Hey guys,
Just curious if someone has done it before and thoughts behind it. I’ve ordered a 16 with GPU and was wondering what’s the best way of setting up the system when it arrives.
My primary OS is Arch Linux and I prefer not to split the disk for windows. And I happen to see some folks might be booting an OS through an expansion card ( I got the 1TB ).
My windows usage is primarily Steam and nothing else. The expansion card seems fast enough to run an OS, but it doesn’t look as fast as an SSD or NVMe, so games like starfield might suffer some performance is my current guess. If my guess is right, does it mean it’s better to have some external SSD to use as storage?
What do you guys think?
Yo! I did this with my FW13.
Windows is actually running on the SSD … and Ubuntu is running off the expansion card.
I wanted Linux to run completely independent of windows … so the way I solved the problem: After windows was installed on the SSD … I opened up the laptop - pulled the card out. Then, booted up the computer with Ubuntu on a flash card - and installed it to the expansion card. Then I obviously put the SSD back in.
The computer automatically boots to windows … if I want Ubuntu - I press F12 at boot and it brings up the boot loader.
I have had literally zero problems using Ubuntu from the expansion card.
However, I do run most my files from the cloud.
I have not used it for gaming … I use Ubuntu for coding (web dev). Nevertheless, it’s been running with good read/write rates - and I can’t complain.
I think it’s fun to be able to put different OS’s on expansion cards - and run whatever you want.