Twelve months ago to the day I posted about the steps I’d undertaken to install the Debian linux distro and set up Openbox as the Window Manager.
Twelve months on and I’m ready to post about install Fedora and running Xfce as the Desktop Environment.
The primary reasons for Fedora are: It is an independent distro, it has a sizeable community, and packages are updated within a reasonable timeframe. And the primary reasons for the Xfce Desktop Environment are: Small footprint so it’s fast to load, has a ‘desktop’ where I can store files and display Conky monitors, and autostart programs and keyboard shortcuts are easy to configure.
So, for posterity, what are the steps I’ve undertaken to get my Fedora 32 distro up and running with Xfce?
- Download the appropriate iso. Copy it to a bootable USB drive. Boot up. Choose to install.
- I opted to install / on my 32GB SSD and partition my 460GB magnetic drive into four partitions for /tmp (4GB), /var (8GB), swap (8GB, I think) and /home (the balance of around 440GB).
- Once installed, reboot into the newly-installed system.
- Move launchers from the bottom to the top panel and delete the bottom panel (I prefer just one panel).
- Add my user to the wheel (admin/sudo) group using # usermod -aG wheel user_name.
- Perform a full system upgrade using sudo dnf upgrade
- Add extensions to Firefox: fixed zoom, ad block, password manager.
- Setup Firefox login and sync.
- sudo dnf install nextcloud (start syncing) conky (then use the config files saved in nextcloud) xiphos xset (if not present) dmenu ncdu evolution abiword calibre (opting for repo version over website version) php php-gd php-zip (the later three so I can run Grav server locally) java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64 (so I can run jdo.txt)
- Add keyboard shortcuts for Xfce4-session-logout, dmenu_run, terminal, file manager, text editor, mail client, web browser, Xiphos, jdo.txt (in Nextcloud/applications), calculator (and scid_vs_pc once installed).
- Restore Evolution settings from backup.
- Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf to allow auto login.
- sudo hostnamectl set-hostname new_name (not sure why Fedora doesn’t have this as an installation option).
- If system beeps, add ‘xset -b’ to autostart.
- Add the following two lines to .bashrc:
- export HISTSIZE=10000
- export HISTFILESIZE=10000
- Add the following two lines to autostart for natural scrolling. The second may not be needed as you can set the option in the Mouse and Touchpad settings.
- xinput set-prop " 2.4G RF MOUSE" “libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled” 1
- xinput set-prop “SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad” “Synaptics Scrolling Distance” -113, 113 (check parameters first)
- Both transmission and xarchiver were pre-installed, so a step saved here!)
- Download rpm from the ExpressVPN site. Install with sudo rpm -i expressvpn_.rpm
- Install h264 per https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration (add rpmfusion repo then install multimedia functionality).
- sudo dnf install vlc (comes from the rpmfusion repo added in the previous step).
- Download manager from manager.io. Move to ~/bin and set up a .Desktop config/launcher file.
- Setup a launcher for Treepad as well (also in ~/bin folder).
- Can change my password using # passwd user
- Install scid_vs_pc copr then scid_vs_pc (if you want a useful chess database, that is).
And there you have it. 24 steps may seem like a lot, but it isn’t really, and you can pick up from where you left off at any stage. Some of these can be performed in a different sequence - whether vlc is installed before scid or my vpn depends on what you want to do!
But it works. It’s repeatable. It leads to a fast, functional system.