The best thing about modern Linux isn’t the desktop, it’s how easy it is to roll back your mistakes
The best thing about modern Linux isn’t the desktop, it’s how easy it is to roll back your mistakes
https://www.xda-developers.com/best-thing-about-modern-linux-rollback-your-mistakes/
Publish Date: 2026-04-04 17:30:00
Source Domain: www.xda-developers.com
When I made the move from Windows to Linux, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I knew I was moving into a whole new ecosystem, and I had an idea as to what I wanted to test out, but other than that, I had no idea what I was getting into. So, I just sort of jumped in and gave Linux a try.
Fortunately, my experience with the FOSS operating system landscape was really positive, and I’ve stuck with Linux ever since. However, I’ve come to realise that one of the biggest parts of Linux that I never expected to love as much as I do is the rollback tools available to you, especially the ones you don’t even need to set up.
My love began with Fedora’s DNF kernel history
A small but powerful feature
One of the very first distros I tried was Fedora KDE, because I really wanted to give KDE Plasma a try, and people said that Fedora was a good pick for KDE and bleeding-edge features, so I gave it a go.
After a few days of use, I noticed something odd. When I booted up Fedora, I noticed that GRUB was listing the last three Linux kernels I had installed on my PC. It turns out that Fedora’s package manager, DNF, does this by itself after an update. It’s worth noting that I didn’t tell Fedora to do this, nor did I have to set anything up; it just began storing past copies of the Linux kernel by itself. I knew it would come in handy one day, so I left it.
Sure enough, one update caused my KDE Plasma desktop to go into a bootloop, so I restarted my PC and loaded up a previous kernel from GRUB. Sure enough, everything was fixed, and I just had to wait for another update to fix the bootloop. It was really cool to see Fedora automatically setting up a history of kernels without my intervention for just such an occasion.
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