Hi All…
New to Linux since December 2025, I tried and then stayed with FEDORA 43 + KDE. When it came up, I upgraded to FEDORA 44 with no troubles, and now,I’m a little bit more used to it and to Linux, no way to go back to W11… I’m a guitar player and heared about LAB’S FEDORA 44 JAM. I gave it a try on a USB Live, found it very intersting, there is more than all I want/need, except REAPER. So, I think about installing this release in Dual-Boot mode. But before doing it, I’d like to know, cause I’m shure that someone made it before, If id really adds something compared to standart FEDORA 44, speaking about latency, low latency kernel. It seems that the 2 kernels are the same in the 2 release of FEDORA … So, could someone tell me if I can expect a difference (of course a faster system) with FEDORA JAM. Thank you for reading, and for your answers !
Welcome to Fedora @will7369
I believe you not have to install the JAM ISO to get the software. There is a group you can install on your existing setup. Even on an other lighter DE if you like.
However, dual booting with two fedora versions can get messy. They appear both as Fedora in the grub menu alias ufi menu.
Have you tried the virtualization to see if you could use it in a VM? This is cleaner and you can work on both systems on the same time. But the systems are isolated. If you mess up the JAM setup just start over.
You can have a look in dnf if the audio group is that what you need:
dnf group info audio
Thank you for the answer, ‘ilikelinux’. I hadn’t thought about this grub trouble possibility ! I like your idea to use the group’s content and so that’s what I’m gonna try. VM could be a solution, but I have a first VM for Win10 that works perfectly, except for my audio interface ‘focusrite scarlett 2i4’, that I can’t make correctly work, although it worked perfectly when I was only under windows11 !
I have tried ‘DNF group info audio’ to see, and you’re right, almost everything that is the audio part of Fedora Jam is inside. But as a new user, I have a question : Much of the content is already present in my FEDORA, so What would happen if I do a ‘DNF update group’, with the components that are already present in my fedora ? Is DNF keeping the newest ?
yes - you won’t end up with two packages of the same thing, and you also won’t have anything downgraded in version unless you specifically request it.
Sine you are working with media and fedora is somewhat limited in the codecs it distributes, I suggest you enable the rpmfusion repos then install the full version of ffmpeg along with a couple other packages from there so that you have the full suite of available codecs for support of multimedia. This applies whether using fedora workstation or fedora jam.
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing and sudo dnf install x264 x265
Thank you, Jeff, so to be sure I won’t break my Fedora, I should run the two commands you mentioned, and then apply the ‘AUDIO group’ installation. I’ve never had the opportunity to install a group, so I don’t know how I should write it ! Could you just tell me the right command’s syntax ? Is it ‘sudo DNF group AUDIO install’ ?
By the way, I’m using FEDORA DESKTOP, so KDE plasma.
Thanks for any answer !
That is why I proposed you to do your fist steps in a VM. If you break something you can start over without affecting your workstation. This is also meant to do your fist step with dnf and groups etc. Learning by doing and also read the Manuals. There are a lot of volunteers keeping them up to date.
Please see here:
About the group install a nice example is when you use the Fedora Way to do virtualization. For that we also have a nice documentation. This will help you to get familiar with dnf and the different variant of installation, including the group install:
When you encounter a specific problem, you can create a separate issue about that, giving enough information and we will love to help you get along.
Learning by doing 
P.S.
To give some thoughts about the difference between an Edition and a Lab. While the Editions are driven and controlled by Fesco, a Lab is a purely Community driven initiative. This labs contain a lot of upstream software including older once. It can be, that you encounter issues which have to be newly included into this labs and also it might some testing needed. This way I would not use a Lab as a day to day installation.
Just keep in mind that the audio group is made especially for such a lab. That is why i can not emphasize enough to be aware of some imperfections.
I think @ycollet can also sing you a song about the work which goes in such a project, updating every 6 month and test all again.
You can also try the Audinux COPR repository.
It’s a repository containing a lot of tools for audio and music.
I used it to play guitar in real time.
An example:
Thank you for this answer, ilikelinux ! I know a little about Virtualisation, having Windows10 as a VM, and my only issues with it is about audio ! That’s a bit the reason why I was searching for other ways to test. I’m gonna read …
And you can check this article on Fedora Magazine:
And some others too:
Very interesting, Yann ! I’m gonne give it an eye ! Thank you !
In general, with the current dnf5 syntax, the easy way to install a group use
sudo dnf install @GROUPNAME. So for the audio group that would be sudo dnf install @audio, or using the older dnf4 syntax it would be sudo dnf group install "Audio Production". To upgrade a group that is already installed similarly use the same command but replace the “install” with “upgrade”
You can see most of the available groups and the group name to use with dnf group list. The first column is the name to use with the dnf5 syntax.
Thanks, Jeff.
I guess I’m not gonna make it right now, after reading Yann and ilikelinux, I think I’d better first read more about ‘audio’ in Fedora, and when I feel that I’m ready to dive … I will !