Setting Up Fedora 42 XFCE with LUKS Encryption and XLibre in VirtualBox

Download the Fedora 42 XFCE Spin ISO from the official Fedora Spins website and create a VirtualBox VM. I recommend creating one with 8GB RAM, 4 CPUs, and at least 40GB of disk space.

Important: If you have VirtualBox Extension Pack installed, uninstall it first as it may cause driver conflicts with XLibre.

Boot from the ISO and start the installer. When you reach the Installation Destination screen, select Custom/Manual partitioning.

Choose Standard Paritioning and check "Encrypt my data".

Create 4 partitions in this order:

1. /biosboot with 1 MiB
2. /boot with 1 GiB
3. swap with 4 GiB, and
4. / using the remaining space

The installer will prompt you for a LUKS passphrase when you click Done/Save. Choose a strong LUKS passphrase and save it down securely. Complete the installation by creating a user account with administrator privileges.

After installation, remove the ISO from the VM and boot into your new system. You'll be prompted for your LUKS passphrase at every boot. Once logged into XFCE, open a terminal and update the system with:

sudo dnf update
sudo reboot

After rebooting, remove any conflicting AMD graphics drivers that prevent XLibre installation if you are on an Intel system:

sudo dnf remove xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu xorg-x11-drv-ati

(Similarly, if you are on an AMD system, you may get warnings about conflicing Intel graphics drivers when you attempts to run dnf update after enabling the xlibre-xserver repo below.)

Next, enable the XLibre Copr repository and install XLibre:

sudo dnf copr enable kkofler/xlibre-xserver
sudo dnf update
sudo reboot

After rebooting, verify XLibre is running by checking the version:

Xorg -version

This should show "XLibre X Server" instead of "X.Org". You can also verify you're using X11 with:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

This should return "x11".

Finally, backup your LUKS encryption header if you wish:

sudo cryptsetup luksHeaderBackup /dev/sda2 --header-backup-file ~/luks-header-backup.img

You can copy this file to your host system and keep it safe along with your LUKS passphrase. If either is lost, your encrypted data is unrecoverable.

You now have a working Fedora 42 system with XFCE desktop, full disk encryption, and the XLibre X11 server running.