The Ultimate Guide to Installing Discord on Fedora 35

Discord is an incredibly popular real-time chat and voice communication platform designed specifically for gaming communities. With over 150 million active monthly users as of 2022, it has quickly become the go-to gathering place for gamers looking to connect.

Why Choose Discord?

Unlike clunky forums or old-school Voice over IP apps, Discord delivers a fast, responsive and featurerich social experience on both desktop and mobile. Some key advantages include:

• Slick modern interface with dark mode support
• Top notch voice chat functionality
• Support for video streaming
• Inbuilt emoji reactions and GIF support
• Cross-platform availability
• Secure and reliable infrastructure
• Easy organizational tools like user roles and permissions

Developers have also released full Discord integration capabilities for games and communities to tap into. Top titles like Fortnite, Overwatch and Minecraft now offer official Discord servers for their players.

As an experienced Linux engineer who‘s been using VoIP and chat apps since the early TeamSpeak and IRC days, I can confidently say Discord provides one of the most polished and practical communication platforms out there today.

Key Discord Usage Metrics

Let‘s look at some interesting statistics that showcase Discord‘s massive growth over the past 5 years:

• Over 150 million monthly active users as of 2022
• 19 million+ concurrent users at peak times
• 5.5 million+ Discord servers created
• 1 billion messages sent per day
• Top server has over 600k members
• Average user spends 4+ hours per day on Discord

The network effect from these figures gives Discord unmatched reach and quality of conversations in the gaming space.

Now that we‘ve convinced you to give Discord a try, let‘s get into installing it on Linux. I‘ll be demonstrating the setup process on the latest Fedora 35 workstation edition.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, make sure your system meets the following requirements:

• Fedora 35 Workstation installed
• Active internet connection
• Hardware should meet at least minimum specs:
  • 2GHz dual core CPU
  • 2GB RAM
  • Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU

I‘d also recommend setting up Discord with adequate audio equipment to get the best experience:

• Good quality gaming headset
• Dedicated USB microphone
• Sound dampening for ambient noises

With the prerequisites covered, let‘s move on to installing Discord.

Step 1 – Enable RPM Fusion Repositories

Discord‘s Linux package is distributed through the RPM Fusion software repositories. Unfortunately, Fedora Workstation does not enable these repositories by default during system setup.

To add RPM fusion to our system, open a terminal emulator and run:

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Confirm importing the public GPG key when prompted. This will enable the free RPM Fusion repository with support for common media codecs and applications.

We‘ll also need to add the non-free repository containing packages restricted by copyrights and patents:

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

With both repositories active, we now have access to install Discord.

Step 2 – Install Discord

Thanks to RPM Fusion inclusion, we can install Discord directly using Fedora‘s dnf package manager.

Let‘s refresh our package indexes before installing the app:

sudo dnf makecache 

Now to grab Discord along with any required dependencies:

sudo dnf install discord

The latest Discord package will now be downloaded and set up on your system. That‘s all there is to the installation process!

Step 3 – Launch Discord

You‘ll find Discord available in your desktop menu and launchers after installation. On first run it may prompt some additional setup and updates.

I generally prefer opening apps from the terminal. To launch Discord this way, use:

discord

After startup, you‘ll see the Discord login page. Provide your existing credentials or register a new account to start chatting!

Customizing Discord

Discord offers several options to customize your experience once inside the app:

• Change notification settings
• Create/join servers
• Tweak voice and video
• Add friends
• Explore public servers
• Adjust appearance
• Set a custom status

For power users, Discord also supports better integration with Linux using CLI options.

To disable hardware acceleration (fixes display issues on some GPUs):

discord --disable-hardware-acceleration

To adjust the Discord UI scale factor:

discord --force-device-scale-factor=1.5

Review all customization flags:

discord --help  

Comparing Discord Alternatives

How does Discord compare to other popular voice and chat apps on Linux? Here‘s a quick competitive analysis:

Slack

• More focused on professional team chat
• Powerful third-party integrations
• More complex pricing plans
• Limited voice/video capabilities

TeamSpeak

• Legacy VoIP application
• Primarily self-hosted servers
• Steep learning curve
• No text chat

Matrix

• Open source ecosystem
• Federated public/private servers
• Requires own hosting
• Less intuitive interface

Mattermost

• Open source Slack alternative
• On-prem or cloud hosting
• Customizable servers
• Smaller user base

Rocket.Chat

• Feature-packed open source option
• Channel organization
• Video meetings
• Contacts management

Among proprietary apps, Discord strikes the best balance of usability, voice quality and gamer-friendly features.

Troubleshooting Issues

Despite being designed for ease of use, here are some common hiccups faced when deploying Discord:

Can‘t Hear Other Users

Discord requires allowing browser access to your microphone under Chrome://settings/content/microphone. Check that this permission is enabled.

Audio Echo

Enable the noise suppression settings under voice settings. For persistent echo, use push-to-talk mode.

Overlay Not Working

The in-game overlay requires hardware acceleration enabled in Discord under Settings > Appearance.

Can‘t Find Any Servers

Ensure Crash Reporting is enabled in Settings > Privacy to see public server listings.

Still facing a stubborn problem? Discord‘s official community support has your back!

Uninstalling Discord

To remove Discord cleanly from your Fedora system, use:

sudo dnf remove discord 

This will uninstall just the Discord package itself while leaving behind dependencies needed by other programs.

To additionally remove unused dependencies, run:

sudo dnf autoremove

And Discord is fully removed! Simple as that.

Final Thoughts

That concludes our guide to get Discord running smoothly on the latest Fedora release. From personal experience across hundreds of Linux environments, I can vouch for Discord being an essential tool for any gaming setup.

Fedora 35 in particular offers a streamlined foundation for the software thanks to quality open source infrastructure like RPM Fusion.

Got suggestions to further fine tune Discord? Found my tips useful? Let me know in the comments below!