I’ve been using fedora for half a year now and it’s great. The most amazing difference between fedora and debian-based distros I’ve been using so far are:

  • a concise and quick installation process
  • newest versions of software already available for download with dnf
  • git, make and etc already pre-installed

My other laptop, dell xps 13 (2018) works with it perfectly, including the graphics/sound card, so I decided to try it out with my msi gs43vr (2017).

Hardware: msi gs43vr
Software: Fedora 30-1.2

Aaand here goes the list of issues I’ve encountered.

  1. Graphical install hangs on Started GNOME Display Manager..
    You will need to start the fedora installer in basic graphics mode with Troubleshooting -> Start fedora in basic graphics mode.
  2. After installation, gnome-initial-setup pop ups every time after reboot.
    Just touch ~/.config/gnome-initial-setup-done. This will apply to current user only.
  3. When rebooted or shut down and then turned on, fedora froze with blank screen and only a blinking cursor for 2mins.
    At first I thouthg it’s graphics driver’s problem. Installation of a proper NVIDIA driver didn’t work though (I followed this guide).
    What worked for me is removing rhbs quiet from /etc/default/grub. Don’t forget to run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg to update grub.
  4. Super button not working
    Install gnome-tweaks and go to Keyboard & Mouse -> Overview Shortcut and toggle it.

Lessons Learned

  • rpmfusion drivers completely smashed my setup.

Persisting issues I’d like to have some help with:

  1. Same blinking cursor + blank screen on shutdown.
  2. Screen brightness regulation buttons (f4&f5) do not work, although volume regulation, keyboard lights and sleep buttons work.
  3. Suspend does not work(stuck forever on saving pages), however hibernate does.
    All of the above stopped when I installed the NVIDIA drivers according to this guide.

Still worth it!