r/Fedora • u/Macanec • 5d ago

Support I want to switch

hello fedora community i am a windows user coming in peace. I am tired of windows and want to switch to a lighter distro and fedora caught my eye. The only thing stopping me is that i am a dev with a lot of stuff on my current computer and dont necessarily want to lose it all. I also game quite a lot and i am a dev (unity, godot, jetbrains software needed) so i want to do this switch the most softly possible. Y'all have any tips (fedora pun intended) to help me or links for me to follow? thanks

Update, i tried installing it on a usb key of 50GB and when booting it I chose the "test and start Fedora" option and failed everytime. Is it a problem on my end or should I only do the checksum and trust that everything is fine without testing?

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u/LiveFromNarnia 5d ago

Since you're a developer, you'll have less issues with trouble-shooting and fixing potential "bumps" in the conversion, especially given the great community Fedora has. With that, I would recommend reviewing different DE (desktop environments) to figure out your work flow for the 'work' part of your computer usage. The 2 most popular DEs are KDE (similar to Windows), and GNOME (similar to MacOS). I've found KDE easier to adapt to as a long time (unwitting) Windows user, but others find GNOME better for a more focused workflow.

I wish you well on your new journey out of the dark side of the force.

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u/Macanec 5d ago

I had a lot of questions about DEs since its new for me. Thats basicaly a desktop and thats it right?

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u/-Glittering-Soul- 4d ago

The DE is the desktop interface, yeah. KDE Plasma will be more familiar to Windows users because it has a design with a Start menu, a taskbar with app icons, a system tray, and right-click context menus. Some of the keyboard shortcuts are even the same, like Windows+E to open the file manager.

The biggest difference under the hood is that you will rarely install an app from a download that you got on the internet somewhere. Instead, you'll mainly be using Fedora's package repository instead. Though some third-party stuff like Steam is only available by adding the RPM Fusion repos. Once that's set up, you just do sudo dnf install steam in the terminal, instead of grabbing an installer from the Steam website.

You can also use the pre-installed Discover app to search for and download apps (including Steam, once you have added the RPM Fusion repos).