It is highly recommended to back up anything you are not prepared to lose. Installing Linux—especially if you’re new or uncomfortable with drive partitioning—can lead to data loss. You may accidentally overwrite your current operating system or important files.
Back up your important files!You Have Been Warned!
This guide is written for the Fedora KDE Plasma spin, but the process will be largely the same for other Fedora spins. Your mileage may vary slightly depending on which spin you choose.
Linux is a powerful, secure, and private environment. In this guide, we’ll walk through installing Fedora Linux, specifically Fedora KDE, which utilizes the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment a distribution that is generally more up-to-date than Ubuntu or Debian, but more stable than bleeding-edge options like Arch.
I’ll demonstrate a dual-boot setup alongside Windows, but the process is the same if you want Fedora as your only OS (just skip the Windows resizing section).
Before we get to install Fedora, we gotta make room. To do this, we are going to shrink down our existing Windows install.
In most setups, Windows will occupy your entire disk (C:). So there is no other option other than to shrink it. Now, in the case of some, you might have another drive entirely that you can install Fedora to. If this is the case, you can skip this whole next part.
In Windows, search for “Create and format hard disk partitions” and open it.
You’ll see a list of your drives and partitions.
Locate your largest partition, its typically gonna be the one labeled (C:) (As shown highlighted below). Now, in my case its not, but let’s pretend it is.
Note: That small partition to the RIGHT of (C:) is the Windows Recovery Partition. It’s used for booting into a recovery environment when your OS corrupts.
Note: That small partition to the LEFT of (C:) is the EFI (Boot) Partition. It’s what tells the BIOS of your motherboard where the OS is that you want to boot from.
Right-click the (C:) partition and choose “Shrink Volume…”.
Enter the size in megabytes to shrink. I would say 60 GB is about good enough, but of course the more the better. (Just be sure to leave room for your Windows install if you plan to dual-boot this setup) For 60 GB, enter 61440. There is 1024MB in 1GB. Hence 60 * 1024 = 61440
You can only resize the partition to a point where there is existing data. This means if your disk is too full, you will need to delete some stuff before you can resize it!
Click Shrink. You’ll now see Unallocated space next to your (C:) partition. This is where Fedora will install to.
Once the USB boot drive is created, reboot your machine.
Enter your BIOS/UEFI boot menu. You access this menu by hitting a key immediately on system startup. The exact key will vary depending on your hardware manufacturer.
Common keys include: F11, F12, ESC, and DEL. It will look something like pictured below:
Mash the key over and over until the menu shows up!
Choose the USB boot drive you created, in my case this is the “Fedora” option.
Select “Test this media and start Fedora”.
This will boot into the live KDE environment.
You will come to the Drive Selection screen
Select the drive that contains the free space we made earlier.
Automatic Storage Configuration will be selected by default. If you resized your drive already, just leave this be.
If you did not resize your drive, you do so here by checking the “Free up space” to resize/delete partitions.
Upon continuing, you will be presented with a GUI where you can resize your partitions. The process is largely similar to the one outlined in windows.
Now, once all of the above steps have finished, click Begin Installation on the Summary Page and wait. Fedora will begin to install to your system. This could take some time, be patient.
Once it has finised, click “Finish Installation” and reboot.
