GNU/Linux Beginners Guide | Square Zero

If you are here, that probably means that you are interested in (or at least curious about) switching to a GNU/Linux based operating system. If you want an easy to follow guide with many pictures, you have come to the right place. The distro we will be using in this tutorial is Fedora Workstation, if you want to know why you can check out this blog post.

How this guide will work:

This guide will be split up into 3 sections, provided here are the links to those sections in case you want to skip to any particular one.

• Pre-Install Instructions: Covers everything you need to do to prepare a USB flash drive with Fedora Workstation on it.
• Install Instructions: Covers the process of installing Fedora Workstation on your system.
• Post-Install Instructions: Covers what to do after installing Fedora Workstation on your machine, during and after first boot.

On the header will be navigation buttons that will allow you to move from section to section, and in the middle will be a link to "square zero" which will return you to this page. Each step will contain a link that can be used to bookmark the step you are on if you need to return later.

What you will need:

• 4GB or greater USB flash drive [WARNING: This drive will be wiped, back up all important data!]
• Standard PC with an x86/AMD64 CPU (this tutorial does not cover ARM based Macs or Chromebooks)
• Basic knowledge of what components are inside of your computer
• Some time to spare and a willingness to learn

About this guide

This is based on a guide I made in 2023 for a particular person, now updated, improved, and adapted for everyone. It has helped them switch over to GNU/Linux, and it has even helped some others that I sent the guide to. I hope this improved version of the guide can help many more switch to GNU/Linux! This is a living guide, and I will update portions of it if anything changes significantly. Right now, this guide is in public beta, if I have made a typo or other mistake, please email me.