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Stuck on Fedora

Authors: Ben <benk@tilde.team>

Dated: 2020-12-26

I love Fedora so much. Everybody knows this, as I covered it some time ago in my gemcast. I started using Fedora Core when it was a new idea, and I was always impressed by this solid, professional operating system. At the time it was very cutting edge (bleeding edge) such that bugs were abundant, but it was an exciting time in GNU/Linux development when a lot of cool and groundbreaking things were coming out.

Prior to Fedora I actually didn't use Red Hat Linux very much. I tried it once. My Linux journey led me through a period of using SUSE before settling on Debian just long enough to figure out that I really much preferred BSD to Linux. For some years I was practically BSD-only before Fedora convinced (tempted?) me to switch back to Linux. In large part, that was due to all the graphical goodness. (As a side note, I also had washed my hands of Windows for many years before making an exception for Windows 7, which has not been repeated since; no machine of mine has ever run Windows 10.)

The irony comes that after sticking with Fedora for so long, it has become so difficult to let go and branch out. Human beings need to learn new things all the time, otherwise our brains turn to stone. It frustrates me a bit that in my teenage years when I dropped programming to pursue a new hobby of Unix system administration, I was bouncing around distros and operating systems all the time just to experience everything and see what's out there, and now I can't be bothered to install anything other than a system which I know and can be certain of how far I'll be able to take it or how fast I can set it up.

For example, if I install Fedora I know exactly what to do in minute detail. If something goes wrong, I can fix it. If I need a package or software, I can find it and run it. If not Fedora, then FreeBSD. I know it like the back of my hand. If not that, then Ubuntu is fine.

So here is my problem: I'd love to play with fun new distros, but I can't experiment anymore on the machine I'm on. Why? I just have this laptop here, and it's for production purposes basically. I can trust Fedora Workstation to ensure that the computer is available for tasks related to my work and studies. I don't really have a computer that I can just freely experiment on, and what about multi-boot? Forget that mess... haven't touched it in over a decade. Also, why sacrifice disk space?

Of course, I tried virtualization. That was fun for a bit, but it's just not the same. At the same time, it was totally worth it to play with oddballs like Haiku and React OS. Helen OS? Beautiful, but it can't be my daily driver. Plan 9, Minix 3... Obviously, I need a hobby machine to put these on.

There's an even greater irony that not only am I sticking to this system because of some packages or utilities, but also largely because of Steam. As I mentioned earlier, configuring the system to play games was such a pain in the butt, particularly with the drivers and API's. Now Steam is working and I've invested money in games that I don't want to do without if I have to switch to an OS where Steam isn't readily available. Granted, most Linux distros probably handle it fine.

So how's that for you? Back in the day people used to not be able to quit Windows because of games. Now games are keeping me on Linux! :)

I should make it a new year's resolution to switch distros sometime, somehow. This machine would probably run Manjaro like a champ. And there's the unusual stuff like Guix that I'd love to hunker down with. Maybe I should just go full-on crazy and install Arch for once!