Even though preloaded Linux laptops like Dell's new Precision 3520 are a great thing -- and can save you $100 in this case, I'd probably have to reinstall because a factory image of the operating system most likely doesn't take into account one thing I want in any desktop Linux system: full disk encryption.

From the days when I ran Debian, through today's Fedora 24, I opt for full disk encryption in the installer. It's the right thing to do. If your laptop falls into the "wrong" hands, your data is encrypted and away from the prying eyes of whoever gets your gear.

Windows users can take advantage of disk encryption ... in some cases. While the Home edition of Windows 10 doesn't offer it, the Pro/Enterprise edition does have an option to encrypt your data.

It's nice that the installers of many major Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora, CentOS/RHEL and Ubuntu (and its many flavors) offer full disk encryption (not just user files, though Ubuntu does offer a user-files encryption option) -- and any user can take advantage of that protection for the low price of $0.

The morale of this story is that the KDE Plasma settings can screw up your Xfce and GNOME settings. So if you're using multiple desktop environments on a single system -- like my Fedora 25 laptop, or any other Linux system -- you could be in for some pain.

What I was trying to do is configure a dark theme for KDE Plasma (easy) and also use dark themes when running GTK3 and GTK2 apps on the Plasma desktop.

It looked pretty good in KDE Plasma, but things went pear-shaped in GNOME 3 and Xfce. My fonts were screwed up, Menus were gray type on a gray background, and icons were messed up -- with KDE icons bleeding into Xfce.

And then I had trouble logging in with Plasma at all. Blame the Fedora 25 upgrade (and KDE Plasma in general) for that one.

I first tried using the many Xfce configuration utilities to make it right. That didn't do much. I finally was able to log into Plasma (only after a reboot) and attempt to undo the damage. I was partially successful.

In GNOME 3, I had a lot of success with the GNOME Tweak Tool (which should be preinstalled on every GNOME system). I was able to use the Xfce Adiwata Dark theme to make even my GTK2/GTK+ apps look better in GNOME. The whole dark-themed GNOME experience is pretty much better than ever. So that's a win.

And I finally got Xfce looking right. I'm still having display font issues, but everything is more than good enough, and figuring out how to make dark-themed GNOME look better than ever is a bonus.