Fedora Workstation Setup Guide

A friendly guide for setting up Fedora Workstation on ASUS laptops

By Metro May 28, 2021

Fedora Setup

Contents

Newcomers should start by reading the Intro guide.

For additional information not covered by this guide, consult the official Fedora Documentation here.

For simple USB stick flashing: Fedora Media Writer

About Fedora Versions

This guide is updated for the current stable release of Fedora.

However, please be aware:

  • You need to keep Fedora up to date. If you are 2 versions behind, your OS is no longer supported by Fedora (updates, security, etc.)
  • E.g. If Fedora 43 is the current stable release, and you are on Fedora 41, your OS is unsupported.

Installation

  1. Download the latest Fedora Workstation (or KDE Plasma Edition) ISO file from the official Fedora website and write it to a USB stick.

    Note: There are also respins available at Fedora Live Respin website. These are "refreshed" ISOs where the packages have been updated to the currently available package versions. This decreases the amount of updates you have to download after the installation. These ISOs will be available a little bit after the official stable releases launch.

    If you want something else than GNOME or KDE as your Desktop Environment, you can check out Fedora Spins.

  2. If you have difficulties starting the live environment from USB, in the Fedora boot menu select: Troubleshooting → Start Fedora in basic graphics mode

  3. Follow the steps of the installer, and remove the USB stick when you reboot

  4. After rebooting, the installer will present a series of dialog boxes to configure wireless networking, privacy, third party repositories, cloud services, and finally a local user account. Ensure that third party repositories are enabled, so that the proprietary NVIDIA drivers can be installed (covered later in this guide).

Setup

Using the Terminal

This guide requires typing terminal commands. To type them, start the Terminal application, which opens a window that has a command prompt.

To open the Terminal, simply press the Windows/Super key to bring up the Start Menu (KDE) or the Activities view (GNOME), and start typing "term" in the search box. Click on the search result.

Terminal in search bar

Commands that have sudo in front are administrator commands, and may require you to type in your password.

Update Fedora

The first thing you want to do is definitely make sure your OS is up-to-date, which can address some issues like WiFi not being functional.

Tip: If you have trouble getting WiFi or Wired Internet to work (commonly seen on newly released products), use your phone hotspot via USB to get internet access.

Simply run this in the terminal then reboot and you are good to go

sudo dnf update -y

Or if you don't want to use terminal:

  1. Open the "Software" application. (KDE Users should use "Discover")

  2. Navigate to Updates tab

  3. Click the Refresh-button in the top left corner

  4. Download all available updates

    Software Updates

  5. After the updates have been downloaded, click the "Restart & Update" button

    Software Updates

  6. Wait until the updates are installed.

NOTE: It is recommended to restart the system to avoid problems with outdated packages loaded into RAM.

Enabling the Terra Repository

ASUS Linux packages and tools are currently packaged on the Terra Repository for Fedora. Add the Terra repo with the following commands:

sudo dnf install --nogpgcheck --repofrompath 'terra,https://repos.fyralabs.com/terra$releasever' terra-release

WARNING For previous users who have enabled the community-maintained COPR repository, this repository is no longer maintained and should not be used. You can migrate to the new Terra repository by using the above command, and by deleting the old copr repository with sudo dnf copr remove lukenukem/asus-linux. Don't forget to reinstall all ASUS Linux tools.

Asusctl - custom fan profiles, anime, led control etc.

This section covers installing asusctl and its supporting software. This enables controls for the Asus ROG hardware on the laptop.

sudo dnf install asusctl

Enable and start the systemd service:

systemctl enable --now asusd.service

To avoid problems with tuned, you should use ppd.

sudo dnf swap tuned-ppd power-profiles-daemon --allowerasing
systemctl enable --now power-profiles-daemon.service

ROG Control Center

ROG Control Center is a GUI tool that can be used to configure asusctl. After adding the Terra or COPR repository as described above, you can now install the tool:

sudo dnf install asusctl-rog-gui

GUI Main Window

GUI Fan Curve

Note: For complete functionality and driver support, it is recommended to use a Kernel version of 6.19 or greater.

Install Nvidia Graphics Drivers

AMD dGPU laptop owners can skip this section.

IMPORTANT: If you have secure boot enabled at this point, you must disable it to continue. Once you're finished installing drivers, see the section on enabling Secure Boot later to re-enable it.

  1. If you didn't enable third-party repositories during the initial install wizard, you can use the following command to enable the RPM Fusion repositories required to install the Nvidia drivers:

    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

    Note: For Laptops with NVIDIA card older than Turing, install the Negativo17 instead.

  2. Install the Nvidia drivers:

    sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

    IMPORTANT: Please remember to wait after the RPM transaction ends to allow the kmod be built. This can take up to 5 minutes on older systems, and about 2 minutes on newer systems.

  3. Reboot your system

For more details, see the official documentation for RPM Fusion.

Graphics Switching

It is now possible to manage your graphics card using the ASUS GPU hotplug with asusctl or the ROG Control Center. You can check if your device supports graphics switching by running the following command:

asusctl armoury list

If your device supports disabling of the dGPU, you should see an entry that looks like the following:

dgpu_disable:
  current: [(0),1]

Here, a current value of 0 means that your dgpu is not disabled (i.e., enabled).

You can set whether you want to utilize your dGPU by modifying the setting under the GPU Configuration tab in the ROG Control Center. Alternatively, use the command asusctl armoury set dgpu_disable 1 to disable the dgpu, and 0 to re-enable it.

NOTE Due to how Linux systems are configured to use the dGPU, you must reboot your system after changing your dGPU configuration. If you wish to power off your dgpu without rebooting, you should use an alternative program such as Cardwire.

Optional Steps

Installing RPM Fusion

Usually, when you enable third-party repositories, RPM-Fusion is enabled automatically. However, if it is not, you can follow this guide.

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

Hardware Accelerated codecs

Fedora does not include the codecs needed to use Vaapi on Intel, AMD or Nvidia in its repositories due to potential legal issues. Therefore, you need to install the codecs in your system (Flatpak and containers (like distrobox, toolbx, docker, podman, etc.) must install their own codecs, as they do not share the system ones).

You need RPM-Fusion repos and follow this guide.

Cardwire

Cardwire is the community's new replacement for the now-deprecated supergfxd.

WARNING Cardwire is currently still considered EXPERIMENTAL. If you choose to install this tool, expect rough edges and quirks. For support, join our Discord server.

Cardwire is available for install on the terra repo. You can install it with sudo dnf install cardwire.

For installation and usage instructions, refer to the documentation.

Enabling Secure Boot

With Fedora 36 and above, it has become super easy to auto sign kernel modules and enable secure boot. To enable auto signing follow these steps:

Install the required tools

sudo dnf install kmodtool akmods mokutil openssl

Initiate the key enrollment

Note: This step requires a password, it doesn't need to be fancy. You'll just need it once during the enrollment.

sudo kmodgenca -a
sudo mokutil --import /etc/pki/akmods/certs/public_key.der

Reboot to enroll the key

When you reboot, the MOK Manager will appear, just hit "Enroll MOK" and enter the password set in step 2. After that is completed choose "Continue boot".

Rebuild the kernel module

If you installed the nvidia drivers before key enrollment, you must run the following command

sudo akmods --force --rebuild

# Shouldn't be needed
sudo dracut --force

CachyOS Kernel

(Please read this section carefully)

if you're having issues with the stock kernel, a recommended alternative is to use the CachyOS Kernel.

  • Newer devices often have newer features that require custom kernel patches to enable functionality. For this reason, we recommend that users with newer devices to install the CachyOS kernel to recieve the latest patches and drivers. Join our Discord server for more information.

Install CachyOS Kernel

The following guide includes directions on how to install and enable Secure Boot for the CachyOS Kernel.

CachyOS Kernel for Fedora with Secure Boot

Disable stock kernel updates

After installing the CachyOS kernel, you can disable updates for the stock kernel by running the following commands.

sudo dnf config-manager setopt fedora.excludepkgs=kernel,kernel-core,kernel-modules,kernel-uki-virt,kernel-devel,kernel-modules-extra,kernel-modules-core,kernel-devel-matched
sudo dnf config-manager setopt updates.excludepkgs=kernel,kernel-core,kernel-modules,kernel-uki-virt,kernel-devel,kernel-modules-extra,kernel-modules-core,kernel-devel-matched
sudo dnf config-manager setopt updates-testing.excludepkgs=kernel,kernel-core,kernel-modules,kernel-uki-virt,kernel-devel,kernel-modules-extra,kernel-modules-core,kernel-devel-matched

Legal Matters

ASUS and ROG Trademark is either a US registered trademark or trademark of ASUSTeK Computer Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Reference to any ASUS products, services, processes, or other information and/or use of ASUS Trademarks does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation thereof by ASUS.

The use of ROG and ASUS trademarks within this website and associated tools and libraries is only to provide a recognisable identifier to users to enable them to associate that these tools will work with ASUS ROG laptops.

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