u/Burrrrfly
▲ 68 r/Fedora
So Fedora 44 just dropped and I know a lot of people sit on new releases for a while before upgrading. I strongly disagree with that mentality - Fedora's release candidate process is thorough, and by the time a version ships it has been through serious QA. But rather than just saying that, I figured I would show it.
I went all in on Fedora 44 KDE from RC 1.7 - the release candidate that received the official GO decision, essentially the final build before it was stamped and shipped - with a fully custom storage configuration: XFS filesystem, LUKS2 encryption, and proprietary NVIDIA akmod drivers on an RTX 4080. On real hardware.
Not your typical default BTRFS layout. XFS is a great fit for a root filesystem - it is fast, mature, and scales well, which makes it particularly appealing for a gaming and general use workstation.
The short version: it works. Everything works. If you have been on the fence about whether F44 handles a non-default setup well, hopefully this is useful data.
The Anaconda bugs are real, but they are not showstoppers
I want to be honest here because I am not trying to pretend everything is perfect. The Anaconda web installer does have bugs with custom partition layouts:
Bug 1: You cannot select XFS as the filesystem when creating partitions inside the installer. It only offers BTRFS. This is a known missing feature in the web UI.
Bug 2: If you create an EFI System Partition inside the installer, it does not get formatted. You then cannot assign it as /boot/efi. The installer just refuses.
Both of these are real, reproducible bugs. They frustrated me. But they have workarounds, and once you know the workarounds, the installation goes smoothly.
The fix for both: create your EFI and boot partitions in GParted before launching the installer. Then use the installer's storage editor only to create the encrypted XFS root partition on the remaining free space. Done.
What I ended up with
- nvme0n1p1 ~600 MiB fat32 /boot/efi
- nvme0n1p2 4 GiB ext4 /boot
- nvme0n1p3 remaining LUKS2 / (encrypted XFS)
LUKS2 encryption with a strong passphrase. XFS root. Proprietary NVIDIA drivers via RPM Fusion akmods. VAAPI support via libva-nvidia-driver. Full multimedia codec stack. noatime in fstab.
Everything works. Wayland works. The passphrase prompt at boot works. NVIDIA works. Hardware video decode works.
On the nouveau situation
Nouveau was genuinely painful in Fedora 43 - random freezes of up to 10 seconds were common. It seems more stable in F44, which is a genuine improvement. But if you have an NVIDIA GPU and you are not running the proprietary driver, you are leaving a lot on the table. Install the akmods.
One thing to be aware of: when you use LUKS encryption with the NVIDIA proprietary driver, Plymouth (the graphical boot splash) will cause a black screen instead of showing your passphrase prompt. The RPMFusion docs suggest a grubby workaround but it had mixed results in my testing. The reliable fix is to omit Plymouth from the initramfs entirely, which gives you a plain text passphrase prompt at boot. Ugly? Maybe. Does it work 100% of the time? Yes.
The full guide
Because I couldn't find anywhere I good enough guide for all this, I wrote up everything step by step, including screenshots from a VM I used to document the installer flow:
https://gist.github.com/erik96/6b644b3bac3e30212e9acd0c96594e46
It covers:
- ISO download & checksum verification
- GParted pre-partitioning (with the why behind each decision)
- The exact Anaconda installer flow with screenshots
- noatime in fstab for XFS
- RPM Fusion setup
- NVIDIA akmod install with the Plymouth dracut fix (correct syntax - the version with only a leading space in the quotes throws warnings)
- Multimedia codecs including NVIDIA VAAPI
Fedora 44 has been solid for me, even with a non-default setup and proprietary NVIDIA drivers. If that is the kind of data point you were looking for before making the jump, there it is.
u/Burrrrfly — 17 days ago