Fedora Silverblue - Postinstall

Personal settings for Fedora Silverblue 39, with lovely help from:

Maintenance

rpm-ostree upgrade
flatpak repair
flatpak uninstall -y --unused
flatpak update -y --appstream

RPM Fusion

RPM Fusion provides software that the Fedora Project or Red Hat doesn't want to ship. See https://rpmfusion.org/RPM%20Fusion for details.

Add the repositories:

rpm-ostree install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
rpm-ostree install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
systemctl reboot

NOTE: It is important to reboot first before continuing with the guide.

Upgrading

To upgrade on major releases, e.g. Fedora Silverblue 38 > 39:

rpm-ostree update --uninstall rpmfusion-free-release --uninstall rpmfusion-nonfree-release \
    --install rpmfusion-free-release --install rpmfusion-nonfree-release

If you ever get in trouble on upgrading, you can reset the current ostree (create a backup first):

rpm-ostree status
rpm-ostree reset
systemctl reboot

Redo giving steps and reinstall your packages.

Hardware acceleration

NOTE: Make sure RPM Fusion is configured first.

See https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/OSTree when using Intel/NVIDIA, and require Broadcom/DVB firmwares.

AMDGPU

Override current mesa-va-drivers:

rpm-ostree override remove mesa-va-drivers --install mesa-va-drivers-freeworld

In most cases you don't need VDPAU anymore, but if you do require it:

rpm-ostree install mesa-vdpau-drivers-freeworld

FFMpeg

rpm-ostree install libavcodec-freeworld libva-utils

After a reboot, you can check support hardware decoding profiles using vainfo:

Trying display: wayland
libva info: VA-API version 1.20.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_20
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.20 (libva 2.20.1)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 23.3.1 for AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, renoir, LLVM 17.0.6, DRM 3.54, 6.6.8-200.fc39.x86_64)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc

Generally you should see a lot more decoding and encoding support.

GStreamer

rpm-ostee install rpm-ostree install gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-vaapi

Filesystems

Encryption

If you are using encryption on a NVMe/SSD, you may want to improve performance by disabling the workqueue.

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Specialties#Disable_workqueue_for_increased_solid_state_drive_(SSD)_performance for details.

Btrfs

If you are using Btrfs, you may want to enable https://github.com/kdave/btrfsmaintenance:

rpm-ostree install btrfsmaintenance
nano /etc/sysconfig/btrfsmaintenance

Enable the services:

sudo systemctl enable btrfs-balance.timer btrfs-defrag.timer btrfs-scrub.timer btrfs-trim.timer --now

Software

It is discourage to install (large) software on the ostree. Try to use Flatpaks and your Toolbox (toolbox enter) as much as possible.

You can pull the latest toolbox, using:

podman pull fedora-toolbox:39

To update the Toolbox:

toolbox enter
sudo dnf update && sudo dnf upgrade

You can create multiple toolboxes, and even manage using Podman Desktop.

Replace Firefox

rpm-ostree override remove firefox firefox-langpacks

TIP: The Mozilla Firefox Flatpak package is a good replacement.

TIP: You can also hide the desktop entry itself.

Podman

If you use Podman, and need Docker compatibility:

rpm-ostree install podman-compose podman-docker

If possible, use rootless: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Podman#Rootless_Podman

Theming

TIP: See https://itsfoss.com/flatpak-app-apply-theme/ instructions for Flatpak theming.

rpm-ostree install gnome-tweak-tool

When using GTK-3 apps, see https://github.com/lassekongo83/adw-gtk3 for details.

flatpak install org.gtk.Gtk3theme.adw-gtk3 org.gtk.Gtk3theme.adw-gtk3-dark

After a reboot, you can apply theme settings using Gnome Tweaks.

ZSH

See https://ohmyz.sh/ for details.

rpm-ostree install fira-code-fonts fzf google-roboto-fonts mozilla-fira-mono-fonts powerline-fonts pygmentize tmux zsh zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting

francoism90 / fedora-silverblue