What is/was your distrohopping journey?

Zucca , 26 days ago

DOS (probably) ➡️ Windows95/98 and MacOS 7/8/9 ➡️ mkLinux ➡️ Gentoo ➡️ Arch Linux ➡️ Gentoo

So yeah. Pretty early on I concluded that Gentoo is the best for me.

Steamymoomilk , 26 days ago

Yessss my brother of the Gentooo EMERGE MY BROTHER!

Zucca , 24 days ago

✊

steeznson , 26 days ago

Windows -> MacOS -> Windows -> Ubuntu (2012) -> Arch (2013) -> Gentoo (2016)

Gentoo cured my distrohopping

Zucca , 25 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

Gentoo cured my distrohopping

Kinda the same with me, I’ve been using Gentoo the most of my life.

ZombiFrancis , 25 days ago

Pirated Windows 95. Pirated Windows 98. Pirated Windows XP. A usb stick with Red Hat I never installed. Pirated Windows 7. A usb stick with Fedora I never installed. Pirated Windows 10. Raspbian for a retropie unit. Legit copy of Windows 10. A usb stick with ChimeraOS and a rig on the dining room table that maybe, just maybe, I will install.

I’ll get there.

captain_aggravated , 25 days ago

Was a Windows user up through Win 7.

I started to play with Raspberry Pis and mostly Raspbian on the side largely related to my amateur radio hobby.

My laptop died, I bought a new one. Windows 8.1. Figured I’d rather use that slow-ass single core Pi 1 running Debian Wheezy than this.

First I tried Ubuntu Unity. I thought “Okay this could work, let’s keep shopping.”

Next I tried Mint Cinnamon. “Here we go.”

I’ve taken a look at Manjaro a couple times over the years. I have stopped this.

I briefly tried to run Pop!_OS when I first built my desktop, that lasted 3 weeks.

My desktop and laptop run Mint Cinnamon, I’ve got a tablet running Fedora Gnome. I kinda found my home fairly quickly and I’m not really interested in moving out.

lichtmetzger , 25 days ago

Windows 95

Suse Linux

Yoper Linux

Windows XP

Slackware

Windows 10/11

Fedora Linux

“Relapsed” to Windows for a while because I became a graphic designer and running a somewhat current Adobe suite on wine was impossible (it works now).

Slackware has been amazing, but having to built so much stuff from scratch takes too much time nowadays.

And those first Suse years were too rough to keep using it as a daily driver.

9488fcea02a9 , 26 days ago

You’ll always end up on debian. You just dont know it yet

rotopenguin , 26 days ago

Can confirm. I’ve used Dos, Windows, Dilinux over Windows, Redhat, more Windows, MacOS, Windows again, Ubuntu, and now I’m on Debian.

9488fcea02a9 , 26 days ago

Once people become familar with the basics of linux, they realize that almost anything that these niche distros offer can be accomplished in debian

dessalines , 26 days ago

Does a debian version upgrade require an OS reinstall?

9488fcea02a9 , 26 days ago (edited 26 days ago)

For me, no…

I’ve gone from debian 9 to debian 11 and now debian sid without reinstalling OS on my desktop

Same with my servers. Debian 8 -> 11 all upgrades in-place. Will have to upgrade to 12 soon…

The only time i messed up an upgrade is when accidentally used the codename “bookworm” in the sources file and skipped a major version. The system tried to fully upgrade 2 versions ahead and promptly borked itself… But it was an LXC container so i just rolled back my mistake. Lesson learned…

But yeah. Full re-installs have NEVER been a thing for me since going debian. It will even happily clone to a new SSD when you need to upgrade your hardware. (As long as your new hardware has in-kernel drivers, or at least some basic functionality to boot and fix the problem, if any)

jjlinux , 26 days ago

Agree to disagree. I keep trying Debian and Debian based distros, same with Arch based (looking at you, Endeavor), and always lend up back on Fedora or one of it’s spins.

F04118F , 25 days ago

Genuine question: what is it about Fedora that keeps you coming back? I have also used Debian based and Arch based distros, as well as Fedora.

jjlinux , 25 days ago

For one, I’m a sucker for bleeding edge, so the constant updates, including kernels, are a godsent. Then there’s my overall experience when compared to other bases. For example, I love PopOS, but even in my S76 Gazelle, it would break regularly (it could have something to do with all the tinkering I constantly do, but who knows), whereas with Fedora, since F37, I’ve barely had to tweak anything other than the DE and have yet to see it fail.

I also tried Arch (Endeavour actually), but I find managing it unnecessarily convoluted for my taste.

I’m sure my love for Fedora comes from my personal experience based on my use cases and the hardware I use. It’s not without it’s kinks though, I used to hate how slow DNF is when compared to APT, but DNF5 has been working flawlessly and fast for a couple of months now. And be aware, in terms of performance for some intensive graphical stuff, I feel Fedora falls a bit behind any Ubuntu/Devian based distro, but not noticeably enough for me to go back.

F04118F , 25 days ago

I get it, I actually use the exact same distros you mention: Pop!_OS, Endeavour and Fedora.

Had the same experience with Pop!_OS: those few things that did not “just work” but needed tinkering caused quite some issues. And yeah, somewhat more bleeding edge than Ubuntu LTS is nice: to use neovim on the 22.04 base, I’d need to use distrobox or build vim from source, but on Fedora and Arch, it “just works”.

I liked Endeavour, though I haven’t really used it with a DE, I went with Sway. So hard to compare, but the manual sysadmin intervention everyone keeps talking about has been minimal. AUR is amazing, pacman is fast and sane.

I went to Fedora because it is bleeding edge enough, but seems better tested and more stable than Arch. Also wanted to see how BTRFS is setup on there and test the rollbacks. The codec stuff has been terrible though. Even after enabling RPMFusion and installing a bunch of them, the Fedora source Firefox still refuses to do video calls in MS Teams. I’m using Flatpak browsers now but downloading flatpak updates is way slower than even the worst package manager for “native” binaries. Feels a bit odd to have to use a Flatpak for the browser.

If I had to install a new pc today, I’d go EndeavourOS with KDE (which I’m using on Fedora now), BTRFS and systemd-boot. I got to know systemd-boot in Pop!_OS and have tried a different boot manager (rEFInd), but systemd-boot is amazing.

jjlinux , 25 days ago

At the end of the day, it’ll be a matter of taste and how much anyone’s willing to “play around”. For example, my 9 years old son started with Zorin when he was 6, and has never looked back,whereas my 11 years old daughter started with Zorin at 8, saw me on PopOS and a couple of months later moved to that. Then we gave her an old HP X360 for school when she needs a laptop, and she went with Nobara, and my wife finally dropped Windows about a month or 2 ago, and chose Fedora because that’s what I use and she figures I can resolve anything quickly for her since that’s also what I use.

Yes, My house is now spyware free on all PCs and Laptops 🥰

F04118F , 25 days ago

That’s amazing!

jjlinux , 25 days ago

When your kids tell you “why do people use Windows? I can’t understand why it always popping stuff up”, you know you’re doing a good job as a parent.

marlowe221 , 26 days ago

Almost 10 years into my own Linux journey, I’m feeling the pull to Debian.

I’m just hanging out in denial right now on Pop OS.

ulkesh , 25 days ago

I’ve distro-hopped across at least 20-30 varying distros between 1999, when I began my Linux journey, and now.

From Big Box Redhat 5 to Debian to Mandrake to Ubuntu to Fedora to Mandriva (what Mandrake and Conectiva became) to Arch to Cent to insert-flavor-here and a mix of many of those over the years.

I’ve settled on Garuda Arch for the time being, and may eventually give Nobara a try once GE has v40 out and has made more progress on umu.

The one distro I’ve never tried: Gentoo. I suppose I’m okay with binaries built by someone else.

Allero , 25 days ago

Windows -> Manjaro.

Never looked back. Debian works on a laptop, amazing too!

urska , 25 days ago

Ubuntu (university) -> MX Linux -> Opensuse TW

whodoctor11 , 25 days ago

For me it was:

Windows (for many years) -> Dual Boot with Arch Linux KDE (for a year) -> Arch Linux KDE

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

pingveno , 25 days ago

Mandrake (2004) -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu (I think?) -> Arch -> Ubuntu -> NixOS -> Pop!_OS

I liked fiddling with the base system more when I was younger, but now I want at least the base system to just work. It gets old hunting through wikis to get basic functionality fixed.

pbjamm , 25 days ago

Slackware(1995?), Yggdrasil, Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake, SuSE, Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

Probably some others I have forgotten, and there was a lot of back and forth at various times but I settled on Debian based because at the time APT was the best package manager. I mostly use Mint or straight Debian now because familiarity makes it the simplest for me after all these years.

not Linux but also Solaris, SunOS, & AIX

macabrett , 25 days ago

I used Ubuntu for a long time, because it was easy to use and I wasn’t really a power user on linux (was just using it on a cheap laptop for classes a long time ago). When I built a server for myself recently, I didn’t really explore distros and plopped Ubuntu on it.

More recently, I got a new laptop and ended up installing Fedora on it. So far, I like Fedora a lot. I know there’s probably a better distro out there for me, but this one worked without fiddling and I’m liking it a lot more than Ubuntu. Ubuntu snaps kinda screwed my server for a year or so. I need to replace Ubuntu on that soon, I’m just not looking forward to dealing with that so it silently stays Ubuntu.

soswav , 25 days ago

Fedora → Ultramarine → Arch Linux → NixOS → dual booting NixOS + EndeavourOS → dual booting EndeavourOS + something I don’t remember the name of → something I don’t remember the name of → NixOS → SolydXK → NixOS → CROWZ → NixOS → Ultramarine Linux → FreeBSD → Devuan → FreeBSD → Arch Linux → Parabola GNU/Libre → Ultramarine Linux

All of that happened around September of the last year and this year! I also did not count how much I stayed in those!

Fedora was my first, it being recommended on somewhere made me install it on a USB stick, After doing so, I did the installer without knowing what it was for and ended up purging my hard drive. I did not think too much of it, and continued using it until I found about Ultramarine Linux; I was tired of the Fedora login loop that I had, so I decided to just install Ultramarine, and guess what? It happened again! I was annoyed (angry), so I installed Arch Linux instead. As expected, I had to fix stuff from time to time, which was tedious. Er, I decided to install NixOS and — Okay, I’ll end it here. My hands already hurt from all the typing and I didn’t think it would take this long just to write this thing. Feel free to ask anything, but be aware, I do not remember a lot about this!

Templa , 25 days ago

Windows (many years) -> Dual boot w/ Ubuntu for a few years -> Windows + WSL (Ubuntu) for many years -> Arch Linux (laptop) + EndeavourOS (desktop) for a few months now

I think I will stick with Arch Linux for new installs, I didn’t have any issue that wasn’t solvable by reading the wiki