How to try Fedora Linux, then install it (next to Windows if you like)

You'll end up with Fedora Linux on your PC, alone or next to Windows with a menu to choose between them, plus codecs, the right graphics driver and your apps. You need a USB stick of 4 GB or more that you can wipe, an internet connection and about two hours. You test everything from the stick first, so nothing changes until you decide to install.

What Fedora Workstation is

Fedora Workstation is a free Linux operating system with the GNOME desktop, built by a large community and sponsored by Red Hat. A new version comes out every six months and each gets updates for about 13 months. It has an app store called Software, comes with Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice, and has no ads or trials.

It suits people who want a clean, current desktop for the web, study, office work, coding or creative work. Many Windows games run through Steam, but some online games with anti-cheat refuse to run on Linux, so check yours before giving up Windows.

Your PC needs:

• A 64-bit Intel or AMD processor (nearly every Windows PC from the last ten years).
• At least 4 GB of memory and 40 GB of disk space; double that is more comfortable.
• No firmware changes: Secure Boot can stay on.

Make the USB stick

Writing the stick erases everything on it.

With Fedora Media Writer

1. Install Fedora Media Writer from its page here and open it.
2. Choose Download automatically and click Next.
3. Under Official Editions, choose Fedora Workstation and click Next.
4. On Write Options, leave Version on the newest release and Hardware Architecture as it is.
5. Plug in your stick and choose it under USB Drive. If it isn't listed, try another USB port.
6. Click Download & Write, and Yes if Windows asks for permission. It downloads a few gigabytes, then writes and checks the stick.
7. When it reports that the image was successfully written, click Finish.

If Media Writer warns about the drive's size, you've probably picked an external hard drive: choose again.

With Rufus

Download the Workstation ISO for Intel/AMD (x86_64) from the official site linked on our Fedora Linux (Workstation) page, then write it with Rufus using our boot USB guide. When Rufus asks how to write the image, choose Write in DD Image mode, which copies the image exactly, as Media Writer does. Windows may then call the stick unreadable; that's normal, and Media Writer's Restore option makes it an ordinary stick again.

Start Fedora from the stick and test it

1. With the stick plugged in, open Settings → System → Recovery in Windows and, next to Advanced startup, click Restart now.
2. On the blue screen, choose Use a device, then your USB stick (its name varies). If Use a device isn't there, switch the PC off, then on again while tapping its boot-menu key (often F12, F11, F9, F8 or Esc) and pick the stick.
3. On the black menu that appears, choose the entry that starts Start Fedora-Workstation-Live and press Enter.
4. After a minute or two, a Welcome to Fedora Linux window opens. Click Not Now to try the desktop.

If the PC goes straight back into Windows, it didn't start from the stick: use the boot-menu key, or try another USB port.

Now test what most often goes wrong:

• Wi-Fi: click the top-right corner of the screen and connect to your network.
• Sound: play a video in Firefox through the speakers, then headphones.
• Screen: try the brightness keys, and an external monitor if you use one.
• Touchpad: moving, clicking and two-finger scrolling.
• Sleep: close the lid (or choose Suspend from the power button in that top-right menu), wake the PC and check that Wi-Fi comes back.

If Wi-Fi is missing altogether, the chip (often a Broadcom one) probably needs a driver that isn't on the stick; use a network cable or your phone's USB tethering, and fix it after installing. With an NVIDIA card, don't judge graphics speed yet. Ask about anything else that's broken on Ask Fedora before you install.

Get Windows ready (dual boot only)

Skip this section if Fedora will replace Windows.

Back up and save your BitLocker key

Copy anything you can't lose to an external drive or cloud storage. Resizing is normally safe, but not if the power fails halfway.

Many Windows 11 PCs encrypt their drive with BitLocker (on Home editions it's called Device encryption). Installing a second system changes the disk and the start-up chain, which can make BitLocker ask for its 48-digit recovery key. Without that key you're locked out of Windows, so find it now:

1. Right-click Start, choose Terminal (Admin), then click Yes.
2. Type manage-bde -protectors -get C: and press Enter.
3. If the output has a Numerical Password section, the 48-digit number under it is your key. Write it on paper or photograph it with your phone; don't keep it only on this PC. If it says no key protectors were found, BitLocker is off and you can move on.

If you sign in to Windows with a Microsoft account, the key is usually saved there too: sign in at account.microsoft.com from another device and look for this PC's BitLocker recovery key.

Make room

Shrink Windows from Windows itself: it handles its own drive most safely, and Fedora's installer can't resize a BitLocker-encrypted partition anyway.

1. Right-click Start and choose Disk Management.
2. Right-click the (C:) partition and choose Shrink Volume. Wait while Windows works out how much it can free.
3. Type the amount to shrink in MB. 1 GB is 1024 MB, so 81920 gives 80 GB; give at least 40960 (40 GB).
4. Click Shrink. A block marked Unallocated appears after C:.
5. Don't create a new volume in it; the installer looks for exactly this free space.

If Windows offers far less than you want, system files it can't move are in the way: settle for less, or free some space, restart and try again.

Install Fedora

Start from the stick again, as above. In the welcome window, click Install Fedora Linux…. If you closed that window, press the Super key (the one with the Windows logo), type install and open the installer.

1. On Welcome to Fedora Linux, choose your language (and keyboard layout, if it differs) and click Next.
2. On Installation method, check that Destination shows the disk you expect; use Change destination if not.
3. Under How would you like to install?, choose one:
   • Use entire disk for Fedora alone. This removes Windows and everything else on that disk.
   • Share disk with other operating systems to keep Windows. It installs into the free space you made.
4. Click Next.
5. On Storage configuration, you can tick Encrypt my data and set a passphrase. You'll type it at every start-up, and if you forget it your files are lost. Click Next.
6. On Review and install, read the summary. If you're keeping Windows, it should only add new partitions in the free space and reuse the existing EFI partition; it must not delete or format the Windows partition. If anything looks wrong, click Back.
7. Click Install (keeping Windows) or Erase data and install (whole disk). It takes about 5–20 minutes.
8. At Successfully installed, click Exit to live desktop.
9. Open the top-right menu, click the power button and choose Restart…. Remove the stick when the screen goes dark.

If Share disk with other operating systems reports too little free space, shrink C: further in Windows rather than using the installer's Reclaim space dialog, which can delete partitions.

On the first start, a short setup runs. Click Start Setup and work through it. On Third-Party Repositories, click Enable Third-Party Repositories: this adds Flathub's big app catalogue and NVIDIA's driver. Then create your account.

Your first hour

To open a terminal, press the Super key, type terminal and press Enter. Commands starting with sudo ask for your password, and nothing appears as you type it; that's normal. When a command asks Is this ok [y/N], type y and press Enter.

Update everything

Open Software, go to Updates, click Download, then Restart & Update…. Or run this, then restart when it finishes:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Update first, so the drivers below match your system.

Check the extra app sources

If you skipped the third-party page during setup, turn the repositories on now, then check that Flathub is listed:

sudo fedora-third-party enable
flatpak remotes

If flathub isn't in the list, add it with Flathub's own command:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

RPM Fusion and codecs

Fedora leaves out some codecs for patent and licensing reasons, such as the full FFmpeg with H.264 and H.265. RPM Fusion, a long-running community repository, provides them. Turn it on:

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

Then swap in the full FFmpeg and add the rest of the codecs:

sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
sudo dnf update @multimedia --setopt="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin

The first time, dnf asks you to accept RPM Fusion's signing keys: type y. If the last command complains that the group isn't installed, run it again with install in place of update. Optional extras for hardware video decoding are on RPM Fusion's Multimedia page.

NVIDIA graphics drivers

Skip this with Intel or AMD graphics: their drivers are built in. NVIDIA cards start on a basic driver; for games and video you want NVIDIA's own. Check your model with lspci | grep -i nvidia, then:

• GeForce GTX 16-series, RTX 20-series and newer: in Software, search for nvidia, open NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver and click Install. With Secure Boot on, it asks you to choose a password; restart and enrol the key (below).
• GTX 750 and 750 Ti, the GTX 900 and GTX 10 series, and Titan V: NVIDIA's current driver no longer supports these, so use the legacy 580 driver through the terminal route below (with RPM Fusion on).

The terminal route works for any of them:

1. Install the signing tools: sudo dnf install akmods mokutil openssl
2. Check Secure Boot: mokutil --sb-state. If it says SecureBoot enabled, do steps 3 and 4; otherwise go to step 5.
3. Create a signing key: sudo kmodgenca -a
4. Queue the key: sudo mokutil --import /etc/pki/akmods/certs/public_key.der. It asks you to make up a password and type it twice; you'll need it once, after the restart.
5. Install the driver: sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia for current cards, or sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia-580xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx for the older ones.
6. Wait about five minutes while it builds, then run modinfo -F version nvidia. You should see a version number; if it says the module isn't found, wait a little and try again.
7. Restart, and enrol the key if you made one.

To enrol the key: after the restart, a blue screen titled Shim UEFI key management says Press any key to perform MOK management. Press a key within 10 seconds (if you miss it, run step 4 again and restart). Choose Enroll MOK, then Continue, then Yes, type your password, and choose Reboot.

For CUDA, or NVIDIA hardware encoding in OBS Studio, also install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda (xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx-cuda for older cards). RPM Fusion's NVIDIA page covers other cases.

Installing programs

In Software, click the search button, type the app's name, open it and click Install. Afterwards Open starts it, and it's in your app grid (press the Super key).

If an app comes from more than one source, a button in the top bar of its page shows which one Software will use; click it to switch between Flathub and Fedora's own packages. Either works, and Flathub often has the newest version.

Good first installs:

• VLC media player plays almost any video or audio file.
• GIMP edits photos; Krita is for drawing and painting.
• OBS Studio records and streams. Choose the Flathub source, which is the official build.
• Kdenlive edits video.
• Steam for games, including many Windows ones through its built-in compatibility layer.
• Discord for chat and voice.
• qBittorrent for torrents.

Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice are already installed. Windows programs (.exe files) don't run on Fedora; look for the same app, or a Linux alternative, in Software.

Choosing Windows or Fedora at start-up

With both installed, a menu appears every time the PC starts:

• The top entry, starting Fedora Linux, starts Fedora. It's chosen automatically after 5 seconds.
• Windows Boot Manager starts Windows.

Use the arrow keys and Enter; pressing a key also stops the countdown.

If Windows asks for the BitLocker recovery key, type the key you saved. If it asks every time you choose Windows from this menu, start Windows from your PC's boot-menu key instead (pick Windows Boot Manager there) and ask on Ask Fedora. If Windows is missing from the menu, use the boot-menu key the same way.

Getting help

Ask Fedora is the official help forum. Search it first; when you post, give your PC model, your version, what you did and the exact error message. You can also ask on the Nuxtre forum.

Removing Fedora again

If Fedora replaced Windows, going back means reinstalling Windows from Microsoft's installation media. If you dual-boot, work in this order, or the PC may start to a black screen with a grub> prompt:

1. Copy anything you want to keep out of Fedora.
2. In your PC's firmware settings (often F2 or Del at power-on), move Windows Boot Manager to the top of the boot order. Save, and check that Windows starts by itself.
3. In Windows, open Disk Management. Right-click each Fedora partition and choose Delete Volume. They have no drive letter and appeared when you installed it: usually a 2 GB one and a large one. Don't touch the EFI System Partition or the recovery partition.
4. Right-click (C:) and choose Extend Volume to take the space back.

BitLocker may ask for its key once more. A Fedora entry stays in the firmware's boot list, and a small EFI\fedora folder stays on the EFI partition; with Windows first in the boot order, both are harmless. Removing them takes commands (bcdedit and mountvol) where one typo can stop Windows starting, so ask on Ask Fedora first. If you do meet the grub> prompt, use the boot-menu key, choose Windows Boot Manager, and fix the order.