Fedora 42 and Why I Went back to Ubuntu Budgie Within a Few Hours

Fedora 42. No Thank You.

I was so excited over the release of Fedora 42 on Tuesday and couldn't wait to install it on my Lenovo T490 laptop. I have been using Microsoft Windows 11 for far too long and I wanted to move back to a Linux OS and open source software. Most recently, I was using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and found it to be incredibly stable and powerful and then the release of Fedora 42, along with the storyline of Hitchhikers of the Galaxy being implemented into the reasoning behind the build number 42 of the OS, sparked my interests - with Ubuntu 25.04 being release just 2 days after.

For those of you who aren't aware, Lenovo is one of the few laptop manufacturers who offer the option of having Fedora, Linux Mint, or Ubuntu installed on your machine instead of Windows 11 as your primary operating system. One of the main reasons behind this is because many large businesses and data centers use a Linux OS to run their complex business and developers and / or I.T. professionals prefer to code and resolve issues using the Linux command. Other business models use a Linux OS because of it's security and privacy standards, far beyond what Microsoft and Apple provide.

Anyway, back to Fedora 42.

Fedora 42 was incredibly challenging to install on my laptop, and I believe that it had something to do with performing a fresh installation (moving from Ubuntu to Fedora), which according to the Fedora forums, there is a known issue with some USB ports upon installation. I found this feed after I tried installing Fedora 42 three times and suspected that it was the ISO file, which may have been corrupted, when creating the USB boot drive. I then tried the other USB drive (3.0) as my third attempt, and I was still getting stuck in the installer at the point where you can choose to have third party software installed along side of the installation.

What resolved the issue was not opting to have third party software installed upon installation and using the USB 3.0 plug instead of the USB 2.0 on my machine. You can also install the third party software after you complete the installation, if you choose to do so. So, this was an easy fix overall.

The next thing that I encountered once I started customizing my system was a battery drain problem. My battery drained 13% in about 10 minutes, and I was barely using the laptop. I've never had this issue before and I replaced the battery and upgraded the SSD just last week, which I had no similar issues when using Ubuntu compared to Fedora. Since my experience with Ubuntu was much better, I decided that I was going to back and wait a bit to see if Fedora can resolve whatever issues they're having with the new release. I didn't investigate the issues further because this is my business computer and I use it daily.

Have you tried the new Ubuntu 25.04 or Fedora 42? What was your experience?