Install Fedora on Physical Server / VirtualBox & Vagrant

Fedora operating system gets a new release every 6 months for the general public and it ships with new cool features all available to you. This release has the ISO installer distributed for Server, Workstation, and Atomic Host. Fedora Project also has a whole collection of desktop Spins,  Cloud images, special-purpose Labs, and ARM devices, versions for Power and S390 e.t.c.

Installation of Fedora on a physical machine, VirtualBox or any other Virtualization platform is not complicated. First, download the ISO image of the release distribution you want to install, and either create a bootable USB using:

• How to Create Linux bootable USB Stick on macOS / Linux

If you’re installing on VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, vSphere ESXI or KVM, just attach the ISO while booting the instance for the first time.

Installing Fedora on Physical Server / VirtualBox / VMware / KVM

1. The first step is to insert Fedora installation disk into your computer and boot it up to initiate the installation process. A screen similar to below should be displayed:

2.Select your preferred language and click Continue

3. Set your  KEYBOARD layout type, Keymap, Timezone, Software Selection and click the “Begin Installation” button.

Also set the Installation Destination and click Done

4.  The Installation will start and asks you to provide a root password and create a standard user account

Click on “Root Password” to set a root password.

Click on “User Creation” to add  a new user

Check if to “Make this user administrator” if you’re creating an Admin account. If all is set, you should see a message like below

5. Wait for the installation to complete then click the Reboot button to restart the installed operating system.

6. Select the Kernel to boot to on the Grub menu and press <ENTER> key.

Finally login with root account or user added earlier

The first thing you may want to do is install basic packages:

sudo dnf -y update
sudo dnf -y install vim bash-completion wget

Running Fedora using Vagrant

Vagrant is an open source tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in an easy-to-use single workflow. If you’re installing Vagrant for the first time, check:

• Install Latest Vagrant on Ubuntu
• Using Vagrant with Libvirt on Linux

Once Vagrant is installed, download Vagrant boxes using the vagrant box addcommand.

For Fedora KVM box:

$ vagrant box add fedora/37-cloud-base  --provider=libvirt
==> box: Loading metadata for box 'fedora/37-cloud-base'
    box: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/fedora/37-cloud-base
==> box: Adding box 'fedora/37-cloud-base' (v37.20221105.0) for provider: libvirt
    box: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/fedora/boxes/37-cloud-base/versions/37.20221105.0/providers/libvirt.box
Download redirected to host: dl.fedoraproject.org
    box: Calculating and comparing box checksum...
==> box: Successfully added box 'fedora/37-cloud-base' (v37.20221105.0) for 'libvirt'!

For Fedora VirtualBox box image:

vagrant box add fedora/37-cloud-base --provider=Virtualbox

List available boxes

$ vagrant box list | grep 31-cloud-base
fedora/37-cloud-base (libvirt, 37.20221105.0)
fedora/37-cloud-base (virtualbox, 37.20221105.0)

Test by creating a Vagrant file and bringing up the instance

vim Vagrantfile

Add the following content

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

ENV['VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER'] = 'virtualbox'

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.define "fed" do |config|
  config.vm.hostname = "fed"
  config.vm.box = "fedora/37-cloud-base"
  config.vm.box_check_update = false
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
    v.memory = 1024
    v.cpus = 1
    end
  end
end

To create the vagrant environment, run:

$ vagrant up

I hope our guide on installing Fedora on Physical Server / VirtualBox & Vagrant was helpful. If you have any issue, do let us know through the comments section.

Also check: Best Linux Desktop Distributions to try