Hello, I’m new here.
After breaking my Windows 10 OS with scripts, I finally decided that it's time that I switch to Linux and force myself to learn it. I've settled on Fedora, because I felt that it wouldn't be too streamlined like deb/ubuntu/mint derivatives, while not being as time-consuming as arch, therefore being the perfect balance. Plenty of others have also vouched for it as a search-ending distro for those who like to distro-hop.
Unfortunately my experience with Fedora 36 so far has been at best, interesting, and at worst, just broken, and I'm not quite sure as to why. I have a list of issues, and would appreciate any advice on how to rectify any of them. I really hope that I won't have to go to a different distro, or worse, back to Windows. I did end up using this list, as well if it helps,
Please note, I am not Linux proficient. I grew up on Windows, since XP for ~15 years of my life, and It took me at least an entire day to learn that:
- Fedora 36 doesn't natively install .deb package files, (.rpm instead)
- Packages aren't what I thought they were, (some kind of software to install the software? not as simple as window's executable, maybe more like a .msi)
- "sudo" (means superuser do, administrator equivalent)
- "sudo apt" doesn't work on fedora (dnf package manager is used instead)
- That I don't know any terminology or commands, like what is cli/terminal or repo, or distro, etc. (Command Line Interface/terminal, is like command prompt, repo = repository, which can hold files to download or use, distro = distribution or types of linux), plenty more things I don't know
etc. etc., so any pointers for additional resources would be great.
I don't believe my machine to be slow, but not modern either:
OS: Fedora Linux 36 (Workstation Edition)
Host: AB350-Gaming 3
Kernel: 5.18.5-200.fc36.x86_64
Packages: 2032 (rpm), 13 (flatpak)
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 2560x1440
DE: GNOME 42.2
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (12) @ 3.200GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Memory: 3510MiB / 15800MiB (16gb)
I can provide any other information from inxi -Fzx, like I see from some users post if needed.
And now onto the questions:
- Why do some software from certain repositories work, while others don't?
- Why do I sometimes very occasionally get stutters?
- How do you setup QEMU/KVM virtual machines?
- Why does my hard drives keep unmounting?
This was a really strange phenomenon that I noticed while downloading software. So, in the beginning I had no idea how to install software onto Linux.
Discord:
After some googling, I came on this article, https://itsfoss.com/install-discord-fedora/, after looking up "how to install discord on fedora". They recommended initially using the rpmfusion repository, and after installing and running it, i ended up with a black box. I thought that this was the best way since logically, the terminal is your best friend. However, I found that no matter how much I installed and uninstalled it, Discord would always continue to be a black box, and not load correctly.
I then noticed that there is the Software Center. I looked up Discord in it, and found it there, with a repository in the top right called flatpaks from flathub, and opted to try and install discord that way instead. It worked perfectly fine. What. Well except for that fact that I can't screenshare.
Steam:
After using the Software Center and it working so well, I've opted to use it to install Steam. This installation proved to be much more straightforward and clean, as there were 3 different installations offered, 2 from rpmfusion and 1 from flatpaks. I found the rpmfusion one to be more cleaned up, as the flatpak was larger, slightly slower, and less refined, like for example the connecting to Steam Account: username window had a default background. All 3 worked fine though.
VLC:
Hoo boy, there are issues. VLC is my usual go to player for videos. I tried the rpmfusion and flatpak releases from VLC, and suffered from video quality constantly stuttering. Audio was fine though. I know VLC cannot handle .mkv without tinkering, such as changing thread counts, but nothing I did worked, and it had issues running standard mp4 as well. No go.
This worked perfectly fine, except for some reason subtitles are displayed all the way on the left for some reason. This isn't acceptable for me, since I really like to use subtitles, and I was unable to change the position of the subtitles. I don't know if the option exists, but I really hope it does as it's a minor grip for a video player that does work. MPV:
Looking for an alternative to VLC, I found that some users of Linux swore by MPV. Unfortunately, the flatpak version, installed through the Software Center didn't work. When launched, it would only display a black window, once again. In order to even try and install mpv from the rpmfusion repo, I had to do it through the terminal, and that also resulted in the same black window. Kate:
I downloaded Kate, since I hear that a lot of Linux users on KDE liked to use it for text editing. I didn't know what a DE was at this point, but I figured that Kate would probably be good to learn. It's strange, because it did install well, (from Fedora repo (rpm) through terminal), and I could use it. However, every time I clicked on settings, it crashed. I found this deal breaking, since I really wanted Kate's dark mode and some other things, so I gave up on it. Gedit:
Works fine, installed through terminal (believe it was fedora repo), and was able to get dark mode. I'll stick with this, since it feels more customizable and light than sublime text 3. I uninstalled Text Editor after installing this, thinking that I hopefully won't need to use this. Zoom:
Out of all these applications that I REALLY needed to work, it was Zoom for college. And this had to just not work I guess. I installed it from flatpak through Software Center, and when I attempt to open it, I get a transparent box, and nothing else.
I can't install it from the terminal, so I'm guessing there isn't any hope from those repos either. I had gotten a prompt on first-time startup that said something about turning on "EnableWaylandShare", which when I checked, was on. Afterwards, nothing else happened on recurrent launches.
Initially, I followed this guide to get my NVIDIA drivers installed. https://phoenixnap.com/kb/fedora-nvidia-drivers. It was relatively painless, and easy to do so. However, I noticed that Fedora sometimes gets stuck and hangs/becomes unresponsive. It happened when browsing steam, when watching YouTube on Firefox, using VLC (though this might be a VLC issue), and even when I was writing this post. I just wanted to ask if this is normal behavior.
After seeing a video on why dual booting isn't better than vms, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JeP5wGd6wk, I decided to go all in on Fedora. However, I know that I do in fact need Windows to do things like gaming, (specifically 3rd party modding), so I want to set up qemu to utilize the GPU pass through. However, I can't find a solid guide on how to do this, and I'm confused with what exactly is KVM, and what is QEMU, or if there is any difference.
Every time I log out or shutdown my computer and come back, I get a popup stating that my folders from other drives cannot be displayed, and when I check it's unmounted. Is there a way to make it so that they are always mounted?