Things To Do After Installing Fedora 38

Fedora releases a new version approximately every 6 months. Each new version is supported with updates for 13 months in total. The distribution is a good place to get the latest stable software and technologies consistently.

The latest stable version is currently Fedora 38, you can download it from the Fedora official website.

16 Things to do After Installing Fedora 38

If you are a new Fedora user, you may be wondering about what to do after installation. This guide will help you through this part.

1. Run a System Update

This should be pretty obvious in any new installation for any Linux distribution. In most cases, there are a lot of updates and bug fixes for problems that may exist in the latest release.

Running an update for your system packages would be a wise decision to do before starting to use the system and complaining later about problems that may already be solved.

To update your system, simply run the following command:

sudo dnf update

2. Enable RPM Fusion

Due to Fedora’s policy on shipping packages which does follow certain standards and rules related to patents and the liberty of software, some packages are not available to be installed from the official Fedora repositories.

Most of the time, you can find additional packages that you might need in the RPM Fusion repository. It’s a repository that ships what Fedora doesn’t accept.

There are two repositories to add here: One of them is the free repository which only contains free software, and which you can install by running:

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

And the non-free repository, which, just as its name suggests, contains non-free software:

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

After you’ve added those repositories. You can go ahead and install any package you need from RPM Fusion. If you don’t know what you are looking for, consider using the search box on their website.

3. Install Fedy

Fedy is a graphical tool that allows you to tweak your Fedora system in a few clicks. The application allows you to run a set of pre-defined system commands which will install and configure a lot of stuff. From normal apps to themes and passing by various tweaks to the system, Fedy can almost do everything you may need on Fedora.

It can even install GPU drivers, network drivers, development tools, multimedia codecs, and extra fonts… Much and much more.

To install Fedy on the latest Fedora release make sure that you’ve already enabled the RPM Fusion repositories in the previous stop, and then run the following commands:

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

Notice that you need to activate RPMFusion repositories before you start using Fedy (Or some software you install will give you errors).

4. Get Important Firefox Addons

Firefox is the default web browser in Fedora. Since you are – probably – going to use it every day. It’s better for you to try a set of different addons and extensions:

5. Install Steam

If you like having some games on your PC to enjoy from time to time, then Steam is definitely the way to go on Linux. 25% of all games on Steam now support Linux. Which is why it’s a must if you are a gamer.

After you have enabled the non-free RPM Fusion repository, you can install Steam on Fedora using:

sudo dnf install steam

Also read the following post on how to enable Steam Play on Linux to run Windows games.

6. Install VLC To Play Multimedia Files

One of the most famous multimedia players all over the world. Its main feature is that it can run the multimedia formats you may see and supports all codecs. Above that, it’s free and open source.

A simple DNF command would work:

sudo dnf install vlc

7. Install GNOME Tweaks

The default desktop in Fedora Workstation is GNOME. Sadly it does not come with a lot of customization options by default, but you can install the GNOME Tweaks software for additional settings that you can adjust.

To install it, apply the the following command:

sudo dnf install gnome-tweaks

8. Restore Minimize and Maximize Window Buttons

For some historic reasons, GNOME desktop ships with a lot of autistic choices when it comes to user experience. You’ve probably noticed that when you saw that there are no minimize or maximize buttons in any of your open windows.

To restore them back, open your GNOME Tweaks and apply the following:

9. Get Better Font Hinting & Antialiasing

If you are using LCD screens, then you can get better font rendering settings than the default.

Just navigate using GNOME Tweaks to the fonts tab, and make sure the following two checkboxes are triggered regarding font hinting and antialiasing:

Should make the fonts sharper and more suitable for large LCD screens!

10. Customize GNOME Shell

You can customize your GNOME Shell desktop further by installing additional extensions. All what you need to do is to head to extensions.gnome.org and install the extensions you like. This is a quick list:

Additionally, you may download GTK+ 3 themes, GNOME Shell themes and icon themes from Gnome-look.org.

11. Change GNOME Text Editor Font

Gedit is no longer the default text editor in Fedora. Instead, it was replaced by GNOME Editor which is rewritten from scratch and uses GTK4 and LibAdwaita library.

While the new editor is nice, the default font looking is not the same (at least so we think):

You can go to the settings and change them accordingly:

This will give you the following look; a better contrast for line numbering and also a better Monospace font:

12. Setup Dropbox

Backups are really important, and I recommend setting them up in all posts related to Linux distributions configurations. My laptop was stolen once and it had a lot of projects and unfinished drafts which sadly were not in my backups, and I lost them forever. That’s why I feel obligated to say it over and over: People, always set up a backup plan.

Dropbox is one of the common methods to use for backups. You can install the Dropbox Linux client on your Fedora installation from the official website.

Additionally, you may check Duplicati, the open source backup solution, if you would like to manage your own backup infrastructure.

After that, you can open Dropbox from the applications menu in order to start configuring it. Later on, you will have a folder called “Dropbox” in your home folder. You can use it to sync your files across your devices and with your Dropbox account.

13. Understand Btrfs

Btrfs is the default filesystem in Fedora starting from version 33. It is a copy-on-write filesystem which allows you to keep snapshots (backups) of many folders and files on your system, so that you can restore older versions of them any time a problem happens. Btrfs provides much more features than that too, and it became the default filesystem during installation starting from Fedora 33.

You can still get the old ext4 filesystem during installation, but the default selection right now will be Btrfs.

However, there is no easy way to interact with Btrfs in Fedora 35, you’ll have to master the command line utilities designed to interact with it so that you can employ it for your needs. No GUI tools by default, no handbooks, no guides… Nothing.

A good introduction to learning Btrfs can be found in our Linux filesystems article, besides the official Btrfs guide and the ArchWiki page. You mainly need to learn the btrfs command, so you may want to view its man page:

man btrfs

14. Check Power Profiles

Starting from Fedora 36, you can choose the power profiles you want for your PC from the power settings in the GNOME Control Center. This is useful if you were running the distribution on your laptop for example and you wanted to save battery power, then you can choose the “Power save” mode instead of the normal mode to do it in one click:

You can switch between these modes back and forth whenever you need from your user menu in the GNOME desktop:

15. Enable Sound Over-amplification

From GNOME Tweaks, you can choose to over-amplify the sound up to %150, which should help you if your audio device has a low sound volume or the video/audio content you were listening to had a low sound volume:

16. Get a VPN

a VPN protects your privacy by shielding your Internet connection from your ISP and other possible intruders. It is essential to own a VPN in 2022, especially with the rise of authoritarian governments around the world, and the slow collapse of even the democratic ones.

You can get any VPN you like, but the most privacy-respecting ones are ProtonVPN, MullvadVPN and NordVPN.

For the last one, we can offer a 60% discount for FOSS Post readers if they sign up using the following link. A 2-years plan could cost you just $78 (Then $100 after 2 years), and you can get additional encrypted storage/encrypted password manager with it, if you wish.

This tutorial also shows you how to use NordVPN on Linux from the command line client.

What Further After Installing Fedora 38?

Simply use it!

Remember that your Linux distribution is just a tool for you to do real work. Don’t do “distro hopping” and move from one distribution to another. This will waste your time and you will rarely advance in your Linux learning curve.

That said, Fedora is a good Linux distribution for power users and advanced Linux experts wishing always to get the latest software and technologies. For example, Fedora was one of the first distributions to move to Wayland and Pipewire.

Conclusion

This was our list for things to do after installing Fedora 38. Now you should be ready to start using your new OS on daily bases according to your needs.

Remember that Fedora – like any other distribution – is pretty much customizable. If you don’t like something in the system, you can simply change it to what you want.

Here is a short changelog for this guide, and how it changed over Fedora releases:

What are some other things that you do after installing Fedora? Share them with us in comments.

M.Hanny Sabbagh

Hanny is a computer science & engineering graduate with a master degree, and an open source software developer. He has created a lot of open source programs over the years, and maintains separate online platforms for promoting open source in his local communities.

Hanny is the founder of FOSS Post.