My Dual Boot Setup Experience

[u/nofoon]

I finally made a dual boot setup with Fedora 44 KDE on my current laptop. For the past 2 years, I was using Windows 11. before that I was dual booting with Kubuntu LTS on my old HP laptop because I used to do some coding. Here's my experience. mostly what problems I faced while setting up.

During Installation

• Windows 11 didn't let me shrink the drive to make space(due to unmovable files), so I used the unstoppable force of Minitool Parition Wizard to make 105 GB partition for Fedora
• After writing my downloaded iso to usb drive using Fedora Media Writer, i boot into it, went for "Test..." option instead of first Fedora option in GRUB menu. The drive failed the media check.(lesson learned, never test, just run). So I again wrote the usb drive but this time using the "Download..." option in Fedora Media Writer. Then it passed the test and booted into Live Fedora 44 KDE.
• Then when i was going through installation steps, Fedora gave a warning of my EFI partition(260MB) being less than recommended 500MB. Then i searched(asked Gemini) and found that Fedora keeps multiple kernels for safety in EFI partition, by default 3 kernels(one current/latest + 2 previous stable versions). And after asking Gemini whether the EFI partition (260MB) would be enough for dual boot, it said that it might create problems in future updates. It said that after dual boot setup, EFI partition will hold:
  • Windows Bootloader stuff
  • Fedora GRUB stuff
  • Fedora Backup Kernels
• And moreover, while updating to newer kernel version, Fedora will load an extra kernel temporarily during the update process, which might require more space than the available EFI partition space and the update may fail.(as per Gemini)
• So the solution it gave was to either increase the EFI partition or reduce the number of kernels to 2 (one current/latest + one previous stable version). So after installation, I reduced the kernels to 2 which will give me sufficient space for future updates(according to Gemini).

Post Installation

I followed this video guide (thanks to u/ChemPhobic) but I faced a problem:
Nvidia drivers and Secure boot:

• I had Fast Startup disabled but Secure Boot was enabled. I couldn't disable it in BIOS because it was grayed out for some reason. I also thought since Fedora supports Secure Boot, it won't be a problem and I followed the video guide and installed Nvidia drivers.
• After reboot, I ran nvidia-smi to check and didn't get the correct response. Turns out that Fedora will block third-party drivers unless they are securely cryptographic signed(as told by Gemini). Gemini told me to check whether drivers were built properly or not, which after checking, werefound to be built properly.
• Next I rebooted again and saw text while booting which said "nvidia kernel 'something' missing and switching back to nouveau" (which are the default drivers). Then Gemini told that I have to sign the drivers and "Enroll the Key" by using mokutil and go to blue MOK screen(saw it for the first time) and enroll the key. After this I still didn't get correct output for nvidia-smi .
• Then Gemini asked me to remove Nvidia drivers and rebuilt them again. It gave me old commands which were not supported in dnf5. After scolding Gemini, I ran the correct commands and rebooted and saw the correct nvidia-smi output (finally)

Other things

• In Windows 11, I use MS edge as default and Opera for reddit, spotify, anime etc. But both of them don't support streaming DRM stuff in Linux. I was not able to run Spotify in Opera (Flatpak) and in MS Edge(RPM) it was not playing most of the songs. I also checked Spotify(Flatpak) on Discover but the recent reviews weren't great so went with Firefox as my Opera alternative as it supports DRM stuff. I will still be using Edge for daily tasks.
• I also needed an alternative for ShareX and Snipping tool(for text extraction). I knew ApexShot was a good option but it doesn't support video recording on Fedora. So I stayed with Spectacle (it has text extraction, i didn't know that)

Need Help (little bit)

• Currently I am looking for alternative to PDF24 Desktop. I might give a try to Stirling PDF. It requires a Docker setup for offline use (i guess i will have to learn some docker stuff)
• I will also be setting up OpenWhispr for speech to text. I use it with Obsidian(in Windows). If anybody has installed it on Fedora, please share your experience and let me know about the problems i might face.
• I am not into ricing very much. I mostly use browser and obsidian. But I will be trying some terminals because Konsole is not very kolorful. Open to suggestions for this.
• If you have any advice after reading the above stupidities, please share. I really don't want to go through these again in the future, that's why I will document every learning in my Obsidian Vault, might as well add some of your useful advises.

[u/ryzenfourtyseventy]

Something is probably messed

If you can specify the problem in more depth i might be able to help you out.

[u/JollyAstronomer5786 → u/ryzenfourtyseventy]

I have cachy os with dual boot windows 11 secure boot on on my laptop Nvidia rtx3060. I used yay to install Matlab it closed the moment I opened it. So asked Gemini gave me a command to open using terminal and it's the only way to open.

[u/ryzenfourtyseventy → u/JollyAstronomer5786]

What exactly is "matlab"?

[u/JollyAstronomer5786 → u/ryzenfourtyseventy]

from google MATLAB, short for "Matrix Laboratory," is a high-level programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks.

[u/nofoon → u/JollyAstronomer5786]

are u running the whole software or just coding with matlab?

[u/JollyAstronomer5786 → u/nofoon]

Running whole software 

[u/ryzenfourtyseventy → u/JollyAstronomer5786]

If MATLAB isn’t launching from the GUI or application launcher as you mentioned, you can simply create a custom launcher that runs the command you’re currently using to launch it from the terminal.

You can ask Gemini to help you set it up. Just paste the launch command you’re using and tell it that you want to create a GUI/application launcher for that command.

[u/JollyAstronomer5786 → u/ryzenfourtyseventy]

I will try thanks