D-RINE GNU/Linux - Installation

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Step One - Downloading the Oracle Linux ISO
1. Download the UEK boot ISO from: https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html
You should be able to find mirrors for Oracle Linux ISOS, but if all else fails you can download them from here.

2. Verify the integrity of the files by reading the dedicated verification page.

3. Write the ISO file to a USB.
On Windows you can use Rufus.
On macOS you can use balenaEtcher.
On GNU/Linux and other operating systems you will have to find your own dedicated program or use the 'dd' command.



Step Two - Booting the Oracle Linux ISO
This installation page is assuming a system with no important data on it.
If there is important data on it, back it up or move it before continuing!

1. Plug in the USB and press the F12 key over and over on Intel based machines or the F10 key over and over on AMD based machines.
If neither of these keys work you will have to refer to your machine's manual on how to enter the BIOS menu.

2. You should now see a list of available devices to boot from. Select the USB containing Oracle Linux.

3. The machine should now boot the entry screen. Select the option to install Oracle Linux without testing the ISO.

If the USB does not boot then this means that UEFI Secure Boot has blocked it. You may or may not be able to adjust your BIOS to accept the certificate.
I should also mention that with UEFI Secure Boot enabled that it will typically break hibernation support and third party kernel modules such as Nvidia graphics or VirtualBox.
So although it should be possible to have your system accept Oracle's certificate and sign the third party modules yourself this will have to be done on your own.



Step Three - Installing Oracle Linux
1. You can go through the installer as usual except for everything in the Software section.
Once you have configured everything it is now time to set up the installation source and software selection.

2. In 'Installation Source' add the following repositories:

If you are using the Red Hat compatible kernel you can leave the ol9_UEKR7 repository out.

3. After setting up the installation source it should pull in the repository information. Once this has finished you can enter 'Software Selection'
In software selection you should choose 'Workstation (KDE)' on the left panel and 'KDE Applications' on the right panel.
You can enable other groups on the right panel depending on what you want installed on your system.

It is possible to use the 'Workstation' group on the left panel to use GNOME instead of KDE, but this is something I will not be supporting.
If you continue to do this you will have to install the D-RINE custom packages manually with 'yum'.

4. You can now select 'Begin Installation' to start the installation.
Once installation has finished you can then reboot and start using Oracle Linux.
I'd recommend to choose the "Plasma (X11)" option when logging in which appears in the bottom left of the login screen.
I'd also recommend to install programs from the Discover program. Just be sure to add Flathub as a default repository.



Post Installation Improvements
You should now have have successfully booted into Oracle Linux.
Although installation has finished there are some extra things to be done to improve Oracle Linux.
Enable the CodReady repository and update the system
KDE Improvements
Modify SELinux settings to allow Steam and Wine to work properly
Hide GRUB menu and Kernel ouput
Create swapfile for swap and hibernation support
AMD Radeon Proprietary Drivers/Modules
Nvidia Proprietary Drivers/Modules
Case Insensitivity



Case Insensitivity
This makes programs see a file like test.txt as test.txt and TEST.TXT
This sub-section is assuming that there is no data on your /home partition. If there is back it up or move it!

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-F4 over and over until it switches the screen to a virtual terminal.
2. Log in to your user account and run the following commands:

$ cd /
$ sudo su
# mkdir /hometmp
# mv /home/* /hometmp/
# mount | grep /home
    

3. With the last command it should output something like this:
/dev/mapper/ol_hostname-home on /home type xfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,attr2,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota)

The underlined part of the output should be used in place of XXX in the next set of commands.
Be very sure to not mistype or misspell this part or you may erase something important.

# umount /home
# mkfs.xfs -f -n version=ci XXX
# mount /home
# mv /hometmp/* /home/
# reboot
    

4. To test if it is functioning properly:

$ echo pass >test.txt
$ cat test.txt
$ cat TEST.TXT
    

Nvidia Proprietary Drivers/Modules
Caution! Disabling the nouveau driver on UEFI will completely break graphics!
Only option around this is to either have a second graphics card or to use the '-z -Z' paramaters after ./NVIDIA

1. In your web browser go to this web page to download your driver: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx
If you don't know your model number you can run this command in a regular terminal:
$ lspci | grep VGA

2. Then run the following commands:

$ sudo su
# yum group install "Development Tools"
# yum install kernel-devel kernel-uek-devel libglvnd-devel
# cd /home/yourUserName/Downloads/
# chmod +x NVIDIA*.run
# ./NVIDIA
    

The NVIDIA run file will have a different name for every card so you will have to press the tab key to autocomplete its name.

3. When installation fails because the nouveau module is loaded and it asks to create a modprobe file click yes.
Once the installer exits run these commands:

# dracut -fv
# reboot
    

After reboot:

# ./NVIDIA
# rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# nvidia-xconfig --prime
    

AMD Radeon Proprietary Drivers/Modules
1. In your web browser go to this web page to download your driver (under RHEL section): https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers

2. Then run the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo su
# yum install amdgpu*.rpm
# nano /usr/bin/amdgpu-install
# amdgpu-install --no-dkms
# reboot
    

For the nano command you will want to edit the file to change rhel|centos|almalinux|rocky to rhel|centos|almalinux|rocky|ol
DKMS is not used because it doesn't work.



Create swapfile for swap and hibernation support
1. Run the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo su
# mkdir /vm
# chmod 700 /vm
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/swap0 bs=1G count=X status=progress
# sync
# sync
# sync
# chmod 600 /vm/swap0
# mkswap /vm/swap0
# swapon /vm/swap0
# nano /etc/fstab
    

For the 'dd' command you will need to replace X with the amount of RAM you have.
You can use the 'free -h' command to see how much RAM you have. So if you have 7.6Gi of RAM you can round it to 8.

For the 'nano' command you will have to edit this '/etc/fstab' file to enable the swapfile at every boot.
Add the following line to this file:
/vm/swap0 none swap sw 0 0

2. To enable hibernation support run the following commands in a terminal:

# filefrag -v /vm/swap0
# mount | grep "on / "
# nano /etc/default/grub
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg
# reboot
    

For the 'filefrag' command it should output something like this:

Filesystem type is: 58465342
File size of /vm/swap0 is 2147483648 (524288 blocks of 4096 bytes)
 ext:     logical_offset:        physical_offset: length:   expected: flags:
   0:        0..  524287:    4282748..   4807035: 524288:             last,eof
/vm/swap0: 1 extent found
    

The first number in the physical offset section is the one you want. In this case its 4282748.
You may wish to read this Arch Linux wiki page for more information.


For the 'mount' command it should output something like this:
/dev/mapper/ol_hostname-root on / type xfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,attr2,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota)

The underlined portion will be used later on.


In the 'nano' command you should find a line that has something like: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="..."
Between these two quotation marks insert the following:
resume=MOUNT_OUTPUT resume_offset=SWAPFILE_OFFSET

So using the values from the examples earlier it should look something like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=ol_hostname/root rhgb quiet resume=/dev/mapper/ol_hostname-root resume_offset=4282748"


Lastly in the 'grub2-mkconfig' command it updates the GRUB configuration file to load these new settings.
On MBR/Legacy BIOS machines you can just simply use 'grub2-mkconfig' with no command paramaters.



Hide GRUB menu and Kernel ouput
1. Run the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo su
# nano /etc/default/grub
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg
# cp -av /boot/grub2/grubenv /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/
    

For the 'nano' command you will have to add:
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
after
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5

to hide the GRUB menu and then insert
loglevel=0
after
quiet
in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" line to hide Kernel output.

For the 'grub2-mkconfig' command it updates the GRUB configuration file to load these new settings.
On MBR/Legacy BIOS machines you can just simply use 'grub2-mkconfig' with no command paramaters and skip the 'cp -av' command.



Modify SELinux settings to allow Steam and Wine to work properly
1. Run the following commands in a terminal:
$ sudo su
# setsebool -P selinuxuser_execheap=1
# setsebool -P selinuxuser_execmod=1



KDE Improvements
1. Run the following commands in a terminal:
$ sudo su
# sed -i 's^LogoPath=.*^LogoPath=/usr/share/pixmaps/fedora-logo-sprite.png^g' /etc/xdg/kcm-about-distrorc

This will fix the logo in 'About this System' for KDE System Settings.


# sed -i 's^action/start_new_session=false^action/start_new_session=true^g' /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-profile/default/xdg/kdeglobals
# sed -i 's^action/switch_user=false^action/switch_user=true^g' /usr/share/kde-settings/kde-profile/default/xdg/kdeglobals

This will re-enable user switching.


# sed -i 's^"start-here"^"system-logo-icon"^g' /usr/share/plasma/look-and-feel/org.fedoraproject.fedora.desktop/contents/plasmoidsetupscripts/*.js
This will fix the Start icon. If you logged in before applying this fix you will have to manually adjust the icon for yourself.



Enable the CodeReady repository and update the system
1. Run the following commands in a terminal:
$ sudo su
# yum config-manager --enable ol9_codeready_builder
# yum group install "KDE"
# yum group install "KDE Applications"