When I installed Linux on my desktop in the beginning of May in 2021, I selected Ubuntu for reasons I can no longer remember. It may have been because it was the only one I had heard about, that it was considered easy to use, was considered stable, had lots of packages available, I don’t know.

Not knowing better I installed the latest version available at the time, 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo), which I learned later was not an LTS release.

I don’t remember my exact upgrade path, nor is it very interesting. I do remember Ubuntu not upgrading to the latest version, which may have been caused by me not following LTS from the start but I learnt a little about Ubuntu in the process and how to switch between release tracks. (See files in /etc/update-manager)

I also experienced an issue where I could no longer upgrade packages because I had somehow gotten a package conflict. That annoyed me a little as all I had done was upgrade the packages when the upgrade pop-up came and install some new one I needed. I don’t remember if it went away on its own or if I fixed it myself, but in any case, life went on.

I ended up running 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) for quite a while as I was happy with everything and it was an LTS release so it would be supported for a long time. Then when 24.04 appeared and the upgrade pop-ups began appearing, I started considering upgrading.

However, it came with an “annoying” “make sure you have backups of your data” message that made me pause. Although it would probably be fine, with the other upgrades I had done I had not experienced any problems, I didn’t want to chance it this time. I had gotten used to my setup and had files I wanted to keep, but wasn’t the best at making a backup of everything.

The “a new release is available” kept coming from time to time, and the most annoying thing about that and “new software, want to update?” pop-ups was that they take keyboard focus when they appear. I think that’s a pretty bad default! It would happen from time to time that as I was typing away, one of the pop-ups would appear, take keyboard focus, and I had suddenly started or declined an update before I could even read what the box said. Fortunately the system-upgrade pop-up required my password afterwards, so I could cancel it if activated by mistake.

Time went on, until I finally decided to make sure I had good backups of everything just a little while ago. A chore, which was nice to get done even though I could have lived well with a data loss, it would just be nicer to not have it. Then I felt ready to silence the Ubuntu upgrade warnings.

So I took the plunge and installed Fedora 42.

I wanted to do a full reinstall to set everything up from scratch, get rid of old stuff that had accumulated over time and just basically start fresh. Having learnt about Fedora, I was enticed by their 6 month upgrade cycle as well as software being a little more up to date than on Ubuntu. Fedora for instance seems to be more aggressive with updating the kernel to newer versions, which I think can be beneficial.

Issues incomming #

I am not a die-hard or hard-core Linux user as is probably evident, so I’m not actually sure what desktop environment Ubuntu use, but I guess it is gnome. I know Fedora uses gnome, and it feels fairly similar to Ubuntu. There are however some differences and maybe also new annoyances.

The screenshots I had seen of Fedora desktop beforehand all looked nice, and crucially, I think they all had a dock, the place where you have easy access to your favorite or most used programs. When I started Fedora, the dock was indeed shown at the bottom of the screen and there was also a search-field at the top of the screen. The background image doesn’t fill the screen but is made smaller, possibly to indicate that there are multiple desktops. All okay-ish so far. However, if I click the desktop, the search-field goes away, the dock goes away, and the background image fills the screen. All of it, so there is nothing to see other than the background image…

Dock issues #

I found that by moving the mouse pointer to the top-left corner of the screen I could get this mode back, and again see the dock. However it was not very user-friendly to me, having to first go to top-left corner, then to the bottom to start a program. Right out of the bat here I feel I’ve made the wrong choice as this is something I won’t be able to live with. Some searching and I learned that there is something called “the super key” I can press to enter this mode and not have to point in top-left corner. That helps a little, but it still irks me as it’s not how I’m used to working.

Searching further, I learn that there is indeed a way to have the dock stay on your desktop permanently. This video was made using Fedora 40 but it still works in Fedora 42 fortunately. I must say, the video is excellent and provides very detailed steps on what to do, detailing both what to do if you’re doing this for the first time or you’ve already done some of it, making it very easy to follow along! Hats of to you, Techmimic!

The process in brief includes installing the “gnome-extensions-app” package with dnf, opening the “extensions” app and activating it, opening a browser and going to “extensions.gnome.org”, searching for “dash to dock”, turning it on and selecting install. Now the dock will be permanently visible at the bottom of the screen. Yes you read that correctly, you have to install a browser extension to control your desktop. I am quite surprised to put it mildly. To configure the dock, search for the “extensions” program again, and select the 3 dots next to dash to dock. However strange that felt I can now mimic the Ubuntu dock so I’m happy.

Browser issues #

The next hurdle was that my browser of choice, Brave, was not very performant. Clicking on a tab it would take around two seconds before it actually switched to that tab. More searching and I learnt that by going to brave://flags which contains experimental features, there is something called “preferred ozone plattform” which should be set to “wayland”. All right, that seems to have fixed the browser issues so I’m starting to think this is something I can user after all.

Terminal issues #

Another hurdle was that my preferred terminal emulator, WezTerm did not start. Or rather, it started but crashed immediately. Searching revealed that I should add config.enable_wayland = false to the configuration, and that seems to help. However, after I’ve installed the font I use (Intel One Mono) and pulled in the rest of my configuration, it turns out that option is no longer needed so I don’t know what was going on there. But it works now so I am happy.

VLC issues #

Next was my preferred video player which is VLC. I had some issues with that on Ubuntu where it didn’t have all the necessary codecs, but those were easy to find and install. On Fedora however, VLC seems to work as it plays audio, but the picture is black. Looking at media information it has identified the right codec, H.264, so everything looked fine. It seems like codecs for this is installed as well. Searching does not turn up much help either, others have experienced the same, but there was not much with regards to a conclusive solution. I followed many things others had done that fixed it for them, but it did not help for me. I discovered rpmfusion and installed stuff from there, both free and non free to no avail. Many times I would also get the result “already installed” of things that was suggested to install. I tried countless configuration changes in VLC as well, regarding input, output and what not, but nothing helped.

Many suggestions said something about broken media file, but I knew that was not the case. A video from my phone that worked on Ubuntu wouldn’t play. Even videos from the built-in video recorder (shift-ctrl-alt-r) wouldn’t play back. This was the most frustrating experience so far. What finally solved it for me was installing a package called “libavcodec-freeworld”. I don’t know if this alone fixed everything or if some of the previous steps I completed is also necessary, but I’m not going to try to reproduce this. So unfortunately I can’t provide any better explanations than others have tried to give.

VLC has one strange quirk on Fedora when it starts where it will fill most of the screen, pause for 2-3 seconds, and then fill the screen completely. I don’t know what is going on there, it’s just strange, and not something that happened on Ubuntu.

Intermission #

“This is what Linux is about”, you might say, “you can configure everything exactly the way you want!” That may very well be, but that is not for me. I came accross a reddit post the other day that formulates this nicer than I could:

Is there an end game with Linux?

Two things from the post resonated with me in particular:

"After several days, my concern is that Linux might just be a
never ending hobby instead of a tool that can be configured and
then used."

And

"Is there a point where I can just use the computer to complete
tasks or is the computer always going to BE THE TASK?"

I can live with doing some configuration, if you’ve read this far you can tell I have figured out how to fix the issues most critical to me, but it is something I’d rather not have to spend much time on. Having Linux or an operating system as hobby is not productive to me.

More Gnome issues #

Another thing I felt was missing was the minimize and maximize icons usually found at the top left or right of the program windows. Maximize wasn’t that critical as I know I can double-click the title-bar to maximize the window, but I needed a minimize icon as I use that quite a lot. Turns out it’s time to install yet another program, this one called gnome-tweaks. It was fortunately just a sudo dnf install command away, but I am curious why these configurations aren’t all available in the same program, or a package of programs if need be.

Anyway, I finally got the desktop set up the way I wanted, and I am hoping this is it. Like I said above, tweaking, fixing and investigating the operating system and desktop I am running I don’t consider to be productive use of time, and it is not something I find particularily fun either. It’s a chore that has to be done before we get to the good stuff, which is actually using this thing.

A positive #

This has been a little negative this far, but there are some positives as well. The upgrade notifications are a lot better! I get a toast notification if there is something critical I should update, otherwise I can go into the software app and check the upgrades tab. This is a lot less intrusive than Ubuntu, and the way I think it should be handled! Though I haven’t used Fedora long enough to experience what happens when the next release comes out.

It also seems that the screen is a little crisper with Fedora. I’m not sure why that is, it just seems a little sharper and more clear to me.

A final negative #

Fedora seems to be accessing the disk a lot more than Ubuntu did. Now I know I’m looking at this with fresh eyes as it is new to me, but I’m fairly confident Ubuntu was gentler to the disk. On Ubuntu, I do believe I had started all my programs, like the terminal, code editor and browser with multiple tabs open, and let it just sit there a little while, there was not much disk activity. On Fedora in the same situation, the disk-light ticks regularly every 5 seconds or so. It will also from time to time tick a lot on and off without me doing anything.

I have 32 GB RAM which really is overkill for my needs, and top tells me only 6 GB RAM is used so the disk usage does not come from swapping. The culprit seems to be the browser, or that at least seems to be one of the causes, but why it needs to access the disk a lot on Fedora while being idle, but it did not need thaton Ubuntu is beyond me.

Given I have an SSD, I am wondering about wear and tear from all this extra activity, so I am contemplating going back to Ubuntu to check if I misremember things or if there really is a difference. There’s obviously a chance the newer versions of everything might come in to play here, and that the latest version of Ubuntu would be no better, but I don’t know. I am also aware that I’m watching everything more closely as “everything” is new, so it might mean I am noticing things that were the same on Ubuntu I just didn’t notice it.

Just one more thing #

Sound will sometime blast at full volume, even though the volume slider is at 50%. Nudging it a little fixes it. It’s not terrible, but it is annoying and I find it quite strange. What setting somewhere is not being set, or is ignored or whatever?

I’ve also noticed that there’s something about what fonts are being shown in the browser. There seems to be more serif-type fonts now, while I believe Ubuntu had more sans-serif. I could of course be something I’ve done over the years, some font-pack I’ve installed and forgotten about, but it’s just another one of those things.

Then finally, alt-tab seems to work differently where it only shows the program icons, like Mac does. I believe Ubuntu showed window previews, like Windows does, which I find a lot more useful. Given I have multiple browser windows open, the Windows way allows me to find the one I want quicker. There seems to be something with the window handling in general on Fedora compared to Ubuntu. Given the case with multiple open browser windows, right-clicking on the browser icon in the dock gives me a menu where I will have to click “all windows” to see all the open browser windows. I believe Ubuntu let me do the same with less clicks, but I can’t remember exactly.

Conclusion #

To me it feels like Ubuntu does things better out of the box with mostly better defaults. The browser just worked, VLC clearly told me it was missing codecs and they were easy to find and install, there never was any issues with the volume, the minimize/maximize icons were there by default, as were the dock and so on.

Like I said before, it could be that I scrutinize things more closely now given this is a fresh install, or it could simply be due to newer versions of everything, I don’t know. I am tempted to go back to Ubuntu and check if I just remember everything wrong or if it just suited me better than Fedora. It seems that Ubuntu might be a little more aggressive with upgrading kernels for instance going forward, which I think is a good thing. Also knowing what I know now I might just upgrade to the interrim releases as well.

It’s been a learning experience, but like I’ve also said already, I don’t want Linux to have to be a hobby for me now, I want it to just be there and work and let me focus on other things.