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I can't install fedora because they require you to have a mouse connected by cable to your computer to install.
It's absurd. I only have a Bluetooth mouse and you can't get to the Bluetooth connect screen. So Mint it was.
I even saw someone complaining about this on the fedora forum and the response was totally "Do you not have mice?" energy.
What stopped the install process working without a mouse?
Surely they'd have a keyboard navigation method.
They do... For the first screen of the welcome page only. When it gets to connect WiFi the keyboard nav is broken. Tabbing doesn't work.
Beyond that if you hit alt F4 to close the welcome page you get to your desktop, but Fedora doesn't come with any predefined hotkeys (or at least none of them worked on Fedora 39, if there were any - it might have been part of the welcome screen). So I couldn't open up a terminal or anything to actually get to useful controls.
After an hour of fighting with this and seeing useless forum posts I scrapped it and installed Mint, where they actually bothered to let you open up Bluetooth connection management with only a keyboard.
You could've shifted into tty mode from there I think, but they don't have a hotkey for a terminal emulator up. You probably also could've just hit the super key and used the search bar for "ter-" and it'll pull it up, hit enter, and it'll launch. Personally if none of that worked I would've went to walmart and bought the cheapest little logitec mouse with a usb dongle or borrowed one from work for a few days because they're cool like that.
Of course, you shouldn't have to find a work around even if there are some, so there's that too.
In theory super + term should've worked but in reality super didn't open up search.
It was incredibly cursed.
Ultimately Mint was 0 effort so I'll be sticking with it. It's only a little toy laptop anyways.
If this ever happens to you again, you can try doing ctrl + alt + < F1 - F12>. That will bring up different screens/terminals and its so baked into linux it might have still worked even in that broken state. Still bonkers the installer didn't accept keyboars info though. Its ironic because so much of my linux experience has been about reducing mouse/touchpad use.
It didn't work. I tried so many different options. I got to the point where I was facerolling the keyboard with all sorts of different options.
This is something acknowledged by Fedora devs: It's not my imagination.
laptop
couldn't you have just used the laptop's built-in pointing device, plugged in a wired mouse or paired BT via console... instead of dying on this hill?
It was a mainboard not a full laptop. No built in pointing device.
Couldn't open the console because fedora would not accept any keystrokes to open terminal.
I don't have a USB c mouse.
The only way to fix this would be purchasing a USB c mouse. I'm not installing fedora to pay more.
That's an obviously poor take. If only laptop users could get past the screen then it's still broken.
None of the options I gave are exclusive to laptops.
You were literally responded by suggesting they use their laptop's HID, then suggested a wired mouse which they said they didn't have, then suggested using the console which the install process doesn't advertise as a possibility to the user.
Poor UX is a bug, it needs to be updated.
I don't disagree with that at all. I was responding specifically to where you said "if only laptop users could", and I was just stating that the options I presented did not have a laptop as a prerequisite in order to use said options. It still needs fixing as you said, I just don't agree with OP's swift dismissal of the entire distro as a non-starter for the reason stated.
Fedora+KDE is the perfect match
Kde and fedora is definitely a good choice.
Indeed. The only annoying thing is the automatic updates not working.
I have a Nvidia gpu and I did run into issues on Fedora with drivers and cutscenes, switching from Gnome to KDE and wayland to X11 fixed some problems, but I fidn't manage to get it to work properly and have given up in a few weeks.
However, I switched to Nobara which is based on Fedora and handles the gaming related configuration for you, and so far O've had a great experience without any issues for half a year already, so if gaming is what you're primarily after, I'd recommend going with Nobara.
For Nobara, which would you say it's the best (DE + X11/Wayland) setup for an Nvidia GPU?
I preffer KDE and use x11. Wayland is getting better with nvidia, but I still had some bugs with taskbar freezing often when I first tried it, so I just switched to X11. I haven't tested it recently though, so it may be OK now.
Yeah DNF rocks and the new builds always have the new fun stuff right away.
I think Bazzite or Nobara is easier for casual gamers that just want things to work
Bazzite has been amazing for me!
Which Steam package did you install? I remember tried the rpm package from the software store and encountered problems.