After weeks of distrohopping returning to fedora 44

Ask Fedora
1

i had installed fedora 43, then moved it to fedora 44

i had some problems both with the distro and support

so i decided to distrojump, i never could install opensuse, finally made a tumbleweed installer and managed to install it, it was very problematic, it decided to make autolo9gin without password and forced x11, i never could make a account on their support forum to even ask

weeks passed and i managed to find information on how to fix most things

today i decided thay opensuse had way too many flaws so i moved to kde neon, but i found it is being abandoned to move to kde linux, so i installed that, it is nice but had some weird flickering on web browser and couldnt install printer, so decided to install again fedora, but using 44 iso

i couldnt make custom partitions like on neon or kde linux, it is its way or no way, basically, i do get that people can get lost partitioning but, i needed to create a swap partition because i do know that the ram one gives problems and i couldnt

seeing 3 distros doing the same points to a new approach that will not fit to everybody

in my case i know that swap is sort of legacy now but the compressed swap on file is the same size of ram and that is a problem for me and my 6.7 gbs of ram

2

I suspect you missed the ⋮ in the top right, which contains the advanced partition editor. The new installer has been built for a simple default flow and hides the advanced partitioning options. But it does have them. And I think the Anaconda team has heard the feedback that the advanced partitioning is currently really hard to discover.

Or you could just use the Everything installer, which still uses the older Anaconda installer with Blivet-GUI for advanced partitioning use cases.

3

when i installed kde neon, i was not using my glasses so i saw the only options offered and i used what was offered, i saw the option on kde linux

then when i installed fedora, i tried to make custom partitions, i tried to make a efi partition mounted as efi, the swap and just one /

installer complained, made me delete / and made a 2 gbs /boot partition

swap is there, but system is using zram, i already had a system freeze after waking up from sleep, and that is why i wanted to have a swap partition

what partitions are necesary now for fedora? i understand i need a efi, a / but i didnt knew i needed a 2 gbs /boot partition

i dont like how it was partitioned and i dont see system using swap, so perhaps delete it is the best, so, let it wipe drive and let it do its thing or what kind of partitions can i use now? /boot is the new efi partition?

4

I think it is a restriction imposed by the GRUB bootloader. You will have to create both a ESP and a separate /boot partition. Also, the ESP must be mounted under /boot at /boot/efi, not at /efi. If you want to do something simpler, you would have to manually configure another bootloader. It can be done, but it requires a lot of knowledge about the workings of the bootloaders.

It is unlikely that the swap partition has anything to do with your system freeze. It is more likely a bug or missing functionality in a kernel driver or in your PC’s firmware. Hybernation is not well supported under Linux. Personally, I just power the system completely off when I am done with it.

5

The default (and recommended) setup is a 600MB EFI system partition mounted at /boot/efi, a 2GB /boot, and a BTRFS partition with subvolumes for / and /home (and others like for /var/lib/libvirt created if you are using virtualization). It is documented here.

Technically, you can install Fedora without a separate /boot. The main reason for the separate /boot, as I understand it, is that GRUB needs to write to /boot/grub2/grubenv to record, e.g., the last booted entry. And while GRUB can read the kernel just fine from a /boot on the default BTRFS partition, it cannot write to it, meaning grubenv is never updated.

6

i didnt used hibernate, i used sleep

if i fall asleep, i want the pc to do the same, and whn i wake up, i will wake up the pc too, i have not used hibernation option, just the sleep after 5 minutes i set

this pc is a mix of daily driver and htpc in my room, i experienced in the past problems with the lack of virtual ram so i decided to put 12 gbs of swap to avoid problems, i just have 8 gbs but apu takes like 1 gb so i am limited on ram

7

thank you for your reply

i tried lsblk command and shows this

zram0 251:0 0 6.7G 0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1 259:0 0 238.5G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 954M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 11.2G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 1M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p4 259:4 0 2G 0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p5 259:5 0 224.4G 0 part /home

so it is not far form what you report, the only problem as you see there is zram and the swap not being mounted and used, not sure if i can attack that or is faster to just reinstall and let the swap partition idea go

8

If you have a partition to use as swap and it isn’t used, you can check /etc/fstab if it has a line for that swap partition. If not, run mkswap on the partition and add it to fstab. After that, reboot or run swapon -a to activate it.

9

the contents of fstab

UUID=baf728cf-8fb6-4c66-a727-20b877b325bd / btrfs subvol=root,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=1d9acda6-6e4b-40bc-8b46-7d9841bb2795 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
UUID=baf728cf-8fb6-4c66-a727-20b877b325bd /home btrfs subvol=home,compress=zstd:1 0 0

i ran sudo mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2 but i dont remember what to put on fstab, perhaps UUID=68ae510e-3cf8-43dc-896b-9994e6c91c7e swap?

10

Not quite:

UUID=68ae510e-3cf8-43dc-896b-9994e6c91c7e none swap defaults 0 0
11

i ended answering my own question

it was UUID=68ae510e-3cf8-43dc-896b-9994e6c91c7e none swap sw 0 0

i saved fstab, restarted pc and now system reports to have 17.9gbs of swap, because zram is still there, i wont touch zram, but have swap with little ram has saved firefox form crashing when reporting low ram i had in other distros

i understand the zram concept, it is a swap but on a file basically, it would be nice to be able to modify it, assign more space, but by default it goes straight to same as ram available and i found that as it was in the past, 1.5 times the size of ram available is a better value, especially when you are low on ram

12

The zram space is using part of the main memory. You can disable it by

sudo dnf remove zram-generator

If you try to google for how to disable the zram swap space you may get an answer that doesn’t work on Fedora.

By the way, the storage editor have no problem creating a swap partition during installation. I just tried it to verify that.

13

my point with the thread was discuss/ask about how complicated the partition creator is and what is needed now to install modern linux, when compared to how things were in the past

i never said i couldnt create swap specifically, it was more about all partitions, i could, it was there as reported on the previous replies i made where i showed what was mounted and what was in the nvme where i installed and you can look for the entire thread, as is recomended to do on most forums before replying

the whole situation in my opinion points to force users to use the partition created by the installer, because i couldnt even reuse the partitions i already had, it wanted to install side by side with kde linux that i wantd to remove and the installer made more confusing the custom option by moving it to a button with 3 dots that wasnt what i was expecting to find where in the past i had a optin that said custom partition under the option where system chooses what to do or reuse what is there

it is not making easy for users to create what they want, like it happened to me where only 2 of 3 partitions created by me were accepted by the installer, and one of the two were not used, so i had to delete / i created so system created another / and also a /boot

the installer could use some improvements, or, perhaps add again a simpler tool to create partitions like how most distros used in the past, fedora itself in 43 had it iirc, where if you created a partition called swap using the usual swap partition type, it was automatically detected as swap, added to fstab to be mounted and just used without more intervention from the user because, it is just a swap partition

about disable zram, i dont know if fedora will like that, perhaps leave it there now is the best option

14

Your point of view is that you need extra steps for your particular needs, and that is difficult compared to earlier versions. And I see where you are coming from.

I would like to offer a different perspective: with the new installer, it is possible to install a system – with defaults that work for a lot of people – by making a few selections and clicking “next” a few times. Why should Fedora force the added complexity on all users, especially beginners, when there is a separate storage editor for this scenario and the few users who need it? And yes, it is documented that the storage editor is not easy to find if one doesn’t know about it, I think this is going to be addressed.

But, frankly, this has been discussed ad nauseam in other threads about the new installer. I doubt there are any arguments left that haven’t already been exchanged.

15

definitively possible, the default installer will for sure put a pc to work with linux in a couple minutes, as it did both kde neon and kde linux right here, both using same solution with kde integration

all 3 hiding the custom option i needed, and making things more complicated than they should be

i was talking to a friend yesterday and he also had problems with his pc, but he wiped windows by accident, the installer instead of being more friendly makes things more complicated

there was nothing wrong with the old 3 options, reuse partitions, wipe and partition as required and custom, custom doesnt need to be hidden, nor refuse to use swap, or / how i created it(i will assume it was for the /boot partition i didnt created)

old installers used to request what was necessary, this one iirc mentions /boot, but doenst mention efi

i do get your point on complicate things, but the example of my friend who nuked his windows install on his working laptop, he is as old as me, and while none of us are even close to be advanced linux users, were are not lost, i was using linux before win xp

i guess a good idea would be make a installer taking your hand and offering you some help if you want to take the custom route remembering what is the you need this and what partition types are required or recomended, stop using ext4, use btrfs, mount this here, or that there, skip /home if youy dont need it, things like that

in my particular case, the installer never asked me for swap, it assumed zram was enough, since it defaults to use all free space for /, if i didnt left such free space, resize / while mounted inside the os installed, i wont do that, perhaps with a liveusb could be done, but not safely

i didnt touched this new installer in this form, when i installed fedora, perhaps last year, i had more options, i am new to the discussion you say is old, because i was not distro jumping, or at least not into distros using less is more philosophy, well, it is not just the distro here, the tool seems to be kde, so integration with distro affects here alot

i would leave ideas i have but the kde forum is, well, i will not say what it is and what happened when i suggested that a dev took a moment to check a error i had, it is wasted time any time you put into that forum