Install

To install secureblue, you will use a Fedora Atomic (or CoreOS, for securecore) ISO to install Fedora Atomic, then rebase to a secureblue image using the installer. Unless specified otherwise, secureblue is used to refer to both the secureblue set of images and the securecore set of images, for the sake of brevity. The installation script presented in a later step lets you choose between them. You must start from a Fedora Atomic ISO for secureblue desktop images, and must start from a Fedora CoreOS ISO for securecore images.

Table of Contents

Pre-install

The following is advice on what to do before and during the installation of a Fedora ISO, and how.

Note

The cross-platform Fedora Media Writer is the official, tested, and supported method for the creation of bootable media. Instructions (alongside a word on alternative methods) are available in the Fedora documentation.

Tip

If you don't already have a Fedora Atomic installation, use a Fedora Atomic ISO that matches your secureblue target image to install one. If you want to use a secureblue Silverblue image, start with the Fedora Silverblue ISO, Kinoite for Kinoite images, Sericea (Sway Atomic) for Sericea images, and CoreOS for all the securecore images.

For more details on the available images, have a look at the list of available images before proceeding.

Before rebasing and during the installation, the following checks are recommended.

Fedora installation

BIOS hardening

Terms of use

secureblue includes a combination of software packages, each under its own licensing terms. The license of secureblue is the Apache License 2.0. The license of secureblue does not supersede the licenses of upstream code and content contained in secureblue images. By downloading secureblue you agree to the license terms of its use.

Copyright 2024-2025 The secureblue authors

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this software except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Rebase

Now that you have a Fedora Atomic or Fedora CoreOS installation, rebase it to the secureblue image of your choice using the script below. This script does not install secureblue into the existing system. It rebases (fully replaces the existing system) with secureblue.

Download secureblue installer

After downloading the installer, run it from the directory you downloaded it to:

bash install_secureblue.sh

Post-install

Note

After installation, yafti will open. Make sure to follow the steps listed carefully and read the directions closely.

Subscribe to secureblue release notifications

How to subscribe to secureblue release notifications

Set NVIDIA-specific kargs if applicable

If you are using an nvidia or nvidia-open image, run this after installation:

ujust set-kargs-nvidia

If you encounter flickering or LUKS issues, you may also (rarely) need this karg:

rpm-ostree kargs \
    --append-if-missing=initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init

Enroll SecureBoot key

Note

GNOME users on Nvidia images may notice that Gnome Software prompts them to create a new secureboot key. This prompt can and should be ignored, and the command below used instead. 

ujust enroll-secureblue-secure-boot-key

Set hardened kargs

Note

Learn more about the hardened boot kargs applied by the command below. 

ujust set-kargs-hardening

This command applies a fixed set of hardened boot parameters, and asks you whether the following kargs should also be set along with those (all of which are documented in the link above):

32-bit support

If you answer N, or press enter without any input, support for 32-bit programs will be disabled on the next boot. If you run exclusively modern software, chances are likely you don’t need this, so it’s safe to disable for additional attack surface reduction.

However, there are certain exceptions. A couple common usecases are if you require Steam, or run an occasional application in Wine you’ll likely want to keep support for 32-bit programs. If this is the case, answer Y.

Force disable simultaneous multithreading

If you answer Y when prompted, simultaneous multithreading (SMT, often called Hyper-threading) will be forcefully disabled, regardless of known vulnerabilities in the running hardware. This can cause a reduction in the performance of certain tasks in favor of security.

Unstable hardening kargs

If you answer Y when prompted, unstable hardening kargs will be additionally applied, which can cause issues on some hardware, but are stable on other hardware.

Setup USBGuard

This will generate a policy based on your currently attached USB devices and block all others, then enable usbguard.

ujust setup-usbguard

Create a separate wheel account for admin purposes

Creating a dedicated wheel user and removing wheel from your primary user helps prevent certain privilege escalation attack vectors and password sniffing.

Caution

If you do these steps out of order, it is possible to end up without the ability to administrate your system. You will not be able to use the traditional GRUB-based method of fixing mistakes like this, either, as this will leave your system in a broken state. However, simply rolling back to an older snapshot of your system, should resolve the problem.

Note

We log in as admin to do the final step of removing the user account's wheel privileges in order to make the operation of removing those privileges depend on having access to your admin account, and the admin account functioning correctly first.

  1. run0
  2. adduser admin
  3. usermod -aG wheel admin
  4. passwd admin
  5. exit
  6. reboot
  7. Log in as admin
  8. run0
  9. gpasswd -d {your username here} wheel
  10. reboot

Note

You don't need to log in using your wheel user to use it for privileged operations. When logged in as your non-wheel user, Polkit will prompt you to authenticate as your wheel user as needed, or when requested by calling run0.

Setup system DNS

Interactively setup system DNS resolution for systemd-resolved (optionally also set the resolver for Trivalent via management policy):

ujust dns-selector

Note

If you intend to use a VPN, use the system default state (network provided resolver). This will ensure your system uses the VPN provided DNS resolver to prevent DNS leaks. ESPECIALLY avoid setting the browser DNS policy in this case.

Toggle MAC address randomization

Toggle system-wide MAC address randomization in NetworkManager between random and permanent:

ujust toggle-mac-randomization

Note

Disabling MAC randomization can help with network compatibility issues, especially in enterprise or captive portal environments. Enabling it improves privacy by preventing tracking across networks.

Bash environment lockdown

To mitigate LD_PRELOAD attacks, run:

ujust toggle-bash-environment-lockdown

LUKS Hardware-Unlock

Note

There are two options available for hardware-based unlocking. You can either enroll FIDO2 or TPM2 for your LUKS volume. FIDO2 enrollment is preferable if you own a hardware security key. It's recommended that you choose only one of these, and not both at the same time.

LUKS FIDO2 Unlock

To enable FIDO2 LUKS unlocking with your FIDO2 security key, run:

ujust setup-luks-fido2-unlock

LUKS TPM2 Unlock

Warning

If you have an AMD CPU, check your firmware settings to make sure it is using a dedicated TPM device or a Pluton Chip. If not and it is using an fTPM (firmware TPM), skip this step. If you do not know what this means or are unsure, just skip this step.

To enable TPM2 LUKS unlocking, run:

ujust setup-luks-tpm-unlock

Type Y when asked if you want to set a PIN.

Flatpak Permissions Tuning

Consult our Flatpak article for guidance on tuning Flatpak permissions.

Validation

To validate your secureblue setup, run:

ujust audit-secureblue

Optional: Trivalent Flags

The included Trivalent browser has some additional settings in chrome://flags you may want to set for additional hardening and convenience (can cause functionality issues in some cases).

You can read about these settings in the Trivalent post-install instructions.

Read the FAQ

Lots of important stuff is covered in the FAQ. AppImage toggles, GNOME extension toggles, Xwayland toggles, etc.