• Boot fedora live from a USB
• Get root with sudo -s

WARNING: If your system is UEFI, you already have a windows installation, and you don’t have an ESP, STOP RIGHT NOW, you’ve installed windows in CSM mode, and you will break your windows installation. Either work out how to deal with MBR on your own, or backup your important data, disable CSM from your firmware settings, delete everything, reset the partition table, follow the rest of the instructions, then install windows.

Partitioning

This installation will dual boot with Windows, so i have this partition table on my SSD on /dev/sda

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 447.1G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0     1G  0 part /boot
├─sda2   8:2    0    96G  0 part /
├─sda3   8:3    0    16M  0 part
└─sda4   8:4    0 350.1G  0 part
sdb      8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   0    16M  0 part
└─sdb2   8:18   0 931.5G  0 part
sdc      8:32   1   7.5G  0 disk
└─sdc1   8:33   1   7.5G  0 part /run/media/glacion/FEDORA-WS-L

Some notes:

• I am not using a swap partition.
• I don’t have a seperate home partition.
• /dev/sda1 will be used by both windows and fedora, be careful not to format the ESP if you’ve already installed windows, it’s a pain to get windows’ bootloader installed again. When asked for partition type, enter EF00 for ESP partition.

Filesystems

ESP is vfat, no exceptions. Don’t do this unless you don’t have a working windows(or any other OS) installation. I had installed windows before so i’ll leave ESP as is.

mkfs.vfat -n ESP /dev/sda1

I like to use XFS for my installation filesystem. Use whatever you want, but there’s something you need to do which will be noted in a later section.

mkfs.xfs -L fedora /dev/sda2

Setup

Mount your partitions

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

…No /boot/efi? Yes, i had prepared my ESP when i was first installing on this computer to be 1G, windows by default create an 100M ESP partition, which is enough for both windows, and kernel, initrd, and bootloader. But 100M won’t be enough if you keep more than 2 kernels if you want to keep multiple kernels installed.

Bootstrapping Fedora

With everything out of the way, let’s install a bare minimum required for a functioning system. Replace or add to glibc-langpack-en if you want localization on your system. Omitting this will cause dnf to install all available langpacks.

dnf install \
--installroot=/mnt \
--releasever=33 \
--setopt=install_weak_deps=False \
--assumeyes \
systemd dnf glibc-langpack-en vim-minimal sudo passwd

Generating /etc/fstab

Arch Linux has a convenient little tool called genfstab that we can use for this.

wget https://github.com/glacion/genfstab/releases/download/1.0/genfstab
chmod +x genfstab
./genfstab /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Control /mnt/etc/fstab and manually modify if necessary. I’ll remove /dev/zram0 entry since i don’t want swap.

Installation

Chroot into the container

systemd-nspawn -D /mnt

Create user

useradd -c "Ahmetcan Güvendiren" -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash glacion

Set password for the user

passwd glacion

Exit the chroot with C-d

“boot” the newly bootstrapped system.

systemd-nspawn -bD /mnt

Login with your credentials, become root with sudo

I’ll delete some repositories that i don’t use.

rm -f /etc/yum.repos.d/*{*cisco*,*testing*,*modular*}*

I’ll disable installation of weak dependencies

vi /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

Append install_weak_deps=False to the end of that file, save and exit.

Bootloader

Install systemd-udev package with dnf.

dnf install systemd-udev

You may need to edit /etc/resolv.conf if you get an error saying “couldn’t resolve host name”. Add nameserver 1.1.1.1 or something to that file and try again.

Install The Bootloader

bootctl install

…Wait, where’s grub? I don’t use grub, and i recommend you to not use grub as well unless you have a specific setup. If you want grub, you’re on your own.

Configure Initrd

You need to make dracut know whatever your filesystem is. Replace xfsprogs with whatever the programs for your root filesystem is. I use LZ4 for compressing my initrd. Omit that if you’re fine with it.

dnf install dracut xfsprogs lz4
vi /etc/dracut.conf.d/bardiche.conf
# Add these to that file
filesystems+=" xfs "
drivers+=" i915 "
compress="lz4"
hostonly="yes"

Install The Kernel

dnf install kernel
dracut -Nfv --regenerate-all

Bootloader Configuration

There’s now a bootloader entry at /boot/loader/entries/${MACHINE_ID}-${KERNEL_VERSION}.conf

Edit the options section of this file like below

root=UUID=${UUID} ro

The root drive’s UUID can be acquired with blkid tool.

Network Configuration

dnf install NetworkManager NetworkManager-wifi NetworkManager-config-connectivity-fedora

Services

I disable some services due to conflicts or them being not necessary

systemctl disable systemd-homed systemd-resolved NetworkManager-wait-online

Shut Down

Close the chroot with poweroff

Add EFI Entry

Add an EFI entry that points to systemd-boot

efibootmgr -d /dev/sda -p 1 -c -L "Fedora" -l /EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi

First Boot

Power off the system, unmount everything, and restart your computer.

Connecting to Network

Connect to a network with Ethernet or WiFi.

To connect to WiFi using nmcli use the following:

sudo nmcli device wifi connect ${SSID_NAME} password ${PASSWORD}

Install Some Quality of Life Packages

These packages are not required but recommended.

dnf install rtkit deltarpm zchunk sqlite iputils less bash-completion file rootfiles iproute

Configuration

Configure keymap, hostname, NTP, and system timezone

localectl set-keymap us
hostnamectl set-hostname bardiche
timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Istanbul

SELinux (Optional)

dnf install policycoreutils selinux-policy-targeted audit
touch /.autorelabel
reboot

This may not work, keep your live usb nearby for failures.

GNOME

Fedora Workstation installs the group “Fedora Workstation”, you can list all available groups with dnf group list

Checking what’s in Fedora Workstation

dnf groupinfo "Fedora Workstation"

From these subgroups i’ll check what’s in GNOME group

dnf groupinfo GNOME

From the listed packages i will install some of them:

dnf install mesa-dri-drivers mesa-libEGL gdm gnome-shell nautilus kitty gnome-screenshot eog file-roller-nautilus avahi gnome-session-wayland-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-control-center gnome-tweaks

After a reboot, GDM will welcome you.

Fractional Scaling

GNOME supports fractional scaling, my screen is better on 125% so i’ll enable that.

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

Then in settings->displays i selected 125% Scale factor

RPMFusion

sudo dnf install 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

You may want to opt out of nonfree repo of rpmfusion.

Browser

I use chromium-freeworld package from rpmfusion which includes VAAPI support

Setup VAAPI first

dnf install libva intel-media-driver
vainfo

You should see libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0 in the output.

Now install chromium

dnf install chromium-freeworld

• Local network
• A machine that can run docker and docker-compose

In this guide i will be using a ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine on Virtualbox connected to the local network via bridged adapter.

Preperation

Server installation

• Retrieve ubuntu server 18.04 image from here.
• Create a new virtual machine in Virtualbox, set network adapter attached to bridged adapter.
• Install ubuntu server on this virtual machine.

Networking

Install avahi-daemon via apt, this ensures that your virtual machine will show up under the name of hostname.local, for this machine, i set the hostname to ubuntu. Any instructions below will use this hostname.

Docker

Follow the official instructions to install docker on the server.

Optional: Add user to docker group to use docker without root

sudo usermod -aG docker your-user

Miscellaneous Dependencies

Install docker-compose and git if not installed.

sudo apt install docker-compose git

Deploying Docker Registry

• Clone this repository from GitHub which includes the required configuration files.

  git clone https://github.com/glacion/lan-docker-registry
  

• Go to the fetched directory

  cd lan-docker-registry
  

• Run the server

  docker-compose up -d
  

Testing The Deployment

• Pull the busybox image from the local registry, this will trigger the registry to cache the busybox image.

  docker pull localhost/library/busybox
  

• Acquire the container id of the registry.

  $ docker ps --format "{{ .ID }} {{ .Image }}"
  9e898cde9182 registry:2
  804903ce9f7e redis:alpine
  

  This shows that 9e898cde9182 is the container id of my registry container.

• Check for errors and warnings of the registry.

  docker logs 9e898cde9182 2>&1 | grep -E "level=(warning|error)"
  

  Currently, the only output to this should be a warning level log with message

  Registry does not implement RempositoryRemover. Will not be able to delete repos and tags
  

• Remove the busybox image

  docker image rm localhost/library/busybox
  

• Re-pull the busybox image

  docker pull localhost/library/busybox
  

• Recheck the logs, if there are no new entries, the registry is working correctly.

Client Configuration

Clients to this registry must be configured to use the newly created server as proxy.

• In a client machine, edit docker daemon settings.
  For a linux client, edit /etc/docker/daemon.json,
  For a mac client, use Preferences -> Docker Engine

• The file should look like this:

  {
    "registry-mirrors": [
        "http://ubuntu.local"
    ],
    "insecure-registries": [
        "ubuntu.local"
    ]
  }
  

Keep any other items as-is.

• Acquire a Fedora Workstation image.
• Create a bootable USB with that image.
• Open a terminal and acquire root.
• Disable enforcing selinux with setenforce 0, this is only required for setting the password for the new user that you’ll create.
• Acquire the genfstab script which makes it easier to create the /etc/fstab. The script is originally from Arch Install Scripts, but for convenience you can acquire it and add executable permission with this command:
  wget https://github.com/glacion/genfstab/releases/download/1.0/genfstab; chmod +x genfstab

Partitioning

If you are not familiar with partitioning, get comfortable with it.
For reference, these are the partitions i use for testing in a VM with a drive of 12GiB:

• /dev/sda1 ESP partition of size 100MiB, mounted on /boot.
• /dev/sda2 swap partition of size 1.9GiB.
• /dev/sda3 XFS partition of size 10GiB, mounted on /.

I chose /mnt to be my install root, you may change to your preference but be sure to update the commands accordingly.

Installing The Base System

Assuming that your partitions are mounted on /mnt, install the base system like below:

dnf install \
--installroot=/mnt \
--releasever=30 \
--setopt=install_weak_deps=False \
--setopt=keepcache=True \
--assumeyes \
--nodocs \
systemd dnf glibc-langpack-en passwd rtkit policycoreutils \
NetworkManager audit firewalld selinux-policy-targeted kbd zchunk sudo \
vim-minimal systemd-udev rootfiles less iputils deltarpm sqlite lz4 xfsprogs

• releasever=30 Install fedora 30, change if desired.
• setopt=install_weak_deps=False Do not install weak dependencies.
• glibc-langpack-en English langpack for glibc, in order to have a localized system install glibc-langpack-<LANGCODE> if no langpack is specified to install, dnf will install glibc-all-langpacks package which costs 100MB alone compared to installing them seperately which costs around 1MB per langpack. Use a different langcode if you want to use a different locale.
• xfsprogs because i used an XFS root, change or add more filesystem tools depending on your setup.

Configuration

• Setup machine id and configure the system locale, keymap, hostname on your new system;

  systemd-firstboot \
  --root=/mnt \
  --locale=C.UTF-8 \
  --keymap=us \
  --hostname=fedora \
  --setup-machine-id
  

• Generate fstab and save it in your new system, replace -U with -L if you want to use labels instead of UUIDs in your /etc/fstab

  ./genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
  

• Chroot without booting and add an user

  systemd-nspawn -D /mnt
  useradd -c "<YOUR_FULL_NAME>" -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash <YOUR_USERNAME>
  passwd <YOUR_USERNAME>
  exit
  

• Boot the system as a container

  systemd-nspawn -bD /mnt
  

  Login with the newly created user and get root with sudo -s, commands until the exit will be executed in the container.

• DNF configuration

  • Delete unnecessary repositories with rm -f /mnt/etc/yum.repos.d/*{*cisco*,*testing*,*modular*}*

  • Add following options to /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

    install_weak_deps=False
    keepcache=True
    tsflags=nodocs
    

• Install the bootloader

  systemd-boot is a fairly minimal and gets the job done without much configuration. If you opt to use GRUB or something similar, you are on your own.

  bootctl install
  

• Add any required filesystem to dracut configuration

  Dracut needs to know the root filesystem so that it can mount it when booting, it doesn’t need to know about other filesystems that are in the system. Open /etc/dracut.conf.d/fs.conf and add the root filesystem like below:

  filesystems+="xfs"
  

• Install the kernel

  dnf install kernel
  

• Configure the bootloader

  When you installed the kernel, the bootloader created an entry at /boot/loader/entries/<MACHINE_ID>-<KVER>.conf, however it just copied the boot parameters of the live system.

  The options part of the file shows something like this:

  options    BOOT_IMAGE=/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
  root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora-WS-Live-30-1-2 rd.live.image quiet
  

  Change it to something like this:

  options    root=UUID=<UUID_OF_ROOT_PARTITION> ro quiet
  

  Add the kernel parameters that you want to include here.

• Exit the container with poweroff

• EFI Entry

  Create an EFI entry using efibootmgr like below.
  Note: Make sure that the -d and -p arguments point to the ESP of your system.

  efibootmgr -d /dev/sda \
  -p 1 \
  -c \
  -L "Fedora" \
  -l /EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi
  

• Clean up and reboot

  umount -R /mnt
  reboot
  

Tweaks

• Dracut

  • Install binutils with dnf install binutils so that initramfs can be stripped.

  • Open /etc/dracut.conf.d/custom.conf and add the lines below:

     drivers+="i915"
     compress="lz4"
     hostonly="yes"
    

    • drivers+="i915" add i915 driver to initramfs for early Kernel Mode Setting.
    • compress="lz4" use lz4 for the initramfs compression.
    • hostonly="yes" generate images that works with this host only.

  • Rebuild the initramfs with dracut -fv

• Time

  • Set the timezone with timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Istanbul
  • Enable NTP with timedatectl set-ntp true

You will need a Java 8 executable in your PATH as the sdkmanager tool is still not compatible with higher Java versions.
More info can be found here.

Download Android SDK Command line tools

Near to the end of the Studio page, a section exists under the name of “Command line tools only”, download the Linux tools.

Setting up the environment

Add the following environment variables to your ~/.profile
More info about these variables can be found here.

export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/.local/opt/android_sdk
export ANDROID_HOME=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT
export ANDROID_AVD_HOME=$HOME/.local/opt/android_avd

Activate changes by running source ~/.profile

Extracting the command line utilities

Extract the downloaded zip file to your ANDROID_SDK_ROOT

unzip ~/Downloads/sdk-tools-linux-4333796.zip \
-d $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT

Installing the SDK

$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/sdkmanager \
'platforms;android-28' \
'build-tools;28.0.3' \
'system-images;android-28;google_apis;x86_64' \
'platform-tools' \
'ndk-bundle'

• platforms;android-28: The Android SDK for API 28 (Android 9).
• build-tools;28.0.3: Android SDK Build Tools.
• system-images;android-28;google_apis;x86_64: An Android 9 system image for Android Virtual Device.
• platform-tools: Tools such as adb and fastboot (Optional)
• ndk-bundle: Android Native Development Kit (Optional). If this is installed, an additional environment variable ANDROID_NDK_ROOT, which is typically on $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/ndk-bundle

Searching Additional Utilities

To search a newer version of a package or installing a different package, you may search with the following command:

$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/sdkmanager --list | grep YOUR_QUERY

Creating an Android Virtual Device

An AVD can be created with the following command;

$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/avdmanager create avd \
-n MyAvd \
-d 'Nexus 5X' \
-k 'system-images;android-28;google_apis;x86_64'

• -n: Specifies the name of the AVD
• -d: Specifies the device definition. Find more definitions by running $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/avdmanager list device
• -k: Specifies the system image of the AVD. The system image must be installed to be used.

Starting the AVD

An AVD can be started with the emulator utility.

$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/emulator @MyAvd

or

$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/emulator -avd MyAvd

Troubleshooting

“This User Doesn’t Have Permissions to Use KVM” on Debian based systems when trying to run the AVD, there are two solutions

• Installing qemu-kvm

  sudo apt install qemu-kvm
  sudo usermod -aG kvm USER*NAME

Though, since the Android Emulator already packs its own qemu, we can avoid installing qemu _just* for the permission to use /dev/kvm

• Manually taking ownership of /dev/kvm

sudo groupadd kvm
sudo usermod -aG kvm USER_NAME

# The following must be run each boot,

# create a service or something similar.

sudo chgrp kvm /dev/kvm