Linux

I've moved the whole house to Fedora KDE. Every laptop. The only things not running it, Steamdeck and Unraid server.

I wrote a script for first installs, its mostly to make my life easier, but you might like it too. I wrote it for Fedora 42, and updated it for 43, but it should run fine on 44 as well.

Just take a minute to esit then parameters at the top. https://github.com/mortalic/firstrun

I've been using Fedora KDE since V40.

I have had some weird issues in the past where a network adapter randomly won't work on startup a few years back, but haven't had issues since.

Also back when I had a Nvidia GPU, I remember it having issues updating drivers due to not waiting long enough before restarting even though it said update complete and causing the driver the not work properly.

Those are really the only issues I've had with it, mostly just works for me personally.

I've been running Fedora steadily since Fedora Core. I've used just about every version of Red Hat's distro since RHL5. I've used a whole lot of other distros, too.

Fedora is the upstream of CentOS and RHEL. Anything targeting RHEL will first show up in Fedora. Fedora has a long history of pioneering new technologies. The release cadence is twice a year, versions are supported for 2 years from release (2 subsequent release cycles).

Your programs and data will move just fine between different Linux distributions. You've got nothing to worry about there.

Display issues are generally a WM/Compositor/Driver problem. If the bugs aren't in the drivers or in Wayland itself, then you might see differences in e.g. Gnome-Shell versus KDE. This isn't likely to be a distro-specific issue, though. It is possible that some of the distro-level patch work may have fixed the bug.

Keyboard shortcuts are fully configurable. Not a distro-specific thing, but each distro does it a little differently depending on which software they're using. You can make any key combination do anything you want. But persisting changes may not always happen depending on how you're setting it.

Most of what you're talking about just requires a little deeper know-how than you've currently got. One detail that you'll need to understand before anything else - The differences between Xubuntu and Fedora are a whole lot smaller than the differences between Mac and Windows or either of those and Linux. Yes, each distro is opinionated about how it's out-of-the-box configs are set. But, they're running more of the same software than not. So, now it's just time for you to learn how the sausage is made. Hit the man pages and start learning how to solve some of these problems. :)

I am not entirely sure what I am hoping from this post, but maybe a "yea, it is worth it" would ease my mind a bit.

If that is all you need, I'll throw you a "yea, it is worth it". I have been running Fedora with KDE Plasma as my main personal desktop on multiple machines for five years or so. Mainly desktop/laptop, but I even used it pretty regularly on a tablet for a while (I stopped simply because I stopped using the device altogether due to preferring having the full keyboard of a laptop) and even use it on my HTPC. There may be a better HTPC OS, but I am just so used to it everywhere else that it seemed simple enough to get going and I just stuck with it.

If you want stable and can deal with the downsides honestly I suggest immutable distros. Otherwise Fedora is pretty reasonably stable for a pretty up to date distro and also has decent community support which is underrated. If your drive(s) are setup for it it’s pretty easy to distro hop anyways so it’s worth a shot

If you just want to switch to kde you can install it on your current system:

apt install kde-full

Or

apt install kde-standard

No need to reinstall an entirely new distro.

I’ve tried most distros over the years. I liked arch with gnome, but maintaining it was a bit of work. And then I realized that when I was done setting it up the way I liked it, I was essentially just building fedora workstation. So I switched a few versions ago and I haven’t looked back.

Fedora is boring, like sometimes too boring. But then I remember that’s what an os is supposed to be. I now run it on all my PCs and it’s what I install on family members PCs. (Yup it’s even done well with windows converts who don’t know anything about linux - their transition has been easy)

Issues I have encountered:

1. Rpmfusion is a must, otherwise the distro doesn’t handle much. It’s also the best way to nvidia.
2. i still run into the odd codec thing even with rpm fusion-I just use VLC and it works fine
3. it took me a while to figure out that the fedora based flatpaks are not always the same as the flathub versions. For example, back to point 2, the fedora flatpak of VLC is missing codecs while the flathub version works with everything.
4. i don’t like how flatpaks update automatically. I’m sure I can stop that behavior but I haven’t bothered to look into it yet. It manifests itself with steam. The flatpak updates but the main system has not. Steam then has driver differences which leads to processing more shaders and sometimes outright conflicts and my games default to the integrated gpu. This is always fixed by simply updating the system, it’s never a real issue. But sometimes I don’t want to update, I just want to game.
5. it’s got some funny ways of doing things. Always worth googling before you do something. For example, the way you update grub, there’s a special fedora way to do that. They push Podman instead of docker and despite what they say, it doesn’t always build cleanly - just use docker. That kind of stuff.

What I like about fedora

1. It’s boring and “just works” not even mint “just worked” as good for me
2. the upgrades between versions are boring and non events. It works if you go into detail cleaning up old things from the command line, it works if you just click the “upgrade” button in the gui.
3. its not bleeding edge but still pretty new. I’ve thrown some brand new hardware at it and it was supported, whereas all other distros failed except arch
4. It’s cake to maintain. Updates don’t require the attention arch does, and honestly I’ve had more issues with Ubuntu updates. It sets up btrfs by default - some may see that as a detriment - but it sets you up nice for snapshots and whatnot right out of the box.

I say give workstation a shot and give it a little time to get used to things. Definitely do rpmfusion. It’s the one time I’d recommend just jamming commands into the terminal exactly like the website says without thinking. (You still have to read the website for the right commands). Good luck!

I don't know, but I can tell you that I use Bluefin - Fedora Silverblue. I have it for 7 months now and had 0 stability issues.

All I have are Fedora based machines running Bazzite & Aurora. That's been the case since the distros were originally released about 2+ years or so. Same install. No issues ever. A whole family of 4 running perfectly working Fedora based PCs with no issues and no maintenance whatsoever. I don't do crap and they just keep working perfectly. No complaints, all praise. My family doesn't even know it's not ~~butter~~ Windows, I mean I told them, they just don't care... it works and it gets the job done.

If that's not stable, then I don't know the meaning of the word.

/home should have all your stuff, just copy that to the new installation and you're set.

I've been using Fedora (gnome) as my main distro for over 5 years and have zero issues with stability. Webcam, etc., all work by default with no problems. Would definitely recommend!

I've been using Fedora for years across several devices. I've only seen my device compatibility improve over the last few releases. For example, my HP Victus laptop's camera would work but not the mic, this has been fixed. My desktop runs several monitors with no issues and keyboard shortcuts have never done anything goofy. It is my preferred distro so I am biased but I've used a lot of others and I think Fedora is one of the more consistently good distros.

I've been using Fedora in my gaming desktop with a nvidia GPU - which not that long ago, would be a recipe for a disaster since nvidia + wayland = problems. But so far, the experience has been very stable, despite me being an update addict that updates the OS almost daily.

From my experience, it's been more stable than EndeavourOS (which is basically Arch), Ubuntu and Mint. YMMV and all that.

PS: you will want to give this a go, if you go Fedora: https://nattdf.streamlit.app/

It's a tool created to get your Fedora up and running in one go. You can use it to configure flathub, install codecs, etc.

i found fedora hard to work with because of its hard "no non-open source" stand. e.g. i had trouble playing a x265 HEVC file with vlc where as i never encountered anything like that on any other distro and solving this was not trivial.
i am on kubuntu rn but if i were to switch i'd go back to cachyos with KDE.

Try it and see how it works for you. There’s really no telling what it will be like because each system is different and will respond to the different distros of Linux and their kernel versions in different ways. For a time Fedora worked better on my laptop but Kubuntu caught up and hardware support was improved in their newest kernel so now I’m back on that xD

But yeah, for my 2025 laptop Fedora was extremely stable and I never ran into a problem. I just missed the big repos of the Debian/Ubuntu family.

I've been running Fedora for about six months now and haven't run into an issue where the system failed or refused to boot. However, I have a single screen and no web cam, and only use it for web browsing and mild app development and deployment. On the Fedora side, do expect that you will see regular package updates as Fedora likes to move fast. (It feeds the CentOS Stream build that ultimately feeds RHEL.)

I've been using Fedora for over 10 years. I used to have Nvidia issues, but those are all solved now.

Using it seems to be fine, but I would advise being wary and not giving Fedora/Red Hat any code or financial support. They do a lot of work for the US DoW, helping enable war crimes like murdering hundreds of school girls.

Also, I am a bit unsure how to easily move between them (programs and data).

I simply use rsync to move files to a temporary machine and wipe the disk. But I don't store that much data locally in the first place. Code and important configs are synchronized using git, firefox sync preserves bookmarks and extensions. Programs are easy to install using a package manager.

I think Fedora offers a good balance between freshness and stability. The installation process is easy; you get btrfs, zram, and disk encryption too.

Idk if a newer kernel and plasma will solve these problems, but Fedora is a good distro regardless. I definitely cannot recommend Debian as Plasma doesn't get any bugfixes there and the kernel might be too old to fix your problem with the web camera.

it's a lot of work to switch distributions, and I don't recommend unless you have a really good reason!

kde is supported on Ubuntu... id suggest installing it and trying it out first. the bugs u state sound like desktop environment issues and not distribution bugs ...

You're looking for stability and KDE Plasma. Fedora doesn't seem to be the right candidate.
Arch Linux (or Endeavour / Manjaro), or OpenSUSE are better candidate.

None of these are stability problems.

You can spin the wheel and hope it works better on a different distro.

You can investigate the problems and try to fix them.

Or you can ignore it and live with it. (my favorite)

I use gnome on my laptop and stuff like scaling worked on several projectors in the school. Webcam (Lenovo) works, I think I recall it didn't work on another distro.

KDE no problem on desktop with monitor and projector plugged in. Panels etc customisable on both screens (I also make it look like gnome ha).

You want slow updates/upgrades like Ubuntu and stability then OpenSUSE slowroll is better option or even OpenSUSE kalpa. Even Debian + KDE will work for you.

If your data is all backed up then what have you to lose?.