This guide shows you how to install Fedora. These instructions will work for any computer that doesn’t use a UEFI interface. (That guide will come as part of a dual boot guide later on).
Why would you choose to use Fedora over Ubuntu or Linux Mint?
This article at Linux.com highlights the fact that Fedora is cutting edge and brings new technologies to the forefront faster than other distributions. It also only distributes free software so if you want to release yourself from the shackles of proprietary software, firmware and drivers then Fedora is a good place to start.
This is of course not to say that you can’t install proprietary software and drivers if you want to because there are repositories available which allow you to do that.
In order to be able to follow this guide you will need:
A bootable Fedora USB drive
A computer with a minimum of 1 GHz or faster processor, 1 Gigabyte of RAM and 10 gigabytes of hard disk space
The process takes about 30 minutes.
Before you begin backup your current operating system. Click here for Linux backup solutions.
If you are ready to begin insert you Fedora Linux USB and restart your computer. When the screen above appears click “Install To Hard Drive”.
The first step in the installation process is to choose your language.
Choose the language in the left pane and the dialect in the right pane.
Click “Continue”.
The Fedora Installation Summary Screen drives the entire installation process.
On the left side of the screen the coloured bar shows the version of Fedora you are installing. (Either workstation, server or cloud).
The right side of the screen has two sections:
The localisation section shows the “date and time” settings and the “keyboard” settings.
The system section shows the “installation destination”
and the “network and hostname”.
Note that there is an orange bar at the bottom of the screen. This provides notifications showing recommended actions.
If you aren’t connected to the internet it is worth doing so otherwise you can’t use NTP settings to set the time and date. To set up the internet, click the icon in the top right corner of the screen and choose wireless settings. Click on your wireless network and enter the security key.
The orange bar within the installation screen will tell you if you aren’t connected.
You will notice on the image above that there is a little orange triangle with an exclamation mark through it next to the “Installation Destination” option.
Wherever you see the little triangle you need to perform actions.
The “Begin Installation” button will not become active until all of the required actions have been completed.
To change a setting click on the icon. For example click on “Date & Time” to change the timezone.
To make sure your computer shows the correct time, click on “Date & Time” from the “Installation Summary Screen”.
All you have to do to set the correct time is click your location on the map.
If you aren’t connected to the internet you can manually set the time by using the up and down arrows next to the hours, minutes and seconds in the bottom left corner.
You can change the date manually by setting
the day, month and year fields in the bottom right corner.
When you have finished setting the time click the “Done” button in the top left corner.
The “Installation Summary Screen” will show you the current keyboard layout that has been selected.
To change the layout click on “Keyboard”.
You can add new layouts by clicking on the plus symbol at the bottom of the “Keyboard Layout” screen.
You can change the default order of the keyboard layouts by using the up and down arrows which are also at the bottom of the screen.
It is worth testing out the
keyboard layout by using the “Test the layout configuration below” box.
Enter keys such as the £, | and # symbols to make sure they appear correctly.
When you have finished click “Done”.
Click on the “Installation Destination” icon from the “Installation Summary Screen” to choose where to install Fedora.
A list of devices (disks) will be shown.
Choose the hard drive for your computer.
You can now choose one of the following options:
Automatically configure disks
Manually configure disks
You can also choose to make additional space available and whether to encrypt your data.
Read my article about reasons for encrypting your data
.
Click on the “Automatically configure disks” option and click “Done”.
Incidentally the disk configuration I ended up with after installing Fedora was as follows:
54 gigabytes of root partition (EXT4)
8.5 gigabytes of swap partition
687 gigabytes of home partition (EXT4)
It is worth noting that the physical disk is actually split into two actual partitions. The first is a boot partition of 524 megabytes. The second partition is an LVM partition.
If your hard drive has another operating system on it you are likely to receive a message stating that there isn’t enough free space to install Fedora and you are given the option to reclaim space.
Click the “Reclaim Space” button.
A screen will appear listing the current partitions on your hard drive.
The options are to either shrink a partition, delete a partition that isn’t required, or delete all of the partitions.
Unless you have a recovery partition for Windows, which you need to keep if you intend to restore Windows at a later stage, I would opt for the “delete all partitions” option which is on the right side of the screen.
Click the “Reclaim Space” button.
To set your computer’s name click the “Network & Hostname” option from the “Installation Summary Screen”.
All you have to do is enter a name for your computer and click “Done” in the top left corner.
Click the “Begin Installation” button to start the full process of copying files and the main installation.
A configuration screen will appear with two more settings that need to be made:
Set root password
Create a user