I’m running Windows 10 22H2 and tried installing Fedora Media Writer. When I launch the executable, I’m presented with a UAC prompt to enter my admin password, but after entering my password, nothing seems to happen. It doesn’t seem to install nor does it launch the application. I tried restarting my PC but that didn’t seem to help.
use imgburn in Windows
imgburn is for discs only & cannot make bootable flash drives.
imgburn is practically abandonware, zero updates in 10 years.
on windows you can alternatively use tools like rufus, yumi & ventoy to make a bootable flash drive.
I actually have Ventoy set up on a USB already. I just heard that Fedora Media Writer automatically verifies the ISO files for you. Since the ISOs are coming from third-parties, I’d like to verify them, but it seems like doing so with PGP on Windows is a bit of a hassle that I’d like to avoid, so I was hoping I’d be able to download the ISOs through Fedora Media Writer (which comes directly from Fedora’s website, signed by Red Hat) and (hopefully?) they’d automatically be verified.
I’m not a very technical user, I just try to remain security-conscious and was hoping to try out Fedora 40 to see if it this version works better with my hardware out of the box.
1st things 1st, from where are you downloading the fedora isos? which 3rd parties?
download the official isos from the fedora site & verify the check sums for authenticity.
you do not need to be a ’ very technical user ’ to do the above.
add the fedora iso to your ventoy flash drive & install.
From whichever mirrors I get when downloading an ISO from Fedora’s website. It seems like the specific mirror you’re redirected to is random or semi-random. Just to give a specific example, I just downloaded an ISO which came from the University of Calgary Open Source Mirror Site Maintained by the Department of Computer Science.
This is different from Fedora Media Writer, which comes directly from Fedora and is signed by Red Hat, a verified publisher… At least according to the UAC prompt.
Of course, I don’t expect the third-party mirrors to be malicious, but I don’t want to take my chances with extremely important pieces of software like my OS.
How? The instructions provided next to the download button seem to only provide instructions for Linux (or perhaps Unix-like?) systems with PGP installed. I’m on Windows, those commands don’t seem to work. Most of the “advice” I’ve seen is to just compare the checksums (which you can actually do on Windows OOTB), however the hashes also come from third-parties, which defeats the whole purpose. If I can’t download the ISOs or hash values directly from Fedora (verified with TLS) and I can’t get Fedora Media Writer (which comes from Fedora, signed by Red Hat) to verify it for me, it seems the only way to verify it would be to learn to use PGP/GPG and verify that manually, which doesn’t seem to be explained anywhere on Fedora’s website. (Or at least not in the “Verify your download” part)
I’d be open to learning PGP, but as stated earlier, that’s the kind of hassle I was hoping to avoid.
Respectfully, most if not all “non-technical” users who would’ve faced this issue with Fedora Media Writer would’ve either given up or they would’ve used an unverified ISO. I’m just trying to make the effort to get it to work or possibly report it as a bug because I’d love to be able to (safely) try Fedora with as little hassle as possible. I know Fedora isn’t typically the first “just-works” desktop Linux distribution people usually recommend, so maybe that’s not Fedora’s target audience, which is totally fair. But if it isn’t something the average person (who, relatively speaking, is somewhat computer-illiterate) can perform, I’d consider it to be a little bit “technical”, regardless of how trivial the task may seem to developers and enthusiasts.
In any case, I’d love to be able to get Fedora Media Writer working if anyone has any troubleshooting tips. If not, I’d either need to find the hash values directly from Fedora or perhaps read a guide on how to set up and use PGP to verify Fedora ISOs, so any resources to either of those would also be much appreciated. I’m also curious if there’s an easy way to report this as a bug if it turns out there is no way for me to get it running. I’d hate for other users to be turned away from FOSS or have to wrestle with getting a verified ISO just as I am.