Fedora Workstation Setup Guide
A friendly guide for setting up Fedora Workstation on ASUS laptops
Newcomers should start by reading the Intro guide. For additional information not covered by this guide, consult the official Fedora Documentation. For simple USB stick flashing: Fedora Media Writer
Contents
About Fedora Versions
This guide is updated for the current stable release of Fedora.
However, please be aware:
- You need to keep Fedora up to date. If you are 2 versions behind, your OS is no longer supported by Fedora (updates, security, etc.)
- E.g. If Fedora 44 is the current stable release, and you are on Fedora 42, your OS is unsupported.
Installation
- Download the latest Fedora Workstation (or KDE Plasma Edition) ISO file from the official Fedora website and write it to a USB stick.
Note
If you want something else than GNOME or KDE as your Desktop Environment, you can check out Fedora Spins.
-
If you have difficulties starting the live environment from USB, in the Fedora boot menu select: Troubleshooting → Start Fedora in basic graphics mode
-
Follow the steps of the installer, and remove the USB stick when you reboot
-
After rebooting, the installer will present a series of dialog boxes to configure wireless networking, privacy, third party repositories, cloud services, and finally a local user account. Ensure that third party repositories are enabled, so that the proprietary NVIDIA drivers can be installed (covered later in this guide).
Setup
Using the Terminal
This guide requires typing terminal commands. To type them, start the Terminal application, which opens a window that has a command prompt.
To open the Terminal, simply press the Windows/Super key to bring up the Start Menu (KDE) or the Activities view (GNOME), and start typing “term” in the search box. Click on the search result.
Commands that have sudo in front are administrator commands, and may require you to type in your password.
Update Fedora
The first thing you want to do is definitely make sure your OS is up-to-date, which can address some issues like WiFi not being functional.
Tip
If you have trouble getting WiFi or Wired Internet to work (commonly seen on newly released products), use your phone hotspot via USB to get internet access.
Simply run this in the terminal then reboot and you are good to go
sudo dnf update -y
Or if you don’t want to use terminal:
- Open the “Software” application. (KDE Users should use “Discover”)
- Navigate to Updates tab
- Click the Refresh-button in the top left corner
- Download all available updates
- After the updates have been downloaded, click the “Restart & Update” button
Wait until the updates are installed.
Note
It is recommended to restart the system to avoid problems with outdated packages loaded into RAM.
Enabling the Terra Repository
ASUS Linux packages and tools are currently packaged on the Terra Repository for Fedora. Add the Terra repo with the following commands:
sudo dnf install --nogpgcheck --repofrompath 'terra,https://repos.fyralabs.com/terra$releasever' terra-release terra-gpg-keys
Warning
The older community-maintained COPR repository is no longer recommended and is currently broken due to expired signing keys, so it should not be used. If you previously enabled it, migrate to the Terra repository by using the above command, and by deleting the old copr repository with
sudo dnf copr remove lukenukem/asus-linux. Don’t forget to reinstall all ASUS Linux tools.
Asusctl
This section covers installing asusctl and its supporting software. This enables controls for the Asus ROG hardware on the laptop.
sudo dnf install asusctl
The asusd service is started automatically by a udev rule, so it does not need to be enabled. You can check its status or restart it manually:
systemctl status asusd.service
# or, to restart it:
sudo systemctl restart asusd.service
asusd manages platform profiles and CPU EPP settings itself. Running an external power management daemon (such as power-profiles-daemon or tuned) alongside asusd can cause race conditions and contention over the platform profile and EPP preferences. You have two options:
- Let
asusdmanage profiles and disable the external daemon. Since Fedora 41,tunedis the default power profile daemon. Note that KDE Plasma’s PowerDevil can respawnpower-profiles-daemonthrough DBus activation even after it is disabled, so be sure to mask it instead:
sudo systemctl mask --now power-profiles-daemon.service
# or, if you use tuned:
sudo systemctl mask --now tuned.service tuned-ppd.service
- Keep the external daemon and disable
asusd’s profile management by setting the following tofalsein/etc/asusd/asusd.ron:
change_platform_profile_on_ac: false,
change_platform_profile_on_battery: false,
platform_profile_linked_epp: false,
See issue #264 for details.
ROG Control Center
ROG Control Center is a GUI tool that can be used to configure asusctl. After adding the Terra repository as described above, you can now install the tool:
sudo dnf install asusctl-rog-gui
Note
For complete functionality and driver support, it is recommended to use a Kernel version of 6.19 or greater.
Install Nvidia Graphics Drivers
Note
AMD dGPU laptop owners can skip this section.
Important
If you have secure boot enabled at this point, you must disable it to continue. Once you’re finished installing drivers, see the section on enabling Secure Boot later to re-enable it.
- If you didn’t enable third-party repositories during the initial install wizard, you can use the following command to enable the RPM Fusion repositories required to install the Nvidia drivers:
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
Note
For Laptops with NVIDIA card older than Turing, install the Negativo17 instead.
- Install the Nvidia drivers:
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
Important
Please remember to wait after the RPM transaction ends to allow the kmod be built. This can take up to 5 minutes on older systems, and about 2 minutes on newer systems.
- Reboot your system
For more details, see the official documentation for RPM Fusion.
Graphics Switching
See GPU Switching for how to manage the dGPU and MUX.
Optional Steps
Installing RPM Fusion
Usually, when you enable third-party repositories, RPM-Fusion is enabled automatically. However, if it is not, you can follow this guide.
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
Hardware Accelerated codecs
Fedora does not include the codecs needed to use Vaapi on Intel, AMD or Nvidia in its repositories due to potential legal issues. Therefore, you need to install the codecs in your system (Flatpak and containers (like distrobox, toolbx, docker, podman, etc.) must install their own codecs, as they do not share the system ones).
You need RPM-Fusion repos and follow this guide.
Enabling Secure Boot
With Fedora 36 and above, it has become super easy to auto sign kernel modules and enable secure boot. To enable auto signing follow these steps:
Install the required tools
sudo dnf install kmodtool akmods mokutil openssl
Initiate the key enrollment
Note
This step requires a password, it doesn’t need to be fancy. You’ll just need it once during the enrollment.
sudo kmodgenca -a
sudo mokutil --import /etc/pki/akmods/certs/public_key.der
Reboot to enroll the key
When you reboot, the MOK Manager will appear, just hit “Enroll MOK” and enter the password set in step 2. After that is completed choose “Continue boot”.
Rebuild the kernel module
If you installed the nvidia drivers before key enrollment, you must run the following command
sudo akmods --force --rebuild
sudo dracut --force
Then reboot the system:
sudo systemctl reboot
After booting, verify that the rebuilt NVIDIA module is loaded:
nvidia-smi