I Use Fedora, by the Way

My first serious Linux experience was with Zorin OS in 2021.

It was friendly, familiar, and close enough to Windows that I could learn without immediately questioning every decision that had brought me there.

A week ago, I decided to try again.

This time, I installed EndeavourOS in a virtual machine on my Proxmox server and accessed it through remote desktop.

The idea was to experiment safely before touching my laptop.

This taught me two things.

First, I should probably not use Arch.

I originally wanted to try EndeavourOS so I could finally say:

I use Arch, by the way.

Unfortunately, I also enjoy having a good time.

I do not want every update to become a small research project. I like learning how systems work, but I do not want to debug merely for the spiritual value of debugging.

Second, configuring a graphical desktop through remote desktop is a bad way to judge how it will behave on a 3K, 120 Hz OLED laptop screen.

The bitrate was never going to help me understand animations, scaling, refresh-rate behaviour, or visual details properly.

I should have seen that one coming.

Keeping one foot in Windows

I wiped the laptop and installed Fedora alongside Windows.

I kept Windows because I needed a fallback.

It is difficult to explain during a job interview that your camera does not work because you spent the previous evening experimenting with drivers.

“Oh, sorry. I broke the webcam, and it now either looks like it came from 2003 or does not exist.”

Probably not the professional image I am trying to build.

Windows remained there as insurance.

Fedora became the experiment.

The machine is an ASUS Vivobook OLED with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB SSD, and a screen that deserves better than being configured through compressed remote desktop.

My practical objective was also simple: get more than five hours of battery life without turning the laptop into an expensive typewriter.

Starting with the sensible option

I began with KDE Plasma.

It felt like the reasonable transition from Windows: familiar enough to understand, but flexible enough to start changing things.

That lasted until I discovered the limits of my restraint.

I added two floating application docks.

Then I changed more things.

Then I changed the things I had already changed.

At some point, I nearly broke the window manager by trying to force KDE into becoming something it was not designed to be.

This is usually the moment when a sensible person stops.

I installed Noctalia.

Noctalia gave me more of what I wanted: a custom shell, a launcher, widgets, media controls, notifications, visual consistency, and a desktop that felt less like a collection of default components.

It also introduced a window-management problem.

So I installed Niri.

Niri was not configured.

The result was a black screen and the sudden realization that I did not know any of the keyboard shortcuts.

Linux freedom is sometimes the freedom to create a completely empty desktop and then discover that you have also removed the obvious way to escape it.

Ricing as a design problem

I like UI and UX.

I care about spacing, motion, hierarchy, consistency, and the small details that make software feel intentional.

One of my long-term ambitions is to build a Linux distribution of my own, or at least something close enough that I can pretend the difference is technical.

Ricing is therefore more than changing a wallpaper.

It is a way to understand how a desktop is assembled.

Niri handles windows.

Noctalia handles the shell, launcher, media controls, screenshots, notifications, and much of the visual experience.

GTK applications have their own theming system.

KDE and Qt applications have another.

Flatpaks may ignore both because they live in their own sandbox.

Electron and CEF applications may decide that none of this concerns them.

Spotify, for example, still insists on keeping an ugly blue title bar that looks as though it escaped from Windows Vista.

I fixed the rest of the interface.

The title bar remains.

Every operating system needs one small monument to suffering.

The desktop slowly became mine

The setup now looks close to what I wanted.

The theme is coherent across most applications.

The battery behaviour is much better.

Hardware controls work.

The launcher can search Spotify and display album artwork.

I built a Noctalia plugin for that because the feature did not already exist in the form I wanted.

I plan to publish it.

That is one of the parts of Linux I value most.

When something is missing, the answer does not always have to be waiting for a company to decide that enough users deserve it.

Someone can build it.

Someone else can improve it.

The next person can use it without asking permission.

Software on Linux should be community-driven and available to everyone whenever possible.

My plugin is small, but it belongs to that idea.

AI made the process less painful

I expected the setup to be unnerving.

I know how much attention I give to small visual details, and Linux provides an almost unlimited number of details to become concerned about.

It was not as bad as expected.

AI helped enormously.

It made it easier to understand configuration files, investigate errors, compare approaches, and move between systems I had never configured together before.

That did not remove the need to understand what was happening.

It reduced the time between breaking something and knowing where to look.

Without it, I might still be staring at the black Niri screen while pressing random keys and developing opinions about Wayland.

Windows lost the plot

I do not hate Windows.

I grew up using it.

It is familiar, widely supported, and still the safest fallback for many professional tools.

But Windows increasingly feels like a system built around obligations.

Use the account.

Accept the integration.

Keep the services.

Ignore the telemetry.

Let the operating system decide which parts of your machine are truly yours.

Linux has problems.

The theming is fragmented.

Some applications fight the desktop.

Hardware support can require investigation.

A simple visual change may involve five configuration systems and one forum post from 2019.

But Linux still gives me the feeling that the computer belongs to me.

Not theoretically.

Practically.

I can change the shell.

I can replace the window manager.

I can decide how the machine behaves on battery.

I can connect a launcher to Spotify.

I can publish the missing feature for someone else.

I can make the desktop reflect how I work instead of adapting myself to whatever product decision arrived in the latest update.

Windows gives me a finished product.

Linux gives me parts.

That is less convenient.

It is also far more exciting.

Not finished

Fedora is stable enough now that I do not see a strong reason to leave it on this laptop.

Windows remains available, but mostly as insurance.

The real test will come when I start a new job and discover which applications, security policies, and workflows I am expected to use.

Maybe I will need Windows again.

Maybe I will not.

For now, the laptop finally feels like mine.

The desktop looks the way I want.

The battery lasts long enough.

The camera works.

Spotify still has its terrible blue title bar.

Nothing is perfect.

That is probably why I am having fun.