Fedora Linux 38 has been released a few days ago! If you are a newbie who wants to install and test the latest version of Fedora, then we are here to help you in setting up Fedora 38 desktop operating system. This step by step guide explains how to download the latest Fedora 38 workstation edition, and then how to install Fedora 38 with screenshots.
Table of Contents
Upgrade To Fedora 38
Heads Up: If you're already using Fedora 37 or older versions, you can safely upgrade to Fedora 38 as described in the guide given below.
Download Fedora 38 ISO Image
There are five types of distribution fedora offers.
- Fedora Workstation - Desktop Edition.
- Fedora Server - Server workloads.
- Fedora IoT - IoT ecosystem.
- Fedora CoreOS - Minimal operating system for containerized workloads.
- Fedora Cloud - Minimal operating system for for public and private cloud uses.
In this article, our focus will only be on the Fedora 38 workstation installation.
Download the Fedora 38 ISO image from the official download page. You can also choose to download ISO images through torrent files.
Create Fedora 38 Bootable Medium
Once the Fedora 38 ISO file is downloaded, you need to create bootable USB medium. There are many bootable USB creation tools available to create a bootable USB medium.
You can choose any one of the following tools to create Fedora Linux bootable USB.
Command line bootable USB creation tools:
- How To Create Multiboot USB Drives With Ventoy In Linux
- How To Create Bootable USB Drive Using dd Command
- Bootiso Lets You Safely Create Bootable USB Drive In Linux
Graphical bootable USB creation tools:
- Create Bootable USB Drive With Ventoy WebUI In Linux
- Create Bootable USB Drives And SD Cards With Etcher In Linux
- Popsicle – Create Multiple Bootable USB Drives At Once
- Create Bootable USB Drive With USBImager In Linux
- Kindd – A Graphical Frontend To dd Command
If you wish to install and test Fedora in any hypervisor (Virtualbox, KVM, Vmware), just skip the media creation and boot up the ISO image.
Fedora 38 Installation Steps
Fedora installer is beginner-friendly, so you won't find any difficulties to install Fedora 38. Just follow the steps given below and you will be fine.
STEP 1 - Boot the System with Fedora ISO
Boot your system with the newly created Fedora 38 bootable USB drive. You will see the following menu.
By default, the second option i.e. "Test this media & start Fedora-Workstation-Live 38". If you want to test your Fedora ISO, just go with this option. If you don't want to test the media, choose the first option and boot the Fedora live right away.
I will go with the first option "Start Fedora Workstation Live 38" is automatically selected to boot into the live system.
Now, you will be given two choices. You can start Fedora installation by choosing "Install Fedora" to install Fedora on your disk or try the live Fedora version to see what's in there before installing Fedora. I've decided to go with the first option i.e. Install Fedora.
If you wish to know what's actually in the new Fedora version, choose "Not Now" option to enter into the Fedora 38 live environment and test it thoroughly.
STEP 2 - Choose Installation Language
In this step, you should choose the language that you want to use throughout your installation process. After choosing the language, press Continue.
STEP 3 - Configure Keyboard, Timezone and Partition the Disk Drive
In this step, you need to configure following three important settings before proceeding to the next step.
- Keyboard Layout
- Time & Date
- Hard Disk Partitioning
First, let us configure the Keyboard layout.
STEP 3.1 - Configure Keyboard Layout
In this step, you choose which keyboard layout you want to use. You can choose one or more Keyboard layouts and configure keyboard shortcuts to switch between different layouts.
After choosing the Keyboard layouts, click on the "Done" button on the top left corner.
Now you will be redirected to the previous screen where you can configure the other two settings.
STEP 3.2 - Configure Timezone
Choose your geographical region and the city based on your selected geographical location. You can either choose the region and city directly from the drop-down boxes or select the location from the map. You can also enable network time protocol (NTP) by toggling it ON.
After choosing the region and city, click the "Done" button to apply the setting and go back.
STEP 3.3 - Disk Partition
In this step, you should decide your installation destination and how your disk will be partitioned. By default, the automatic partitioning method will be chosen for you. If you are a beginner who wish the installer to do a appropriate partitioning scheme for automatically, you can choose this option.
If you're an intermediate or an advanced who wish to partition your disk as per your liking, choose the "Custom" option and press "Done" to start creating custom partitions.
In Fedora 38, the Btrfs filesystem type is automatically selected. You can also choose other options, such as Standard, LVM or LVM thin provisioning. In the next step, you'll have to choose either standard partition or LVM and press the (+) symbol to add a new partition. You can also check the "Encrypt my data" check-box if you wish to automatically encrypt the partitions.
For the purpose of this guide, I go with Btrfs partitioning scheme with no encryption.
To create a new mount point, click the + (plus) button.
In the next screen, choose the mount point type (E.g. /boot) and the desired size (E.g. 2 GB) for the mount point.
you will be prompted to create a new mount point and assign space to it.
Now we have created /boot partition and assigned space to it. By default, the /boot partition will pick ext4 as its default filesystem type. You can also change the filesystem as you wish. You will see the newly created mount point details on the right hand side of the installer window.
Again click the + (Plus) button and create other partitions. Choose "swap" as mount point and assign desired size to the swap partition and click "Add mount point" button.
Next, we need to create root partition which is required for the fedora installation. To do so, click the + (Plus) button, choose / as mount point and assign desired size (E.g. 20 GB) to it.
Again, click the + (Plus) button, choose the mount point type (E.g. /home) and assign desired size to it.
Next we need to create one more partition called biosboot, which is required for GPT disks. You can assign a minimal size (1 MB) to this partition. Since I have more space left on the disk, I assigned 100 MB.
If there is any free space left on the drive, you can create additional partitions (E.g. /var) and assign a size to it.
Once you created all required partitions, press "Done" twice. You will now see the summary of changes in the partitions. If you're OK with it, click Accept Changes to save the partition scheme and proceed to next step.
STEP 4 - Start Fedora Installation
Now all the three parameters from the installation summary are configured. Press "Begin Installation" to start installing Fedora 38 workstation desktop edition.
Fedora 38 installation will start now. This will take a few minutes to complete.
Once the Fedora 38 installation is completed, press "Finish Installation".
Reboot the machine to start using Fedora 38 desktop.
STEP 5 - Fedora Post Installation
After rebooting the machine, you will get a new setup wizard. It will ask you to set a few parameters like location features, bug reporting, new user creation, etc.
Click "Start Setup to" continue.
In the next screen, you will have the options to configure privacy related settings like enable location services and automatic error reporting. Toggle the ON/OFF switch to enable or disable these services. By default, both will be set to ON.
Next, you can enable or disable third-party repositories. The third-party repositories provides additional applications or proprietary software from external sources. By default, this option is disabled. Click Enable to enable the third-party repositories.
In the next step, you can connect one or more online accounts in-order to access your mail, contacts, calendar, documents and photos from the cloud. You can also do this later from Settings section.
Enter your user account details here. This user will be automatically added to the sudoers list.
Enter user password twice.
Congratulations! Fedora 38 desktop setup is completed and it is ready to use!
As stated already, Fedora 38 is shipped with the latest GNOME 44 Desktop Environment. On first login, GNOME 44 tour pop-up message will appear. If you want to know what is new in the GNOME 44, click "Take Tour" button and learn your way around. This will take a visual tour, so you can learn about the key features in Fedora 38 Workstation edition.
This how Fedora 38 Workstation GNOME desktop looks like.
To view the installed version, go to the Settings.
Click the About section.
You can also check the installed Fedora version from commandline using the following command:
$ cat /etc/fedora-release Fedora release 38 (Thirty Eight)
Or, use the following command to view the detailed output.
$ cat /etc/os-release
Sample output:
NAME="Fedora Linux" VERSION="38 (Workstation Edition)" ID=fedora VERSION_ID=38 VERSION_CODENAME="" PLATFORM_ID="platform:f38" PRETTY_NAME="Fedora Linux 38 (Workstation Edition)" ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180" LOGO=fedora-logo-icon CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:38" DEFAULT_HOSTNAME="fedora" HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/" DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f38/system-administrators-guide/" SUPPORT_URL="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/" REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora" REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=38 REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora" REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=38 SUPPORT_END=2024-05-14 VARIANT="Workstation Edition" VARIANT_ID=workstation
STEP 6 - Set Root Password (Optional)
Like I already said, the newly created user will be added to sudoers list, so you can perform administrative tasks using that user by prefixing sudo with each command. If you'd like to set/change the root user password for any reason, this is how you do:
$ sudo passwd root
Related Read: How To install Fedora Alongside Windows
Conclusion
In this article, we've discussed the steps to install Fedora 38 Gnome desktop edition with screenshots. As you can see, Fedora 38 installation is fairly easy and straight-forward.
Things to do after installing Fedora:
2 comments
Ok so I installed it and restarted it, but then it takes me back to the same place. I get the grub screen and then start fedora, and then it asks me to install fedora again, no new setup wizard. When I click on install fedora again, the partition appears to be already full. Is there a way to manually get to the account setup?
It sounds like you might be stuck in a loop during the Fedora installation process. This could happen for various reasons, including issues with the installation media, the partitioning process, or the installation itself. Here are some steps you can try to manually get to the account setup:
1. Check Installation Media: Ensure that the installation media (such as a USB drive or DVD) you used to install Fedora 38 is not corrupted. You can verify the integrity of the installation media by checking its checksum or using a different USB drive or DVD to create a new installation media.
2. Boot from Installation Media: Make sure you are booting your computer from the Fedora installation media and not from the hard drive. You may need to change the boot order in your computer’s BIOS/UEFI settings to boot from the installation media first.
3. Access Rescue Mode:
a. When you see the GRUB screen, select the Fedora entry (the default option).
b. Once Fedora starts loading, press the ‘Esc’ key to interrupt the boot process.
c. You should see a menu with different kernel options. Select the latest kernel version (usually the one at the top) and press ‘e’ to edit the boot parameters.
d. Find the line that starts with “linux” and ends with “rhgb quiet” or similar. Remove “rhgb” and “quiet” from that line, and add “rd.break enforcing=0” at the end.
e. Press ‘Ctrl + X’ or ‘F10’ to boot with the modified parameters. This should boot you into a rescue mode.
4. Fix Partitioning Issues: In rescue mode, you can use tools like `fdisk` or `parted` to check and fix any partitioning issues. For example, you can run `fdisk -l` to list partitions and ensure they are correctly set up.
5. Chroot into the Installed System: Once you’ve made sure your partitions are set up correctly, you can chroot into the installed system to make changes. Run the following commands, replacing `/dev/sdXY` with the appropriate partition for your Fedora installation:
mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
chroot /mnt
6. Reset Password and Create User: You can use the `passwd` command to reset the root password if needed and then create a new user with administrative privileges using the `useradd` and `passwd` commands.
7. Exit Chroot and Reboot: After creating a new user and setting a password, exit the chroot environment:
exit
Then, reboot your system:
reboot
8. Complete Setup: Once your system reboots, you should hopefully be able to log in with the newly created user account and complete the initial setup.
If you encounter any issues or errors during this process, please provide more details about the specific error messages you see so that I can provide more targeted assistance.