I left Red Hat a few months ago and joined Sciam, but I had to return my corporate laptop. To maintain my workstation setup, I decided to reuse my old Dell XPS and migrate my data from one laptop to another. After installing a fresh Fedora system on the XPS, everything seemed fine initially, but some unexpected issues arose afterward.

The Initial Problem: Intermittent Freezing

After transferring my corporate laptop data to the older machine, I restored my home directory using Deja-Dup. While the backup and restoration process worked smoothly, a significant issue arose: my Fedora system began freezing approximately every 10 seconds for 3 seconds at a time, rendering it almost unusable.

Diagnosing the Issue

I started by isolating the problem to see if it was related to the system itself. Here’s what I did:

  1. ✨ Created a New User: I created a new user account on Fedora and tested the system. To my surprise, it worked flawlessly without any freezes.
  2. 🔍 Narrowing Down the Cause: This indicated that the issue lay within my home directory. I began moving folders to a backup directory to pinpoint the culprit. When I moved the .config directory and relogged, the freezing stopped. Narrowing it down further, I discovered that the ~/.config/dconf/user file was the source of the problem.

The Solution

To resolve the issue, I moved the problematic dconf file to a backup directory:

mv ~/.config/dconf/user ~/backup/dconf/user

This completely resolved the freezing issue. It appeared that the dconf database had become corrupted or contained conflicting settings. By removing it, the system regenerated a new, clean dconf database.

Lesson Learned: A corrupted dconf database can severely impact performance. Resetting it is an effective troubleshooting step.

Troubleshooting dconf Read/Write Errors

Hoping to retain my configurations, I attempted to back up and restore the dconf database:

  1. 💾 Backup: 
    dconf dump / > dconf-backup.txt
  2. 🔄 Restore: 
    dconf load / < dconf-backup.txt

However, when I tried to restore the settings, I encountered the following error:

The operation attempted to modify one or more non-writable keys

To identify the problematic keys, I wrote a script to check the readability of each key in the backup file. Surprisingly, all keys were readable. Despite this, the restoration process failed. Ultimately, I chose to manually rebuild my configuration rather than continuing to debug the permissions issue.

Lesson Learned: When restoring dconf settings proves too difficult, rebuilding configurations manually can be faster and more reliable.

Resetting Deja-Dup Configuration

While investigating the issue, I noticed log entries related to Deja-Dup in journalctl. This raised the possibility that frequent backup operations were causing the freezes. To rule this out, I decided to reset the Deja-Dup configuration.

Using dconf-editor didn’t provide an obvious way to remove or reset Deja-Dup settings. Instead, I took a brute-force approach by deleting the configuration files and reconfiguring the backup settings manually. This resolved any potential conflicts quickly.

Lesson Learned: Sometimes, deleting and starting fresh is the most efficient way to troubleshoot persistent issues.

Adjusting Trackpad Settings

After resetting the dconf database, I noticed changes in my trackpad’s behavior. I had to manually adjust its sensitivity and gestures to restore my preferred setup. While this was straightforward, it served as a reminder of how many small customizations accumulate over time.

Lesson Learned: Keep a record of your preferred configurations to streamline recovery after resets or migrations.

Resolving Guake Shortcut Issues

One of the lingering problems after resetting my settings was with Guake, my dropdown terminal. The shortcut I used to toggle Guake’s visibility (Ctrl+Down) no longer worked. Attempting to rebind it in the Guake Preferences dialog resulted in the following error:

Guake Terminal: A problem happened when binding Control+Down key. Please use Guake Preferences dialog to choose another key.

Ironically, this error occurred while using the Preferences dialog itself! After some trial and error, I stumbled upon a workaround:

  1. 💡 In a terminal, I typed guake followed by the Tab key, which revealed a command called guake-toggle.
  2. ⚙️ I went to GNOME Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts and created a custom shortcut.
  3. ⌨️ I set the command to guake-toggle and bound it to Ctrl+Down.

This approach worked perfectly, restoring the desired functionality.

Lesson Learned: When standard UI methods fail, alternative commands and workarounds can save the day.

Final Thoughts

Despite the challenges, I am genuinely happy to return to Fedora Linux. Over the past few months, I had been using macOS and Windows, but it’s clear to me that I’m a Linux user at heart. Fedora feels like home—it’s where I’m most comfortable and productive.

Although it wasn’t easy to troubleshoot and resolve these issues, I managed to overcome them and recover an almost perfect clone of my previous laptop settings. This experience reinforced my appreciation for Fedora’s flexibility and the vast potential it offers for customization and experimentation.