Almost a year has passed since I wrote the article about switching from Windows to Linux Mint on my personal laptop.

In the meantime, I changed my laptop and switched from Linux Mint to Fedora to get the latest kernel updates for the very new hardware at the time (AMD Ryzen AI 9 365).

The article is about my experience, what worked well, what wasn’t ideal, alternative applications, and other information I found useful.

What worked well

Linux Mint

  • See the article above.

Fedora

  • A modern experience with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment
  • Much more frequent updates without encountering any errors
  • An excellent app manager that works with Flatpak
  • Works perfectly with multiple monitors of different resolutions and scaling factors. This is the biggest plus versus Mint for me.
  • Surprisingly, all Fn keys on the keyboard worked out of the box, including keyboard backlight, etc.
  • I think I’ve heard the laptop fans only about 3 times in total since I’ve had it.
  • Very happy with the battery performance.
  • KDE Connect is really cool

It seems that overall, there aren’t many things that would ruin your experience these days with Fedora, Mint, and I suspect Ubuntu is the same.

Applications and alternatives

There aren’t many applications I miss or have had to replace.

  • MS Office suite replaced with LibreOffice, which works well.
  • GIMP for quick image editing
  • Outlook replaced with Thunderbird

Otherwise, I can’t say I really miss any. For Slack, OneDrive, VSCode, Tidal, Teams, etc., there are alternatives and they all work well.

What wasn’t ideal

  • Linux Mint with multiple monitors of different resolutions.

    The X11 display protocol isn’t ideal for a multi-monitor setup with different resolutions. You need to use Wayland, which is still buggy in Mint. I think this is the only downside for Linux Mint.

Note: In the meantime, many things have changed and I believe Mint is more modern now too, but it has a stricter and less frequent update schedule compared to Fedora.

When I got the new laptop, since it had very recent hardware, Linux Mint wouldn’t install and I had to look for alternatives. That’s how I ended up with Fedora, which had the latest kernel version with drivers for the CPU.

With Fedora, there were 2 issues:

  • The audio didn’t work correctly through all the laptop’s speakers, specifically, the subwoofers weren’t working. I had to manually change the configuration because it wasn’t identifying it correctly. But this seems to be a specific issue with this Lenovo laptop model. Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 14ASP10 audio issue
  • It took me some time to find an alternative for AWS VPN that works on Fedora (.rpm). The official version is for Ubuntu/Debian (.deb) and there’s no Flatpak for it either.

Windows, do I still use it?

Not on my laptop, but yes on my desktop. The plan is to switch to Fedora as the main system on my desktop as well.

The only things still tying me to Windows:

  • CaptureOne for photo editing. I still haven’t managed to get along with Darktable, I didn’t have the patience to go through a full tutorial. I want to try RapidRaw as well.
  • Digital document signing with CertSign. But this no longer seems to be an issue since I can sign them directly in the browser with the Cloud version.

I don’t really see any advantage to using Windows at this point, which is why I’ve somewhat stubbornly insisted on getting used to Fedora.

Gaming on Linux

It doesn’t seem to be such a big problem anymore. Unless you want to play competitive games with anti-cheat systems, there you’ll have problems, from what I understand (CS2, Dota2, etc.)

For everything else, it all works fine. Steam with Proton for compatibility does a great job. Essentially, you don’t need to do anything.

Which Linux distribution would I recommend

Linux Mint Cinnamon If you’re not interested in the latest drivers and kernel versions. Without any hesitation, this is the best option. And if you want to revive an older laptop/PC, it’s perfect. Linux Mint.

As proof, I left a recurring donation there for about 10 months because I was impressed with how good the experience was.

Fedora KDE Plasma If you need recent drivers, constant updates, and use a system with multiple monitors and different resolutions.

I’m not a big fan of GNOME, I tried it a bit, but the difference feels too big if you’re coming from Windows. KDE Plasma, on the other hand, is perfect. Fedora Project.

Both distributions above are perfect if you’re transitioning from Windows to Linux.

Other random things

  • Try to use the default applications that come with your Linux distribution. There’s a reason Fedora KDE Plasma comes with Konsole, KWrite, Dolphin, etc. If you really don’t like them, look for alternatives after trying them out.
  • Fedora has many variants - Workstation, Atomic, KDE Plasma - you need to see which one fits you.
  • Don’t jump straight into installing Linux - first make a bootable USB stick and try it out that way.
  • GNOME and KDE Plasma are desktop environments, do a search or ask your favorite AI about them. They’re different and will make you work differently.
  • I recommend separate SSDs for Windows and Linux if you want to keep and use both. Far fewer problems down the line.
  • I still haven’t bothered to find a way to reconfigure the Copilot key on my laptop. I would have liked to set it back to being the right CTRL key or to open the terminal. But it’s one of those things that annoys me, you have a useless key. It’s useless on Windows anyway.