Recently , Red Hat backed community Linux distribution Fedora has released its latest stable release Fedora 35 . Lot of new changes and improvements were made after Fedora 34. Lets install fedora 35 using one of the popular hypervisors in market . i.e. VMware workstation pro 16 .

Follow steps below to get a working installation of fedora 35 as a virtual machine .

Note : Links for installers and ISO

1. VMware workstation pro 16 : link
2. Fedora 35 ISO : link
3. VMware workstation player : link

1. Creating a Virtual machine

Here , we are not covering the basic windows installer steps for VMware . You can grab your installer from this link ( download VMware workstation pro ) . VMware workstation pro 16 is available for Linux too but installation is bit different . So if you are familiar with your Linux system enough you can proceed . Steps for creating VM and configurations will be same on both systems .

Note : VMware workstation pro 16 is a commercial paid product . You can use VMware workstation player as its free alternative .

Now , Open VMware . You will be greeted with a welcome screen like this . Click on “Create a New Virtual Machine “

Now , ‘ New Virtual Machine Wizard ‘ will appear . Here we are given choices Typical and Custom . In custom , we will have greater control over configuration and wizard will not set any recommended settings for us . But in Typical mode , which is recommended by VMware , we are provided with a smooth experience of creating virtual machines .

So , we will go with Typical installation.

Now , At this step , we need to provide Installer disc to a virtual machine . It can be existing virtual disk or an iso file . In this case we will be using our downloaded fedora 35 iso . If you have not downloaded yet , download from this link .

So , here select option ‘ Installer disc image file (iso) ‘ and brows for the iso file . And then proceed by clicking next.

Naming anything properly is very important part and also selecting the location where all VM files are stored . So , be a little careful and select proper path for storing your VM as its going to take up disc space , make sure you have enough of disc space available on the drive you are selecting .

We have set the location to store all VM files , but now we will set size of virtual hard disc which will become boot drive of VM after installation . Here , recommended size for fedora is 20 GB , you can go with it . But its minimum required size which will fill up easily . So , if you can afford to dedicate some more disc space to this VM , i will recommend you to do it . 30 GB is good enough to contain all the development tools and files too .

So far we have configured basic things about our VM , which is enough but we can tinker with some more stuff and we are going to dive a bit deeper in it before moving to next step . So click on ‘Customize Hardware ‘ and proceed.

and here are details about hardware which is going to be used by fedora VM. We can tinker CPU cores , main memory (RAM) , various peripheral device controllers and so on . In image below we are changing CPU core count and memory .Increasing CPU core count will ensure faster processing by Fedora VM. So I will encourage you to go with higher core count for VM .

Now , the configuration step for Virtual machine is done . We can proceed to Installation part of the fedora .

Step 2: Install Fedora 35

Now , click on start Virtual Machine button to start the virtual machine . After click , boot process will start and VM will boot from the iso file for first time as there is no other os installed on Virtual hard disc .

Note :But if the Virtual hard disc had previous os installed already , we have to set boot priority of VM bios .

As soon as system boots from iso file , you will see some options to start fedora in live environment . Select the first option to start fedora in live environment .

Note : for those who don’t know what is live environment , let me explain. In Linux , unlike other operating system ,we can run OS directly from installation media and check whether its running properly on out hardware or not without installing it . Which means out files will not be erased in live boot and we can try out OS .

After booting into os , you will be greeted with a welcome fedora window . It will ask you to select whether you want to try fedora or Install it to hard drive .

Here we will click on Install to Hard Drive , as we want a fully working VM and not just live environment.

As soon as you hit the option to install , the Fedora installer called Anaconda will start .

Now we have to follow some basic steps to setup the OS on Virtual hard drive.

First of all select the language in which you want to install the OS .Here you can choose any regional language of your choice . Select the language And click on continue to proceed.

Now , For installation of OS , we need to configure 3 options . Localization , Installation Destination ( hard disk ) and Time and Date . Out of which if you are connected to network , time and date will be automatically picked along with your time zone . So lets click on Installation destination and configure the virtual hard drive setting .

Here , as we have only one 30 GB virtual hard drive , its automatically selected . But if we had more than one , it will be shown and we had to choose properly .

Now , click on done button .

Now , as you can see , all the required configurations are done and option to begin installation has become blue , which means we can proceed . So , click on Begin Installation and wait for installer to finish setting up the OS.

As soon as installation finishes , you will get option of finish installation . Click it and reboot the os if not rebooted automatically .

Step 3 : User Setup

Now , if system is installed properly , you will see welcome screen on next boot . Upto this point , we have set the OS but not configured the User accounts . Lets start with setup .

On next screen , you will see some user privacy settings , you can opt in for optional features of turn them off . and click on next .

Now , this is new option added to welcome screen of fedora in this release , before fedora 35 , we had to manually enable the third party application repositories . But this is good and welcoming change that they have provided it in welcome wizard itself . So , enable the third party repositories like nvidia repositories etc …

In 2021 , its almost impossible to work completely offline or on local system . Cloud technologies have become the integral part of our day to day life . So here is option to have your online accounts backed into the OS itself. You can login your google , Microsoft accounts . After it click on next.

Now we are going to setup a local user account . If you have logged in with online account in last step , it will pick your name from online account automatically . But if you have not logged in with online account , you can do it here . Just your desired username , your full name , a profile pic and click on next .

Now lets create a strong password for your system . Although , i have entered a weak password , I will not recommend you to do that . Please have a password of length at least 8 characters with upper and lowercase and a special symbol in it .

and its all done .

So , now you can start using your fedora installation and work with your desired developer tools .

I hope you liked the tutorial . I you have any suggestion please do comment below . See you in next one !