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I Finally Switched to Linux

Mar 2, 2026

2 min read

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I had been planning this switch for a while, and this weekend I finally moved from Windows to Linux.

The short version: I should have done it earlier.

Windows had become painful on my machine. Too many bad updates. Random shutdowns with the usual "your PC ran into an issue" screen. The laptop felt slow all the time. Memory usage stayed high. Customization felt limited. Freedom felt limited.

I got to a point where I was scared of updates. I paused them many times, and even disabled security updates at one point because I didn't trust what would happen next.

So I made the call and moved.

I knew Linux would limit some apps for me, but honestly, it is enough for what I do. I am a developer. I need speed, control, and a system that does not fight me every day.

Fedora gives me that.

Fedora over WSL, any day.

The migration was not smooth.

I had NVIDIA driver issues. I had to install Fedora twice. I ran into a boot/EFI mess where BIOS became inaccessible. Pressing F2 gave me a stuck logo and then a black screen. CMOS reset pin saved me there.

Then secure boot created more drama. I disabled it for installation, enabled it again right after, and that led to unsigned kernel module issues. I could not properly disable secure boot later because the boot menu itself was broken in that phase.

At one point I told myself, "I handled it fine."

Not really.

It was frustrating, messy, and chaotic. But I still pushed through.

Now the setup is stable and I have all the apps I need. Coding feels faster. The system feels lighter. Customization is better. I am having fun again, especially with zsh and powerlevel10k.

Fedora KDE 43 has been a great experience so far.

Customizations So Far

  • Desktop: KDE Plasma on Wayland
  • Shell: zsh with powerlevel10k
  • Terminal: Konsole + fastfetch
  • Theme stack: Catppuccin Macchiato Teal + Breeze Dark
  • Icons: Colloid Teal Catppuccin
  • Font: Inter Display in UI and terminal
  • Cursor theme: Breeze (24px)

Resources That Helped

  • ChatGPT and Perplexity helped me debug and recover from multiple issues.
  • Fedora Noble Setup was a useful reference.

Fedora is great for my workflow. This migration had real pain, but I would still choose this path again.

Gopal Khadka