This new laptop I just bought has hardware that Fedora is having trouble with--nvidia GTX 3060, DisplayPort to a nice 38" monitor, and new/wacky wifi chip that Fedora just does not see. I had solved all issues except the wifi, and ran into some software (application) issues. I decided to just go back to the OS that came on this--Pop!_OS. Works fine. I just had to tweak it to get it to how I work.
I find that a bit surprising but I would say not astonishing. Fedora is supposed to be the place to look for “latest and greatest” stuff but live and learn I guess.
I can’t tell from your post if the issue was in kernel version (fedora tends to have the very latest) or maybe it’s down to kernel config, or userspace binaries/config.
Oh wait - you did say - you said software/application. Well, there’s probably a path to get fedora working but probably why bother.
Not worth struggling just to prove a point - as long as you have a way to get to a good state. Way, way back in the day I ran both open source and closed source blobs for nvidia on a laptop and got things working albeit with some tweaking I think of kernel commandline parameters. Nowadays don’t use fedora on a laptop and for that matter don’t have nvidia hw either :)
I’m typing this now on Fedora 34. I quite like the look/feel of the new Gnome.
One thing I’d like to see improve is the gnome extension ecosystem. Inevitably you would like functionality that you can only get via extensions but equally inevitably the extension you want isn’t compatible with the version of Gnome you’re running and no one has bothered to update. I would say in this area things really are not ideal.
Secondly the whole libreoffice story isn’t that great. For simple tasks it works fine. But sharing docs back and forth between libreoffice and M$ office never really works as it should in my experience despite the ability to read/save as docx. It certainly doesn’t work well enough that you would use this as a workflow in a professional setting.
Beyond that - I really have no complaints.
Briefly skimmed over some stuff here: https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/comment-page-1/#comments
It’s not well organized and it’s generally a hot mess but I was able to get at least the gist of
1. Either need to sign the Nvidia blob driver or turn off UEFI secure boot. (I know you said you had UEFI).
2. Need to blacklist nouveau on kernel commandline (which I know remember doing myself way, way back in the day hence my earlier question). (OK obviously PopOS isn’t doing this but maybe they are not building nouveau in either?)
Not sure this helps at all but these two points do resonate with stuff I’ve either done or read about in the past. I do think there is even more to it than just this though.