Fedora Linux tips

My Fedora - KDE Plasma notes (Fedora 43 version when I write this). I have installed Fedora linux distro because works fine in my Thinkpad. I was frustrated about KDE Neon updates and Kubuntu doesnt support Wayland yet.

User permissions

sudo usermod -aG adm,disk,users,audio,dialout,cdrom,video $USER

Installing apps

• Enable RPMFusion (free and non-free)
• Install Spotify from flatpak
• Visual Studio Code

My favourite packages

nextcloud-client yakuake keepassxc make vim git gh docker calibre stow audacious mpv bleachbit qdirstat darktable pavucontrol-qt soundconverter htop chromium zsh wireguard-tools telegram xournalpp libheif-tools libheif-freeworld android-tools

Install recomended multimedia packages

Note that VDPAU packages are recommended only because some old software is compatible only with this Nvidia standard, even you have an Intel or AMD GPU.

sudo dnf install @multimedia libavcodec-freeworld libva-utils mesa-va-drivers-freeworld mesa-vdpau-drivers-freeworld ffmpeg-libs
# replace ffmpeg for the good one
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing

Install development packages

Because I want to use podman locally + Docker CLI for remote contexts, I need to unistall moby from Fedora:

sudo dnf remove docker-cli moby-engine moby-cli docker-ce docker-ce-cli

But then install development packages (including podman):

sudo dnf install -y \
  @development-tools \
  sqlite \
  sqlite-devel \
  gcc-c++ \
  make \
  patch \
  libffi-devel \
  openssl-devel \
  zlib-devel \
  bzip2-devel \
  readline-devel \
  sqlite-devel \
  ncurses-devel \
  xz-devel \
  tk-devel \
  libxml2-devel \
  xmlsec1-devel \
  python3-pip \
  docker-cli \
  podman-compose \
  oci-cli

Multimedia packages

• for Intel GPUs

sudo dnf install intel-media-driver libva libva-utils gstreamer1-vaapi intel-gpu-tools mesa-dri-drivers vlc-plugins-all vlc

• for AMD GPUs

sudo dnf swap mesa-va-drivers mesa-va-drivers-freeworld 
sudo dnf install radeontop

Change default shell to zsh

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Hardware acceleration

OpenCL

Intel GPU

sudo dnf install intel-opencl

AMD GPU (not support yet in my iGPU AMD 680M)

sudo dnf install mesa-libOpenCL
export RUSTICL_ENABLE=radeonsi clinfo

For darktable, test it with: darktable-cltest.

Check GPU use instead of CPU

sudo intel_gpu_top # for Intel graphic card
radeontop # for AMD graphic card

Trackpoint sensivity

The iconic Thinkpad trackpoint is too sensitive for me, so I configured it:

sudo dnf install xinput libinput-utils 
# Get the TrackPoint name
sudo libinput list-devices
# In the file /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks: create the dir and/or the file if doesn't exist
[ThinkPad Elan TrackPoint]
MatchName=*TPPS/2 Elan TrackPoint*
AttrTrackpointMultiplier=0.75
# Permissions
sudo chmod 644 /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks
# Check quirk is configured
libinput quirks list /dev/input/event5

Autofirma

Autofirma 1.8 works for me in Chromium browser with the lastest Java version from Fedora official repos. Autofirma 1.9 doesn't work for me, see issue.

Firefox

Autofirma

Autofirma 1.8.* GUI requires Java 11 to run in Firefox:

sudo dnf install adoptium-temurin-java-repository
sudo fedora-third-party enable
sudo dnf install temurin-11-jre
sudo update-alternatives --config java
# choose java-11 version

Secure DNS

I like to configure ControlD DNS servers with ads and tracking filtering. Please, set network.dns.echconfig.enabled to true and network.trr.mode to 3 and network.http.http3.version_negotiation.enabled to true in firefox about:config.

UEFI (BIOS) update

It seems to update the laptop system firmware requires SecureBoot be enabled when Linux is installed: fwupd/firmware-lenovo#463 . Even in that case I cannot update the BIOS version.

Troubleshooting

KDE or SDDM doesn't start

Try to run from an alternitive desktop: startplasma-wayland

References

• Hardware acceleration:
  • Arch Linux Wiki - Intel
  • Firefox
  • Encoding with VA-API
• Install on laptop:
  • Arch Linux Wiki - Lenovo_ThinkPad_E15_Gen_4_(Intel)
  • Tuned (power daemon since Fedora 41) - Optimizing performance
• Autofirma:
  • gist.github.com Instalar autofirma 1.8.2 en Fedora 39 (también funciona en 40 y 41)