I have a nice i5 Dell 5420 laptop I got used but it’s mint. 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I want Fedora on it but want some advice before I dive in (as experience taught me to ask beforehand, rather than after (a mistake))!
I have dabbled with Fedora 39/40 Workstation. I am thinking of trying out KDE but that’s not for this thread. I have a few questions before I wipe Windows off this machine…
File System - The Fedora install process confused me enough to just go for ‘simple’ or ‘default’ settings last time. Since then people have mentioned ‘btfs’ to me and suggested I should have made other choices, maybe for better backups or ‘snapshots’ (not entirely sure what they are or how they work). I’d be grateful for any recommendations on my install settings this time. I can just go for default again, but if there are advantages to choosing other options (partitions?), I may consider it.
BIOS - On my last machine (Lenovo) I had to use Hirens Boot CD to get a WIndows environment where I could install BIOS updates, not possible via Fedora apparently. Do I need to do similar things with a Dell? Sorry for my vagueness, that’s just where my knowledge level is. Are there any other general things I should ‘do’ with the BIOS before wiping windows and writing Fedora?
Which reminds me of one specific thing I remember from last time - Secure Boot. I don’t know if this is on or not on the Dell, I would assume it’s on as it has Win11 and it’s fairly new. Do I need to turn this offer before installing Fedora?
Thanks for any comments
For now I will just busy myself with learning how to boot from my shiny new Fedora installer USB! (Damn that Fedora Media Writer app is superb, just bloody superb!)
btrfs is already the default filesystem. Use whatever backup software you prefer. btrfs snapshots can be useful for this, but they’re not enabled by default and not necessary.
All Dell laptops will receive firmware updates via GNOME Software or Plasma Discover. This includes even laptops that don’t officially support Linux. You’ll receive a notification when there is an update available; no configuration is required. (This is also true for Lenovo Thinkpads, but not other Lenovos.)
Do not turn off secure boot. That’s not necessary and it’s there to protect you from bootkit malware.
Thanks very much, that’s some relief to me and if I had known some of that before choosing a Dell, I would have chosen one even faster!!
If I may…
So are you saying I can just go ahead and do as before, totally default format/partitioning/install? I have heard a few people suggesting that it’s ‘better’ to partition or format the drive differently, maybe not file system itself, but divisions/partitions. I can’t remember why it was suggested as better than the default approach, but it did sound convincing enough to cause me to ask before going ahead this time.
Are you able to name any? I have asked about backups before and the consensus seemed to be ‘backup your home folder’, and then some clever tricks (which are beyond me) to create some chronological routines which auto run. My ideal would be whatever is closest to Apple’s TimeMachine, actually no, my IDEAL would be something akin to Carbon Copy Cloner. That thing is so damn useful, especially being bootable. I still have a bootable backup of my Mac from 10 years ago (which believe it or not does have some uses due to the apps I had installed!)
That’s VERY cool thanks!
Noted, I heard secure boot has benefits but others debate the value of it. Either way, I’d feel better with it on, that’s what ignorance gets you (me)
Thanks again. I am away for 24 hours then diving in when I get back.
Oh and PS… I just tried a Live USB and opted to ‘test media’ before running the OS. It failed the test, pic below. I suspect I can ignore it (read other threads about it I think, in the past), but if you could confirm it’s not a concern, I will go ahead and wipe the nasty Bill Gates creation off this machine for good
Yup. People have different preferences and strong opinions regarding how to partition disks. Asides from boot partitions, Fedora Workstation and Fedora KDE put everything onto one btrfs partition, with one subvolume for home and one for everything else. This is probably the best configuration for most users and there are many good reasons for doing it this way. But if you prefer something else, it’s your computer, so feel free to do whatever.
In Fedora Workstation, try Pika Backup, which uses Borg. (I’m not familiar with backup apps designed for KDE.)
I don’t see much point to backing up system files, but if you want to do this, then you might want to investigate tools that use btrfs snapshots like Snapper. I’m not familiar with them, though.
Besides Pika Backup, I would also suggest Déjà-Dup Backups, given that the former is only available as flatpak from Flathub, the latter one has Fedora packaging as well (both RPM and flatpak).
As for backup, if you do go the Borg backup route, try Vorta for the GUI for Borg. If you want to go the snapper/snapshot route using the features of btrfs, then install btrfs-assistant which makes using snapper super easy.
Thanks everyone. I’m not really familiar with ‘snapshots’. But by the sound of it I think the two options are a bit similar to my old ways (Timemachine for incremental, CarbonCopyCloner for full system clone). Am I right in thinking DejaDup/Pika are more akin to Timemachine, and Snapper is more like CCC?
I can reply to the first part of the question. Deja-Dup is indeed more akin to TimeMachine (without the “spatial visual” effects when presenting previous backups ), with some caveats:
it’s better suited for the Home folder and maybe other shared drives, or at least user accessible files/folders (if I remember well, TimeMachine can do full system backup too)
the default interval between backups is one week (can be changed though), while TimeMachine makes hourly backups for the more recent ones
Deja-Dup can also do remote backups, which is a plus. You can even choose a Google account as backup location, with the added security that the backup files can be password encrypted.
I don’t find backing up the whole system necessary. For added confort, before upgrading to a new release, I make an image copy of the system partitions, using a live USB (Fedora has some ).
Could you please elaborate on this? What is an image copy, and what are the system partitions? Does this replace/mimic the ‘system’ backup which TimeMachine does on Mac?
thanks
When installing Fedora Workstation, the installer usually creates three partitions:
one for the EFI system partition, with mount point at /boot/efi
one for boot data (kernel, grub etc), mounted at /boot
one for the root (/) and home (home) partitions.
You can check your partitions with lsblk in a terminal, or by running GNOME Disks.
With disk image I meant cloning these partitions for backup porposes on external media. You can do this with a live USB, since the partitions to be cloned have to be unmounted, as follows:
start a bootable Fedora live ISO from USB (the ones used also for installing Fedora)
log in to a live session
open the Disks app
select a partion (repeat for each of the partitions identified above)
click on the cogwheel button
select the Create partition image option
select as target an external drive (USB, SSD etc). The external drive has to be bigger than the total size of the partition being cloned.
press Start Creating… .
Given that this process can take several hours, and occupies a good share of an external SSD, I am only using it before upgrading to a new major release. If something goes wrong with the system upgrade, I can restore the partition images (with steps similar to the above) and have the old OS back.
This is by no means akin to Apple’s Time Machine. In order to incrementally back up my data, similar to Time Machine, I am using Deja-Dup, and backing up my home folder to the cloud, encrypted with password. I can restore previous versions of specific files if needed.
Briefly: using Deja-Dup on a regular basis, as automatic scheduled backup of my Home folder, and using partition image backups only between major releases.
So, I know I have a 1TB internal SSD, so that’s device SDA1 (I think).
As for ‘Volumes’ - looks like there are 4, but only 3 are called ‘Partitions’. Confused.com.
I think I may just give up on trying to secure the ‘system’ files, probably unnecessary in reality, although I LOVED using CarbonCopyCloner on Mac to give me a BOOTABLE mirror image of my machine. GOD I LOVED THAT! (And I keep old versions of my machines with old apps on like Dreamweaver for editing old html pages and stuff, cool to have, hardly ever use, but cool to have…
I just checked, I have only run one backup ever (before I went away a few weeks ago). I used PIKA BACKUP - reviews of DejaDup put me off and I did install it and found it complicated, but I was in a mad rush and needed something as ‘one push’ as possible! So I took a backup of JUST my HOME folder. That’s all I have currently. I think I read somewhere that there are other folders outside Home folder that should be backed up, but that gets messy and I didn’t have time to look into it.
The disk is sda, with the 3 partitions sda1, sda2 and sda3, only that sda3 is a LUKS encrypted partition, hence the visual representation with the encrypted volume and its decrypted filesystem below.
The Disks app can also create images of the whole disk, with the caveat that it doesn’t create a bootable mirror disk. For bootable copies, there are several Linux command line utilities instead, including the ubiquitous dd (easy to use and versatile, but can destroy data if used incorrectly).
Oftentimes I don’t see the need for full disk backup, given that a disk restore might sometimes (especially for larger disks) take longer than an OS reinstall and restoring the home directory.
That can be useful for users who have performed lots of system configurations, but in my opinion it is not necessary for those desktop users who don’t really tweak their systems.
Deja Dup is intended to save your personal files, like your documents or your email. It is a smarter alternative to copying the files manually.
It is very simple in my opinion, it just asks what directory or single files you want to save and what remote directory to use. It is pre-configured for Google GDrive and MS Onedrive, you just have to complete the “authorization” procedure.
Then it asks for the encryption password and if you want to automate the process. Optionally you can set the frequence (like once a week) and how long you want to keep the backups (like three months), after the limit one enters, one exits.
If/when you reinstall Deja Dup, to access the backups you made before you have to go for “new backup” and then just point to the old existing directory.
I could not find a basic QT backup software that provides encryption, that is necessary when you upload the backup on some file hosting service.
BTRFS snapshots are totally a different thing, they are intended to save the filesystem, not directories and files. It is way more complicated, considering that Fedora doesn’t provide anything by default, besides BTRFS. In my understanding, the snapshots are better used for rolling back some broken update/upgrade.
Now I am curious, if Thunderbird profile isn’t in your /home, where is it?
The reason to place the backups on a remote hosting service is to avoid the classic problem of hardware failures that you don’t notice until you need the backup and you find the disk is failing and some data cannot be retrieved. For limited amount of data, the service is “free”, so why not?
Then it is also convenient because you don’t have to connect any external device or being inside some local network, you just need an Internet connection, both for making the backups and for retrieving the saved data.
I do both manual backups as copies on external drives, typically before making big changes on the system and weekly automated backups on GDrive. My manual backups sit in a drawer because of another problem, if you store data on drives that are always connected, anything that can damage data on your machine can also find the data on the external drive, so that isn’t safe.
I made a mistake, TB profile is indeed in /home, just in a different folder to where TB guides always refer to (due to using Flatpak).
I have never wanted to entrust my data to third party / cloud services. I have fire safes, plenty of spare hardware, and thus no need to give myself something new to learn and set up. Just a personal choice. I am sure there are trustworthy places to put the data (at least until they get hacked, have a datacentre fire or…) but just the process of researching them is work I don’t need and don’t have time for. My data is safe, and it stays here (and at relatives house in another fire safe. :P)
I wrote “basic” QT backup software. Vorta is not. Of course it depends on what we consider to be “basic”. IMHO Deja Dup which does not require ANY additional step once you have a GDrive or OneDrive account, is the ideal solution for an home user.
There is a QT backup tool among KDE apps but it basically just copies files to another place that is a little too “basic”.
About Pika Backup, that is nice but:
it requires an account over a Borg hosting service.
the configurations is a bit more complicated to be “basic”, from what I understand you need to copy/paste encryption keys.
Yes, I make the opposite mistake of not considering flatpaks because I don’t use any.
Unfortunately I do use some “free” services from Google so it makes no differece if I place my documents and email on GDrive since they already have most of those elsewhere.
Even worse, they can read my email from Gmail while the backup is encrypted (in theory, don’t know how safe it is).
It seems to me that since most people use smartphones and Web services, the “privacy” train left the station long ago. In the same time, having a backup is necessary and it should be part of the basic default settings.
Agreed, generally anyway. Certainly not in my case. I use virtually zero ‘cloud’ stuff (maybe it is actually zero). GrapheneOS on my phone. The data harvesting is sickening to me, but as you say, that train has LONG since left the station for most people. Convenience is just too addictive sadly, and I do get that, it costs me hundreds of manhours per year to just stay reasonably privacy-focussed.
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