoshop running once, but it’s a pirated version and it’s super buggy.
You can’t use Windows as a Docker container. Docker containers are not running full operating systems; they just run software on top of the current kernel but isolated from the main userspace, making it look to programs inside the container as if it’s a separate system. Anything that claims to be a “Windows Docker container” is just running a VM in a Docker container, which falls into the same pitfalls.
Unlike what others say, a bog standard VM might be the wrong choice depending on which features you use due to lack of graphics acceleration in said VM.
You might be able to get GPU passthrough working on a VM, which I have, with both a Windows and macOS VM that can use the GPU (not at the same time); however, this is really complex (took me ages the first time, though I’ve since discovered tricks to make it a bit easier), and you have to have dual GPUs. Single GPU passthrough is technically possible, but then you can’t use your Linux DE while using the VM. I will say, though, that once it’s set up, it’s a better experience than dual-booting; you get to run graphics-intensive Windows apps quite snappily on one monitor (or monitor input) and use your Linux desktop on the other.
Could you help me with GPU passthrough?
I technically have 2 GPUs in my laptop, one integrated into intel CPU and one discrete nvidia (so called “optimus”). Is it possible to pass nvidia while keeping intel for linux DE?
I tried to read some tutorials but tbh they all leave more questions than give answers.
It might be possible, depending on if the screen is connected to the dGPU or iGPU (I’d guess iGPU). I wouldn’t know because I did my setup on a desktop with two dGPUs. I would think it’s possible, but you might need an external monitor (?). I don’t know how Optimus laptops are wired.
Where I started for GPU passthrough, which got me ~90% of the way there, is https://github.com/bryansteiner/gpu-passthrough-tutorial . Gives you the shell scripts, XML, etcetera needed to do it; I had to modify some bits (some of which you can see in issues), but this is my preferred tutorial. Basically, try it, get really frustrated, take a break for a while, get back to it and keep tinkering with it (check permissions, logs, PCIe driver binds, etcetera), and eventually, you’ll figure it out.
https://github.com/mysteryx93/GPU-Passthrough-with-Optimus-Manager-Guide is linked in one of the issues and specifically concerns your kind of laptop.
I might be able to send over some of my XML to get you started, but I don’t know how helpful that will actually be over the tutorial, as our systems are completely different, and the AMD GPU I use has different bugs/quirks when doing this than Nvidia ones. The truth of the matter on why there’s not really a single-click, easy way to do GPU passthrough is because each system is unique, from the motherboard PCIe implementation to bugs in GPU firmware. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but it takes a bit of ingenuity.
Dual boot sucks because Windows likes to overwrite partitions critical to booting Linux without warning.
You could use Virtual Machine Manager (GUI frontend for QEMU/KVM, the most performant VM software on Linux). Here is a good guide on how to optimize the settings for a Windows 11 guest. I’ve used this guide to get SolidWorks, a CAD program, to work decent, so I assume other professional programs like Lightroom will run well too.
Dual boot isn’t that bad if you just use separate drives; the issue is only with Windows and Linux on one drive.
It’s not possible on all devices, but my laptop has dual NVMe slots, and I used to boot Linux off an SATA SSD and Windows off an NVMe on my desktop before getting rid of Windows and moving my Linux install to the NVMe drive. Never had a problem.
The only hiccup you’ll probably run into is exorbitant storage prices, although you can probably opt for less storage (256GB or 512GB), you can still get well below $100 and have it be perfectly fine.
While 2 drives is better, you can safely dual boot on one drive by making 2 EFI boot partitions. Install Linux on its own EFI and the probe foreign OS will find windows and add it as a chain loading entry. Set UEFI to boot from Linux partition. Windows will ignore the 2nd EFI and only mess with it’s own.
If windows promts to add a drive letter on first boot (to the new efi and Linux partitions) just decline and choose the option to ignore in the future.Dual boot isn’t that bad if you just use separate drives; the issue is only with Windows and Linux on one drive.
This is only true if you boot Windows by switching the boot order in your bios, if you boot windows through grub or systemdboot, it is liable to overwrite files. That being said, keeping them on separate drives removes all but the afformentioned issue, so I would still highly recommend doing so if you plan on dual booting.
I usually use my device’s native boot menu these days; booting through GRUB usually triggers the Bitlocker screen.
separate drive with rEFInd as boot manager is fine. Windows will sometimes still alter the boot sequence to make it take priority, but that’s a relatively quick fix and doesn’t happen all that often.
A VM would probably do fine.
If you have a beefy computer try winboat
VMs won’t do for long, because you won’t have proper acceleration as it’s required by gfx apps like Lightroom. Sure, they’ll work, but you’ll experience slowdowns. You can run accelerated VMs, but I find them buggy.
If you’re going to dual boot, you should install Linux on a separate DRIVE, not just a partition, and install the bootloader on that second drive. You force Linux to do that by disabling in the BIOS the Windows drive first, before installation. Then, you re-enable it again. Then you can choose what to boot at using F12 during boot time. If you put them on the same drive, Windows will eventually overwrite the bootloader.
The ideal thing is to actually move to Darktable. https://mathiashueber.com/migrate-from-lightroom-to-open-source-alternative/
Single gpu passthrough vm works flawlessly if you can take the time to set it up
GPU pass through with VFIO is literally how services like GeForce Now, PSN Streaming work. It’s not too buggy if your system is set up properly and it’s far better than dual boot.
Darktable doesn’t have AI denoise, and also doesn’t have camera profiles for fuji RAF files, just off the top of my head.
Yes, it does not have ML denoise, but there are very good reasons why you don’t want to have that in your raw pipeline. Sure, after raw development is fine, but denoise in a raw pipeline needs to maximise the signal-to-noise ratio. Machine learning denoising would introduce hallucinations, which are not real signal, and that’s why it’s best kept out of raw files.
Well, yes, some specific camera support features are missing, such as Fujifilm look-up tables, it still is the best raw editor I have used in my entire life and I can highly recommend it.
The ideal thing is to actually move to Darktable. https://mathiashueber.com/migrate-from-lightroom-to-open-source-alternative/
Be prepared to commit some time to the transition though. I installed darktable and gave it a try a couple days ago. There’s enough similarity to make you think it’ll be an easy transition, but it sure wasn’t for me. It took me an hour to do something that would have taken 5 mins in Lightroom. I’m glad to have it, and it seems like a powerful tool, so I’m not complaining, just sayin… be prepared to commit some time to learning where everything is.
password protect your bios. that’s the only way i found for windows not to mess it up on my machine, seriously.
I tested Lightroom 5 under Wine. It worked but it was a short test, maybe something is not working. Test it by yourself, if you manage to get it. I think that was the last version without cloud shit.
Not.
Now to be slightly more helpful (apologies for the provocation) I suggest you consider alternatives to Lightroom. I know that instantly you will receive countless comments on how alternatives are just nowhere near as good as Lightroom… and that’s OK. IMHO it’s OK because I bet YOUR usage of Lightroom isn’t the usage of others. So… I recommend you forget the brand “Adobe” or the product “Lightroom” and instead you list here the actual function of a tool you need.
This way, by listing actual needs rather than a bundle product with branding and specific UX, you go back to the root of your problem, namely WHY do you need such a piece of software in the first place.
Sure, you might end up with an entirely different workflow. Sure it will probably be absolutely alien at first… but so was learning how to use that piece of software in the first place too. Right now you do have the concepts, so replacing one click by a command line tool, or 1 piece of software by 10, is IMHO acceptable. What you will hopefully have in the end if YOUR workflow that is even more adapted compared to what you had first. It will be “weird” and maybe nobody else will get it but for you it will be exactly what you need.
No photo editing software even comes close to lightroom. As I said in the OP I’m simply not interested in alternatives.
Right, then I can’t help you.
To clarify for others though as I guess I wasn’t clear based on the downvotes : I’m not suggesting a single piece of software is a viable alternative to Lightroom. Rather I’m saying Lightroom itself is a collection of algorithms dedicated to photo editing wrapped in a UX one is familiar with. On the other hand ImageMagick (just to pick one I know relatively well) is a set of command line tools for image editing. It’s mostly used as a backend with other tools as interface. I imagine there are plenty of alternatives to ImageMagick too, probably some that can include arXiv STOA algorithms for photo editing, maybe some even with a GUI but my point again is to reconsider the workflow to understand how the tools one rely on actual work.
So to hopefully express myself better this time, ImageMagick + Gimp + Krita + some script in a Github repository based on an arXiv publication + I don’t know what + … all together or in part might be better for some people but no I don’t know an all-in-one open source alternative that cover ALL needs without them being expressed first.
Nothing offers the AI tools that adobe does. AI denoise is an irreplaceable feature for me.
Nothing you (nor I) know of but that doesn’t mean it’s the case. I can’t evaluate but https://www.openimagedenoise.org/ is publishing by Intel and in 2026 so maybe it’s good.
