I installed Fedora Workstation 42 (also happens in Silverblue) recently and I can’t use it because the setup process (selecting time zones, creating first user, etc.) won’t let me finish the process completely:
The process get’s stuck in the middle of the process and after that the only thing I can do is to force shutdown my PC. And no matter how much I try it again it happens over and over either if I select my privacy settings (GPS and telemetry), my time zone or if I try to activate third-party repos.
Especially if I select my time zone and click on “Next”, the bottom edge of the map shows broken white blocks which always tells me that the process crashed.
I used Fedora for several versions now and reinstalled it dozen of times (not because it’s bad or had problem with it generally but because I have a personal problem with DEs) and I never had this issues.
Exact same issue – this is my first time installing Fedora and it was smooth and straightforward until selecting the time zone, at which point the interface with the map freezes, broken white blocks exactly like you’re describing, no combination of wifi on/off, telemetry on/off etc. make a difference.
Edited to add: Nevermind, after many attempts that failed identically, it just suddenly worked! Computers are haunted.
It is a bit hard to debug, because until initial setup is completed, I can’t even see what is happening in the logs using Ctrl+Alt+F2, as there is no user to login with…
May be there is some technical account used to start initial setup program, that we could use to check what went wrong?
I experienced something similar when I was installing Fedora 42 into VM and it wasn’t always an issue, a few times it crashed while selecting the time zone, etc.. but other time it installed successfully. Well recently I upgraded desktop from Silverblue 41 to 42 and it seems fine. It’s hard to tell where the issue lies exactly, it’s probably connected to custom settings during 1st installation.
Exactly the same experience for me too. Ended up installing 41 and then upgrading to 42. Initial setup process hangs as described as soon as timezone is selected and clicking on “next”.
I can confirm that also worked for me. Just tried a fresh install and clicked on my location rather than searching for it and I was able to complete setup. Nice one @mpilarski
I can also confirm that it worked. Looks like the search bar produces the issue here. But I’m wondering if the issue still happens on the other sections which got mentioned here (like the 3rd-party repo section)?
Off Topic: Also, depending on your UEFI settings, you may not be able to use Secure Boot currently like described here.
I am experiencing this issue while attempting to install Silverblue 42.
On the “enable third-party repositories” page, the application freezes as soon as I click “Next”. Gnome then asks me if I want to wait or force quit the initial setup app.
I tried just clicking on the map to select a timezone, or using the search bar. Makes no difference on my machine.
Regarding the freeze when enabling third pary repositories, I have filed the issue here a few days ago.
The workaround is to leave the option disabled at this stage, finish the setup, and enable third party repos later (e.g. via GNOME Software or from the command line).
yes, I just installed, and for me there was no issue on the timezone step (even though I typed it out), but after enabling 3rd party repositories and clicking next, it just stopped responding and never resumed.
then I tried again (without reinstalling), clicked on the map, didn’t help.
but after I disabled 3rd party repositories, it worked fine.
it’s good that we can enable them later in the software center.
I have this issue as well on Fedora 42 Silverblue. I managed to work around it by just not agreeing to it. But how can i enable third party repos after the inital setup?
Edit: Never mind, i followed the OSTree setup on rpmfusion.org.
Got mine to work by clicking on the map itself to select my time zone then clicked next. Entering it by using the search bar made the process crash every time.
