Short Answer: Not Really.
Fedora was supposed to be the last hope — the distro with the newest kernels, the fastest patches, and the best chance of fixing the two villains that wrecked my Linux year: the Flashbang Bug and the Big Freeze.
I went in cautiously optimistic.
I tested Fedora 43 GNOME and Fedora 43 KDE Plasma.
I wanted one of them to work.
I needed one of them to work.
But after a week of testing, here’s the honest truth:
Fedora didn’t save my ThinkBook.
Not completely.
Not reliably.
Not in a way I could trust for teaching or daily life.
Fedora GNOME: Smooth, Modern… and Still Buggy
Fedora GNOME was easily the smoothest GNOME experience I’ve had on this laptop. Wayland felt great. Gestures were fluid. Animations were clean. It felt like the “future of Linux” everyone talks about.
But the kernel didn’t care about any of that.
The Flashbang Bug? Still there.
Every resume blasted me with 100% brightness.
Suspend? Better than Kubuntu, but not trustworthy.
It didn’t freeze every time, but it froze enough that I couldn’t rely on it.
When it worked, it felt great. I understand why Fedora remains so popular. Even Linus Torvalds is a fan. So while I’m sure it works great for others, it does not play nicely with my hardware. It’s like taking the wrong tent backpacking. I don’t need a 10 person tent when it’s just me.
Fedora KDE Plasma: Powerful, Transparent… and Still Unreliable
Fedora KDE Plasma gave me all the tools Kubuntu gave me, but with newer kernels and fewer packaging quirks. It felt faster. It felt cleaner. It felt like KDE the way KDE is meant to be.
But the same pattern emerged:
Suspend was inconsistent.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it froze.
Sometimes it woke up confused.
Brightness still reset to 100%.
KDE showed me the exact moment the ACPI event fired and the brightness jumped — but visibility isn’t the same as a fix.
Fedora KDE was better than Kubuntu, but not by enough to matter.
The Hard Truth: The Kernel Is the Problem
After testing Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora GNOME, and Fedora KDE, the pattern is painfully clear:
This isn’t a desktop environment problem.
This isn’t a distro problem.
This is a kernel + firmware problem.
The ThinkBook 16 G6 ABP is a great machine on paper, but the combination of:
- AMD Ryzen 7530U
- Lenovo’s ACPI tables
- Linux’s current kernel state
…is a recipe for inconsistent suspend behavior and broken brightness persistence.
Fedora’s newer kernels helped, but they didn’t fix it.
So… What Now?
This is the part where I’d love to say, “And then I found the perfect distro and camped happily ever after.”
But that’s not where I am.
Right now, I’m standing at a crossroads with three imperfect paths:
- Deal with the brightness bug on Ubuntu
Ubuntu 25.10 is polished and predictable except for the part where it blinds me every time I open the lid. - Try Linux Mint 22.2
Mint was rock‑solid on my ThinkBook 15.
It avoids GNOME’s quirks.
It runs cooler but it’s not exactly “cool.”
It’s calmer but boring.
But I haven’t tested it on the ThinkBook 16 recently. - Go back to Windows 11
The option I’ve been avoiding because of privacy.
The option I don’t want to choose because of Microsoft.
But also the option that would give me:
- perfect suspend
- perfect brightness control
- perfect thermals
- zero kernel drama
And as much as I love Linux, I’m tired. I know that my laptop was built for Windows 11 first. I want Linux for simplicity, privacy, and control it offers. I can’t decide if that’s worth the bugs it entails.
Where I’m Leaving This
I don’t have a clean answer yet.
I don’t have a triumphant ending.
I don’t have a distro I can recommend with confidence.
What I do have is a laptop that works beautifully in every way except the two that matter most: waking up and not blinding me.
So for now, the journey continues.
Do I fight the brightness bug on Ubuntu?
Do I give Mint a chance on the ABP?
Do I retreat to Windows 11 for the sake of sanity?
I honestly don’t know.
But I’ll write about whatever comes next — because if I’m going to suffer through these bugs, I might as well leave a trail for the next hiker.
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