Hi, I just want to share / get some opinion.
I started using Linux 2 years back. I was dual booting back then and after a year switched to Linux completely.
I started out using Ubuntu, hated it, installed Manjaro after a week and when pacmac broke the thing within 2 months, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, read the arch wiki and installed arch. Things were going great except for some Nvidia issues (I am using an Optimus laptop) but utt was running smoothly. Then decided that I want to build a game engine and the nvidia issues were significant. So I read somewhere that Fedora has great nvidia support and I installed it and everything worked. I installed Fedora 39, and it worked. When Fedora 40 came, I upgraded no issues, Fedora 41 came, no issues.
But just a few days back when I had vacation, I decided my system was getting bloated and I didn’t manually want to uninstall apps, I decided let’s format it. But I thought… Arch might take up less space on my disk(1 have a 512gb nvme, and t 2tb hdd, but I like to put things like games and projects I am working on, on the nvme). So I installed arch and loving the experience. I installed Nvidia-open drm drivers and it just works.
TLDR: Is it normal to distro hop after being using a distro perfectly for so long?
PS: I used archinstall because I didn’t want through the lengthy process again. And archinstall works great.
I did something very similar, spent about a year on fedora … 33? then discovered “my preferred distro” and never looked back.
Thing is that everyone finds their place with a distro and settles for as long as it suits their needs. Then, you might move on, you might not. Its just an OS, a means to an end. Use what you need, then use something else, no need to go to the doctor for hopping headaches :)
Distrohopping is just a symptom of FOMO (Fear of missing OpenSUSE)
I had tried opensuse tumbleweed and absolutely loved the way it did things, my perfect balance between fedora and arch, but there were Teo problems that I couldn’t get over.
- Zypper is slow.
- I couldn’t get it to do parallel downloads packages.
But it’s a great distro nonetheless.
Also it has a similar problem with fedora that arch doesn’t. VIDEO CODECS. I don’t understand how the USA messes with my ability to play a video and I am seriously annoyed by it.
I mean I love OpenSUSE TW. Been using it for well over 2 years. One of the best distros I used. But I am slowly looking to try something new. Its all fun and games 😄
The distro that cured my distro-hopping was Slackware.
It taught me that you can do anything Linux can do in any distro, no matter how obscure, ancient or simplistic.It also taught me that there is no reward waiting for you on the other side for making your own life difficult.
Went back to Debian knowing I could do it all myself manually, but I don’t have to.
For me it is just trying different flavors. They are all unique in their own right. I have not used Slackware yet. Might give it a go though.
i switched to nixos after using arch for like 12 years.
no see a doctor
If distro hopping happens more than once a week, please stop hopping immediately and dial 911 as this is the sign of a very rare and serious symptom
plays more upbeat music
Pretty normal if you’ve never used debian.
Debian is the cure to distro hopping
This is so true started on Original SUSE 6 switched to Debian been on debian for 25 years
I’ve also hopped distros on a scale of several years at a time. Loved Arch before I was living on an awful internet connection; did Ubuntu until they messed with snaps; loved Tumbleweed for a few years, but the volume of updates was getting a bit much; nearly learnt Nix but a trial run of Home Manager went up in flames, then I realised multiple layered package versions wasn’t worth the ‘stability’; now Mint’s been doing the job nicely, but I’m tempted to try KDE’s new distro someday.
Almost a year? I’ve been on the same one for about 15.
Variety is the spice of life. I’ve used Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, Nix, been on Debian the last few years. Been looking at setting up my own UBlue image. I really like the immutable thing. Do whatever makes you happy…
I’m interested, What exactly is UBlue? Can you clarify on the immutable thing?
UBlue is a tool the fedora team created to build immutable distros in a container. This is a list of official distros created by it. If you’ve seen Bazzite it was also created with UBlue.
Immutable distro just means the root filesystem is mounted read-only. So when you do updates, they create another image of your filesystem with the updates applied. Then you have to boot into the new filesystem. This is called an atomic upgrade. So if something is broken, you reload your last image and everything is fine.
Thanks for the explanation. That sounds quite promising. I updated Ubuntu one time and it basically broke a python project environment to where I had to reinstall the previous os again. Then of course reinstall everything else too.
Distro hopping is fairly normal if you’re still relatively new to Linux, I guess you do it less as time goes on, because you’ll have a better idea of whether or not a specific distro is appealing to you or not. To be able to even judge that you have to try out some distros for yourself, of course, so you need to do some distro hopping in order to tell what “direction” of distro is best for you. Sure you can read about it or watch videos but it’s never the same as actually running it for yourself.
I like having my stable daily driver (currently PopOS) and a separate drive or partition for a rotating distro that may pose more of a learning curve (NixOS right now). So it doesn’t really feel like hopping, more like a stable and a sandbox.
NB: setup a NAS with either nfs or smb/cifs or fish/sshfs for your home folder.
That way wherever or whatever distro you boot on your home network you can mount your home folder and relogin with all your data and configs in place. Replicate if you want local copies with rsync to avoid duplication and drift.
I distro hopped last year. Proud user of Debian for 15+ years, switched for Void.
Amazing little distro, simple just how I like it.
Removed by mod
I hopped more for different desktop experiences than distro. now I’ve settled into arch for the last 12+ years
distro hopping to me is a feature even though I do not do it a lot. Im looking into appimage for my most important things to make it easier in future though. I move very slowly though.
