It has been just over seven months since I made the jump from Windows to Linux. At first, it was nothing more than a fun experiment; I had read that PewDiePie had made the move to Linux Mint, and with the OS in the spotlight and people everywhere giving it a go, I thought I'd hop on the train and see what's what. I had originally tried Ubuntu around 2010 and hated it, so now that fifteen years had passed, it was worth giving open-source OSes a second try.

What followed was a wild but fun whirlwind tour of Linux distros. I quickly felt that Linux Mint wasn't for me, and so, I started distro-hopping aggressively. I tried Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, EndeavourOS, Arch Linux, KDE Linux, and even a distro that could run off a USB. I would install one, install another, go back to the first one, dual-boot two distros, and then wipe that and install the first one again. At the time, it was very fun to explore all the options available to me, but the more I fresh-installed Linux, the more I noticed that my internal needle kept pointing toward one distro in particular. Finally, I decided to do one more wipe, installed my fave distro, and will now stay on it for years to come.

That distro is Fedora Kinoite, and the cool thing about this distro is that I don't just love the OS as a whole. My distro-hopping taught me that I love three very specific things, and Fedora Kinoite featured all of them. So, here are the three reasons why I'm settling on Fedora Kinoite as my daily driver.

I love Fedora Kinoite because it's Fedora

I keep coming back to it

Out of all the distros I tried, I kept coming back to Fedora. It became my "staging ground" from which I could try other distros; I would back up my Fedora, install an OS over it, and then bring back Fedora once I had my fill. In a way, Fedora became my "home" from which I could venture into other distros, with the option to always go back if I wanted to.

So, why did I stick with Fedora? Well, I really liked how the OS saved the last three images of itself, which made it easy to hop back to an earlier build if a new update messed something up. Fortunately, given how stable Fedora is, there has only been one instance in my months of Fedora use where I had to revert to an older version because something messed up. Additionally, Fedora receives updates relatively quickly, which strikes a perfect balance between incorporating new features and maintaining stability for me.

I love Fedora Kinoite because it uses KDE Plasma

I just want KDE Plasma on everything, really

Fedora comes in a few different flavors, and all of them feature the same great OS I've come to know and love, but some come with KDE Plasma pre-installed. KDE Plasma is, without a doubt, one of the biggest reasons I haven't bounced off Linux and gone back to Windows. After coming from years of using Microsoft's operating systems, KDE Plasma is absolutely spoiling me, and I can't imagine using a Linux distro without it.

KDE Plasma is snappy, easy to customize, and comes with a ton of options right out of the box. It also features some really useful features by default, such as KDE Connect, which I swear by for mirroring my Android phone's notifications to my PC. Plus, the development team is always hard at work cooking up new versions of KDE Plasma, with weekly status updates keeping me notified on what to expect and when.

I love Fedora Kinoite because it's immutable

I honestly believe it's the future of Linux

So, given how I like Fedora and I like KDE, that narrows the available options down to two: Fedora KDE and Fedora Kinoite. And while I used the former for months, I came to love the latter after I tried its Atomic brother, Fedora Silverblue.

Silverblue is an immutable version of Fedora that uses GNOME, and I originally just gave it a try to see what an immutable distro is like. After I decided it was for me, I did some research and discovered Fedora Kinoite, which is the immutable KDE spin. And thus, my trinity of desired features was complete.

If you're not sure what an immutable system is, it's an operating system that protects the system files from tweaks. This makes it really secure, but it also means you cannot install apps on it without using its layering system. Fortunately, using Fedora Silverblue taught me the value of both Flatpaks and setting up AppImages using Gear Lever, so I got everything set up without installing a single app.

Immutable distros also update the OS very differently from 'normal' ones. Updating mutable operating systems often involves grabbing the new files and adding them to your system, but this can cause the system to slowly degrade over time as old files stick around for months and the system tweaks pile up. If you've ever done a clean install of Windows and noticed that it got a lot faster, that's what I mean.

Immutable distros, on the other hand, update the OS by downloading the whole image with the changes pre-applied. That way, you have fresh system files every time you update, which staves off the rot very nicely. I have noticed that my system performance has been rock solid since moving from KDE to Kinoite. This image-based system also means you can roll back your PC to a previous image at any time if a new update mucks things up.

Also, one thing I don't miss from mutable systems is the system update process. With mutable systems, if you download a system update, it can't apply the changes right away. You need to restart your PC, wait for the OS to apply the changes, then restart a second time to get the update. Because immutable updates replace the entire image, you can download the newest image, restart, and use it right away without the need to wait for an installation bar to fill.

Fedora Kinoite is the OS for me

At the start of my Linux journey, distro hopping was a ton of fun. I really wanted to explore what was available, what each distro excelled at, and develop a sense of what I valued in a distro. Now that I've done a grand tour of Linux distros, I feel it's time to finally settle on the one that ticked all the boxes: Fedora Kinoite.