Setting up Fedora GNOME the OEM+ way

This is the checklist I follow whenever I set up a machine with Fedora. It’s an “OEM+” setup: stock Fedora and GNOME, with a handful of tweaks and extensions that make it feel more polished and familiar, without turning it into something else entirely. Everything here can be adjusted to your taste.

Steps 1–6 are the main setup, in order. After that, optional setups covers things only some machines need, like extra drives or docking stations.

Written for Fedora 43 with GNOME 49. Most of it applies to other recent versions too, but menu names and package versions shift over time.

1. First boot

Go through the normal setup when you first install Fedora: language, keyboard layout, timezone, Wi-Fi and so on.

When it offers to enable third-party repositories, say yes. That adds Flathub, Steam, NVIDIA drivers and a few other things Fedora can’t ship itself. If you skipped it, you can turn it on later:

sudo dnf install fedora-workstation-repositories
sudo dnf config-manager setopt rpmfusion-nonfree-steam.enabled=1

Then, before installing anything else, update the system and reboot:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Why update first: it clears up a lot of possible issues with later installs, and it’s also the first thing to try when something misbehaves down the line. Hold off on bigger changes, like upgrading to a new Fedora release, until everything is set up and stable.

2. Settings

Open Settings, from the app menu or the quick menu in the top right:

• Appearance: set the style to Dark (if that’s your preference) and pick a new background.
• System → Date & Time: show the weekday (and seconds, if you like) in the top bar clock.
• Power: show the battery percentage, on a laptop.
• Mouse & Touchpad: natural scrolling is on for touchpads by default; I keep it off for mice.

Then install GNOME Tweaks from the Software centre and, under Windows, turn on the minimise and maximise buttons. They’re much more familiar than GNOME’s default of only having a close button.

Coming from Ubuntu? Ubuntu’s Settings has an Ubuntu Desktop section for the dock and desktop icons. Fedora doesn’t — those options come from the Dash to Dock and Desktop Icons NG extensions below.

3. Flatpak and Flathub

Flatpak is the default way to install apps on Fedora, and Flathub (the main app store) comes with the third-party repositories from step 1. If Flathub is missing from the Software centre, add it yourself:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

If you needed to add it, reboot before installing any Flatpak apps.

4. GNOME extensions

Extensions are what turn stock GNOME into something that feels finished. Don’t be afraid to try them — they can be turned off or removed in a click.

Installing extensions

The easiest way is the Extension Manager app from Flathub: it browses, installs and configures extensions without leaving the app.

You can also install them from extensions.gnome.org in your browser. It will prompt you to install a browser add-on; do so, and install the connector it talks to:

sudo dnf install gnome-browser-connector

Pitfall: without the connector you’ll get “No such native application org.gnome.chrome_gnome_shell” on the website. The command above fixes it.

To turn extensions on and off and change their settings, use Extension Manager, or Fedora’s own Extensions app (gnome-extensions-app).

Version compatibility

GNOME refuses to load extensions that aren’t marked as supporting your exact GNOME version, which is common right after a new release. You can turn that check off:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-extension-version-validation true

Do this at your own discretion. I’ve had no problems with the extensions below even when they were marked as incompatible — and if one does misbehave, you can just turn it off.

Extensions I use

• Alphabetical App Grid — sorts the app grid and folders alphabetically. You can choose whether folders go first, and whether their contents get sorted too.
• Blur my Shell — blurs the background of the overview, lock screen, dock and top bar. It makes everything look better; I keep the defaults.
• Clipboard History — like the clipboard history on Windows: keeps track of what you’ve copied. See below to put it on the same shortcut.
• Dash to Dock — strongly recommended. It makes the dock feel familiar: it shows on the desktop, hides when a window covers it, can be blurred by Blur my Shell, and resized. My settings:
  • Position on screen: Bottom
  • Panel mode: extend to the screen edge: off
  • Intelligent autohide: on (the default)
  • Launchers → Show Applications icon → Move at beginning of the dock: on
• Desktop Icons NG (DING) — puts icons (folders, AppImages, documents…) on the desktop. I turn off Show personal folder in its settings.
• Emoji Copy — quick access to emojis from the top bar.
• GNOME Fuzzy App Search — forgives small typos when searching for apps, showing close matches instead of nothing.
• GSConnect — pairs your computer with your phone. It’s very feature-rich and almost feels like magic: file transfer, media controls, and even using your phone as a touchpad and keyboard. Great for watching media, but both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi.
• No overview at start-up — personal preference: boot straight to the desktop instead of the overview.
• Pinned Apps in AppGrid — pin your most-used apps to the start of the app grid.
• Tiling Shell — proper window tiling for GNOME, with predefined layouts and drag-to-side resizing.
• Unblank lock screen — keeps the screen on after locking instead of it going to sleep almost immediately. Partly because it looks cool.
• Vitals — CPU, RAM and network usage in the top bar, so you don’t need to open a system monitor. Have a play with its settings.
• Volume Scroller — scroll over the top bar to change the volume. Much quicker than function keys or the quick menu for small adjustments.

Situational ones:

• Brightness control using ddcutil — monitor brightness on a desktop PC (laptops have this built in). See below.
• Hide Top Bar — hides the top bar when a window covers it. It can be glitchy in games depending on fullscreen or windowed mode, so I keep it off most of the time.
• Quick Settings Tweaks — per-app volume in the quick settings menu, and notifications there instead of under the calendar.
• Apps on Top — moves the apps icon to the start of the dock. Only needed if you don’t use Dash to Dock, which has this built in.

Brightness control on a desktop

Install the Brightness control using ddcutil extension, then ddcutil itself:

sudo dnf install ddcutil

In my experience that’s all it takes. If you need further setup, the extension’s README covers it.

In the extension’s settings, move it from Top Bar to System Menu for a more OEM+ look, and set Position in System Menu to 1 or 2 so it sits just above or below the volume slider. You can also hide the display name, though you may want to keep it with multiple monitors.

Clipboard History on Super + V

To make Clipboard History work like Windows’ Win + V, set its shortcut to Super + V in its settings.

Pitfall: GNOME already uses Super + V (and Super + M) for Show the notification list. Change it in Settings → Keyboard → View and Customise Shortcuts → System, or from the terminal, keeping just Super + M:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-message-tray "['<Super>m']"

5. Installing apps

Restart before installing apps. It’s best practice after all of these changes, so pin or bookmark this guide so you don’t lose your place.

Install apps as Flatpaks from the Software centre where you can. Some come as RPMs from a vendor’s own repository instead (Brave, for example), and a few as AppImages. If something won’t install or run, online forums, Reddit or an AI assistant can be a quick saviour.

Also install Flatseal. Flatpak apps are sandboxed, so some permissions need to be granted by hand — Steam on a second drive is the classic example.

Apps I install:

Category	Apps
Code	VSCodium (or VS Code), Postman, draw.io
Office	OnlyOffice (clean, just the essentials) or LibreOffice
Internet	Brave, Betterbird (email), LocalSend (share with phones)
Media	VLC, Stremio, OBS, Kdenlive, GIMP
Games	Steam (from the third-party repos in step 1)
Social	Discord
Tools	Flatseal, Extension Manager, Fedora Media Writer

6. The finishing touch

To tie it all together — and to be proud of your new, hopefully stable, operating system — install screenfetch:

sudo dnf install screenfetch

Then run screenfetch in your terminal to get a graphic of your distro and system details. Here’s mine:

           /:-------------:\          eusebiu@fedora
        :-------------------::        OS: Fedora 43
      :-----------/shhOHbmp---:\      Kernel: x86_64 Linux 6.17.1-300.fc43.x86_64
    /-----------omMMMNNNMMD  ---:     Uptime: 4h 15m
   :-----------sMMMMNMNMP.    ---:    Packages: 2195
  :-----------:MMMdP-------    ---\   Shell: bash 5.3.0
 ,------------:MMMd--------    ---:   Resolution: No X Server
 :------------:MMMd-------    .---:   DE: GNOME 49.1
 :----    oNMMMMMMMMMNho     .----:   WM: Mutter
 :--     .+shhhMMMmhhy++   .------/   WM Theme: Adwaita
 :-    -------:MMMd--------------:    GTK Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3]
 :-   --------/MMMd-------------;     Icon Theme: Adwaita
 :-    ------/hMMMy------------:      Font: Adwaita Sans 11
 :-- :dMNdhhdNMMNo------------;       Disk: 209G / 3.0T (7%)
 :---:sdNMMMMNds:------------:        CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700 8-Core @ 16x 5.39287GHz
 :------:://:-------------::          GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
 :---------------------://            RAM: 5518MiB / 31188MiB

Congrats!

Save your setup for next time

Once everything is how you like it, a few commands capture it, so the next install takes minutes instead of an evening:

# Every extension's settings (Dash to Dock, Blur my Shell, Vitals…)
dconf dump /org/gnome/shell/extensions/ > extensions.dconf

# Which extensions are installed and enabled
gnome-extensions list --enabled > extensions.txt

# Your Flatpak apps
flatpak list --app --columns=origin,application > flatpaks.txt

On the new machine, after installing the same extensions, restore their settings with:

dconf load /org/gnome/shell/extensions/ < extensions.dconf

Careful with GSConnect: its settings include your paired devices and their IDs. Remove the [gsconnect…] sections from extensions.dconf before sharing the file anywhere — you’ll re-pair your phone on the new install anyway.

I’ve wrapped all of this — plus the package installs and settings from this guide — into a personal setup script, so a fresh install is mostly one command.

Optional setups

Things only some machines need. Each one says when you’ll want it.

Mounting an extra drive at boot

You need this if you have a second internal drive that should always be available at the same folder.

1. Find the drive’s UUID:

   lsblk -f

2. Open /etc/fstab with sudo and add a line at the bottom:

   UUID=<your-drive-uuid>  /home/<you>/Data  ext4  defaults,noatime  0 2

   That’s the drive, the folder to mount it in, the filesystem and some mount options. Create the folder first if it doesn’t exist.

3. If the drive is currently mounted under /media, eject it. Then reload and mount everything from fstab:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo mount -a
   # If you get permission errors, take ownership of the folder
   sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/$USER/Data

Pitfall: a mistake in /etc/fstab can stop your system from booting. sudo mount -a mounts everything in the file, so if it runs without errors, your new line is fine. For a drive that isn’t always connected, add nofail to the options so a missing drive doesn’t hold up boot.

DisplayLink docks (e.g. Targus)

You need this if your dock’s monitors stay black — many USB docks use DisplayLink, which needs a driver and a kernel module (evdi).

1. Disable Secure Boot in your BIOS. Secure Boot blocks the evdi module unless you sign it yourself, which is very advanced. If you skip this, the install appears to work but the module fails to load with signing errors.

2. Update and reboot, so the kernel headers you’re about to install match the kernel you’re running. Then install the build dependencies:

   sudo dnf install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers-$(uname -r) dkms git make gcc libdrm

3. Download the driver for your Fedora version from the displaylink-rpm releases — for example fedora-43-displaylink-….x86_64.rpm — and install it:

   sudo dnf install ./fedora-43-displaylink-*.x86_64.rpm

   This builds the evdi module, installs the DisplayLinkManager service and sets it to start automatically.

4. Reboot, plug in the dock and wait 5–10 seconds. Your external monitors should appear in Settings → Displays.

Sunshine game streaming

You need this if you want to stream games or your desktop from this PC to another device on your network, using the Moonlight app (Fire TV Stick, PS Vita, Android handhelds, Nintendo Switch and more).

1. Enable the LizardByte Copr repository and install Sunshine:

   sudo dnf copr enable lizardbyte/stable
   sudo dnf install Sunshine

2. If screen capture doesn’t work, give Sunshine permission to capture through KMS:

   sudo setcap cap_sys_admin+p $(readlink -f $(which sunshine))

3. Open https://localhost:47990 to finish setting it up and pair Moonlight.

When Fedora 43 was new, only the lizardbyte/beta repository had working packages for it. That’s no longer the case, but if a brand-new Fedora release isn’t supported yet, the beta repository is worth trying.

Soundux soundboard

You need this if you want a soundboard on Linux — playing sound clips into games or Discord calls. It can pass audio from one app into another, and plays any MP3s you add, with no real limit on length.

sudo dnf copr enable rivenirvana/soundux
sudo dnf install soundux