Will Fedora run on this build?

Ask Fedora
1

Hi All,

Leaving the Mac world and going to custom build PC. I want to run Fedora as my daily driver, and dual boot with Win10 for some apps I need that are not on Linux.

Will Fedora run fine on this build?

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 4.2 GHz 16-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Asus ROG RYUO III 360 ARGB 70.07 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI MAG X670E TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory
Storage: Samsung 870 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL III RGB ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: MSI A1000G PCIE5 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Thanks in advance

2

Can I assume you are planning to by this hardware and do not have it yet?

I would search the web for the motherboard and linux compatibility to see what you find. Also read the manual for the motherboard and see what it claims for OS support.

If you have the hardware then boot a fedora live image to test the hardware.

As an aside MSI was hacked and lost the signing keys for its firmware.

I love MSI but the hack is very concerning Leak of MSI UEFI signing keys stokes fears of “doomsday” supply chain attack | Ars Technica

3

Thank for the response… I do not have the hardware yet, and since I posted this I changed my mind and plan on switching to a ASRock X670E Taichi EATX AM5 Motherboard instead. I will look to see if there is any compatibility info on the web…

Didnt know about the MSI hack, thanks for the info…

4

https://linux-hardware.org/

5

Almost everything works with fedora.

The caveat is that there are certain wifi chipsets that are problematic, such as broadcom and some of the newest of the others. There are also issues with some of the newest GPUs.

Other than that almost anything is acceptable. The link above is a good place to look for things that are known to work or not work as the case may be, but is far from all-inclusive.

6

https://linux-hardware.org/

Thats a great site, Thanks!

7

A couple of things I have learned with my 7950X build with an rtx 3060 Ti:

  1. The main weakness of Linux with hardware compatibility (in my experience) is wifi stability and wifi speed. And I have one of the supposedly “good” wifi chipsets for Linux in my X670E Gigabyte Aorus Master motherboard. I have had issues on Fedora, Linux mint, and Pop!_OS, so this seems to be a pretty common Linux issue. If your desktop is right by your wifi router, just connect it to your desktop with the ethernet cable. If you experience this and your desktop is not right by your wifi router, you can get a wifi extender with an ethernet port. It’s just a little device you can plug into an outlet by your machine and you can connect it to your desktop with an ethernet cable. Ethernet on Linux is fine. Wifi is hit or miss. Trust me, this is way simpler than trying to troubleshoot it or distro hop until you find one that doesn’t have wifi issues. And it’s much more elegant than connecting your desktop to the router with a giant ethernet cable.

  2. In my experience, some apps on Fedora (which uses wayland windowing system by default) are a bit buggy. i.e. app window will turn black or flicker or just generally be laggy. I don’t experience this on distros like Linux Mint or Pop!_OS, which use the X11 windowing system by default. This might be related to Nvidia GPUs and/or Wayland, I am not sure. If you experience stuff like this, try switching to X11 from Wayland on Fedora to see if that helps at all.

A couple of other things:

  1. Depending on how often you need to run apps that are only available on Windows, it may be simpler to run a windows virtual machine than dual booting. Just another option to consider.

  2. If you plan to do any kind of RGB or if any of your components come with RGB, make sure they are supported by OpenRGB.

8

I have 2 different desktops that have been running Fedora for years.
Both have wifi connections.
One has this

$ inxi -Nzxx
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:0030

$ lspci
04:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

and the other has this

$ inxi -Nzxx 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie: speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 1
    bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2723

$ lspci
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (rev 1a)

I have never had any problems with either and both are pcie cards. Stable and reliable on both the 2.4 and the 5GHz wifi band.

9

Mine is:

Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz (rev 1a)

so maybe avoid this one if you need to use a wireless connection. It has given me issues on multiple distros. Great motherboard, but apparently wifi support on Linux is not great. Also, I have heard that ASUS boards have been burning up X3D chips, so maybe avoid those for reasons unrelated to Linux.

10

Thanks for the responses… and info about wifi. My machine will be hardwired via cat6a ethernet so wifi shouldn’t be an issue for me generally.

OpenRGB sounds like a great solution… I’ll look into this…

Running Windows in a VM is a possibility, I have considered it. I am a graphics professional so I need to run the Adobe Suite (for now). I just figured it would run better in native Windows.

Part of my transition to Fedora permanently is switching away from Adobe to FOSS alternatives. So far, nothing FOSS can really hold a candle to InDesign/Photoshop/Premiere. Maybe GIMP, but not really on a Pro level. Same with InDesign alternative, Scribus? Davinci Resolve is great, but dont think its FOSS (I could be wrong I know it has the free version). The only viable alternative I’ve found is the Affinity Suite but that is not on Linux and is also not FOSS. Once I am completely up to speed with Affinity I will switch over to that, then once there is a real viable FOSS alternative I will dump my native Windows and just run a VM for a few other non related apps that are relatively light weight and can easily be done in a VM…

Thanks for all the info thus far peoples… Much appreciated…