Baseline

Install generic Fedora system, command-line, and development packages that other setup steps rely on.

ansible-playbook -i inventory -K playbooks/lab-stack.yml --tags baseline

The role installs bootstrap dependencies such as CA certificates, Git, Python, and archive/download tools, plus command-line convenience tools. Every declared package is expected to be available on the supported Fedora version, and the playbook stops if any package cannot be installed. The optional package group describes non-bootstrap workstation tools; it does not make installation failures optional. This group includes uv for Python project, environment, and package management, alongside the python3 and python3-pip bootstrap dependencies. It also installs the system-level pandoc command through Fedora’s pandoc-cli package, independently of Quarto.

The desktop_apps role owns generic graphical software, Flathub configuration, and removal of unwanted Fedora Workstation applications. Keeping those changes out of baseline makes the baseline safe to reuse on server-oriented (non-GUI) systems.

Baseline retains Git as a bootstrap dependency, but no longer installs Git LFS, Gitk, BorgBackup, Nemo, Dropbox, Vorta, or Thunderbird MCP. Use their focused roles and tags instead; BorgBackup and Vorta are owned by borg_vorta.

🔧 Manual setup and configuration

  • Set up SSH and register on GitHub
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 64 -C "your-email@institution.edu"
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | wl-copy
# add in GitHub settings/ssh

✅ Check

git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email

python3 --version
uv --version
pandoc --version

docker version
docker run --rm hello-world

ssh -V
ls -la ~/.ssh/*.pub 2>/dev/null || echo "No SSH public keys found"
ssh-add -l || true
ssh -T git@github.com

File manager keyboard shortcuts

In Nautilus or Nemo, select a file or folder and press Shift+F10 to open its context menu (the same menu as right-clicking). A dedicated Menu key, when available, does the same. These shortcuts open the selected file or folder’s context menu, not the application’s top menu.

Future work: decide whether additional desktop GNOME setup should be documented here or kept in separate role pages.