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Fedora Prix Fixe Menu Gives Flexibility

David Both

One of the most important things I want in an operating system is flexibility. That is, the flexibility to install the parts of the OS and the software I want, based on my needs for personal and work software.

Fedora meets that need with a plethora of installation images that can get you started with the tools you need. Fedora also makes it easy to install additional tools when they’re needed.

The Prix Fixe menu

The best thing about the prix fixe menu in a restaurant is that all the choices are made for you. For a fixed price you get a meal that’s been already selected for you, from the appetizer to the dessert. In some restaurants you might have a couple options for the full meal, but the meal for each option is fully chosen for you.

Fedora has an amazing array of prix fixe options from which you can choose. Each option is an ISO image that contains the software you need to get started in your chosen field. There are images for many fields such as astronomy, security, development, different desktops, music, learning to program, containers, servers, games, and more.

These choices are grouped into categories that make it a bit easier to find the one that most closely meets your needs. Each ISO image is a complete, ready to install software bundle that provides the tools and other software that meets the needs of many users right out of the box.

Just so you know, most of the descriptions are directly from the Fedora web pages. It will seem a bit like a marketing pitch at times, however I’ve added a comment or two of my own in a few places.

House Specials

These are the six main Fedora Editions which are the primary Fedora offerings.

Fedora Workstation

The leading Linux desktop

Fedora Workstation is a polished, easy to use operating system for laptop and desktop computers, featuring GNOME Desktop and a complete set of tools for developers and makers of all kinds.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and upgrades between versions are quick and easy.
  • Free & private — With Fedora, your desktop is your own. It’s free, there are no ads, and your data belongs to you.
  • Beautiful — Featuring GNOME Desktop, Workstation is carefully curated to deliver a high-quality experience. The desktop is clean and uncluttered.
  • Trusted — Developed in partnership with upstream projects. Rigorously tested. Backed by Red Hat.
  • Leading technology — Built on the latest technologies and enhancements that open source has to offer.
  • Makes the most of your device — Fedora works with hardware vendors to make excellent hardware support across a range of devices.

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KDE Plasma Desktop

The next generation personal desktop

Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop is a customizable high-quality desktop built on the latest open source technology to provide an easy and flexible environment to make your computer more personal than ever before.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and upgrades between versions are quick and easy.
  • Free & private — With Fedora, your desktop is your own. It’s free, there are no ads, and your data belongs to you.
  • Customizable — Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop lets you customize your desktop to your need and workflows, instead of the other way around.
  • Trusted — Developed in partnership with upstream projects. Rigorously tested.
  • Leading technology — Built on the latest technologies and enhancements that open source has to offer.
  • Makes the most of your device — Fedora works with hardware vendors to make excellent hardware support across a range of devices.

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Fedora Server

A Community Server OS

Fedora Server is a powerful, flexible operating system that includes the best and latest datacenter technologies. Run server workloads on bare metal or virtual machines with the latest open source technologies curated by the Fedora Community.

The Fedora Project envisions a world where everyone can benefit from free and open source software built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities. Fedora Server is created by a team in the Fedora community called the Server Working Group. It is comprised of official members who have decision making powers, as well as other contributors. Learn more on the Server Working Group website.

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Fedora Cloud

The lightweight VM environment

Fedora Cloud edition is a powerful and minimal base operating system image with tailored images available for both public and many private cloud uses.

  • Customizable — Fedora Cloud allows you to tailor your environment to your needs by selecting the specific packages and features you want to include.
  • Secure — Designed with security in mind, Fedora Cloud includes functions like SELinux, which boosts kernel security, and Security Profiles.
  • Up-to-date — Fedora Cloud offers the most recent software packages and updates, ensuring that you are constantly up to date.
  • Open-source Ecosystem — Everything is supported by a totally free and open-source Fedora ecosystem.
  • Community-driven — Being an open source project means that there is a large pool of knowlege and expertise available.
  • Container-based — Fedora Cloud is optimized for container workloads making it a great host for running containerized applications.

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Fedora CoreOS

The container optimized OS

Fedora CoreOS is an automatically updating, minimal, container-focused operating system.

  • Container-based — The optimal container host will be offered in order to run containerized applications.
  • Secure — Our goal is to provide the best container host to run workloads securely and at scale.
  • Open-source Ecosystem — Everything is supported by a totally free and open-source Fedora ecosystem.
  • Open to everyone — CoreOS is currently available on multiple platforms, with more coming soon.
  • Minimal — The Fedora CoreOS image is kept minimal by design.
  • Flexible — There are a wide variety of supported installation methods.

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Fedora IoT

The solid edge foundation

Fedora IoT provides a trusted open source platform as a strong foundation for IoT ecosystems.

  • Leading Technology — Built on the latest technologies and enhancements that open-source has to offer.
  • Container Based — Fedora IoT is a container-based host that runs on your hardware, with a focus on edge device deployment.
  • Open-source Ecosystem — Everything is supported by a totally free and open-source Fedora ecosystem.
  • Flexible — There are a wide variety of supported installation methods.
  • Edge Support — Use Fedora IoT to support your workloads that are computed outside of the traditional datacenter.
  • Makes the most of your device — Fedora works with hardware vendors to make excellent hardware support across a range of devices.

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Spins

Spins are where you should start looking if you’re new to Linux and want to try it out. If you already know which desktop you want to use this is also the best place to start, as it provides several alternative desktops for Fedora. Each spin is based on a different Linux desktop and has a complete set of software to go with it. If there’s some software that’s not included, you can easily install it later.

I’ve used or at least tried all of these at one time or another. They each have strong points and features that will appeal to different users.

Fedora Xfce

A complete and well integrated desktop. This is what I use on most of my systems.

The Fedora Xfce spin showcases the Xfce desktop, which aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. Fedora Xfce is a full-fledged desktop using the freedesktop.org standards.

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Fedora Cinnamon

A modern desktop featuring a more traditional GNOME 2 user experience.

Cinnamon is a Linux desktop which provides advanced innovative features and a traditional user experience. The desktop layout is similar to GNOME 2. The underlying technology is forked from GNOME Shell. The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience.

Cinnamon is a popular desktop alternative to GNOME 3 and this spin provides the option to quickly try and install this desktop.

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Fedora MATE-COMPIZ

A classic Fedora desktop with an additional 3D window manager.

The MATE+Compiz spin bundles MATE Desktop with Compiz Fusion. MATE Desktop is a lightweight, powerful desktop designed with productivity and performance in mind. The default windows manager is Marco which is usable for all machines and VMs. Compiz Fusion is a beautiful 3D windowing manager with Emerald and GTK+ theming.

If you want a powerful, lightweight Fedora desktop with 3D eyecandy you should definitely try the MATE+Compiz spin.

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Fedora i3

Fedora Linux with the i3 Tiling Window Manager.

The Fedora i3 Spin provides the popular i3 tiling window manager. It makes i3 accessible and appealing to both novices and advanced users who prefer not to use a mouse, touchpad, or other pointing device to interact with their environment. Featuring lightweight applications for web browsing, text editing, and media playback, the Fedora i3 Spin offers a complete experience with a minimalist user interface.

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Fedora LXQt

A lightweight and well integrated LXQt desktop environment.

Fedora LXQt provides a lightweight, well-integrated LXQt desktop environment. In addition to LXQt itself it provides a small, well selected collection of applications like the Falkon browser, which combines Chromium’s rendering engine with a nice Qt experience. Other applications include the Trojita mail client, the qBittorrent client, the Yarock music player and a set of some more commonly used applications. As all applications use the same Qt5 toolkit and the Breeze theme known from KDE, the desktop provides a unified and well-integrated style and theming. In addition breeze-gtk is provided to allow the user to integrate GTK applications too.

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Fedora LXDE

A light, fast, and less resource hungry desktop environment.

LXDE, the “Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment”, is an extremely fast, performant, and energy-saving desktop environment. It is maintained by an international community of developers and comes with a beautiful interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard shortcuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing.

LXDE is not designed to be powerful and bloated, but to be usable and slim. A main goal of LXDE is to keep computer resource usage low. It is especially designed for computers with low hardware specifications like netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.

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Fedora SOAS

Discover. Reflect. Share. Learn. This spin is a good one for students.

Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora-based operating system featuring the award-winning Sugar Learning Platform and designed to fit on an ordinary USB thumbdrive (“stick”).

Sugar sets aside the traditional “office-desktop” metaphor, presenting a child-friendly graphical environment. Sugar automatically saves your progress to a “Journal” on your stick, so teachers and parents can easily pull up “all collaborative web browsing sessions done in the past week” or “papers written with Daniel and Sarah in the last 24 hours” with a simple query rather than memorizing complex file/folder structures. Applications in Sugar are known as Activities, some of which are described below.

It is now deployable for the cost of a stick rather than a laptop; students can take their Sugar on a Stick thumbdrive to any machine – at school, at home, at a library or community center – and boot their customized computing environment without touching the host machine’s hard disk or existing system at all.

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Fedora SWAY

Fedora Linux with the Sway Tiling Window Manager. This is a very simple window manager that offers few features but is very sparing of resources.

The Fedora Sway Spin provides the popular Sway tiling window manager. It makes Sway accessible and appealing to both novices and advanced users who prefer not to use a mouse, touchpad, or other pointing device to interact with their environment. Featuring lightweight applications for web browsing, text editing, and media playback, the Fedora Sway Spin offers a complete experience with a minimalist user interface.

Learn More

Fedora BUDGIE

Fedora Linux with the Budgie Desktop.

The Fedora Budgie Spin showcases the Budgie Desktop, a feature-rich, modern desktop designed to keep out the way of the user. Budgie Desktop uses common desktop design metaphors while offering users sophisticated functionality such as its Raven widget and notification center, and an approachable method to personalization.

This Spin is designed to align closely with upstream Budgie Desktop, providing a close to vanilla experience with a curated set of default applications that fit in best with Budgie.

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Fedora MIRACLE

Fedora Linux with the Miracle Window Manager.

The Fedora Miracle Window Manager Spin provides the premiere Miracle window manager. It offers an appealing tiling experience to both novices and advanced users who prefer an easy keyboard-driven interaction model. Featuring lightweight applications for web browsing, text editing, and media playback, the Fedora Miracle Windows Manager Spin offers a complete experience with a smooth and cozy interface that anyone can use.

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Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile

A complete, modern desktop built using the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment.

Built on the foundations of KDE Plasma Desktop, the Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile Spin brings its flexibility to a mobile form factor. Although originally geared towards phones, the touch friendly interface works very well on tablets and 2-in-1 laptops.

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Fedora COSMIC

Fedora Linux with the COSMIC Desktop Environment.

The Fedora COSMIC Spin provides the COSMIC Desktop Environment from System76. A modern desktop that features advanced functionality and a responsive design. With optional Auto-tiling, newly opened windows arrange themselves in a grid. Use tiled, classic “floating” windows, or a mix of both across all workspaces. Have fun customizing theme colors to your liking. Save your favorite themes to your desktop and share with your friends.

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Fedora Labs

Fedora Labs is a selection of curated bundles of purpose-driven software and content as curated and maintained by members of the Fedora Community. These may be installed as standalone full versions of Fedora or as add-ons to existing Fedora installations.

Astronomy

Powerful, completely open-source and free tools for amateur and professional astronomers.

The Spin provides the Fedora KDE desktop enhanced with a complete scientific Python environment and the AstrOmatic software for data analysis. KStars was added to provide a full featured astrophotography tool. As KStars uses the INDI library to control equipment, various telescopes, cameras etc. are supported. Summarized, Fedora Astronomy provides a complete set of software, from the observation planning to the final results.

Get Started

Design Suite

Visual design, multimedia production, and publishing suite of free and open source creative tools.

Looking for a ready-to-go desktop environment brimming with free and open source multimedia production and publishing tools? Try the Design Suite, a Fedora Spin created by designers, for designers.

The Design Suite includes the favorite tools of the Fedora Design Team. These are the same programs we use to create all the artwork that you see within the Fedora Project, from desktop backgrounds to CD sleeves, web page designs, application interfaces, flyers, posters and more. From document publication to vector and bitmap editing or 3D modeling to photo management, the Design Suite has an application for you — and you can install thousands more from the Fedora universe of packages.

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Games

A collection and perfect showcase of the best games available in Fedora.

The Fedora Games lab offers a perfect showcase of the best games available in Fedora. The included games span several genres, from first-person shooters to real-time and turn-based strategy games to puzzle games.

Not all the games available in Fedora are included on this lab, but trying out this lab will give you a fair impression of Fedora’s ability to run great games.

Get Started

Jam

Fedora Jam is for audio enthusiasts and musicians who want to create, edit and produce audio and music on Linux. It comes with JACK, ALSA and PulseAudio by default including a suite of programs to tailor your studio.

Fedora Jam is a full-featured audio creation spin. It includes all the tools needed to help create the music you want, anything from classical to jazz to heavy metal. Included in Fedora Jam is full support for JACK and JACK to PulseAudio bridging, the newest release of Ardour, and a full set of LV2 plugins.

Get Started

Python Classroom

A classroom lab for teaching the Python programming language to students.

One of the benefits of Fedora for Python developers is the ease of setting up Python development. The Fedora Python Classroom Lab makes it even easier for teachers and instructors to use Fedora in their classrooms or workshops. Ready to use operating system with important stuff pre-installed – either with GNOME or as a headless environment for Docker or Vagrant. Teach Python on Fedora, with Fedora, using the stuff you love: IPython, Jupyter Notebook, multiple Pythons, virtualenvs, tox, git and more

The Fedora Python Classroom Lab comes in 3 variants. Either you can run it in graphical mode with GNOME, or you can virtualize it with Vagrant or run it in a Docker container. You choose what fits your teaching environment the best.

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Scientific

A bundle of open source scientific and numerical tools used in research.

Wary of reinstalling all the essential tools for your scientific and numerical work? The answer is here. Fedora Scientific Spin brings together the most useful open source scientific and numerical tools atop the goodness of the KDE desktop environment.

Fedora Scientific currently ships with numerous applications and libraries. These range from libraries such as the GNU Scientific library, the SciPy libraries, tools like Octave and xfig to typesetting tools like Kile and graphics programs such as Inkscape. The current set of packages include an IDE, tools and libraries for programming in C, C++, Python, Java and R. Also included along with are libraries for parallel computing such as the OpenMPI and OpenMP. Tools for typesetting, writing and publishing are included.

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Security Lab

The Fedora Security Lab provides a safe test environment to work on security auditing, forensics, system rescue and teaching security testing methodologies in universities and other organizations.

The spin is maintained by a community of security testers and developers. It comes with the clean and fast Xfce Desktop Environment and a customized menu that provides all the instruments needed to follow a proper test path for security testing or to rescue a broken system. The Live image has been crafted to make it possible to install software while running, and if you are running it from a USB stick created with LiveUSB Creator using the overlay feature, you can install and update software and save your test results permanently.

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Atomic Desktops

The Fedora desktop experiences you know with an additional layer of security and reliability.

Fedora SilverBlue

Fedora Silverblue is an atomic GNOME-based desktop aimed at good support for container-focused workflows.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and each update takes effect on your next reboot, keeping your system consistent. You can even keep working while the updates are being applied!
  • Atomic — The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
  • Safe — A previous Version of your system is always kept around, just in case. If you need to go back in time, you can!
  • Containerized — Graphical applications are installed via Flatpak, and keep themselves separate from the base system. They also allow for fine-grained control over their permissions.
  • Developer-Friendly — Toolbx keeps all of your development tools neatly organized per-project. Keep multiple versions of your tools independent from each other and unaffected by changes to the base system.
  • Private, Trusted, Open Source — There are no ads, and all your data belongs to you! Fedora is built on the latest open source technologies, and backed by Red Hat.

Fedora Kinoite

Fedora Kinoite is an atomic KDE Plasma-based desktop.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and each update takes effect on your next reboot, keeping your system consistent. You can even keep working while the updates are being applied!
  • Atomic — The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
  • Safe — A previous version of your system is always kept around, just in case. If you need to go back in time, you can!
  • Containerized — Graphical applications are installed via Flatpak, and keep themselves separate from the base system. They also allow for fine-grained control over their permissions.
  • Developer-Friendly — Toolbx keeps all of your development tools neatly organized per-project. Keep multiple versions of your tools independent from each other and unaffected by changes to the base system.
  • Private, Trusted, Open Source — There are no ads, and all your data belongs to you! Fedora is built on the latest open source technologies, and backed by Red Hat.

Get Started

Fedora Sway Atomic

Fedora Sway Atomic is an atomic Sway-based desktop.

Fedora Sway Atomic provides the popular Sway tiling window manager in an atomic fashion. It makes Sway accessible and appealing to both novices and advanced users who prefer not to use a mouse, touchpad, or other pointing device to interact with their environment. Featuring lightweight applications for web browsing, text editing, and media playback, Fedora Sway Atomic offers a complete experience with a minimalist user interface.

Get Started

Fedora Budgie

Fedora Budgie Atomic ships the popular Budgie desktop environment in an atomic fashion.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and each update takes effect on your next reboot, keeping your system consistent. You can even keep working while the updates are being applied!
  • Atomic — The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
  • Safe — A previous version of your system is always kept around, just in case. If you need to go back in time, you can!
  • Containerized — Graphical applications are installed via Flatpak, and keep themselves separate from the base system. They also allow for fine-grained control over their permissions.
  • Developer-Friendly — Toolbx keeps all of your development tools neatly organized per-project. Keep multiple versions of your tools independent from each other and unaffected by changes to the base system.
  • Private, Trusted, Open Source — There are no ads, and all your data belongs to you! Fedora is built on the latest open source technologies, and backed by Red Hat.

Get Started

Fedora COSMIC Atomic

Fedora COSMIC Atomic ships the COSMIC desktop environment in an atomic fashion.

  • Reliable — Each version is updated for approximately 13 months, and each update takes effect on your next reboot, keeping your system consistent. You can even keep working while the updates are being applied!
  • Atomic — The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
  • Safe — A previous version of your system is always kept around, just in case. If you need to go back in time, you can!
  • Containerized — Graphical applications are installed via Flatpak, and keep themselves separate from the base system. They also allow for fine-grained control over their permissions.
  • Developer-Friendly — Toolbx keeps all of your development tools neatly organized per-project. Keep multiple versions of your tools independent from each other and unaffected by changes to the base system.
  • Private, Trusted, Open Source — There are no ads, and all your data belongs to you! Fedora is built on the latest open source technologies, and backed by Red Hat.

Get Started

Miscellaneous

Here you will find the Minimal Fedora Linux image, Fedora’s online installer, versions of Fedora Linux packaged as containers that can be run on other operating systems, BitTorrent links, and more. The Everything image that I use is located here.

This link takes you to the page where all of these options are available.

Fedora Minimal 43

Fedora Minimal is the smallest possible Fedora Linux installation. It does not include a desktop environment. You might start with this if you want to build a custom installation that only includes the core packages and software that you explicitly choose to add after the system is up and running.

Fedora Everything 43

This is Fedora’s online installer. Unlike the offline installer that the standard Fedora Linux releases use, this installer allows you to choose the software packages at installation time. Since The Fedora Project has too much software to bundle it all with this installer, you will need a working internet connection or a local mirror of Fedora’s software repository to use this installer.

This is the image I now use to install all my Fedora systems. It allows maximum flexibility for you to choose the things you want to install and those you don’t. Personalize your installation.

Fedora Container Base 43

This is the standard Fedora Linux container image. In addition to the core packages that are required for basic functionality, it should include some common network, authentication and storage configuration tools that you are likely to need.

Fedora Container Minimal Base 43

This is the smallest possible Fedora Linux container image. It is mainly coreutils, systemd and dnf.

Fedora Container Toolbox 43

These container images are made to be used with Toolbx.

Fedora WSL 43

These are the images that you will need in order to run Fedora Linux under MS Windows’ Subsystem for Linux. Microsoft’s WSL tool should be able to download these images automatically, but if you want to provide the image files to Microsoft’s WSL tool manually, you can get them here.

Fedora Linux Testing Images

These are unreleased development versions of Fedora Linux made available for testing the next official Fedora Linux release.

Fedora Rawhide

Find out more about Rawhide, our ever-moving development version. Rawhide is targeted at advanced users, testers, and package maintainers.

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