Since my home Internet connection has been so bad, I haven't been using my Fedora 22 laptop as my main production machine for Citrix apps, and that means I can run GNOME 3 on it without trouble.

Instead, I use the laptop for writing, web browsing, development and watching media.

And instead of my usual Xfce, I've been using GNOME 3.16 as the desktop environment.

I have few complaints. GNOME 3 is getting better and better with each release, and even between releases there have been little improvements here and there.

Right now my only complaint with GNOME 3 is with file management in Nautilus. When you drag a file into a folder, if you linger too long over the folder, you end up in it. That should be something you can configure not to happen.

To avoid this problem, I've been using Nautilus' move to feature. It's clean.

My problems with the upper panel (I'm using the TopIcons GNOME Extension) are pretty much gone. Everything shows like it's supposed to.

I like the notifications system.

GNOME Software's notion that you want to reboot for every update is absurd. I use the Yum Extender for DNF to update, and that doesn't require any rebooting. The new Yum Extender fails about 25 percent of the time. I'm confident that the Fedora team will continue polishing the application. In the meantime, dnf in the terminal works without fail.

I'm having a PulseAudio issue that presents itself in both GNOME and Xfce: When I switch audio to HDMI via PulseAudio Volume Control (aka pavu), there is no audio over that connection unless I log out and log back in. I can switch back to local audio and hear it on the laptop speakers, but going back to HDMI requires another logout/login. This fairly recent issue is not a deal-breaker but is annoying.

Otherwise, my 2-year-old HP Pavilion g6 laptop is running better than ever under Linux.

Notes:

• While I said I was going to stop obsessing about Linux, I reserve the right to talk/write about software I'm using. Tools are still interesting. And important. My focus remains on programming. And the rest of life. (Or so I tell myself.)

• I am getting ready to pull the trigger on 100Mb/s Time Warner Cable broadband to replace my sub-1Mb/s DSL Extreme "broadband." That would mean I could work at home more, and I would probably swing back to Xfce for production because it plays so much better with the unwieldy Citrix apps I must use.

I'm probably using more Linux than ever. My laptop runs Fedora. I'm the admin on a server running CentOS.

I will keep doing those things.

But today I unsubscribed from most of the mailing lists that have been flowing through my Gmail account over the past few years.

The Debian, Fedora, Xubuntu and Lubuntu users list? All gone. So are the development lists for Debian, Fedora and Xubuntu, and most of the others. I'm keeping a few low-volume lists. For now anyway.

I was always more of a lurker than active participant on all of those mailing lists.

Lately, and probably before that, I didn't find much of value in most of that mail. Even though the quality of the Fedora lists is a bit higher than average, I wasn't getting a whole lot out of them. I'd scan the mail, maybe read one or two posts every few days, then delete the whole lot.

At this point, I see my operating system as a tool. To get things done.

I'm not interested in Linux evangelism. If you want to use it, that's great. I still do and will do.

If not, that's cool. Do what makes you happy.

I'm still a satisfied user of Linux. It's pretty much all I've run on my laptops since maybe 2009, and I messed around a whole lot with it before that, starting in late 2006 if I remember correctly.

There's more to life.

There's my family. I sure as hell want to do better where they're concerned.

Putting together coherent sentences? I'm still very much interested.

I've threatened to write about more than Linux for years. I'd like to write about things that aren't technology. It's been in the sidebar of this particular blog for as long as I've been writing it.

I see the "tech guy" on the morning news, and I wince. Is that me? Other than the fact that I'm very obviously not on TV, I worry that it is.

There's more to life than gadgets and apps.

That being said (there's always a that being said) ...

It sounds like I'm just on the other end of the same pool, but lately programming has dominated what little free time I have. I read a whole lot about it. And occasionally do it. Maybe I'll be able to tip the scales toward more doing in the near future.

I've been playing with Go, Perl, Python and Ruby. I need to focus.

Coding is what interests me at the moment.

What I'm not playing with are Linux distributions. I don't burn ISOs of anything, don't install just to see what something's like.

New releases of obscure distributions, or even not-so-obscure ones? I'm just not into it.

The ins, outs, politics and boiling pots of the Linux world? Not interested.

Give me my working Fedora system (or maybe Debian if the hardware is willing) and let me do my work, write my code, live my life.

If that sounds melodramatic, so be it.

I reserve the right to change my mind. But for now, I'm 50 other things first and a Linux user after that.