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"And the last thing you might expect to see here... is pengwings."

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Introduction

I'm a software developer with 15+ years of coding experience, but that's almost entirely on Windows. I also love playing video games (particularly older/retro ones).

My exposure to non-Windows operating systems is limited. I did do some Mac development in the early 2010s and hated it. I've also used Ubuntu Server to run many of my various web servers since the mid-2000s, but I only learned essential stuff for server maintenance (I can use apt, vim, Apache and Docker and that's pretty much it). My desktop Linux experience has mostly been just running various versions of Ubuntu in a VM for short term use to prat about and/or browse web pages using a VPN, nothing ever serious.

When I bought a Steam Deck in Spring 2025 I got excited - the Steam Deck is an amazing piece of hardware from a technical perspective, Proton is really good honestly, and gaming on Linux finally looked viable. I wanted to explore the world of desktop Linux too, more seriously this time.

So in February 2026 I started messing around with Fedora Linux as part of a push to learn more Linux stuff. I picked the Fedora Atomic Desktop because the idea really appeals to me and the whole thing just made sense in my brain. For the desktop environment I chose KDE Plasma, I've used it before on the Steam Deck and quite liked it, very Windowsy and it's more familiar to me in visuals or layout than GNOME.

Eventually I want to move away from Windows permanently, because Windows continues to get worse every release and all the new AI integrations are kinda the straw that broke the camel's back. Windows frankly just sucks now. The point of this experiment is just to try running Fedora as my daily driver for a few months and see how things go, learning as much as I can along the way. If things go well then I'll stick with it longer, if not then back to Windows I guess...

So anyway, I hereby introduce Pengwings, a wiki which contains random documentation for various Linux things I had to work out. I wanted to document it so that I can refer back to my notes in future if I need to. I guess now I'm also sharing my exploration with others. If you're a techy Windows user looking to move to Linux, there might be something here you find useful. Who knows.

Documentation is for Fedora Kinoite (KDE Atomic Desktop) and Universal Blue derivatives. Some alteration might be needed for other distros depending on what the thing is.