I am not looking for software alternatives. Is the best method still to dual boot?
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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.
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.
If you have a beefy computer try winboat
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
adobe softwares do not run on those
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.
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.
I use the web based Lightroom as an installed PWA for most of what I need. I’ve got a windows 11 VM that I can run for a few features that are left out of the web version or if I need something in Photoshop that photopea can’t do. If I really need better performance for something I’ve got a Windows “To Go” install on a nvme in an external enclosure I can boot into.
My current photo workflow is to import and use geeqie to quickly batch rename, and sort with ratings. Then I upload the rated selections to lightroom for editing.
I dabble a bit with raw therapee and darktable. But I do a lot of editing on my android phone and tablet on the couch. So adobe keeps me locked in.
The web version of light room is so close to feature parity with the desktop version (not classic) that they really should just flesh it the rest of the way out since they will never make a native Linux version.
Fuck Adobe
I agree, but you are forced to use those softwares for some studies or jobs. So the question still makes sense
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.
Openimagedenoise is included in Blender for denoising Cycles renders, and it works quite well for that, IMO.
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.
I am not looking for software alternatives.
Then just use Windows or a Mac.
