There are multiple desktops available for use with Fedora. Each has a slightly different look and feel and offers varying levels of customization. You can use the Fedora Workstation image, which comes with the
GNOME desktop by default, and then change your environment afterwards by installing additional packages, or you can download a spin image which will give you a different environment out of the box. Visit Fedora Spins for more information. You can also take advantage of Fedora Labs. Fedora Labs is a selection of curated bundles of purpose-driven software and content as curated and maintained by members of the Fedora Community.
These may be installed as standalone full versions of Fedora or as add-ons to existing Fedora installations. Visit Fedora Labs for details. You can write all Fedora ISO images to
a USB stick, making this a convenient way on any USB-bootable computer to either install Fedora or try a live Fedora environment without writing to the computer’s hard disk. You will need a USB stick at least as large as the image you wish to write. The
official and supported tool to create a Fedora USB stick is the Fedora Media Writer utility, which was formerly known as LiveUSB Creator. To learn more about this application and how to use it, refer to the Preparing for Installation chapter of the Fedora Installation Guide.
Fedora Media Writer destroys all data on the USB stick. If you need a non-destructive write method (to preserve existing data on your USB stick) or support for 'data persistence', you can use the livecd-iso-to-disk utility on Fedora. Using GNOME Disk Utility
This method is for people running Linux, or another unix with GNOME, Nautilus and the GNOME Disk Utility installed. Particularly, if you are using a distribution other than Fedora which does not support Flatpak, this may be the easiest available method. A standard installation of Fedora, or a standard GNOME installation of many other distributions, should be able to use this method. On Fedora, ensure the packages nautilus and gnome-disk-utility are installed. Similar graphical direct-write tools may be available for other desktops, or you may use the command-line direct write method.
Command line methods
Using the livecd-iso-to-disk tool
The
By combining these features, you can carry your computer with you in your pocket, booting it on nearly any system you find yourself using. It is not a good idea to try and write a new Fedora release using the version of Ensure the livecd-tools package is installed:
If necessary, you can have
To include a persistent filesystem for
This will create a 2 GiB filesystem that will be mounted as To enable 'data persistence' support - so changes you make to the entire live environment
will persist across boots - add the
Here,
You can combine Using a direct write method
This method directly writes the image to the USB stick much like Fedora Media Writer or GNOME Disk Utility, but uses a command line utility named
Using UNetbootin for Windows, macOS, and Linux
UNetbootin is a graphical, bootable USB image creator. Using it will allow you to preserve any data you have in the USB drive. If you have trouble booting, however, you may wish to try with a blank, cleanly FAT32-formatted drive.
Creating a USB stick from a running live environmentIf you are already running a live CD, DVD, or USB and want to convert that into a bootable USB stick, run the following command:
Booting from USB sticksAlmost all modern PCs can boot from USB sticks. However, how you tell the system to boot from a USB stick varies substantially from system to system. Initially, you can try this:
If the computer starts to boot off the hard drive as normal, you’ll need to manually configure it to boot off the USB drive. Usually, that should work like this:
If your system has a UEFI firmware, it will usually allow you to boot the stick in UEFI native mode or BIOS compatibility mode. If you boot in UEFI native mode and perform a Fedora installation, you will get a UEFI native Fedora installation. If you boot in BIOS compatibility mode and perform a Fedora installation, you will get a BIOS compatibility mode Fedora installation. For more information on all this, see the UEFI page. USB sticks written from x86_64 images with Fedora Media Writer,
GNOME Disk Utility, Identifying a stick on LinuxMost of the writing methods will require you to know the
Troubleshooting a live USBlivecd-iso-to-disk problemsPartition isn’t marked bootable If you get the message Partitions need a filesystem labelIf you get the message If you get this message from fdisk, you may need to reformat the flash drive when writing the image, by passing If your test boot reports a corrupted boot sector, or you get the message
Testing a USB stick using qemuYou can test your stick using QEMU. # umount /dev/sdX1 $ qemu -hda /dev/sdX -m 1024 -vga std Mounting a Live USB filesystemYou can use the liveimage-mount script in the livecd-tools package to mount an attached Live USB device or other LiveOS image, such as an ISO or Live CD. This is convenient when you want to copy in or out some file from the LiveOS filesystem on a Live USB, or just examine the files in a Live ISO or Live CD. Creating and using live CDGetting startedTo create a live image, the The # dnf install livecd-tools spin-kickstarts If you are interested in localized (i.e. translated into other languages) live CD files, install also l10n-kickstarts. Configuring the imageThe configuration of the live image is defined by a file called kickstart. It can include some basic system configuration items, the package manifest, and a script to be run at the end of the build process. For the Fedora project, the most important live image configurations files are:
kickstart files for other spins, e.g. Fedora Electronics Lab, can be found in You can create a customized
kickstart file by running
Making the imageTo make the image, simply issue the following command: livecd-creator --verbose \ --config=/path/to/kickstart/file.ks \ --fslabel=Image-Label \ --cache =/var/cache/live The name given by
If you have the repositories available locally and don’t want to wait for the download of packages, just substitute the URLs listed in the configuration file to point to your local repositories.
ExamplesSpinning the Fedora desktopThe following command: livecd-creator --verbose \ --config=/usr/share/spin-kickstarts/fedora-live-workstation.ks \ --fslabel=Fedora-LiveCD \ --cache=/var/cache/live This will create a live
CD called Fedora-LiveCD using the A Barebones live CDThe following command: livecd-creator --verbose \ --config=/usr/share/doc/livecd-tools-$(rpm -q livecd-tools --qf "%{VERSION}")/livecd-fedora-minimal.ks \ --cache=/var/cache/live This will create a live CD that will boot to a login prompt. Testing your live CD using KVM or qemuAs root: # qemu-kvm -m 2048 -vga qxl -cdrom filename.iso
Replace Live image media verificationThe live image can incorporate functionality to verify itself. To do so, you need to
have isomd5sum installed both on the system used for creating the image and installed into the image. This is so that the |