Installing fedora on macOS

0.fedora-on-macos-using-utm.md

Installing Fedora on MacOS

This article demonstrates how to install Fedora Linux on MacOS.

Specifically we will use

• a macbook with m1 (arm/apple silicon) processor & 32GB ram
• macOS Sonoma 14.0
• Fedora Linux beta
• UTM as the virtualization tool

The steps are to

• Install UTM
• Create a virtual machine environment for Fedora
• Install Fedora

Installing UTM

UTM can be installed using the installer directly, or using Homebrew. I prefer the latter, as I find it easier to manage most of my applications this way, and I use a lot of linux-like tools

Installing with homebrew

brew install utm-beta

You can also use the stable 'utm' package if you prefer. Replace 'utm-beta' above

Installing with the installer

Download and run the appropriate installer from the UTM website

Creating a virtual machine environment for Fedora

First, we need to download the Fedora image we want to use.

Choose the image from the fedora project download site. For a macbook with apple silicon, chose the ARM aarch64 image, and go for the 'Live ISO' option.

For example the Fedora Workstation 38 Live ISO image for ARM aarch64 is at https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/38/Workstation/aarch64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-aarch64-38-1.6.iso

Workstation images will have everthing to run a graphical environment, whilst server is suitable for text only - though you can install a graphical environment later

Installation steps

• First start UTM

from the Applications folder  - Click **+** at the top of the UTM panel to add a new virtual machine  - Select Virtualize, since we have the same hardware architecture (aarch64) for both the fedora image we are installing, and the machine we are running on. This will give the best performance.  - Select Linux  - On this screen we will *not* select Apple Virtualization - in theory it's faster, but seems to cause some random crashes... - We do need to select the linux image to boot from, so Click *Browse* and select the file you downloaded above. When done click Open then Continue  - We now need to start specifying some of the requirements of the virtual machine we need to run. We assume you are going to do some software development and general desktop usage.  - Select RAM/CPU needed: - 4GB minimum, 8GB for heavier work - 2 CPU cores minimum, 4 for heavier work - Tick the 'OpenGL acceleration' box - Click Continue  - 64GB data storage is likely appropriate, so just click Continue on the storage page  - For now just click Continue on shared directory - Click Save - The new image is now available for use  ### Optional If you want to refine these settings later, right click on 'Edit'. A few areas worth considering - Under QEMU, enable the 'Balloon' device. This improves memory allocation - the virtual machine can give up memory if it's needs reduce during operation  - Under Display, select 'Retina mode' to optimize the display for a high definition screen  - Under Network, change the Shared Network to Bridged. This will likely improve performance, and give the virtual machine it's own IP address on the local network. 

Starting & installing Fedora

• Right click on the entry in the UTM UI & click Start
• Allow the virtual machine to boot & login with the detault user
• select to install Fedora
• Choose English
• Click installation destination, and then immediately return by selecting Done. This is required since on a real machine it will result in a format of all storage!
• Click Begin installation
• When complete the installer will report it's finished

fedora-boot.png

fedora-install-begins.png

UTMicon.png

fedora-installdest.png

fedora-installed.png

fedora-lang.png

fedora-welcome.png

utm-cpuramgpu.png

utm-cpuramgpu2.png

utm-displayopt.png

utm-linux.png

utm-linux2.png

utm-main2.png

utm-mainwindow.png

utm-netopt.png

utm-qemuoptions.png

utm-selectimg.png

utm-selectos.png

utm-shareddir.png

utm-storage.png

utm-virtoremulate.png