Fedora Ultimate Setup Script

Based on https://github.com/David-Else/fedora-ultimate-setup-script

V3 UPDATED VERSION including Centos 8 Scripts

Total rewrite for ease of customization

I came to the conclusion that the original script was over engineered and the additional functionality of saving the packages to disk for re-use was too difficult to support with the use of Flatpak which has become more important.

People are forking the script for their own use, and I felt a bit sorry for them having to negotiate the associative arrays and maze of function calls. I have spent some time attempting to make the script as simple and functional as possible, and in the process split it into two parts. This solves a super annoying problem with the original in that you had to keep coming back to the machine and saying yes to continue when the sudo privileges timed out.

Fedora Installation and running

Download this repository using git, CD into the directory, and run:

git clone https://github.com/David-Else/fedora-ultimate-setup-script
cd fedora-ultimate-setup-script
sudo ./fedora-ultimate-install-script.sh
./fedora-ultimate-setup-script.sh

Centos 8 Scripts

I decided to try and recreate my desktop using Centos 8... and it worked! I had to use more flatpaks and work around things a bit, but I am running Centos 8 now and it is awesome!

Centos 8 Installation and running

Download this repository using git, CD into the directory, and run:

git clone https://github.com/David-Else/fedora-ultimate-setup-script
cd fedora-ultimate-setup-script
sudo ./centos8-ultimate-install-script.sh
./centos8-ultimate-setup-script.sh

V2 Legacy Version Docs... (ignore unless you want the backup functionality)

Using only the official Fedora 31 Workstation ISO create your perfect Fedora experience and save it to a USB drive to preserve forever!

Use this script to update the system, install all your favourite programs, remove the ones you don't want, and setup your computer exactly the way you like. Optionally save all the .rpm files that are downloaded for later offline use. By doing this you can recreate the exact same system without having access to the internet.

As default it has my custom tweaked setup that is biased towards front end web development, but it also has things like setting up mpv for GPU acceleration, Pulse Audio for high sound quality and some great Gnome desktop settings.

How to Use

Installation

Download this repository using git, CD into the directory, and run:

git clone https://github.com/David-Else/fedora-ultimate-setup-script
cd fedora-ultimate-setup-script
./fedora-ultimate-setup-script.sh

Now follow the on-screen instructions.

For Xfce flavor run:

./fedora-xfce-ultimate-setup-script.sh

Offline Mode (optional)

To use this script offline requires you have used it before previously online to generate the .rpm files needed.

IMPORTANT the time to create these files is after a totally fresh install of Fedora. This way all the updates follow on from the official ISO image, doing so at a later point will not give the correct results.

First you run the script with option 2 which includes 'create offline install files for future use'.

These files will have been stored by default in:

$HOME/offline-system-updates
$HOME/offline-user-packages

Copy these directories along with the exact same script that was run to create them onto a USB stick. On the new computer install the original Fedora ISO, and then insert the USB key and run the script choosing option 3.

When offline install mode is used any functionality that requires access to the internet is skipped, including setting up repositories. If you want updates in the future to any of the programs that were downloaded from non standard repositories you will need to add the repos at a later date. This can be done by re-running the script in offline mode with internet access, or manually.

Customization

Customize the packages you want to install or remove

The create_package_list() function contains all the packages you want to install. It contains an associative array in the following format:

['category of package']='package-name-1 package-name-2'

The 'category of package' string is only used for categorization and printing the results to the console, the exact wording is not important. The 'package-name' string must be exactly the same as the name you type when using dnf install package-name.

To remove packages just edit the REMOVE_LIST array.

REMOVE_LIST=(gnome-photos gnome-documents rhythmbox totem cheese)

Customize the adding of repositories

In the add_repositories() function you will see RPM Fusion, RPM Sphere, Flathub and Snap are installed by default. After that certain packages trigger certain repositories to be installed. You can add your own here.

Customize the setting up of programs

Later in the script in the main() function certain packages trigger certain actions. This functionality is contained in a case statement in the following format (note the spaces around the package names):

    case " ${PACKAGES_TO_INSTALL[*]} " in
    *' code '*)
        # do something
        ;;&
    *' nodejs '*)
        # do something
        ;;&
    esac

This is where you can add custom commands or functions to setup the packages you have chosen to install. There are also a lot of universal default settings in main() you may want to edit.

Setting up Visual Studio Code (optional)

Inside the setup_vscode() there is an array called code_extensions, here you can add all your favourite extensions to be downloaded and installed.

To obtain the names of currently installed extensions to add to the list you can use:

code --list-extensions

My entire user settings file is stored here, please copy and paste your own.

FAQ

Q: Does this script disable the caps lock key? I've noticed that it works during login but after that it stops working all together.

A: It makes the caps lock into a delete for touch typing purposes, the line that does it is:

 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['caps:backspace', 'terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp']"

You can delete the 'caps:backspace', to rectify the situation.