Install guide for a minimal Fedora 22 desktop

These are my notes for setting up a Fedora 22-installation but with a smaller set of packages. It's mainly for my own use but it's out there in case anyone else needs it.

Reasons for using this guide

This document guides you through the processes of setting up a non-standard install. Why in the world would anyone do that?

• Smaller footprint means fewer updates and security-holes.
• Your webbrowser or terminal emulator of choice might not be the ones in a default install. Resulting in multiple applications for the same purpose.
• You will not be bothered with apps you never use (cheese, gnome-maps, gnome-weather, gnome-documents, brasero).
• People nowadays use web-based applications for e-mail, word-processing, chatting and music (evolution, libreoffice, empathy, rhythmbox).
• A lot of applications aren't used in virtual machines or in front of the TV (scanning, printing, vpn, wifi, input-support, language-support, hardware-support, localized fonts).
• Probably improved performance, battery-life and bootup-time.
• Why not use respins (eg Korora) or third-party installers (eg Fedy)? Official packages and scripts tend to be better maintained and of higher quality. Security/trust. Keeping it vanilla makes it easier to use upstream bug-tracking, mailing-lists, chats and forums. Longer support. Safer upgrade-path.

Installing the base system

Download Fedora Server Netinstall ISO and transfer it onto onto a USB-disk.

In the installer under Software Selection, select Minimal Install.

To use sudo instead of root: once the install starts choose the User Creation dialog (with Make this user administrator checked), don't use the Root Password dialog.

Graphical environment

Run these commands to install X, GNOME and a terminal.

$ sudo dnf install @base-x gnome-shell
$ sudo dnf install gnome-terminal dejavu-sans-mono-fonts bash-completion # terminal
$ sudo dnf install NetworkManager-wifi # if you're on a laptop
$ sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target # enable on boot
$ sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target # start

At this point you will have a fully functional desktop but with ~820 fewer packages compared to Fedora Workstation.

Web browser

Next you'll probably want a web-browser so that you can copy-and-paste commands. This will install Firefox

$ sudo dnf install firefox liberation-*-fonts mozilla-adblockplus

Hardware and software support

For additional hardware- and software-support you can add a third-party repository called RPM Fusion containing packages that are not available in the standard Fedora repos (firmware for your wifi-card, graphics-drivers, video-codecs and more).

$ sudo dnf install --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Better looking fonts

Fedora doesn't come prepackaged with some patches and settings you'll need for your fonts to look sharp. Install RPM Fusion's version of FreeType (that comes with subpixel anti-aliasing) and configure hinting.

$ sudo dnf install freetype-freeworld
$ sudo curl -o /etc/fonts/local.conf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/benmat/fedora-install/master/fontconfig.xml

Restart any applications to use the new changes.

Other utilities

You might need some more apps, these are the GNOME defaults.

$ sudo dnf install gedit # Editor
$ sudo dnf install nautilus # File manager
$ sudo dnf install gnome-system-monitor # System monitor
$ sudo dnf install eog # Image viewer
$ sudo dnf install baobab # Disk usage analyzer

Chrome

$ sudo cat << EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo
[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome - \$basearch
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/\$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
EOF
$ sudo dnf install google-chrome-stable

I recommend installing the extensions AdBlock and Adwaita (GNOME 3).

Video-player and codecs

GNOME Videos (Totem)

$ sudo dnf install totem gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-vaapi

VLC

$ sudo dnf install vlc

Flash

If you need Flash-support in Firefox.

sudo rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
sudo dnf install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

MTP support

If you, for example, need to copy photos from your Android-device via USB.

sudo dnf install gvfs-mtp

Compare packages with standard Fedora Workstation

If you need help finding a package you know is installed in Fedora Workstation check the output of this command.

$ sudo dnf groupinstall 'Fedora Workstation' --assumeno