Install Fedora 37 KDE Plasma Desktop (KDE GUI)

This article will show the simple steps of installing a modern Linux Distribution like Fedora 37 KDE Plasma with KDE for the user graphical interface. First, it is offered the basic steps for installing the Operating system and then there are some screenshots of the installed system and its look and feel of it. Here is another article available with more screenshots of the installed and working Fedora 37 KDE PlasmaReview of freshly installed Fedora 37 KDE Plasma Desktop (KDE GUI). If the user is interested in Gnome as a graphical interface there are two articles on how to install Fedora 37 Workstation Edition, which comes with GNOME and the look and feel of the GNOME – Install Fedora Workstation 37 (Gnome GUI) and Review of freshly installed Fedora 37 Workstation (Gnome GUI)
This is the simplest setup. One hard disk device in the system is installed, which is detected as sda and the entire disk will be used for the installation of Fedora 37 KDE Plasma. All disk information in sda disk device will be permanently deleted by the installation wizard!

The Fedora 37 KDE Plasma Desktop comes with

  • Xorg X server – 22.1.5 XWayland is used by default
  • linux kernel – 6.0.7
  • KDE Plasma version: 5.24.3
  • KDE Frameworks version: 5.99.0
  • QT version: 5.15.6

For more packages and versions information the user may check out the Fedora 37 server articles – Software and technical details of Fedora Server 37 including cockpit screenshots though it is for GNOME installation.

We used the following ISO for the installation process:

https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/37/Spins/x86_64/iso/Fedora-KDE-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso

It is a LIVE image so you can try it before installing it. The easiest way is just to download the image and burn it to a DVD disk and then follow the installation below:

SCREENSHOT 1) Boot from the UEFI DVD-ROM device.

It is the same as the USB bootable removable drive. Choose the UEFI USB drive and boot the installation live drive.

main menu
UEFI BIOS DVD-ROM boot

Keep on reading!

Install Fedora Workstation 37 (Gnome GUI)

This article will show the simple steps of installing a modern Linux Distribution like Fedora 37 Workstation Edition with Gnome for the graphical user interface. First, it is offered the basic steps for installing the Operating system and then there are some screenshots of the installed system and its look and feel. Soon another article will show more screenshots of the installed and working Fedora 37 (Gnome and KDE plasma) – so the user may decide which of them to try first.
This is the most straightforward setup. One hard disk device in the system is installed, which is detected as sda and the entire disk will be used for the installation of Fedora Workstation 37. All disk information in sda disk device will be permanently deleted by the installation wizard!

The Fedora 37 Workstation comes with

  • Xorg X11 server – 1.20.14 and Xorg X11 server XWayland 22.1.5 is used by default
  • GNOME (the GUI) – 43.0
  • linux kernel – 6.0.7

Check out our article about what software is included in Review of freshly installed Fedora 37 Workstation (Gnome GUI).

There are previous installations howto articles for the older Fedora 36Review of freshly installed Fedora 36 Workstation (Gnome GUI), Install Fedora Workstation 31 (Gnome GUI), Install Fedora Workstation 30 (Gnome GUI).

The following ISO is used for the installation process: https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/37/Workstation/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-37-1.7.iso
It is a LIVE image so you can try it before installing. The easiest way is just to download the image and burn it to a DVD disk (or make a bootable USB flash drive) and then follow the installation below:

SCREENSHOT 1) Boot from the UEFI DVD-ROM device.

It is the same with the USB bootable removable drive. Choose the UEFI USB drive and boot the installation live drive.

main menu
UEFI BIOS DVD-ROM boot

Keep on reading!

Monitor and analyze with Grafana, influxdb 1.8 and collectd under Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

This is an updated version of the previous version of this topic – Monitor and analyze with Grafana, influxdb 1.8 and collectd under CentOS Stream 9, but this time for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. The article describes how to build modern analytic and monitoring solutions for system and application performance metrics. A solution, which may host all the server’s metrics and a sophisticated application, allows easy analyses of the data and powerful graphs to visualize the data.
A brief introduction to the main three software used to build the proposed solution:

  1. Grafana – an analytics and a web visualization tool. It supports dashboards, charts, graphs, alerts, and many more.
  2. influxdb – a time series database. Bleeding fast reads and writes and optimized for time.
  3. collectd – a data collection daemon, which obtain metrics from the host it is started and sends the metrics to the database (i.e. influxdb). It has around 170 plugins to collect metrics.

What is the task of each tool:

  1. collectd – gathers metrics and statistics using its plugins every 10 seconds on the host it runs and then sends the data over UDP to the influxdb using a simple text-based protocol.
  2. influxdb – listens on an open UDP port for data coming from multiple collectd instances installed on many different devices. In this case, a Linux server running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
  3. Grafana – an analytics and a web visualization tool. A web application, which connects to the InfluxDB and visualizes the time series metrics in graphs organized in dashboards. Graphs for CPU, memory, network, storage usage, and many more.
  4. nginx to enable SSL and proxy in front of the Grafana.

The whole solution uses the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server edition distro. Installing the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is a mandatory step to proceed further with this article – Installation of base Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS
The UDP influxdb port should be open per IP basis and web port of the web server (nginx) is up to the purpose of the solution – it can be behind a VPN or openly accessible by Internet.

STEP 1) Install additional repositories for Grafana, InfluxDB and collectd.

collectd is part of the Ubuntu official repositories. Grafana and InfluxDB maintain their official repositories. Here is how to install them.
Add the InfluxDB repository by first, importing the key of the InfluxDB repository and add the URL of the repository in /etc/apt/sources.list.

myuser@srv:~$ sudo curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -
Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8)).
OK
echo 'deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stable main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdata.list

Then, repeated the same procedure with the Grafana repository:

myuser@srv:~$ sudo curl -sL https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8)).
OK
echo 'deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Execute apt update to include the available file packages from all repositories including the ones:

apt update

Keep on reading!

How to install collectd in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and in general under Ubuntu

It appears Ubuntu 22.04 LTS still does not include in its packages base one of the best server software to gather metrics from different sources. collectd is a small and fast daemon, which can gather metrics from more than 80 different sources.
In fact, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS does not include it, but the new not LTS Ubuntu 22.10 provides the package in the universe repository – https://packages.ubuntu.com/kinetic/collectd-core. At least, one more file should be installed collectd from https://packages.ubuntu.com/kinetic/collectd. The name of the package is collectd, collectd-core and there are 4 more files of interests – collectd-dev, collectd-utils, libcollectdclient-dev, libcollectdclient1.
Check out the pool folder of an Ubuntu mirror, for example, the mirror – http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/collectd/ and download the latest file.
Now, the latest files are http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/collectd/collectd-core_5.12.0-11_amd64.deb and http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/collectd/collectd_5.12.0-11_amd64.deb. Download them and install the files with apt like usually but pointing to the files:
Keep on reading!

Monitor and analyze with Grafana, influxdb 1.8 and collectd under CentOS Stream 9

This article describes how to build a modern analytic and monitoring solutions for system and application performance metrics. A solution, which may host all the server’s metrics and a sophisticated application, allows easy analyses of the data and powerful graphs to visualize the data.
A brief introduction to the main three software used to build the proposed solution:

  1. Grafana – an analytics and a web visualization tool. It supports dashboards, charts, graphs, alerts, and many more.
  2. influxdb – a time series database. Bleeding fast reads and writes and optimized for time.
  3. collectd – a data collection daemon, which obtain metrics from the host it is started and sends the metrics to the database (i.e. influxdb). It has around 170 plugins to collect metrics.

What is the task of each tool:

  1. collectd – gathers metrics and statistics using its plugins every 10 seconds on the host it runs and then sends the data over UDP to the influxdb using a simple text-based protocol.
  2. influxdb – listens on an open UDP port for data coming from multiple collectd instances installed on many different devices. In this case, a Linux server running CentOS Stream 9.
  3. Grafana – an analytics and a web visualization tool. A web application, which connects to the InfluxDB and visualizes the time series metrics in graphs organized in dashboards. Graphs for CPU, memory, network, storage usage, and many more.
  4. nginx to enable SSL and proxy in front of the Grafana.

The whole solution uses the CentOS Stream 9 Linux distro. Installing the CentOS Stream 9 is a mandatory step to proceed further with this article – Network installation of CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0) – minimal server installation
The UDP influxdb port should be open per IP basis and web port of the web server (nginx) is up to the purpose of the solution – it can be behind a VPN or openly accessible by Internet.

STEP 1) Install additional repositories for Grafana, influxdb and collectd.

Install CentOS official EPEL and OpsTools repositories. EPEL provides additional packages to the base CentOS packages and OpsTools provides collectd and more collectd plugins than the ones included in the built-in repositories.

dnf install -y epel-release centos-release-opstools

Add the InfluxDB repository by creating a file in /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdb.repo

[influxdb]
name = InfluxDB Repository - RHEL $releasever
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/centos/$releasever/$basearch/stable
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key

Finally, add the Grafana repository in file /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Keep on reading!

How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL (MariaDB), PHP-FPM (LAMP) Stack on CentOS Stream 9

main menu
PHP Version 8.0.20

This article describes how to install a Web server with application back-end PHP and database back-end MySQL using MariaDB. In continuing the same topic, but with different software from the previous article – How To Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL (MariaDB), PHP-FPM (LEMP) Stack on CentOS Stream 9, where the Web server is Nginx with application back-end PHP-FPM, which is a sort of CGI (FastCGI). In this article, the Web server is Apache and the application is again PHP-FPM, because since the CentOS 8 the Apache mod_php is deprecated.
All the software installed throughout this article is from the CentOS Stream 9 official repositories including the EPEL repository. The machine is installed with a minimal installation of CentOS Stream 9 and there is a how-to here – Network installation of CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0) – minimal server installation.
Here are the steps to perform:

  1. Install, configure and start the database MariaDB.
  2. Install, configure and start the PHP-FPM and PHP cli.
  3. Install, configure and start the Web server Apache 2.x.
  4. Configure the system – firewall and SELinux.
  5. Test the installation with a phpMyAdmin installation.
  6. Bonus – Apache HTTPS with SSL certificate – self-signed and letsencrypt.

STEP 1) Install, configure and start the database MariaDB.

First, install the MariaDB server by:

dnf install -y mariadb-server

To configure the MariaDB server, the main file is /etc/my.cnf, which just includes all files under the folder /etc/my.cnf.d/

[root@srv ~]# cat /etc/my.cnf
#
# This group is read both both by the client and the server
# use it for options that affect everything
#
[client-server]

#
# include all files from the config directory
#
!includedir /etc/my.cnf.d

[root@srv ~]# ls -altr /etc/my.cnf.d/
total 32
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  295 Mar 25  2022 client.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  120 May 18 07:55 spider.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  232 May 18 07:55 mysql-clients.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  763 May 18 07:55 enable_encryption.preset
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 1458 Jun 13 13:24 mariadb-server.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root   42 Jun 13 13:29 auth_gssapi.cnf
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Oct  6 06:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 81 root root 4096 Oct  6 06:34 ..

The most important file for the MariaDB server is /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf, where all the server options are included. Under section “[mysqld]” add options to tune the MariaDB server. Supported options could be found here: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mysqld-options/
Add the following options under “[mysqld]” in /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf
Keep on reading!

How To Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL (MariaDB), PHP-FPM (LEMP) Stack on CentOS Stream 9

main menu
dnf mariadb

This article presents how to install a Web server with application back-end PHP and database back-end MySQL using MariaDB. All the software installed throughout this article is from the CentOS Stream 9 official repositories including the EPEL repository. The machine is installed with a minimal installation of CentOS Stream 9 and there is a how-to here – Network installation of CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0) – minimal server installation.
Here are the steps to perform:

  1. Install, configure and start the database MariaDB.
  2. Install, configure and start the PHP-FPM and PHP cli.
  3. Install, configure and start the Web server Nginx.
  4. Configure the system – firewall and SELinux.
  5. Test the installation with a phpMyAdmin installation.
  6. Bonus – Nginx HTTPS with SSL certificate – self-signed and letsencrypt.

STEP 1) Install, configure and start the database MariaDB.

First, install the MariaDB server by:

dnf install -y mariadb-server

To configure the MariaDB server, the main file is /etc/my.cnf, which just includes all files under the folder /etc/my.cnf.d/

[root@srv ~]# cat /etc/my.cnf
#
# This group is read both both by the client and the server
# use it for options that affect everything
#
[client-server]

#
# include all files from the config directory
#
!includedir /etc/my.cnf.d

[root@srv ~]# ls -altr /etc/my.cnf.d/
total 32
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  295 Mar 25  2022 client.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  120 May 18 07:55 spider.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  232 May 18 07:55 mysql-clients.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root  763 May 18 07:55 enable_encryption.preset
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 1458 Jun 13 13:24 mariadb-server.cnf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root   42 Jun 13 13:29 auth_gssapi.cnf
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Oct  6 06:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 81 root root 4096 Oct  6 06:34 ..

The most important file for the MariaDB server is /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf, where all the server options are included. Under section “[mysqld]” add options to tune the MariaDB server. Supported options could be found here: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mysqld-options/
Add the following options under “[mysqld]” in /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf
Keep on reading!

Review of freshly installed CentOS Stream 9 Workstation (Gnome GUI)

After the tutorial of Install CentOS Stream 9 Workstation (Gnome GUI) this tutorial is mainly to see what to expect from a freshly installed CentOS Stream 9 Workstation installation – the look and feel of the GUI (Gnome – version 40).

  • Xorg X server – 1.20.11
  • GNOME (the GUI) – 40.4.0
  • linux kernel – 5.14.0

More technical details are available for the server installation, which is not different from the workstation but the GUI (Gnome) installed – Software and technical details of CentOS Stream 9 minimal install. The later article may be of interest to developers, too. The CentOS Stream 9 Workstation install may install all of the listed software for CentOS Stream 9 Server.
The idea of this tutorial is just to see what to expect from CentOS Stream 9 Workstation (Gnome)the look and feel of the GUI, the default installed programs and their look and how to do some basic steps with them. Here the reader finds more than 125 screenshots and not so many text the main idea is not to distract the user with much text and version information and 3 meaningless screenshot, which the reader cannot see anything for the user interface, but these days the user interface is the primary goal of a Desktop system. More reviews of the kind will follow in the future …

CentOS is a pretty stable Linux Distribution System, which follows the paid Red Hat enterprise RHEL 9. And if the user really just wants a stable OS with a GUI for the next let’s say 5-10 years with support and fast security updates the CentOS Stream 9 might be perfect for it! Developing on this platform should be easy, too, because it supports all kind of virtualization and despite it may not include the bleeding edge libraries and software, it is easy enough to install latest software in a full or para virtualization or a container!

For all installation and review articles real workstations are used, not virtual environments!

SCREENSHOT 1) Fedora Linux (5.14.0-119.el9.x86_64) 9

main menu
grub 2.06 entry boot

Keep on reading!

Install CentOS Stream 9 Workstation (Gnome GUI)

This is the latest CentOS version with a graphical interface Gnome for a workstation. If you are a developer or just a Linux user, which want to have a pretty stable Operating System, the CentOS Stream 9 may be an option for you. CentOS Stream 9 is based and follows the RedHat Enterprise Linux 9 – paid Linux for the enterprise world, which is available for free thanks to the Open-source Software. CentOS Stream 9 will receive all the updates from the paid Linux system RHEL 9 and the support will be 10 years from now. 5 years of full support and 5 more years of security updates. The use of CentOS Stream 9 assures the user to have a stable and secure Linux operating system, which will not bring fundamental changes and breaks things periodically as of a more enthusiastic Linux Distributions. More information for the system here – Software and technical details of CentOS Stream 9 minimal install and Software comparison Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS vs CentOS Stream 9 head-to-head
The CentOS Stream 9 has a generic installation wizard for multiple type of installations – server, server with gui, user workstation and so on. This article is to show what options to enable to install a user workstation with CentOS Stream 9 with a graphical interface – Gnome. Most of the people think CentOS as a server Linux Distribution, but in fact, it is ideal for a workstation, too, especially with the grade of stability and security these days.
This article uses network installation with the following media: http://mirror.stream.centos.org/9-stream/BaseOS/x86_64/iso/CentOS-Stream-9-latest-x86_64-boot.iso which always points to the latest release of the CentOS Stream 9. The network installation will choose automatically the best mirror to download the packages for the system. There is an option to use an off-line installation with an 8G ISO disk. Check out for more ISOs here – http://mirror.stream.centos.org/9-stream/BaseOS/x86_64/iso/

SCREENSHOT 1) Boot from the UEFI DVD-ROM device.

It is the same with the USB bootable removable drive. Choose the UEFI USB drive and boot the installation live drive.

main menu
UEFI BIOS DVD-ROM boot

Keep on reading!

Network installation of CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0) – minimal server installation

Minimal net install is useful when a dedicated server is installed from a IPMI KVM or Dell iDRAC, HP iLO, IBM IMM or where the initial client side download of files need to be minimal.
CentOS Stream 9 is receives the updates before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and there is no versioning except the major release, which is 9. So the CentOS Stream 9 receives the updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9. On monthly or less basis CentOS community releases a stable ISO with a temporary time version like this one CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0).

Continuously delivered distro that tracks just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development

Here are some useful URLs:

For amd64 the net of CentOS Stream 9 install bootable media is located here (now the current latest release is 20220606.0, but you may check the last release. for the time you follow this howto):

http://mirror.stream.centos.org/9-stream/BaseOS/x86_64/iso/CentOS-Stream-9-latest-x86_64-boot.iso

Note there is no minimal CD for offline installation. Boot CD is to just boot and make “network installation” installation and there is a big fat DVD of 8.1 Gbytes to install offline.

Software details of CentOS Stream 9 minimal install could be found here – coming soon. Technical details of a default CentOS Stream 9 (20220606.0) minimal installation
There is a previous major release installation article – How to do a network installation of CentOS 8 (8.0.1950) – minimal server installation

Download it and put it on a CD or USB, the boot from it and follow the steps bellow:

SCREENSHOT 1) If you booted from the DVD you would get this first screen – select “Install CentOS Stream 9” and hit Enter

main menu
Start installation

Keep on reading!