Blown away by Fedora 40+KDE Plasma

Kainz

Kainz

Kainz

Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2002
Posts
23,587
Location
In a cowfield, London, UK
You've all heard the stories of migrating users from the pos that is Windows, and this is such a story.

Been using Windows since the 3.0 days, and over the past years have been saddened with the mess it has become. My old PC gaming rig which sits at my mothers house now is still very capable (12GB i7 2600k @ 5.1ghz, 1070 GTX) runs Win10 still, which has steadily becoming filled with crap I never asked for. I only use it for Office365 work now if I am staying at my mums because at my home I have moved to a MacMini with MacOS and a PS5 for games. Like my Mac - I want my daily driver to be MY daily driver. Windows for a while just does its own damn thing whereas MacOS just leaves me well alone.

Yesterday I decided to slap Fedora40 on a USB stick and try out a live install on my PC. I was saddened to see the end of Ubisoft and Epic's game launchers but I haven't played Windows games in over 1.5yrs so I'm past that.

After 10mins of use I was mostly convinced and installed that. I wanted more from the GNOME desktop though, so I switched to KDE Plasma via some entries in Terminal and was blown away by the customisation options. Overall I was up and running in an hour with the programs I needed, Firefox, Betterbird, VLC etc and the entire OS is fast as hell. I got Steam installed but didn't have the time to try some games.

My only annoyance is that there is no OneDrive or Office365 (I believe?) client though I can use a browser for accessing them. Overall I am seriously impressed - I won't use that PC that much but should I need to, at least I'll have a solid, reliable OS that just doesn't intrude on my work.
 
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Kainz said:
You've all heard the stories of migrating users from the pos that is Windows, and this is such a story.

Been using Windows since the 3.0 days, and over the past years have been saddened with the mess it has become. My old PC gaming rig which sits at my mothers house now is still very capable (12GB i7 2600k @ 5.1ghz, 1070 GTX) runs Win10 still, which has steadily becoming filled with crap I never asked for. I only use it for Office365 work now if I am staying at my mums because at my home I have moved to a MacMini with MacOS and a PS5 for games. Like my Mac - I want my daily driver to be MY daily driver. Windows for a while just does its own damn thing whereas MacOS just leaves me well alone.

Yesterday I decided to slap Fedora40 on a USB stick and try out a live install on my PC. I was saddened to see the end of Ubisoft and Epic's game launchers but I haven't played Windows games in over 1.5yrs so I'm past that.

After 10mins of use I was mostly convinced and installed that. I wanted more from the GNOME desktop though, so I switched to KDE Plasma via some entries in Terminal and was blown away by the customisation options. Overall I was up and running in an hour with the programs I needed, Firefox, Betterbird, VLC etc and the entire OS is fast as hell. I got Steam installed but didn't have the time to try some games.

My only annoyance is that there is no OneDrive or Office365 (I believe?) client. Overall I am seriously impressed - I won't use that PC that much but should I need to, at least I'll have a solid, reliable OS that just doesn't intrude on my work.
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Fedora is a great distro and has a good backing - also pretty common that, if there's a Linux release, it'll have a .deb and .rpm.

GNOME isn't for everyone but it's more polished than KDE; not that KDE is bad, but it's worth keeping in mind.

No official support for MS Office products so you're limited to the web apps for that, otherwise OnlyOffice is a solid contender. There are a couple ways to sync OneDrive - I've seen this mentioned before (https://github.com/jstaf/onedriver)
 
I initially struggled with GNOME as I am fussy about interface elements being a bit fat and with some tweaks I still couldn't see a way to reduce that. I had to dig a bit deep to customise it and find the options I wanted. I have a ton of reading to do now so I can always return if required.

I have OnlyOffice installed but haven't tried it yet. I'll read about OneDriver for sure, thanks.
 
Mesai said:
Fedora is a great distro and has a good backing - also pretty common that, if there's a Linux release, it'll have a .deb and .rpm.

GNOME isn't for everyone but it's more polished than KDE; not that KDE is bad, but it's worth keeping in mind.

No official support for MS Office products so you're limited to the web apps for that, otherwise OnlyOffice is a solid contender. There are a couple ways to sync OneDrive - I've seen this mentioned before (https://github.com/jstaf/onedriver)
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Yeah, I agree with this...I've always felt that GNOME was more polished than KDE and just more consistent because of how 'strict' they are about things...if your workflow happens to match that then great, you'll find it a fantastic environment (in my opinion.)

If not though, yeah...you can spend a lot of time trying to mangle it to how you want it
 
You can access your OneDrive with the file manager in Fedora 40, like in Windows. Choose Microsoft 365 in Online accounts (in settings), then sign in (ignore the ID fields for personal accounts). You may need to run a dnf update, if you haven't already.

I'm waiting for Mint (Mint 22 probably) to get this Online Accounts update from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, before i move from Windows on my main laptop.
 
Fedora is pretty good, I've been running it on my main rig since 35 and upgraded all the way to 40, with explicit sync getting added in plasma 6.1 and nvidia 555 driver fixing some more issues, that'll be pretty much all of the nvidia + wayland + KDE issues gone, currently it's working great apart from out of order frames issue (slightly annoying but not that bad enough for me to switch back to x11) and flashing/flickering in certain software (so far I've only encountered it with Unigine's Superposition benchmark).
 
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spaceman said:
You can access your OneDrive with the file manager in Fedora 40, like in Windows. Choose Microsoft 365 in Online accounts (in settings), then sign in (ignore the ID fields for personal accounts). You may need to run a dnf update, if you haven't already.

I'm waiting for Mint (Mint 22 probably) to get this Online Accounts update from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, before i move from Windows on my main laptop.
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This is a Gnome feature I think - he’s using KDE.
 
KDE for myself is the best DE. Simply because of how easy it is to customise. Every other DE I've used takes a bit of faffing about: You usually need a specific folder for themes, then you have to download and extract to that folder. In Gnome you need to download a specific extension to allow themes to work. In KDE it's all built in.
 
biron_w said:
KDE for myself is the best DE. Simply because of how easy it is to customise. Every other DE I've used takes a bit of faffing about: You usually need a specific folder for themes, then you have to download and extract to that folder. In Gnome you need to download a specific extension to allow themes to work. In KDE it's all built in.
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It’s hardly a hardship to run the Gnome Extension for themes though is it :)
 
Spleen Sauce said:
It’s hardly a hardship to run the Gnome Extension for themes though is it :)
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For that one thing specifically yes but part of the problem with Linux is that it's death by 1000 small cuts to get what most people would assume is standard in place. A lot of things are "you just need to do this simple thing", but you have to research what that simple thing is and all the associated jank you need to do around it. Having to repeat that experience a ton of times gets old quick so when the list of "simple things" are made easier (or you don't need to do half of them!) it actually makes a big difference.

My time running IT departments have taught me that it's actually the small things that makes people productive and happy. Seemingly small things like being able to quickly customise a work environment so they can get on with actually doing the thing they want to do is extremely valuable. Linux as a whole is getting a lot better in this regard but there is still a long way to go.
 
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