What did yall end up settling on?

I tend to use macOS on the desktop (I know, booo) so I’ve landed on Alpine Linux for just about everything else.

I love that you can be on the bleeding edge but also not have tons of baggage everywhere. The downside is of course a lot of times I find myself doing things from scratch.

I started on pop!_os and now 6 years later im on... pop!_os

Yeah, I didn't really do any distro hopping :p. Though I've tried a bunch of distros in VMs

Started with Arch, landed on Artix ☺️

Arch Linux on laptop (needed some bleeding edge stuff), Fedora Linux on pc, looking forward for GNOME OS stable

The seventy-tooth

Started with Mandrake, currently on Cachy

And tomorrow will be the seventy-thirth distro.

Ubuntu til KDE 5, then Kubuntu since

I've run most non KDE distros now I just install Debian or Ubuntu depending on the computer

Do people actually do this serial distro hopping? When such a meme is posted even now most people say they switched only a few times at most

I'm a gamer who recently switched to Cachy and honnestly it is by far my favourite yet. It runs so smoothly without feeling bloated and it's perfect for someone like me who feels too noob to try pure Arch.

My timeline of the last 16 years

Ubuntu > Kubuntu > Neon > Debian (KDE) > Garuda Dragonized > Garuda + custom Hyprland

I went from Windows to Mint and have been using that for almost a year now. Haven’t run into any issues that would make me want to switch: it does what I want it to now.

I started with Mint. My next and last stop was Alpine. I started trying to host my own website on a Raspberry Pi and ended up switching my laptop over to Alpine so that I could consistently learn on one operating system

I also found a side hobby in making POSIX portable scripts which goes nicely with self-hosting. It's great having a lean and customized desktop just for myself even if it took a long time to learn how to make it all work

What are the advantages of nixOS? I have a Ubuntu Server but plan to run Fedora KDE on my desktop when I build it.

I am trying to set up like 50 Surface Pro 5s to give away so I wanted something that felt as close to Windows/Mac as possible while still allowing me to enable all the Surface Pro features.

Settled on ZorinOS as of now. (Actually, I did some experiments and even got the CAC reader working and CAC login working on it in the event that they want to use them in a student environment.)

Mint > Ubuntu > Lubuntu > Arch (desktop) / Debian (server)

I switched away from Canonical the first time I saw an ad when running apt update & apt upgrade, fuck them forever.

I'm sticking to Arch because its easier to install something myself than to rip apart something prepackaged.

I'm curious about trying Void.

every now and again, I feel the urge to try another distro. I can't help it, it's in my DNA

Same with endeavour lol. VM test drives before “buying” ol’ reliable is the way to go ;)

Although I do use SteamOS on my deck, if that counts as a hop.

I started with like, nothing, linux 0.99 on 8 floppies and X11 on like 12 floppies... then some kind of LFS, then Debian, then Ubuntu, then Mint, then MX with Xfce (since almost 10 years)

Used Manjaro for a while, gave EndeavourOS a try and have been happy there for a few years now. Before that it was Ubuntu, Mint and Debian. Also had OpenBSD on my servers for many years.

Probably going to get hate for this and reveal my age a bit, but i've been on Ubuntu since 2006 back when they'd actually mail you CDs for free. My desktop's hardware has been a ship of theseus since then, and no dist-upgrade really ever broke things, and I think the last time I did a full OS reinstall was in like ~2011 when I got an SSD that was a smaller side than my old HDD, so I couldn't just clone the drive with dd. Everything works well for what I need it for, and don't need the bleeding edge.

ublue/fedora bootc derivatives

A side hop if anything :3 I wouldn't count secondary devices as distro hopping, especially something like the steamdeck, but I suppose someone might

Speaking of steamdecks tho, I've thought about picking one up. I just wish I travelled more to actually be able to justify the price lol. It's a cool piece of kit

In 3 years:

Mint > OpenSUSE Tumbleweed > Fedora

Very happy with Fedora right now. If I ever had to switch again, maybe CachyOS. But not worth wiping and reconfiguring everything just for that. If RedHat pulls a Canonical though, definitely.

Am I the only one here that uses their computer instead of fucking with it?

started in 99.

red hat, slackware, debian, ubuntu, arch, manjaro, nix, cachyos

You might find Void too barebones but it's nice like that. When you finish void-installer for the first time, you get a system with 144 packages only.

Not the same dude, but I assume the Nix reproducible declarative build and deployment system. It's what interested me the most as a former Arch user, though the poor documentation threw me off at the time. Don't know if it improved or not.

Half my time on my deck is at home tbf. I use it for gaming from the couch/bed mostly and streaming my heavier games from my desktop. Quite nice that way imo!

Install gentoo

It's rly only for ppl who REALLY care about the install process or just have the 'grass is always greener'

Or both

Exactly! Whyvis everyone on hannah montana linux now? I must know

What are your thoughts on systemD and wayland?

Most kids these days use em to fuck, I hear

Arch->Elementary OS

I had experienced other distros before (not on my pc, at least), but as a joke my cousin suggested Arch, while I had some trouble setting it up, the documentation was so good I stayed for a while. Though I've always liked MacOS, so when upgrading my notebook, I took chance to install Elementary OS 8. Overall, it's ubuntu based, so I can't complain.

Could I get one? My old toshiba laptop is bout to collapse

Holy shit thats a great combo that will definitely break soon, but kudos for the originality if tru

Can't tell if joking or old or both...?

Fedora - arch - nixos - arch - Debian - arch - debian

Yes! I’ve found myself doing this both personally and professionally. At work we’re using Docker and Kubernetes but the old way of thinking is assuming everything is Debian or Ubuntu so a lot of Bash scripts just break on Alpine-based containers.

But even for those scripts we execute primarily on macOS, I’ve taken the liberty of making them POSIX compliant because you never know who’s using Bash, zsh, sh or what have you.

same but I am using Mint Debian edition and so far I've liked it okay but I think I probably should go with a distro that gets newer kernel updates sooner hmm

at this point just pick a fucking main branch and install the rest of the shit on top. It's all just fucking linux + package manager + DE.

Fedora, Arch, Debian, Suse, Slack, Gentoo. Pick one. KDE, LXQT, Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, or one of those newfangled WM only DEs.

Fucking done.

If you keep jerking off that hard drive , it'll get hairy.

Arch for many many years. Then Bazzite for round about 8 months. Now CachyOS for 9 months. Super happy with it.
Additionally, I am running Debian on my Thinkpad and server.

Systemd: no particular thoughts. It's a PID1 and process manager? 😅 If I'd had to say something, then perhaps it "hampers" my Linux learning, since instead of having to write config files and scripts and learning to work with symlinks (for instance between config and whatnot templates in /usr/share/ and things you actually apply in /etc/), it has a lot of automation built in with all its -ctl commands.

Wayland: never used. It looks fancy? 😅

Sorry for boring answers. 🫣

You would think so but no...

This is my daily driver and it's so stable I have been using it for work for the last 16 months or so.

When Hyprland upgraded to 0.56 it broke some of my config. I was still able to launch apps so no panic, but it took me a couple of hours to read the new documentation and fix everything.

I would not recommend this particular combo for a newbie, but honestly it is a lot more stable than people seem to think

Edit:

Posting a pic as soft proof

After all the distribution hopping stuff. I settled with Debian Sid. Feels like home

I went with the Garuda catpuccin Mokka KDE plasma after using the Garuda i3 (computer upgrade prompted the change, not breakage)
Been solid for me for about 3-4 years now.

Curious how the custom Hyprland is?

Ubuntu -> Debian -> arch (6 years) -> Garuda (3-4 years)

Still use Debian on some machines but Garuda is just smooth and more just-works than Arch.