Greetings, Iām new here (and to Fedora).
I have, in fact, been using Fedora 43 (KDE) for just over a week, after having used Zorin OS as my only OS on my HP Victus laptop (a September 2024 make) for about 10 months, ever since I switched to it from an older laptop, a Dell Latitude.
I have been interested in computers from age 4 till date (even though I am now an aspiring electrical engineer, not a computer science engineer). I am turning 18 shortly.
I first explored Linux (Ubuntu and Mint, the usual two beginner distros) when I was 12 (right around the time COVID first hit, lockdowns begun and there suddenly was lots of free time on hand), even deeper when I was 13 (when I discovered Zorin OS and took an instant liking to it), and completely shifted to it at 16. Until then, I was oscillating between Windows and Linux installs on that old Latitude laptop.
I had liked Windows 7 for more reasons than Aero. In fact, that was the Windows version on which the computing instincts I still have today were formed (window management, keyboard shortcuts, process and resource monitoring, familiarity with operations like system restore, defragmentation and registry editing). Even now, I appreciate some, if not all, parts of the Windows NT philosophy.
The Fedora KDE equivalents of Windows power tools are, in my opinion, even more feature-rich and informative than the Windows ones, and unlike GNOME, they arenāt retrofitted onto the base OS.
I have themed my KDE to look like Windows 7 without copying it one-for-one (especially considering that Wayland will, in the future, be the sole windowing system, and existing ātotal conversionā packs are built on X11 design assumptions which do not translate well to Wayland). I have achieved an equivalent of the Aero design, adapted for 2026 and beyond.
Now, I am no novice. However, I do not resonate with the philosophies of distros such as Arch, Gentoo or Alpine, because my use case is different. (I had tried Arch on a VM when I was 14, and did manage to build a more-or-less functional KDE desktop, but didnāt really find it rewarding.)
So, while Zorin was the distro which initiated me into Linux (and into things like user privacy awareness, as helpful side effects), Fedora is the distro which I think will serve me well in the future, as I step into adulthood and allow my childhood curiosity to mature into technical wisdom.
Iāve been noticing a few things about Fedora KDE over the past 10 days since installing it, such as how KCalc includes values of physical constants such as the impedance of vacuum, in scientific mode! I donāt know whether this is a Fedora thing, or a KDE thing, but this is one among numerous other reasons why I took a liking to Fedora KDE, especially given my electrical engineering interest, and my wish for my Linux system to grow with me.
Moreover, I deeply dislike what Windows has become today, which is why I had tried out Linux in the first place, even before Windows 11 was released. This experiment had, well, side effects too, because I now use FOSS almost exclusively on my laptop, even though I am not zealous about philosophy (if I was, I would reject all things proprietary, including Nvidia drivers, which is impractical for me!)
FOSS, to me, is not about ideological purity. The below screenshot is of a post on forum.fossunited.org about the nature of FOSS philosophy, which struck a chord with me.
My use case is highly mixed. I use my laptop to learn various things, write essays, run VMs to experiment (I have often experimented with distros and DEs), edit audio and maintain a USB audio guitar amp setup, game (ETS2, Open Rails) and run BOINC (often in the background while engaging in lighter tasks, when AC power is available), and with Fedora, I can get stuff done with less hiccups than previously on Zorin OS on this same laptop. Interestingly, it took me only about 2 days to attain a stable footing, after the new install. The same distro and DE had overwhelmed me when I was 14!
Like I said earlier, I want my system to grow with me, now that I am stepping into adulthood. Fedora KDE is, therefore, my favourite. It would not be wrong if I say that Fedora represents the successful culmination of an almost 6-year-long experiment, which started with my thought that āthere must be something betterā, when a Windows 10 laptop (not that Latitude I mentioned earlier) I was using was acting up.
Fedora.
Fast forward a few months and Iāve gone all-in to the OCI/
