Installing Fedora Workstation on my new PC which has an ASUS motherboard that supports UEFI

Discussions in English on installing or upgrading Fedora
#1

Hi,
I am want to install Fedora Workstation 33 on my brand new PC which has an ASUS motherboard that supports UEFI modes. I have few questions to ask if I may please.

  1. If I use Fedora Media Write and write to my USB will I need to do anything special to make my USB work and boot in UEFI mode ?
  2. When I install from my USB onto my new PC in a UEFI mode will I need to create EFI, SWAP, HOME and ROOT partitions like in ARCH or will this made up automatically ?
  3. Is it true that I can choose KDE Plasma during the installation process instead of GNOME ?
    Thank you.
    Kind regards,
    fedorazook
1 Like
#2

  1. When you start your host with the new media, go to the BIOS screen. It will have selections for you to boot into legacy mode or UEFI mode. Choose UEFI, of course.

  2. The UEFI partitioning scheme will be created automatically by the installer.

4 Likes
#3

Thank you blueshurricane4. So your point 1. answered my point 2. and your point 2. answered my point 3. Thank you. Question 1. of mine was incorrect. I am sorry. I should have read the Fedora Media Writer in more detail. This was to create a bootable live environment. I think my last question is how do I prepare my USB using the ISO from the Fedora Workstation website to be UEFI ready ? Does anyone know ? Or is there an MS-DOS command line or Linux command line I could use to run to wwrite to my USB to make it UEFI ready ?

#4

Nothing special. The ISO is capable to boot in a UEFI environment.
Use Fedora Media Writer from Windows/Mac/Linux, or dd from Mac/Linux or any other good software capable of creating a bootable USB sticks starting from an ISO (i.e. I heard that Unetbootin doesn’t work very well).

2 Likes
#5

Excellent I think I can also use dd if=<ISO_FILE_NAME>.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4M and that should do the trick to make it UEFI usable.

#6

Please pay attention: it should be of=/dev/sdb. (Supposing that sdb is the USB stick).

#7

OK NP. So this Fedora Media Writer when used to Create Live USB will also enable me after liking the OS to install on my new machine in UEFI mode ? And for this reason I will not need to do any security checks e.g. checksums etc etc ?

#8

Hi All,

I am totally and utterly confused. I am a software developer coming from a Perl/Python/C# on a .Net framework background so essentially a Windows person and wanting to move to Linux. I was trying to move to Arch but I was told it was not for beginners. I now moved to Fedora and I remember when I once installed it long ago many many years ago on a Legacy mode it was easy. I had an ISO and I installed it straight away. Now with a UEFI mode I have to first prepare my USB so it is recognised for a UEFI install and then install it but make up the partitions and make sure I put the correct sizes which I have to work out and make sure the volumes are safe. On YouTube one guy was installing Fedora and he was creating the partitions including SWAP and EFI. Do I really need to do this ? If I do the following will it be perfectly OK for my UEFI motherboard or I have to follow other steps ? Let me know if this is the correct official way and if not then I have no choice but to go back with Windows again if I struggle again which I hope I don’t as I really want to start using Linux as my home driver :frowning:

  1. Go to Fedora website in Windows and go to the downloads section and install Fedora Media Writer
  2. Insert a new USB stick formatted to default values e.g. FAT32
  3. Start Fedora Media Player and click on Create Live USB and then once complete click on Write to disk
  4. Once done insert in the new PC and start the computer and go to Install to Hard Drive
  5. From then I should go though all set ups and ignore creating partitions ? Correct ?
  6. Also do I have to do any other additional steps on top of the ones above to install it properly on my UEFI mode machine ? Also any special formatting to the USB needed ?

It would be really useful if someone from Fedora does a video for UEFI install but maybe it’s an idea.

Kind regards,

fedorazook

#9

Your steps are basically correct but:

  1. You must free up space on the drive before you attempt the install or it will fail with a message about no free space (explained in #2).
  2. Installing on a PC with windows already installed is explained here. It recommends a minimum of 20 GB but I suggest much more, at least 200 GB.
  3. If windows is already installed with UEFI boot then the installer will boot with UEFI and do the install for you. If you provide adequate space for the install and choose the automatic partitioning it will handle everything for you.

You will need to do nothing except
A. Use fedora media writer to write the downloaded iso image to the USB (Writing the iso to the USB will handle the formatting of it.)
B. Follow the instructions in #2 above to install it dual boot. (Installing F33 is essentially the same as F32 so the instructions apply)

If windows is already in UEFI mode then the install will be the same and you should need to do nothing else except select auto partitioning. If windows is in legacy (MBR) mode then the new install will be the same.

3 Likes
#10

Hi Jeffrey Vian,
This is so comforting and clear. So all is automatic then. What if my hard drive has Arch but broken OS and I am not sure whether this was installed UEFI or Legacy ? What do I do then ? I want only one OS and that is Fedora so no dual boot.
Kind regards,
Fadi

#11

If you only want one os and are installing fedora then tell it to use the whole disk when you do the install. that occurs at the screen where you select the disk to install to and you check the box to make more space available. If it already has an efi partition it will automatically use it or you can let it create the new partition after deleting all the partitions that were there before.

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#12

By default the automatic install creates (I think) 4 partitions.
/boot/efi as the efi partition, /boot as ext4, then the rest is BTRFS with / and /home as BTRFS subvolumes. You then have the entire disk for use.

You may have to tell it to use UEFI but that is done when you boot to the USB and select it from the boot menu with bios. It will show twice. Once as UEFI and once as legacy. As long as you select it as UEFI to boot it will automatically install in that mode.

3 Likes
#13

Excellent. That is just perfect. Thank you so much and sorry for the hassle. I will leave this thread so it closes automatically.
Kind regards,
Fadi

#14

Everything installed automatically. So flawless. This is what an OS should be so it let’s you get to work. No wonder why Linus loves it. Anyways. Thank you Fedora and thank you Beautiful Community.
Kind regards,
Fadi

3 Likes