Daily driving Fedora Linux for 5 months.

It's been about 5 months since I switched to using Linux full-time as my daily driver on both my laptop and desktop, so far it's been a journey filled with ups and downs. It's taken a lot of restraint to not switch back to Windows a few times, no matter how much Linux tried pushing me to do it. I hope I have the strength to continue as I'm sure I'll be tested more as time goes on.

As a much older blog post suggested, I originally tried Linux Mint which is a fantastic distro for new users and I have very few bad things to say about it. The main problem with it though was some difficulties with some of my hardware (Lenovo Yoga 5 laptop with 3rd party docking station and an ASUS NUC). I just couldn't get external monitors working with Linux Mint on my laptop with the docking station even though I got them working the first time I tried it (which I ended up switching back to Windows because an update nuked my OS somehow).

Anyways, back in October of 2025 I made the decision to switch back to Linux again and after failing to get Linux Mint working I went with Fedora KDE since that's what I was most familiar with having been my daily driver back in college (with the XFCE desktop though). It took a few hours in the command line to get it working properly with all of my hardware and software, but once it was up and running I was very happy with the desktop experience.

One critical part of my workflow that I've always had issues with was sharing a mouse and keyboard between multiple devices. Synergy is normally my go-to, but that didn't work on KDE with Wayland so I tried InputLeap as suggested by others, but that had a known issue with the OS version so I had to skip that also, finally I settled on Deskflow which works on all of my devices including the few Windows boxes I have left for various specific tasks and testing.

A function I really wanted to get working, but just gave me headaches was getting an eGPU working. I feel like if I had it plugged in 24x7 then it wouldn't be a problem, but I only plugged it in when gaming so the constant switching between my IGP and my eGPU caused a lot of issues as well as being unable to tell apps which one to use. My workaround for now is using NVIDIA GeForce NOW when I want to play games and it's been really solid, and even lets me play games that don't run on Linux. I'll have a better and local solution in the future, but for now gaming isn't much of an issue for me.

There have been a handful of one-off issues that a reboot usually fixes, so those have been annoying but not a deal-breaker (yet). I will say that a lot of the reasons I switched are the reasons I've stayed:

• Privacy - It's nice not having extra stuff added when I get an update and don't have to find ways to disable or opt-out of programs that use my personal information and usage activities.
• Control over my data - I like the concept of not fighting with services or programs that want to manage my data for me like OneDrive or Copilot. It's also nice that my data isn't being used to train models, being sold to advertisers, or being collected and stored somewhere to get hacked.
• Security - I'm a big fan of having full control over things, but I know that comes at a cost. So when I get that happy prompt to type in my password to run something as root, I know to think twice before I do. I also know that I don't have to worry about all of the zero day vulnerabilities that Windows has to contest with. When I saw there was a CVE for Notepad, I knew it was time to move on.

Is Linux perfect? No, especially since "Linux" is such a broad term these days with the ocean of different distros out there to choose from. Not everybody's experience will be the same and in fact, the likelihood of any two people having the same experience is shockingly rare. For some people "it just works" which means they're willing to ignore any difficulties that made it work, which can vary in size and complexity. Others will spend hours in the command line, sometimes by choice, to have the experience they want. Then there's a few people who just want to see the world burn and run Gentoo.

Is Linux better than Windows? That totally depends on the person. Windows has stability, usability, and overall a better user experience for people who grew up with it. Linux emulates Windows well enough for me that I don't miss using it most of the time. There are still a few applications that I have a Windows box for, specifically OBS which has a Linux version and works well enough, but it's more work and less stable than I'd prefer. Seriously, nothing feels more defeating than doing a multiple hour stream only for it to die right towards the end when you're nearing the completion of you project or task and not knowing it until you're done and go to end the stream. But that's easily fixed with an $80 Windows box the size of a charging brick.

I'm not here to sell you on Linux or Windows or Mac or ChromeOS (seriously, don't get me started on ChromeOS, maybe that'll be another blog post by itself). If you have any kind of curious nature and are considering changing your OS, you owe it to yourself to at least give Linux a try. I always recommend Linux Mint for new users as it's the best "out of the box" experience I've ever had with Linux, as long as you don't have any fancy hardware requirements.