Project: Moving main laptop to Korora 25 Desktop
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Update #2: I installed Ubuntu 16.04.2 (17.04 doesn't work right) along side of Win10 for now (dual boot). As noted below, Korora and Fedora were giving me hardware issues that I just didn't have time or the interest to fix... see here.
Update: Project scrapped, see here.
Title used to say Fedora 25 Cinnamon Desktop, but due to issues, I'm leaving it Korora 25 as so far, only Gnome desktop is working. I will edit this post later appropriately to reflect the final set-up.
This
iswas going to be my experience and/or log (for future reference) of moving to Fedora (or Korora) on my personal main home system. I expect things to take a while to get fully functional (as it was on Win10), but it depends on how much time I have to get things going.It's an ASUS ROG STRIX GL502VT-DS74 15.6" laptop (Internal small m.2 and a regular SSD), plus I want to use my new Razer Orochi wired/wireless mouse with it, and the ability to configure the mouse.
Normally this isn't something I'd track, but being that my (main) personal home systems have been primarily Windows due to the ease and use of gaming, drivers, Office Suite (and OneDrive), peripherals, other software, etc.
I'm making this switch now primarily due to the (finally) better and wider support available on home Linux based operating systems, covering much of the above. To get things working, it no longer seems like a month-long uphill battle, now that things are a bit more supported, popular, quicker, and well... easier to be honest.
I chose Fedora because, of all of the distros, this one has been the most useful and friendliest as far as supporting the things I care about most on my personal home system, which I listed above already. Also, it uses a familiar format that I'm used to... RedHat-based OSs (mostly CentOS) I manage at work professionally. I tried Korora, but it's just issue after issue. F that.
I've already looked into things before making the decision to switch, as far as support of my hardware and peripherals. The only thing I'm not sure of is my wireless Bluetooth mouse. It works fine wired, but we'll see if I can manage to get the Bluetooth part working. It didn't in the Live-preview, but I didn't spend any time on it.
I think my biggest challenge in all of this will end up being my mouse (hopefully). But we shall see.
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Reserved for setups.
1. Prep
I downloaded via bittorrent the Korora 25 Cinnamon .iso. Because I already had the "Fedora Media Writer", I used that to burn to a USB stick.
2. Setup
I selected the English keyboard layout and also added the Swedish one, so I'm able to switch when I need to type a lot in Swedish.
I did a typical setup with full hard drive encryption:
I selected my m.2 drive, used automatic partitioning, and checked "I would like to make additional space available.
Did the typical dance afterwards, set up hostname, root password, created a user for myself.
Rebooted, did a full update:
sudo dnf upgradeThen rebooted again.
3. (...in progress)
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Reserved for fine-tuning.
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Reserved for Issues & troubleshooting.
1. First issue I've come across is that after updating Korora 25 and rebooting, the loading screen (that little loading bar) never finishes.
After some googling, it looks like there's an issue with encryption/efi or something somewhere along them lines.
I tried booting to the live usb stick I have, but after logging in, I just see a blank desktop. I've waited a while and the desktop never fully loads.
Nothing has changed hardware wise, so I don't see why I can't live boot.
I am going to attempt to install Korora without disk encryption, if I can ever get that far.
Update 1 to Issue #1
I can boot to Fedora live usb just fine. I'll clear the disk and try Korora again. Maybe a bad USB, I don't know.
Update 2 to Issue #1
I'm finally able to install Korora again, but not before re-burning the USB twice, and live-booting to it via "Troubleshooting" mode. Hopefully it goes well this time. Hopefully I can reboot and make it to the desktop after running updates.
Update 3 to Issue #1
Going to install Fedora, Korora is just not happening. reference post
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I've really been considering installing Korora on my gaming laptop, but would be pissed to no end if things just didn't / wouldn't work.
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Yeah that was one of my main concerns too... but I've seen that WINE will do most things, and that Steam is supported on Fedora.
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@DustinB3403 said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
I've really been considering installing Korora on my gaming laptop, but would be pissed to no end if things just didn't / wouldn't work.
One of the reasons I keep landing back on Windows... Games just work.
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@dafyre said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@DustinB3403 said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
I've really been considering installing Korora on my gaming laptop, but would be pissed to no end if things just didn't / wouldn't work.
One of the reasons I keep landing back on Windows... Games just work.
I left my SSD alone, kept it ntfs and all that, data intact (that's where all games and such are). I also copied my AppData to it before I wiped windows. And of course, I took a full bare-metal backup of everything already, so I can go back if needed. I don't want to and will give it at least a half a year before doing that, though.
But if I REALLY REALLY REALLY need to, I will repartition my small m.2 to dual boot Windows. But from what I've seen, the main games I play should work, or at least with some tinkering.
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@dafyre said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@DustinB3403 said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
I've really been considering installing Korora on my gaming laptop, but would be pissed to no end if things just didn't / wouldn't work.
One of the reasons I keep landing back on Windows... Games just work.
Or crash, actually.
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@scottalanmiller said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@dafyre said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@DustinB3403 said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
I've really been considering installing Korora on my gaming laptop, but would be pissed to no end if things just didn't / wouldn't work.
One of the reasons I keep landing back on Windows... Games just work.
Or crash, actually.
lol. Only rarely -- for me, at least. The ones I play (WoW, and The Witcher, right now) play nicely.
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@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
And of course, I took a full bare-metal backup of everything already, so I can go back if needed. I don't want to and will give it at least a half a year before doing that, though.
I should do that and give it a go, see how it ends up. There are just so many bugs with Windows. . .
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Before I do anything, I wonder if Korora would be any better than Fedora?
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@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
Before I do anything, I wonder if Korora would be any better than Fedora?
Yeah I really don't see the difference between the two except for that dumb side bar. I'll stick to Fedora rather than Korora.
Anyone know of any benefit to Korora over Fedora?
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Looks like Korora might come with some things pre-installed like codecs and support for more things like graphics drivers and such.
It might not matter if I can still get it all on Fedora, and if Korora is only a small time saver. I'll have to do some more searching.
Still leaning towards Fedora unless anyone knows why not?
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@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
Looks like Korora might come with some things pre-installed like codecs and support for more things like graphics drivers and such.
It might not matter if I can still get it all on Fedora, and if Korora is only a small time saver. I'll have to do some more searching.
Still leaning towards Fedora unless anyone knows why not?
Korora is based on Fedora. So you'll be able to add anything from Korora into Fedora without too much of a hassle.
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@coliver said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
Looks like Korora might come with some things pre-installed like codecs and support for more things like graphics drivers and such.
It might not matter if I can still get it all on Fedora, and if Korora is only a small time saver. I'll have to do some more searching.
Still leaning towards Fedora unless anyone knows why not?
Korora is based on Fedora. So you'll be able to add anything from Korora into Fedora without too much of a hassle.
I think I'll try with Korora first. If I run into any hiccups that Fedora otherwise wouldn't have caused, I'll switch.
My reasons for this are due to it looking like it just more natively supports more home use scenarios (gaming, drivers, etc), thus saving me time and research.
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@Tim_G I've also experience Korora 25 Cinnamon where all I see is the default wallpaper. I never tried investigate it since using Fedora 25 works great.
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@black3dynamite said in Project: Moving main laptop to Korora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@Tim_G I've also experience Korora 25 Cinnamon where all I see is the default wallpaper. I never tried investigate it since using Fedora 25 works great.
Yeah... I've had 0 issues with Fedora so far... and with Korora, it's endless. I'm hoping to get to a stable state in Korora. If I just can't, Fedora it is.
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@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Korora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Fedora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
Before I do anything, I wonder if Korora would be any better than Fedora?
Yeah I really don't see the difference between the two except for that dumb side bar. I'll stick to Fedora rather than Korora.
Anyone know of any benefit to Korora over Fedora?
I believe its more of a convenience of not have install repos, certain packages and making it look nice.
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@Tim_G said in Project: Moving main laptop to Korora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@black3dynamite said in Project: Moving main laptop to Korora (25) Cinnamon Desktop:
@Tim_G I've also experience Korora 25 Cinnamon where all I see is the default wallpaper. I never tried investigate it since using Fedora 25 works great.
Yeah... I've had 0 issues with Fedora so far... and with Korora, it's endless. I'm hoping to get to a stable state in Korora. If I just can't, Fedora it is.
My issue could possibly be with my AMD Graphics Card. Plus I can't get passed the bright and colorful icons. It seems weird too me.
