There are two kinds of people in this world:
I discovered — with scientific precision — that I am firmly in the second category.
There’s a moment in every tech person’s life when their laptop does something so profoundly stupid that it forces a full existential reset. For me, that moment came courtesy of my ThinkBook 16 G6 ABP — a machine that, on paper, should have been a dependable workhorse, but in reality behaved like it was auditioning for a role in a cyberpunk horror film.
When I started Hacking The Hike, it was a place to document gear, trails, and the chaos of hiking with five kids. It was personal, practical, and full of pine needles. But over time, the blog evolved — because I did.
My ThinkBook 16 has been the center of much consternation the latest few months. If the other problems weren’t enough, I have one more to add. This is when scrolling turns into zooming.
After Ubuntu blinded me and Kubuntu froze on me, I found myself staring at the one trail I usually avoid: Fedora./
Every so often, I get the itch to hop distros again. Not because I’m unhappy with what I’m running — I’ve got a setup that mostly works — but because I like checking in on the distros that almost make sense for my daily workflow (and I may be procrastinating over projects). openSUSE Tumbleweed is one of those. I don’t run it full‑time, but I always enjoy dropping into it for a week or two. It’s like visiting a friend who has their life way more together than you do, even if you wouldn’t want to live exactly like they do.
Here’s what keeps pulling me back.
After Ubuntu 25.10 blinded me one too many times, I pivoted to the obvious next step: Kubuntu. Same Ubuntu base, same kernel, but with KDE Plasma — the desktop environment that gives you knobs, dials, sliders, toggles, and enough configuration options to make a mechanical keyboard enthusiast blush.
After meeting the two villains of this saga — the Flashbang Bug and the Big Freeze — I started my distro testing with the obvious choice: Ubuntu.
