Windows 11 on a newish HP OmniBook X I bought a year ago was increasingly unreliable. It was just frustrating to use. Crashing in Brave when using it with a remote access web software, slowness in accessing files, other issues as well.
So it was clear it was time to wipe and reinstall the OS. Then I got to thinking, maybe I should do something other than Windows. After all, I have my windows gaming computer and my windows work computer. I really like Fedora as I said before, so why not install that? So I did!
Now I have to say it is crazy how much better it works than Windows. First the install was so quick. I think it was like 10 minutes tops and that includes rebooting. Windows 11 took 45 minutes the last time I did it on this computer.
Then actually using it. Using Brave and 1Password was superior than how it worked with Windows 11/Brave. It immediately popped in and I just clicked once and I was in. Much easier than Windows 11. The video on YouTube was clearer and more color accurate than windows 11. The file management was snappy and I save things as PDF and attached them to my Fastmail email quickly. Everything that I used to do on a daily basis in Windows was better. It was either faster or more compatible.
What is the downside? Hmm that is really hard to say. It has the familiar Windows left button and menus. I would say that the only thing it doesn’t have is the Voice Typing which I had been using on Windows 11. However if you go to flatpack you can easily install Speech of Sound and it does the same thing that Voice Typing does. It hears your words when you tell it to and it translates voice into text. In fact it does it more accurately and faster than Windows and does it locally so you don’t have any privacy concerns like with Windows saving them to Azure Speech services. So if adding a program to get more privacy, better functionality is a problem, then now you know.
Will I continue to use it? Yes! I used the Fedora Plasma desktop. On another laptop I have the other Fedora version that isn’t the Plasma desktop. I like to try out different versions. Honestly I love both versions. If you are not an IT person the Plasma version is the most intuitive to use. However the other version is really clean looking and if you are tired of how Windows looks you might enjoy that as well. No Fedora is not paying me, I just love how it looks and functions.
If you don’t like Fedora, OpenSuse is my second choice. That is just an awesome distro. Good luck!