Fedora 36… TBD…

I was being bombarded on YouTube with videos praising Fedora 36 as being better than Jesus and the best thing ever in Linux! (Only slight hyperbole) So I just *had* to see what all the fuss is about. The installer was okay… It wasn’t clear what it was doing on the most important and difficult question it asked – hardware partitioning. But I muddled past it.

It first booted to a screen with very minimal UI and eventually, the Tour came up… which froze at the 3rd party screen. I’m used to Manjaro/XFCE and I like my menu bars and on-screen information so whatever minimalist nonsense Gnome 42 has I immediately took a dislike to. No notifications? No weather? No CPU level? No clickable screen switching? UGH. (I mean if you are copying Apple you already get a -1) So *unintuitively* you have to cursor to the top left corner to get UI to show. Which is okay after you know to do it but why would you? A gnome configuration app would be nice here so I can set the desktop environment up how I’d like. Nothing appeared to be available.

I’m trying some of the Foss post-install suggestions – one of which is to install ‘install Gnome Tweaks and Extensions App’. All this reference to a SUPER key. WTF is a SUPER key?! After some tweaking I think I have the environment an acceptable place. With a few clicks, I brought back apps and windows, maximize and minimize windows – why the hell would you remove this???! Still no applets that I can see however? I’m reading top menu bar icons were *intentionally* removed and I’ll need an extension to restore them? What?! Derp. Still…it is meh, I guess that is why Linux offers so many options.

System-wise Fedora seems great. My Wifi USB stick worked. Yay

The system seems nice and stable. I don’t think it is Fedora I dislike. It’s Gnome. So, going to install KDE Plasma

UPDATE!

Ha, so I tried KDE Plasma. After logon it freezes and the UI disappears. SIGH. Impressive. What else is there? Mine as well try the old stand-by XFCE. If that fails too then fsck Fedora. XFCE also froze. LOL. So I’m settling on Gnome Classic. *grumble* If it fails I’m installing Manjaro. 😛

Need an extension just to change the clock? That is the last straw. I seriously do not get the Gnome excitement. It is so pedestrian and bland. To me, it is not very linux and completely inflexible. What a disappointing experience. I won’t return to Fedora anytime soon. 2 out of 3 environments froze. UNINSTALLED.

Big game 5 tonight. Go Bolts! Bloody Leafs.

UPDATE!

Going to hop over to MX Linux with KDE. Ahh, this is better. Much, much better. No issues, easy, straight forward install. Everything works. Flexible, configurable desktop environment. Impressed with MX so far.