What is/was your distrohopping journey?

FrozenHandle , 25 days ago

I tried various linux distros like ubuntu as a kid, but because of gaming I didn’t switch at that time, then around 2010 I got a home server and installed Arch on it. When Arch switched to systemd I switched to gentoo because I did not want systemd. In 2014 I switched to gentoo Linux on my desktop, but still had dual boot for gaming on windows. I tried various init systems on gentoo and then ended up using systemd anyways. Because I got sick of waiting for packages to compile I switched back to arch on my desktop. On my home server and laptop I used alpine linux for a while. I switched back to arch shortly after because I had too many issues with alpine on desktop. I still use alpine in VMs on the server, but others that I don’t touch as much like the print server run rocky linux. I also tried GPU-passthrough to game in a windows VM, but I never managed to resolve all the issues. Since nowadays most games run on wine and proton I never bothered reinstalling/fixing windows when it stopped booting a few years ago, so now I use linux only.

robojeb , 25 days ago

• Windows (various versions on and off like 95, XP, 7,8,10)
• Fedora core 6
• Ubuntu 8.O4-10.04
• Fedora again I think beefy miracle
• Arch

SpaceCadet , 25 days ago

• Red Hat Linux 5.1 - 7.x
• Slackware 7.0 - 12.0
• Ubuntu 6.10 - 9.10
• Slackware 13.37 - 14.1
• Mint 16 - 17
• Arch

cy_narrator , 25 days ago

I used to enjoy Arch when I was 16 maby

ssm , 26 days ago

Copying this from another thread that was basically the same question, but didn’t get much attention

Started on Arch Linux for some reason back in 2016, I just decided to throw out my Windows and install it (Don’t really remember what was going through my head, or why I wanted to install Linux, other than I was reading the r/linux subreddit wiki at the time). I was trapped in a TTY trying to install the thing for maybe a week, and after 9 reinstallations, I got Arch working and got a Weston compositor session running under Wayland. After realizing Weston was more a tech-demo than something I was actually supposed to use, I installed X11 and Gnome, which was cool for approximately 3 minutes before I decided to replace it with some minimal window manager instead. Can’t remember if it was i3wm or something else, but i3wm sounds right; and later I messed around with some tilers like StumpWM, ratpoison, and HerbstluftWM.

After about 3 months, something in Arch broke (systemd was not reaping processes properly was what I concluded at the time, no idea what the actual problem was but I ended up with a bunch of zombie processes), and I decided to install Gentoo as my second Linux distribution. After installing Gentoo, I entered a stage which is colloquially know as “config hell” where I overconfigured everything to the point of breaking something, and could never figure out what I actually broke because everything was so overconfigured. After recompiling the whole system, everything was still broken, so I reinstalled Gentoo, this time less overconfigured, but still somewhat overconfigured (It didn’t help I was also running a full self-made custom kernel config with 3 months of Linux experience, I surprised the thing booted at all).

I lived in Gentoo for around a year using HerbstluftWM, but eventually I grew tired of how much maintenance Gentoo required and just wanted some sane defaults. This led me to installing OpenBSD, which I guess was the right decision for me because I’m still using it to this day (7 years!), and is where I gained the majority of my knowledge about using Unix thanks to the wonderful documentation. Initially I didn’t like the ports system because it didn’t have as many knobs as Gentoo’s portage did (Gentoo’s portage is more modeled after FreeBSD’s ports than OpenBSD’s ports it seems), but I came around to enjoying hacking ports with my own patches instead of using preconfigured knobs. Eventually my porting skills got good enough that I now officially mantain a couple OpenBSD ports (games/stone-soup, www/pipe-viewer), and that list is likely to grow. I switched between some other window managers (ratpoison, JWM, FVWM2) before settling on OpenBSD’s in-house cwm. I purchased a VPS also running OpenBSD, and self host various things like email, git, ZNC, web/http, and IPsec/VPN. Eventually, I grew tired of not having games to play (OpenBSD doesn’t support WINE), so I bought a Steam Deck that I use as both my gaming desktop and handheld. I also bought a Pinephone from Pine64 which currently uses PostmarketOS (I hope to run OpenBSD on it some day though).

https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/56735566-ad96-4ae6-a667-434aa5275e39.png

tl;dr Use Arch as your first Linux distribution and you’ll end up as an OpenBSD ports maintainer I guess

Fizz , 25 days ago

It takes a special person to jump into a complicated task struggle and then pick up and even more complicated task and end up succeeding.

Fizz , 25 days ago

Windows 10 years -> macOS 6months -> Windows 10 years -> mint 1 week -> Ubuntu 1hr -> Garuda 30mins -> endeavor 1hr - > arch 1 day (I got filtered) -> manjaro 1 year -> fedora 1 week -> nobara 6 months.

I did manage to install arch on an old chromebook but I find configuring things from scratch annoying and I like it to be configured well be default and I’ll change it if I want to.

sirico , 25 days ago

Risc_os>win95-xp>Ubuntu>mint>Ubuntu>win8.1-10>manjaro>mint>popOs>fedora>fedora silverblue>bazzite/aurora

digdilem , 25 days ago

Linux: 1995, Sco (At work), then got a copy of Slackware on a Cover-CD around 2000. Shortly after found Debian and have been using that at home exclusively for over two decades, now onto desktops and laptops as well as a couple of home servers. (I use EL distros, Ubuntu and OpenSuse at work nowadays)

Longer history: 1981: ZX81. 1985, Dragon 32. 1988 Amstrad CPC. 1991 an XT. 1992 A 386 sx25 with 1mb ram, and so on.

erici , 25 days ago

Vic20 😆 -> C64 -> AmigaOS -> MacOS -> Slackware (much frustration!) -> MacOS -> Ubuntu -> EndeavourOS

Sorse , 26 days ago

The “+” indicates a dualboot

MacOS (for a while) → MacOS + Windows (for a year) → Ubuntu + Windows (for a year) → Linux Mint + Windows (for 6 months)→ Linux Mint (for 1.5 years)→ SteamOS (for 9 months) → SteamOS + openSUSE Tumbleweed (for 3 months, then tumbleweed got glitchy with display output) → SteamOS (Current) → Fedora Linux (when I get my new laptop)

NauticalNoodle , 26 days ago (edited 26 days ago)

DOS/Win 3.1 -> Win95 -> Win98 SE -> windowXP -> open?SuSe(1 week) -> Mandrake -> (a month) -> WindowsVista -> Debian(a couple years) ->Win8(a few months) -> Ubuntu/Kubuntu (a couple years) -> Pop_OS! (currently). I still have a windows vm installed but it rarely gets used.

That’s kind of the highlights sort of how I remember it. It’s been a long time . 15-20 years of gnu/linux usage. I’ve also been using a raspberry pi with raspbian/raspberry pi os since the first gen device was released, too.

at the time I installed Mandrake it was one of the only distros that had a graphical installer besides Red Hat. I remember that was a driving factor for my decision making back then.

deadbeef79000 , 26 days ago

Over the last three decades…

• DOS/Win (Games)
• … Various Windows … (Games)
• RedHat 6 for learning about this Linux thing
• LFS for shits ‘n’ giggles
• Ubuntu (for drivers that just worked)
• Debian (for minimalism)
• Ubuntu (for comfort)
• Fedora/Ubuntu

misterj05 , 26 days ago

Windows (XP to 10), Manjaro, Arch, Artix, Alpine (for like a week), NixOS (for like 2 weeks) and finally think I have settled on openSUSE mainly because of the curated rolling release and already setup snapshots. (I was swapping back and forth between Windows for all of these)

Distros I’ve tried but not really used: Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenBSD and FreeBSD (not really linux but you get the point).

NixOS was actually my favorite of the bunch, it was like linux on easy mode, just type in some config and the system manages the rest for you.

delirious_owl , 26 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

Slack, mandriva, Ubuntu, gentoo, arch, xubuntu, knoppix, mint, QubesOS. In that order.

Currently at Qubes and I can’t imagine downgrading to any OS that doesn’t have these VM-level sandboxing features built-in

JadeEast , 26 days ago

DOS, ProDOS, Windows 3.1, Windows '98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Puppy, Mint, Bodhi, Trisquel & Debian.