June 16, 2024
So, I recently took the plunge and installed Fedora on an old college laptop of mine. It had been running Windows 11, but after binge-watching some YouTube videos about the viability of daily driving Linux (check out the videos below), I was inspired to give it a go. Since all my files are safely synced to my personal cloud storage, the laptop was a clean slate—perfect for this experiment.
How To Switch To Linux For Beginners…
Choosing a Linux distro felt like standing in an ice cream shop with too many flavors—each one promising something unique. From my YouTube deep dives and endless scrolling through online posts, Linux Mint emerged as the easiest and safest option for beginners. So, I thought, "Why not?" and installed it.
Mint is often praised for its user-friendliness and stability. The installation process was straightforward. I created a bootable USB using Rufus, rebooted the laptop, and entered the BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive. The installation wizard guided me through partitioning the disk and setting up the system. Within an hour, I was up and running with Linux Mint.
I gave it a fair shot and tested it for a day. I explored the pre-installed software, customized the desktop environment, and even tried out some basic terminal commands. However, it didn't quite hit the spot for me. It was like ordering vanilla when you really wanted rocky road. Mint is great, but I needed something more... dynamic.
Next on my list was Fedora. Admittedly, I wasn't a fan of the name at first—it sounded a bit old-fashioned. But boy, was I wrong. Fedora turned out to be a stable, modern, and sleek OS that ticked all my boxes.
The installation process for Fedora was just as smooth as Mint's. I used the Fedora Media Writer to create a bootable USB, rebooted the laptop, and selected the USB drive from the BIOS. Fedora's Anaconda installer was intuitive and offered plenty of customization options. I chose the default partitioning scheme and installed the GNOME desktop environment. Within no time, I was greeted by Fedora's polished and responsive interface.
But why stop at one distro when you can have two? I decided to install Kali Linux for all my experimental needs. To do this, I set up KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), QEMU, and Virt-Manager.
First, I enabled virtualization in the BIOS settings. Then, I installed KVM and QEMU using Fedora's package manager with the command:
sudo dnf install @virtualization
After installing the necessary packages, I enabled and started the libvirtd service:
sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd
Next, I installed Virt-Manager:
sudo dnf install virt-manager