Over the past few years I’ve bounced between more operating systems than I’d like to admit, all on the same Dell Precision 5520. This is the log of that distro-hopping: what worked, what set itself on fire, and where I eventually landed.
Windows 10
Windows 10 was working fine for a while. It got me through 4 years at university, and was good enough for browsing the web, taking notes, programming, and the occasional test on a lockdown browser.
Windows 11
Windows 11 does not work on my Dell Precision 5520 laptop. I think I could trick it into working, but that is more effort than I am willing to give to get Windows working on a laptop that is less than 8 years old. I don’t know if the workarounds will exist in the future or if the install will just break at some point.
Ubuntu 24
Ubuntu 24 just never felt right. Some apps had problems, and because it is not a rolling release I had issues with drivers for audio. I have never liked Gnome and even when I was running Ubuntu 14 when I fist started venturing into Linux it just never clicked for me. I love Ubuntu Server though. I know people have issues with it, and most of the time Debian works just as well, but I don’t have to install sudo or a bunch of drivers. It has become less of an issue as I have gotten better at proper IaC, but when I was making every VM manually Ubuntu made it a lot easier.
Arch Linux V1 (Easy Install)
Turns out there is an easy way to install Arch with archinstall, but I did not use that for my attempts because the wiki did not mention it, or I somehow missed it. Most likely a skill issue, but still annoying.
I went with Plasma, a simple disk partition without encryption, the linux-zen kernel, and the basics to get me started. I quickly got annoyed having to install everything from the network manager to the tools needed to get audio working. I also prefer to have my laptop’s drive encrypted, so after about an hour or two I wiped everything and started with a new install.
Arch Linux V2 (Hard Mode)
I will be honest, I never actually got to the desktop environment with this install. GRUB refused to launch the tool to decrypt the root partition on boot. I followed all the steps and instructions to get it working, but it turned out I was missing the cryptdevice= kernel parameter in the GRUB config, so the initramfs never prompted for the passphrase. I could decrypt it manually and chroot into it, but that got annoying quickly.
EndeavourOS V1
This was my first time daily driving Linux in the last 4 years. The install was quick and easy, but I had issues with audio not working. Easy fix with a few lines in the MOTD file and audio was back. After about a week and a half of everything working smoothly I ran pacman -Syu to update and… it continued working fine. At some point the wifi stopped working, and nothing I did seemed to fix it, so I decided to reinstall since I was going to DEF CON soon anyway and could use the opportunity to do some security hardening.
EndeavourOS V2 (Encryption + Hardened Kernel)
The install with LUKS went smoothly, I used the same trick as before to get audio back, and I switched the kernel to the hardened kernel. I wanted SELinux as well, but I read that it didn’t work well on Arch. I installed Silk Guardian and USBGuard to help with physical security. Silk Guardian is a kernel module that triggers a full kernel panic if a specific USB device is removed from the machine, so I tied a USB drive to my wrist. The idea is that if the laptop gets ripped out of your hands, the machine panics and locks down before anyone can read the memory or run forensics on it. Given that, I figured my Linux setup shouldn’t be any less secure than the default Windows 11 combo of Secure Boot and BitLocker, so once I moved to the hardened kernel and LUKS, I never went back.
USBGuard also helped prevent friends from plugging random USB devices into my laptop while at DEF CON. I did some other miscellaneous security things, but I don’t remember the specifics other than that Secure Boot was enabled, though I don’t think it was actually working properly. Randomly, a day after DEF CON, I updated using pacman -Syu and when I rebooted it was dead. It would try to boot then shut off halfway through the process. I switched the kernel back to the normal one, removed Silk Guardian and USBGuard, and disabled Secure Boot, but nothing worked. The logs weren’t helpful either, and after about 3 hours of trying to fix it, and a friend telling me I should just use Arch normally, I gave up on EndeavourOS.
Fedora
I switched to the KDE spin almost right away, since I’ve never been a fan of GNOME. Beyond that, it just works. It feels nice to use, and there were no issues with sound or wifi. I actually like using the Discover app to install programs, and dnf is super easy to learn and use. It comes with SELinux and was super easy to install with an encrypted disk. When I ran the first update it even found a BIOS update for my laptop that had been out for a while, but neither Windows 10 nor any of the other Linux distros were set up to install it. After a week it was still working flawlessly, which is more than I can say for anything Arch related I tried.
I have been very happy with Fedora and plan to keep it on my laptop, but I have a list of distros I want to try in the future, even if it’s just to prove that I am a semi capable Linux user:
- Gentoo
- NixOS
- OpenBSD
- FreeBSD
- Arch (again)
- Linux From Scratch (eventually)
Update, July 2026
Fedora is still working perfectly as my daily driver, now on a new ThinkPad. I’ve updated from Fedora 42 all the way through Fedora 44 with zero drama. It’s clean, I have had no issues, I don’t need to fix things every 10 minutes, and I’ve never run into something that just wouldn’t install or work.
The current plan is to migrate off Windows 11 on my main PC to Fedora Workstation as well, because it has just been rock solid reliable in comparison. I’ve had more issues with Windows 11 crashing, Explorer freezing, system lockups, and VPN/networking problems than I’ve ever had with Fedora.
Conclusion
Looking back at this whole distro-hopping saga, the throughline is pretty simple: Arch gave me control but cost me hours I didn’t always have to spend, EndeavourOS gave me a nice middle ground until updates started breaking things, and Fedora just got out of my way and let me use my computer. Two years later that hasn’t changed, and it’s now trusted enough to be the plan for my main PC too. I don’t think Arch is bad, and I still want to go back and try it “the normal way”, but for a daily driver I’m no longer interested in fighting my OS just to prove I can.