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Fedora 38 has just been released. In this guide, I look at installation and setup on a Dell XPS 13 2 in 1 Touchscreen Convertible Device with a WD19TB Thunderbolt Dock. Fedora 38 is the leading edge Linux Distribution and includes Linux Kernel 6.2, the GNOME 44 Desktop Environment and the Wayland Display Protocol. If third-party repositories are enabled, FlatPak packages are installable from Software. Software can seamlessly be used to install new Applications, handles Operating System Updates, Application Updates and Device Firmware Updates via the Linux Vendor Service. This integrated functionality makes Fedora much more logical than most other Linux distributions that typically fragment these components.

Fedora uses a vanilla GNOME however this can be customised using GNOME Tweaks, GNOME Extensions and GNOME Settings as shown in this guide. The GNOME Desktop Environment is the Linux Desktop environment that has the most support for a 2 in 1 Touchscreen Convertible Device exhibiting a Touchscreen Keyboard and Device autorotation out of the box. There are still however some limitations here which will be partially addressed using GNOME Extensions.

Written Guide:
https://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/fedora-38/

Although GNOME has the best support for this Device, there are still some short-fallings holding it back which hopefully will be addressed. The GNOME screen video capture does not capture the mouse pointer or give an option to do so. There are also some frustrations with the GNOME Onscreen Keyboard which sometimes needs multiple pressed to populate in a supported application like FireFox and this unhighlights the selected text in the address bar. The onscreen keyboard also does not populate for Chromium; this issue is due to be fixed in third party projects such as Chromium, which will in turn fix the issues in Chromium related programs such as Google Chrome and VS Code. The extension Improved OSK (not shown in the video addresses this problem). The newer Wayland protocol has increased support for multiple monitors, allowing monitors of different sizes and different DPI resolutions to be used. GNOME Window snapping across multiple monitors is limited with ⊞+→ or ⊞+← or ⊞+↑ not being able to move a window from one monitor to another. GNOME could do with some additional features like snap layouts and tabbed browsing for multi-monitor setups. Finally a preinstalled Paint like application would be useful for easy annotation of screenshots.

Creating a Fedora Bootable USB on Windows
Creating a Fedora Bootable USB on Linux
Dell UEFI BIOS Setup: RAID Operation should be SATA as there is no RAID Driver in the Linux Kernel
Dell Data Wipe
Dell UEFI BIOS Update from USB
Fedora Live USB
Fedora Install
GNOME Settings
GNOME Tour
GNOME with Touchpad Gestures (1-3 Finger Gestures)
GNOME Touchscreen Keyboard. This has issues with Chromium and Chromium based applications such as Google Chrome and VSCode
GNOME with Device Transformation: Laptop, Tablet and Tent Modes
GNOME Extensions and Screen Rotate Extension, Install Improved OSK also
Software Updates
Linux Vendor Firmware Service
WD19TB Dock and Multimonitor Configuration
NVIDIA Driver (Not Applicable for this system, not sure of the status of NVIDIAs Open Source Kernel Drivers, maybe leave some comments if you needed to install a NVIDIA driver as it may help other users)
GNOME Screenshot and Screen Capture
Multimedia Codecs
VokoscreenNG - Screen Recording Experimental Wayland
Drawing, KolourPaint - Closest Programs to Paint
GIMP - Closes Program to Photoshop
OnlyOffice Desktop Editors - Closest Program to Microsoft Office
KDENLive - Closest Program to Movie Maker
GNOME Tweaks

#Fedora #Linux #Dell