This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/fedora by /u/fmbernardo on 2024-09-30 17:12:33+00:00.
The first time I tried Linux was 13 years ago… Ubuntu 11.04 that a friend showed me. I remember i was astonished that I could run another OS besides Windows on my own PC.
Over the years, I have made several attempts at a full switch but the combination of the following always created inertia and eventually made me return to Windows.
- hardware incompatibilities
- buggy desktop environments
- work collaboration with other users entrenched in Microsoft ecosystem
- some Windows exclusive commercial software unavailable
But since late last year, which simultaneously was the first time I gave a serious try to Fedora after hearing good reports about the KDE spin, I was able to stick to Linux for longer and longer periods. Well, it also helps that my job as researcher took more of a turn more towards the geospatial programming side, relying on Python and GEE but also QGIS and Zotero which have native Linux versions.
This August I just decided to go all in and use only Fedora KDE and forget Windows exists (I still have the Windows partitions but I avoid booting it).
It has been 2 months running Fedora KDE exclusively both on my desk laptop and on my travel laptop… I already upgraded to Fedora 41 Beta and everything keeps running as smoothly as before even in this beta stage. During September I returned to work and kept using Fedora exclusively for both personal and professional purposes.
Because Plasma 6 with Wayland has been getting increasingly more stable, and my past couple laptop purchases were Intel and AMD compatible hardware, I no longer have hardware incompatibilities and Plasma 6 has been running very smoothly even with a VRR setup with my external 144Hz gaming monitor having HDR enabled! And battery runtimes on both laptops are similar to Windows while giving better performance while unplugged!
For collaboration, Microsoft365 PWAs run surprisingly good, from Outlook, Teams, Excel, even though limited in functionality but they fully preserve document compatibility which is the most important thing when working with others. I bought an Insync license to have offline access to my OneDrive storage and it has been worth the money. I switched all my notebooks from OneNote to Obsidian though, and because Obsidian has so many useful plugins and stores notes as simple text files, it’s far more practical. OnlyOffice is also decently compatible with MSOffice for any documents that are not overly complex.
The increasingly amount of websites that now provide PWAs even with offline access is also very helpful. For instance there’s now an entirely web based version of Adobe Reader which is useful to deal with document signing without booting Windows. Canva is really great for doing stunning presentations effortlessly and has surpassed Powerpoint for me.
Furthermore, since I have frequent online meetings, all meeting platforms I used so far, from Teams to Google Meet to Zoom and Webex, have their web versions running flawlessly without extra plugins needed and with screen sharing working perfectly, no audio or mic sound issues either, switching audio devices, connecting bluetooth headsets, just plug and play as it should be.
As for commercial software, so far I only miss image editors like PaintNET or Affinity Photo because I am more used to these programs, but I found this neat program called Parsec that does low latency streaming between PCs, so in case I really need it in the future, I can just stream one of the laptops instead of having to dual boot. For video editing, Kdenlive is surprisingly good but I don’t really do professional grade video editing.
I think the Linux platform as a whole, from the kernel to the graphic stack to the GUI interfaces, has taken a massive improvement leap over the past 2-3 years and it is now a very compelling alternative to Microsoft Windows, and furthermore, I’m starting to see Linux in the wild more often. The other day I saw some computers in the seismic monitoring lab running some Linux with GNOME interface, and a GIS instructor was doing his programming in Manjaro KDE.
These are truly good times for people like us that have waited so long for Linux to finally realize its full potential on the desktop!