Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Initial Fedora Workstation Setup

current as of Fedora 41

Table of Contents

During Install

Drive Partitioning

Fedora’s installer (Anaconda) will handle partitioning for you if you let it, and for most people that’s fine. If you want more control, here’s a layout that works well:

mountpoint | suggested size | format | notes
-----------------------------------------------------------------
/boot      |  1-2 GB        | ext4   | bootloader lives here
/boot/efi  |  512 MB-1 GB  | fat32  | required for UEFI systems
swap       | equal to RAM   | swap   | or use a swapfile instead
/          |  50+ GB        | ext4   | your root filesystem
/home      |  remainder     | ext4   | your personal files

Recommendation: put /home on a separate physical drive if you have one.

This is the single best thing you can do for your Linux setup. When you reinstall, upgrade, or even nuke the OS by accident, your personal files, configs, and data survive completely untouched. Just tell the installer to mount your existing drive at /home without formatting it. This turns a disaster into a 20-minute inconvenience.

If you only have one drive, at minimum make /home its own partition rather than lumping it in with /.

After Install

DNF5 — Fedora’s Package Manager

Fedora 41 ships with DNF5 as the default package manager — a complete rewrite of the older DNF that’s significantly faster. The commands you’d find in older guides still work (backward compatibility is maintained), so don’t panic if something says dnf install instead of dnf5 install — they’re the same.

Quick reference:

sudo dnf install <package>   # install a package
sudo dnf remove <package>    # remove a package
sudo dnf update              # update all packages
sudo dnf search <term>       # search available packages
sudo dnf info <package>      # show details about a package
sudo dnf list installed      # list installed packages

First thing to do after install — update everything:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf update -y

Tune DNF5 for faster downloads:

echo 'max_parallel_downloads=10' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
echo 'fastestmirror=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
cat /etc/dnf/dnf.conf  # verify your changes

Set your hostname (replace your-hostname with whatever you want to call your machine):

hostnamectl set-hostname your-hostname

Additional Repositories

Out of the box, Fedora only includes fully open-source packages. For proprietary software, drivers, and media codecs, you’ll want RPM Fusion — the community-maintained repo that fills the gaps.

# Install both the free (open-source) and nonfree (proprietary) repos
sudo dnf install -y \
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm \
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

# Enable testing repos to get the freshest updates
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled rpmfusion-free-updates-testing
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing

# Update and pull in the core multimedia group
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf groupupdate core
sudo dnf install -y rpmfusion-free-release-tainted
sudo dnf install -y dnf-plugins-core

To see what package groups are available (there are good ones):

sudo dnf grouplist -v

Nvidia Drivers

Fedora 41 supports Nvidia driver installation directly through RPM Fusion, and it now works with UEFI Secure Boot enabled. No more fighting with COPR workarounds.

# Make sure your system is fully updated first — this matters
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

# Install the akmod (kernel module) driver from RPM Fusion nonfree
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia

# For CUDA support (machine learning, GPU computing, video encoding)
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

# Reboot to load the new kernel module
sudo reboot

Note: After rebooting, give the system a minute or two before expecting accelerated graphics — the akmod process compiles the kernel module on first boot. If you reboot immediately after the install completes and things look wrong, wait 2-3 minutes and reboot again.

For AMD GPUs, the open-source driver is included in the kernel — no extra steps needed.

Desktop Environments

Fedora Workstation ships with GNOME, but you’re not stuck with it. Install any of these:

# Cinnamon — great choice if you're coming from Windows
sudo dnf groupinstall "Cinnamon Desktop"

# MATE — lightweight, traditional two-panel layout
sudo dnf groupinstall "MATE Desktop" --with-optional "MATE Applications"

# KDE Plasma — feature-rich, highly configurable
sudo dnf groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces"

# Xfce — lightweight and fast
sudo dnf groupinstall "Xfce Desktop"

After installing, log out and select your new desktop from the login screen’s session menu.

Useful Package Groups

# Development tools and creative software
sudo dnf groupinstall "Development and Creative Workstation"

# Office productivity suite (includes LibreOffice)
sudo dnf groupinstall "Office/Productivity"

# 3D printing tools
sudo dnf groupinstall "3D Printing"

Important Single Packages

# Container and virtualization tools
sudo dnf install docker-compose

# Utilities that are suspiciously absent by default
sudo dnf install cabextract p7zip p7zip-plugins

# A proper terminal text editor
sudo dnf install vim-enhanced

# USB webcam utilities
sudo dnf install v4l-utils v4l2ucp

Flatpak Support

Flatpak is the recommended way to install desktop apps on Fedora — it’s sandboxed, distro- agnostic, and Flathub has almost everything.

# Add Flathub (the main Flatpak app store)
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

# Add the beta channel (for cutting-edge versions of some apps)
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub-beta https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo

# Keep Flatpak apps up to date
flatpak update

Snap Support

Snap is Canonical’s (Ubuntu’s maker) packaging format. It works on Fedora, though Flatpak is generally preferred here. Enable it if you need something that’s only available as a snap.

sudo dnf install -y snapd
sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap  # enables "classic" confinement mode

# Restart — snap needs the new paths to be active
sudo reboot

After reboot:

sudo snap refresh
sudo snap install snap-store  # optional: graphical snap browser

Fonts

# Google's Roboto font family
sudo dnf install -y google-roboto*

# Microsoft core fonts (for compatibility when someone sends you a .docx)
sudo dnf install -y curl cabextract xorg-x11-font-utils fontconfig
sudo rpm -i https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mscorefonts2/rpms/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

SSH Keys

Generate a key pair for authenticating to servers, GitHub, etc. Ed25519 is the modern algorithm — smaller and faster than RSA.

# Generate a new key (replace the comment with something meaningful to you)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "fedora-workstation"

# Load the key into the SSH agent for this session
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

# Print your public key so you can paste it into GitHub, servers, etc.
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Git and Version Control

# Git and Git LFS (for large file support)
sudo dnf install -y git git-lfs
git-lfs install

# Configure your identity
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

Various Applications

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve has a free version for Linux that’s genuinely excellent for video editing.

  1. Visit blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
  2. Choose the current free Linux version from the selector
  3. Fill out the (required) registration form and download the .zip archive
  4. Extract and run the installer:
unzip DaVinci_Resolve_*.zip
sudo chmod +x DaVinci_Resolve_*.run
sudo ./DaVinci_Resolve_*.run -i

Discord

Multiple ways to install — pick one:

# Flatpak (recommended)
flatpak install flathub com.discordapp.Discord

# RPM Fusion
sudo dnf install discord

# Snap
sudo snap install discord --edge
sudo snap connect discord:system-observe

Dropbox

sudo dnf install -y dropbox nautilus-dropbox

Sublime Text

# Add the GPG key
sudo rpm -v --import https://download.sublimetext.com/sublimehq-rpm-pub.gpg

# Add the stable repo
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.sublimetext.com/rpm/stable/x86_64/sublime-text.repo

# Install
sudo dnf install sublime-text

Sublime Merge (Git GUI)

# Uses the same repo as Sublime Text — if you added it above, just install:
sudo dnf install sublime-merge

Vivaldi Browser

sudo dnf install -y dnf-utils
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/vivaldi-fedora.repo
sudo dnf install -y vivaldi-stable

Zoom

# Download the current RPM from Zoom's site
wget https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_x86_64.rpm
sudo dnf localinstall zoom_x86_64.rpm

Multimedia

VLC

sudo dnf install -y vlc

Multimedia Codecs

For full codec support (H.264, AAC, MP3, DVD playback, etc.):

sudo dnf groupupdate sound-and-video
sudo dnf install -y libdvdcss
sudo dnf install -y gstreamer1-plugins-{bad-\*,good-\*,ugly-\*,base} gstreamer1-libav \
  --exclude=gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-devel ffmpeg gstreamer-ffmpeg
sudo dnf install -y lame\* --exclude=lame-devel
sudo dnf group upgrade --with-optional Multimedia

For OpenH264 (browser video calls):

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled fedora-cisco-openh264
sudo dnf install -y gstreamer1-plugin-openh264

OBS Studio

# Flatpak version includes most popular plugins out of the box
flatpak install flathub com.obsproject.Studio

Gaming

# Steam (via RPM Fusion)
sudo dnf install steam -y

# Heroic Games Launcher (Epic and GOG)
flatpak install flathub com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl

# Lutris (multi-platform game manager)
flatpak install flathub net.lutris.Lutris

# ProtonUp-Qt (manage Proton/Wine versions for Steam and Lutris)
flatpak install flathub net.davidotek.pupgui2

Advanced: Hardware Security Key Setup

This section covers setting up a YubiKey (or compatible FIDO2/PIV hardware key) for two-factor authentication on sudo and for GPG key storage. This is beyond what most users need, but if you care about security, it’s worth the effort.

Required Packages

sudo dnf install -y yubikey-manager pam-u2f pamu2fcfg
sudo dnf install -y gpg gnupg2 gnupg-pkcs11-scd pcsc-tools opensc pcsc-lite-ccid

# Start and enable the smart card daemon
sudo systemctl start pcscd
sudo systemctl enable pcscd

Insert your key and verify it’s recognized:

ykman info

If you see No YubiKey detected, try sudo systemctl restart pcscd — this is a known quirk and the restart almost always fixes it.

Two-Factor Authentication for sudo

sudo authselect select sssd with-pam-u2f-2fa without-nullok
mkdir ~/.config/Yubico

# Register your primary key (touch the metal contact when it flashes)
pamu2fcfg > ~/.config/Yubico/u2f_keys

# Register your backup key on the same line
pamu2fcfg -n >> ~/.config/Yubico/u2f_keys

IMPORTANT: Before closing this terminal, open a new terminal and verify that sudo echo test works and prompts for your physical key touch. Do not close the original terminal until you’ve confirmed this — it’s your escape hatch if something goes wrong.

GPG Key on YubiKey

If you want to store your private GPG key on the YubiKey’s smart card (so the key never touches your disk):

# Check that gpg can see the card
gpg --card-status

# If you get "No such device", restart pcscd:
sudo systemctl restart pcscd

Refer to the YubiKey-Guide for the full process of generating and transferring GPG keys to the card — it’s thorough and well- maintained.