Switcher 2026: Fedora Workstation ⭐️

I've used so many different Linux distributions this year that I've lost count, but Fedora Workstation 43 really stands out as a happy surprise. This is a stable, modern, and refined take on the Linux desktop, and for me, a welcome respite after a few less than successful adventures with other distributions.

There are different ways to measure the relative success of any Linux distribution, including hardware compatibility, software and services compatibility, familiarity in interfaces and interactions, subjective look and feel preferences, and a lot more. And to me, Fedora scores highly across the board.

So let's jump in.
✅ Hardware compatibility
I installed Fedora on a 14-inch Intel Core Ultra ("Meteor Lake") laptop with Nvidia RTX A500 graphics, 32 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD storage. Fedora recognizes all that. The keyboard (including backlighting, using Print Screen as a screenshot shortcut, and so on) and trackpad (two-finger right-click, scrolling, etc.) seem to work normally.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work fine. The display's native resolution (2560 x 1600) and high refresh rate (120 Hz) are correct. Power management is working fine, from what I can tell, as is sound. All the ports work normally, and Fedora recognizes the Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports for what they are. I connected an external display and it works wonderfully.

Even more impressively, I can use the fingerprint reader to sign into the system. This isn't unique to Fedora, but it's still somewhat rare with Linux (and something I need to start tracking, come to think of it). That's a big deal: Signing in with a password is nonsense. (Facial recognition is not available though the PC supports that in Windows; I don't believe I've ever seen a Linux distribution that can support that.)
✅ Software compatibility
Fedora doesn't do anything special for Windows switchers out of the box, but the bundled Software app is serviceable, and I believe that this distribution natively supports the RPM, DNF, and Flatpak app package formats. (The apt command line utility is there, too, and you can use the fingerprint sensor to authenticate with sudo, which is nice.)

Anyway, Fedora of course comes with all the basics, so it has a serviceable media player, text editor, and so on. It also ships with Firefox, which I've been using lately because of all the movement there. But the Software app has Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Microsoft Edge, and other browsers, and you can, of course, download the browser you prefer from the web easily enough.

I rely on Typora for writing, and instaling this app is always an adventure in Linux. But it's right there in the Software app store and it installed and runs normally. Configuring Typora is likewise an adventure in Linux, in part because I have to install a custom font for the theme (iA Typora) that I prefer. But here, too, Fedora made things relatively easy: I just unzipped the theme download, selected all four fonts, right-clicked...