Steps to do after installing Fedora (F37)

Post installation steps for Fedora ~~F35~~ F37.

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress.

What I did.

Basics

Focus
- Set Focus Stealing Prevention to High (Window Behavior)
- Focus follows mouse (delay 300ms)
- Raise on hover, delayed by 750ms
Connectivity
- Enable internet access
- Attach bluetooth mouse/keyboard
Update
- Let everything update using Discover (it pops up in the panel and I let it do it’s thing - I guess dnf is working below. konsole->top tells me it’s packagekitd, hm… I see kwin_wayland already working here, nice…)
- ~~A restart might make sense now, but I didn’t do it~~
Data
- Mount all external filesystems (No rsync et al., I just mount it where I need it, backup is done via NAS)
- I’m enjoying vanilla KWrite to write this md-file documenting my process…
Display
- Get the Displays in right order and set zoom to 175%
- Set the Rendering backend for the Compositor to OpenGL 3.1 (was 2.0)
- Set Theme to Breeze Twilight with Colors set to Breeze (Similar to my favorite Arc Darker)
Usability
- Launcher -> Settings -> Configure enabled search plugins -> Disable: Bookmarks, Browser History and Browser Tabs
- Activate Night Color
- Change Wallpaper to something with 🏔s
Privacy
- Mute microphones
Misc
- Get familiar with Keyboard Shortcuts
  - I really enjoy the ‘activities’ feature (meta+q)
  - and KRunner (alt+space)
- Set Digital Clock
  - To 24h
  - ISO Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
- Move panel to top and shrink to 32px
- Can’t remove system sounds (which seems to be a bug)
- Enable Tap-to-click
- Enable Invert scroll direction (Natural scrolling)
Window Management
- Flatpak Integration sucks so far… #todo
- Enable 4 Virtual Desktops (this competes with Activities a bit…#todo)
- Adapt keyboard shortcuts:
  - Toggle Present Windows (Current Desktop): Ctrl+Alt+Up
  - Show Desktop Grid: Ctrl+Alt+Down

Fedora OS

DNF Flags for faster updates

echo 'fastestmirror=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
echo 'max_parallel_downloads=7' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnf/dnf.conf # You can change it to 10 or other depending on your connection speed
echo 'deltarpm=true' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
cat /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

The last command results in

[main]
gpgcheck=1
installonly_limit=3
clean_requirements_on_remove=True
best=False
skip_if_unavailable=True
fastestmirror=1
max_parallel_downloads=7
deltarpm=true

Update everything once more

To get practice with dnf and also to update the given firmware.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh # this will determine the fastest host and probably upgrade a lot => reboot afterwards (because stopped after the kernel, I guess)
sudo dnf clean all
sudo fwupdmgr get-devices
sudo fwupdmgr refresh --force
sudo fwupdmgr get-updates
sudo fwupdmgr update

It makes sense to reboot again.

Now the most important thing:

sudo dnf install -y vim

Fix Dell fan issues

Add i8kmon and dell-bios-fan-control from copr:

sudo dnf copr enable uriesk/i8kutils
sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install i8kutils dell-bios-fan-control

If you have Thinkpad think about tlp

There are counter arguments, though… read that Fedora gains 30mins with default settings compared to tlp. Forgot where I read that, though. So, YMMV.

Nice fonts

Manually install https://download.copr.fedorainfracloud.org/results/dawid/better_fonts/fedora-34-x86_64/02077386-archivo-black-fonts/archivo-black-fonts-1.001-1.fc34.noarch.rpm. Then:

sudo dnf copr enable dawid/better_fonts
sudo dnf install fontconfig-enhanced-defaults fontconfig-font-replacements

There is a bug report open for F35: https://github.com/silenc3r/fedora-better-fonts/issues/37

Speed up boot time

Find services which take the longest:

systemd-analyze
systemd-analyze blame
systemd-analyze critical-chain

Search online about the services you find what they do and rip out all the shit which is not necessary.

These were mine:

systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service # No wait time needed (~6.0sec)
systemctl disable fwupd.service # I prefer to do this manually (~2.2sec)
systemctl disable dnf-makecache.service # Caching is overrated (~6.3sec)
systemctl disable dnf-makecache.timer

Optimize btrfs:

Add ssd,noatime,space_cache,commit=120 to your fstab. This tells btrfs that we have a SSD, prevent frequent disk writes, make caching of a block quicker and increase the time interval in which data is written to the filesystem.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer

Kernel parameters

cd /usr/sbin
sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="processor.ignore_ppc=1 nowatchdog mitigations=off"

Restart now.

Additional Software Sources

sudo dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf groupupdate core
sudo dnf install -y rpmfusion-free-release-tainted
sudo dnf install -y dnf-plugins-core

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak update # I do not like snap

Nvidia

Fuck you, Nvidia.

Having said that, let’s go forward:

Do have something already inside?

modinfo -F version nvidia

Which probably tells you: Computer says no.

sudo dnf install -y akmod-nvidia
sudo dnf install -y xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda # for cuda/nvdec/nvenc support
sudo dnf install -y xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs
sudo dnf install -y vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils
sudo dnf install -y vulkan
modinfo -F version nvidia

Which now should spit out a version number and you should hear your fans going crazy.

TODO: Next laptop will come with AMD.

Take care of apps watching for file changes

Fix some limits of inotify:

sudo -i
echo 'fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

should answer with:

fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288

There are crazy things happening…

Software

The usual culprits using Flatpak

Fix a few things flatpak:

sudo dnf install xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
sudo dnf install gnome-settings-daemon
flatpak install flathub org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Materia-dark-compact

flatpak install -y org.gnu.emacs                # yep, the best editor for lips and clojure-*
flatpak install -y com.vscodium.codium          # another best editor w/o telemetry
flatpak install -y md.obsidian.Obsidian         # organize everything
flatpak install -y shotcut                      # sometimes I edit videos
flatpak install -y flatseal                     # sometimes I don't understand access rights of flatpaks

In case your fonts look blurry, there are a ton of problems and issues on that.

My fix was to explicity change the socket for the affected packages:

sudo flatpak override --nosocket=wayland your.package.Here

AppImage

Sometimes it still makes more sense to use AppImages due to Wayland issues or simple there being, no flatpak.

Then one can install: AppImageLauncher and point it to ~/.local/share/appimages.

Firefox

Add Plasma Integration via extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/plasma-integration/
Set default Search Engine to DDG
Disallow Mozilla to
- install and run studies
- send technical and interaction data
Disable Title Bar

Shell

Either zsh or fish. fish comes with sane defaults, so fish:

sudo dnf install -y fish util-linux-user
chsh -s /usr/bin/fish

Add ~/.local/bin persistently to fish. Do the following (in fish):

mkdir -p /home/$USER/.local/bin
set -Ua fish_user_paths /home/$USER/.local/bin

Check if it is on bash, too:

bash -c 'echo $PATH'

Nextcloud

sudo dnf install -y nextcloud-client nextcloud-client-dolphin

git

sudo dnf install -y git git-lfs
git-lfs install

Multimedia

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
sudo dnf install -y gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras ffmpeg

Remap Stereo to Mono

Because I suffer under single-sided deafness, remap stereo to mono as described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseAudio/Examples#Remap_stereo_to_mono

MPV

The best media player.

sudo dnf install -y mpv

Fedy

sudo dnf copr enable kwizart/fedy
sudo dnf install -y fedy

MTP

If you want to connect your phone, Dolphin might fail.

sudo dnf clean all && dnf -y update && dnf -y reinstall kio-extras

might help. It’s an issue though. :/

Software Development

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools" -y

The other OSes you have

TODO: WIP

Sources

Troubleshooting:

Linux Mint is so massivly behind Fedora F35, that I had immense problems getting /boot and /boot/efi straight to dual boot it.

Basics#

Fedora OS#

DNF Flags for faster updates#

Update everything once more#

Fix Dell fan issues#

If you have Thinkpad think about tlp#

Nice fonts#

Speed up boot time#

Optimize btrfs:#

Kernel parameters#

Additional Software Sources#

Nvidia#

Take care of apps watching for file changes#

Software#

The usual culprits using Flatpak#

AppImage#

Firefox#

Shell#

Nextcloud#

git#

Multimedia#

Remap Stereo to Mono#

MPV#

Fedy#

MTP#

Software Development#

The other OSes you have#

Sources#

Troubleshooting:#