Installation

1.1 Shrink the Windows partition

In order to install Linux the Windows partition has to be shrunken or wiped.

You may want to consider keeping Windows installed for following reasons:

• firmware updates
• apps/features not working on Linux
• dual booting
• easier to revert back if Linux is not for you(on this device)

After all I'd (unfortunately) suggest not to wipe Windows completely.

If you still want to go all out and delete Windows completely you can skip the first two steps.

1.1.1 Set up Windows

As the device comes encrypted with Bit Locker by default, the Windows partition has to be shrunken from within Windows. So boot up the device and go through the Windows setup process.

(Optional:) Set up Windows without a Microsoft account.

If you don't want to create a Microsoft account just to use Windows, you can (at the time of writing) still get a local account in Win 11 with a little hack:

• Go through with the setup process until you get asked for network access
• Connect to WiFi or use a Ethernet-dongle, proceed to the next step
• Now power off the device e.G. by long pressing the power button
• Kill off the internet connection by temporarily disabling your WiFi router or just walk out of the WiFi range. If you used a dongle disconnect it from the device
• Then power on the device. It should have no connection to the internet now. You should be prompted right where you left off.
• Proceed with the installation; without a connection you should be able to create a local account

For more details check out this article: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account

1.1.2 Shrink the Windows/Bit Locker partition

Note: If you already have any data on the PC it is recommended to back it up before proceeding Management:

• Press Win + r
• Type Diskmgmt.msc
• Right click the Windows Partition(Windows-SSD (C:)
• Open the Shrink Volume Dialog

Just ignore the extra partitions in the screenshot

• Enter your desired shrinking size. To keep Windows usable you probably want to leave at least a few extra gigs free.
• Click Shrink and you should be done in just a few moments.

Note: the numbers in the screenshot won't match up with yours!

Okay, now we should be done with windows. Time to power off and getting our Linux stick!

1.2 Installing Linux

Note: I'll be using Fedora Workstation 36(currently the latest). If you want to use a different distro some commands will be different!

1.2.1 Getting Linux on a stick

You are probably not completely new to Linux and know how to make a bootable Linux Flash drive. If not.. yeah you may want to give Linux a shot on a different device first.. on this it won't be an easy journey.

Get the Fedora Live ISO from here

Little side note: if you distro-hop frequently or want to have multiple ISOs installed on one USB drive for some other reason check out Ventoy if you haven't already

1.2.2 UEFI Setup

• Insert your Linux flash drive

• Power on the device while holding F2 to enter the BIOS

Settings you might want to change:

• adjust time and date
• Secure Boot

should make your system a little safer and works with Fedora but could get a hussle later on (hibernation, custom kernel... if you know more, let me know)

• disable AMD Platform Security Processor

it is proprietary and kind of controversial, best you do your own research

• set a BIOS administrator password

gives just a little security improvement, but it is more important the linux partition is encrypted(we'll get to that)

Note: I am by no means a security expert; what I recommend is based on my limited understanding and online research; better double check what I have written here and if you know better please let me know; thanks!

• Go to Boot ⇨ Navigate to the bottom by pressing arrow down ⇨ Select your USB drive ⇨ But it on top of the list by pressing F6
• Press F10 to save and exit
• Boot the live environment by selecting Start Fedora-Workstation-Live 36 in the upcoming GRUB menu (or test the media first if you feel like it)

1.2.3 Install Linux to the hard drive/SSD

Now you can check out Fedora and you will probably realise the keyboard is not working. This is due to an issue with the new Ryzen 6000 series that should be addressed in upcoming Linux Kernel 6.0. Maybe you read this guide at a later time and it works out of the box?

To address that you can eighter connect a USB or Bluetooth keyboard or enable the on screen keyboard by clicking the top right corner ⇨ Settings ⇨ Accessibility ⇨ Screen Keyboard

Now open the Install to Hard Drive application. Select your language, keyboard layout and timezone than go to Installation Destination

To make hibernation work we need to create a swap partition, if you don't want to use hibernation you can just follow along with the Automatic installation process.

Note: Creating an encrypted swap partition after install is quite a hustle so be sure if you want to skip it

• Make sure the disk is selected than check the Custom radio button and click Done in the top left.

• Select the Encrypt my data checkbox

• Click on Click here to create them automatically

  Now you we need to determine the size of the swap partition. For hibernation to work you usually want to use around 1.5x of the size of your RAM. If you have 16GB of RAM you should be fine with a 20GiB swap partition though.

  Yes yes, I know the '16 Gig model' technically comes with 14.392GB or 13.725GiB of RAM so 1.5x would be 20.588GiB; I'm just trying to keep things simple YOU NERD :P

• Select the root partition (/) and press Modify below Volume:
• Set Size policy to fixed and enter the current partition size minus the determined swap space (In my case 390 GiB - 20 GiB = 370 GiB) then Save

• Now click the + Button to add a new mount point
• Select swap the drop down menu and enter the determined space (20 GiB in my case) ⇨ Click Add mount point

• Click on your newly created swap partition and make sure to check Encrypt with luks2 then press Update Settings
• Click Done in the top left, enter a secure password when prompted then accept the changes
• Now you should be able to Begin [the] Installation

Click Finish Installation and after rebooting you should get right to your fresh Fedora install.

1.2.4 After installation

You can now go through the small setup guide.

Then first things first: Go to Settings and set the Appearance to dark ;) jk style ur desktop as u want

What you might actually want to do is bring your system up to date by executing sudo dnf update in terminal

Also check if the swap partition was created correctly: swapon -s The output should consist of your swap partition as well as ZRAM, automatically created by fedora

Now reboot then run uname -r to check if your kernel is 6.0 or higher. If so the notebook's keyboard should work for you. You can skip chapter 2.