I feel like I'm missing out by not distro-hopping

Unless its NixOS or something like silver blue or QubesOS they're all basically the same. If you want to mess about try some different ones in a VM or on a live CD or USB. That way you still have your daily driver working when you need it

Linux can be a hobby, not just a tool. If you want to have fun with a new hobby, distro hopping will have plenty to keep you busy. But if you just want something to run your computer and your current distro does it for you just fine, then you're not missing out on anything but a headache.

It's funny, I'm in an opposite situation. I don't want to distro hop, but my current one has some issues that I'm getting a little fed up with (issues that are a result of my hardware and use case) so I am working up to swapping distros to find something with fewer issues. For me, I just want my OS to be transparent. I don't want a hobby. That's why it took me so long to swap to linux in the first place.

Anyways, IMHO, unless you're really into the idea of playing with your OS as a hobby, don't let FOMO trick you into making the mistake of throwing out what works in the hopes of greener grass.

Distro hopping is what you do when you don't mind spending a week trying to get things "back the way they were".

You're not missing out.

If it works for you, stick with it.

Works is a feature, not a bug.

_ /\ _

If you don't have any issue with mint, don't bother changing distros. Distro hopping is not necessary to enjoy linux.

"move on to something else" once I got comfortable with the OS.

I would suggest moving on to another distro if you're not comfortable with Mint. The whole purpose of distro hopping is to find which distro is comfortable for you.

Pros: you might find something you like more.

Cons: You've spent a bunch of time installing OSes you might not like, and you have to set everything back up again. Also if you didn't back up your data you're probably going to delete it.

Do you value time fucking around with your computer, or are you happy with how it works currently?

Also distro hop in a VM first, you're probably not going to like most other things, or it might not be worth the time to migrate all your shit over to it if you find something you like more.

You're not missing anything really. For some reason some people like to say that Mint is a good distro for beginners and imply that you should change away from it when you're more "advanced". This is really nonsense. Mint is a good distro. I switched to Tumbleweed because I found one or two things I couldn't do so easily in Mint, but if you're not having trouble there's really no reason to switch. And with tools like Flatpak and Distrobox available these days there's even less reason to distro hop.

If your use cases (a.k.a. requirements) are met by your current distro, never switch.

If you are satisfied with stability, availability of support, quick availability of security patches, never switch.

This is particularly important when you are using your Linux desktop as your daily driver.

Most you can do is to check what additional features other distros are offering (rolling release, hardened/zen kernel, x86-64-v2/3 support, file system type, user base, availability of packages, package formats, overall documentation etc.), validate if you really need those features.

If you are interested or just curious to test those features, install that distro on a VM (QEMU/KVM) to try it out first safely. Use it on VM for a while, make yourself comfortable with it. Once you are satisfied with it, only then switch.

Distro hoping is done yo find a ditro that you are comfortsble with if mint already works well for you, you should probably just stay on mint

Let's start simple: You should consider hoping from Linux Mint to LMDE if you haven't already.

As a user, you have no obligation to participate in the politics between the Ubuntu and the Mint Development team, but if you've followed the controversy and agree that Ubuntu is being a bully, this would be a small yet material way to show support.

what am I missing?

Every Linux distribution has a purpose - a reason its author thought it was worth the effort of creating it. Some are grand, others are silly, etc. When you explore distros, you're telling the community which ideas resonate with you. Popular ideas will replicate, unpopular ideas will be abandoned.

Also, switching distributions makes it harder for business to 'capture' the Linux demographic. The mere act of switching occasionally means that tools to import/export/manage your data stay relevant. This literally fights enshitification.

Finally, and this is a matter of personal taste, but I like trying different versions of Linux for the same reason I try different flavors of ice cream: It's fun; and even if now and then I get a bad flavor, I feel enriched by the experience.

(Edit: it's to its)

Don't let hoppers influence your computing habits. Use what makes you happy and works best for you. I use Pop and it's considered a "beginner" distro and I love it. It does everything I need it to.

I was surviving with Ubuntu, I had my complaints but I figured 'that's just how it is' on Linux, that it was the same everywhere. I didn't even realise what I was missing until I switched.

I got a hardware upgrade at one point, so in order to get those new drivers ASAP I tried an Arch-based distro, with plans to switch back once drivers became available. I never moved back.

The two big reasons I stayed was ironically enough the lack of good Ubuntu documentation, and the PPA system. Ubuntu is used a lot, but there's not really formal documentation anywhere, only random tutorials online (most likely out of date and never updated) and people on forums talking about their problems. By contrast the Arch wiki is the gold standard of Linux documentation, there's just no comparison. Even on Ubuntu I found myself using it as a reference from time to time.

Regarding PPAs, the official Ubuntu package list is strangely small so if you're like me and find yourself needing other software, even mainstream software like Docker, you'll be faffing about with PPAs. So if you want to install Docker, instead of typing sudo apt install docker You instead have to type:

# Add Docker's official GPG key: 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg 
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings 
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg 
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg 
# Add the repository to Apt sources: 
echo \ "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null sudo apt-get update

These are the official install instructions, by the way. This is intended behaviour. The end user shouldn't have to deal with all this. This feels right out of the 90's to me.

Instead of PPAs, Arch has the Arch User Repository (AUR). Holy moly is the AUR way nicer to work with. Granted, we're not quite comparing apples to apples here since the AUR (typically) builds packages from source, but bear with me. You install an AUR package manager like yay (which comes preinstalled on my flavour of Arch, EndeavourOS). yay can manage both your system and AUR packages. Installing a package (either official or AUR) looks like yay packageNameHere. That's it. A full system upgrade like sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade is a single command: yay -Syu, a bit cryptic but much shorter. The AUR is fantastic not just for the ease of use, but for sheer breadth of packages. If you find some random project on github there's probably an AUR package for it too. Because it builds from source an AUR package is essentially just a fancy build script based on the project's own build instructions, so they're super easy to make, which means there's a lot of them.

You might argue 'but building from source might fail! Packages are more reliable!', which is somewhat true. Sometimes AUR builds can fail (very rarely in my experience), but so can PPAs. Because PPAs are often made to share one random package they can become out of date easily if their maintainer forgets or simply stops updating it. By contrast AUR packages can be marked out of date by users to notify the maintainer, and/or the maintainer role can be moved to someone else if they go silent. If a PPA goes silent there's nothing you can do. Also, since an AUR package is just a fancy build script you can edit the build script yourself and get it working until the package gets an update, too. PPAs by comparison are just a black box - it's broken until it gets updated.

Moral of the story? Don't be afraid to just give something a go. Mint will always be waiting for you if you don't like it.

Distro Hopping seems to be such a big part of the “Linux experience.”

It's not, it's just a way to find the distro that suits you best.

If you're already satisfied with what you have, there's no reason to change and you're not missing out on anything. If you're ever curious about other distros, install Virtualbox and try them in a VM.

I stopped distro hopping years ago when I started using Linux MX (Debian based), I'm so happy with it that I have no intention to change ever again.

The only other distro I really like is LMDE (Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu), so I put that one on my laptop (MX on my gaming desktop).

You can always distro hop inside a virtual machine if you have the time and nothing to do.

You’re missing out on watching a lot of progress bars while you reinstall all the time. If you like what you have, keep using it. All you get from switching is a different package manager, a few slightly different package names, maybe faster updates and a new default desktop background. You’ll still be using all the same apps, probably similar versions, probably systemd. It’s a bigger difference logging into a new desktop environment than a new distro.

The goal is for it to work. If it works, you're doing it right. For some people, Mint isn't enough. For many, it absolutely is.

You're not missing out on anything. Mint lets you install various desktop environments, they are all very well-configured and stable by default. You can just install the appropriate desktop environment meta-package using Apt:

• apt install 'task-gnome-desktop'
• apt install 'kde-plasma-desktop'
• apt install 'cinnamon-desktop-environment'
• apt install 'task-xfce-desktop'

Then you can "hop" from one GUI experience to another by just logging out and logging in with a different session. You might have to add some additional Ubuntu repositories to your Apt config to get all of these meta-packages though.

Besides the desktop environment, the only other big difference between distros is how you use their package managers, which all do the same thing anyways, just with different CLI commands.

Probably the most important thing to consider in a distro is which versions of the latest stable releases of the big Linux apps are available in their distros. Arch-based distros (Garuda, Manjaro, ArcoLinux, EndeavorOS) are the most bleeding-edge but these operating systems tend to break after a software update if you fail to update often enough. Ubuntu and Fedora are the most bleeding-edge non-rolling release distros that I know of, and in my experience they never break after a software update.

Distro-hopping might be a sign of perfectionism tbh. I think I'm a perfectionist, and I find that Arch doesn't feel right. But when I try other distros, they have weird and odd issues that Arch just doesn't have.

If you do have that itch, give whatever distro you're looking at a try in a virtual machine. Linux has virt-manager which generally works well with Linux guests, but if you use VMware for a Windows VM, that's also a good option too.

Honestly. I don't think you're missing much. It's not like if you go to a different distro suddenly you're going to have all these new applications you can't get on mint or anything.

I started with mint and played around with other distros (mostly Debian/Ubuntu & Arch based ones) and I ended up settling on an Ubuntu based distro with kde desktop.

Using something like Arch might make sense if your PC is super new as they tend to have support for the newest hardware.

At most you might want to try a different desktop environment but if you have no reason to hop I would say don't waste your time unless you're bored and want to experiment just for the hell of it.

there's a site that will let you play around with different distros/desktop environments over the Web (it's going to be slow and you can't use a VPN when connecting) but that might be a good choice before going through the trouble of downloading a distro, flashing to USB and possibly installing it on your PC/laptop just to find out you hate it.

What am I missing?

Nothing. If you are content with your current setup, you are missing absolutely nothing.

You're not necessarily missing out on anything. Most people find a distro they like and stick with it until some specific reason compels them to change, which might never happen. Distro hoppers are excited about Linux and excited about exploring different things and discussing them with others, which gives you the impression that everyone's doing it—but that's not true. It's a hobby, and you're free to adopt it, but there's no point to it other than to entertain and challenge you, if that's your thing.

The time I spent "distro hopping" back in high school was because I didn't have the balls to commit to a single distro. Even then the only time I actually switched was when I made a config change that blew up in my face so badly I needed to reinstall anyway.

If you've found a setup you're happy with, by all means, stick with it. You're not missing out on much by not voluntarily erasing your boot drive and installing an entirely new OS every week or so for no reason other than it looked cool.

(If you're about to suggest dual booting multiple Linux distros, no. Just stop. I tried that once. You would not believe how many issues are caused by sharing a ~/.config between two systems with slightly different versions of the same software.)

I used to "virtual distro hop" because I tried a lot of distros in VMs before dualbooting. I installed Tumbleweed and haven't changed ever since.

I don't regret keeping my distro, I've been curious, of course, but I think i already have it all:

• Stability
• The newest updates
• I know my system very well
• By knowing my system, I can fix most problems and I know where to go if I can't.

I sometimes try distros in VMs, but with that and Distrobox I think I already have everything I could need to learn and try them in case I need to work with them in the future :)

If you want to enjoy distro hopping, go find a cheap thinkpad as a secondary device, and have fun. Otherwise, you try out live discs/drives to see if you get full compatibility with your main device.

Truth is that you'll have more difference in user experience DE hopping than distro hopping.

You only distro hop until you find what works right with an your hardware and preferred software, unless you're doing it as a hobby. Now, the desktop environments? That's where you'll see the big difference.

If you're comfortable with Mint and don't see a reason to switch, I don't see anything wrong with staying with Mint. If you do want to try new distros, just use a VM.

Well if you are doing work on you computer you find rewarding and it functions I would quit while you are ahead. Getting into distro hopping and caring about Linux internals is a bit like being a car enthusiast. You can either have a car to drive it or have a car that you fart around all the time tweaking bits, replacing it, breaking it, developing strong opionons about things almost no one cares about.

So to you want to be a driver or an enthusiast? By using Linux at all you can essentially consider yourself part of the "car club", but there is a whole heck of a lot else to learn.

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I have used arch on this same install since 2019, before that, 2016. (Just because I wanted to get my old system back ASAP and was comfortable with the process)

If I had to do it over, I would test out openSUSE tumbleweeb or endeavor, but if you have your system that works and you like it, there is absolutely nothing to gain by switching.

If you just want to explore or do it as a hobby, use an old SSD and test out different configs on a seperate drive (you can pick up a 128 or 240GB SSD for like $25) but the only differences are package managers and DE.

When I started using Linux I distro hopped a few times before finding mint, now I have been stuck on mint for a few years, but I still dream of hopping again.

When I was hopping I was in high school, so I had time, now I got to work and hopping takes too much time and effort to set everything up again. If I had a second pc or a laptop I would do it.

You should only hop if you know what you're missing out on, if you don't and don't have any distro-specific problems, it's just unnecessary. But if you really feel like it and have enough disk space, you can try dual-booting another distro and see which you like better.

I hopped because I wanted immediate updates and easy compiling (AUR) so I picked an Arch-based OS.

Distro hopping is pretty similar to changing instances on Lemmy. If you don't have a reason, just keep using your current account.

What would the benefits be of jumping to something else?

None if you want to do it just because

What am I missing?

Again, nothing if you are not needing some very specific feature that only other distro offer or something that is easier on another distro.

not really unless you're trying something relatively unique like nixos or void etc. you can do most things on any distro

I used to be in a similar position as you. I ditched Windows about 1.5 years ago, and I hopped around several distros for a while before settling on Linux Mint. About 2 months ago, i decided that I wanted to try out something new, not because Linux Mint wasn't working for me, but just to see if there was something else that would be fun to learn about Linux. Today, I use Arch, and my DE is basically the Linux Mint Cinnamon DE.

It's good to get familiar with a wide variety of softwares. Often, being exposed to the strengths and weaknesses of something new is a good way to broaden your experience level.

But that said, there's not a lot of point in changing things just for the sake of change. I've been running Debian since around 1998. It's fine. I like it and I'm happy with it. I tried a bunch of things over the years but haven't found anything that suits me as well, so I keep running it. The only distro that really has caught my attention as something with enough of a new thing that might be checking out was NixOS. But, if you're happy with what you're doing I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with being happy with what you're doing.

nah mint is a good distro, dintro hooping is to find what suit you, you found it, congrats, mayme a dual boot to tosh other distros out of curiosity

I've been using Gentoo since 2004, every now and then I pop a distro DVD ISO into a VM to see what all the hubbub is about, but I doubt I'll ever switch to another distro unless Gentoo dies.

My point is, sans diatribe, pop a distro ISO into a VM and see if it even seems like something you'd like.

You don't have to do any more than that, keep using what makes you happy.

Can somebody ELI5 what the difference between Linux distros is? I’m ashamed to admit I don’t truly understand, aside from different package managers and DEs but even then there are only a handful of those.

I’ve been daily driving boring Debian since RedHat Linux 8 came out 20 years ago now. I tried switching to openSUSE and just didn’t see the point after a bit, so I switched back. The only time I’m not on Debian is when I’m playing with FreeBSD or NetBSD.

Same for DE, I’ve been using XFCE for so long that I don’t get the fuss about pretty environments.

Not hopping does not mean you’re missing out, boring can be good. Things are stable and stay out of the way of you doing actual work.

There is a quote out there somewhere about how customizing FVWM can become an obsession.

There is nothing wrong about hopping, as long as you are doing it for hobbyist reasons, at the end of day the only difference is the package manager and the DE.

Good luck

Your operating system is a tool. If the tool is doing what you need and well then you aren’t missing out on anything. If you want to try another distro, then have a project in mind that it’s is a better suited for. Otherwise, you’re just changing it up to change it up. Which is fine, but it’s better to be realistic/honest with yourself with what you’re doing. Otherwise you’ll just be chasing some nebulous concept.

Don't. Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Fedora are used in the exact same way. Pick one of them and then trf different desktop environments, if you want you can download the configurations for distro from their source code

If you are happy with the way things are no need to change, want to try something out ? Live CD or VM. Dual boot if you want to keep 2 systems. Mint is pretty good. I like peppermint myself. A halfway stop between mint and arch. Shit works out of the box but runs on 1 GB ram. Worth checking out if you want to get some extra out of you computer

You are. Reformat and install the first hardware compatible distro you find on https://distro.moe/ right now. Don't think too much about it, just do it! /s, probably?

If checking out a different distro sounds interesting and/or fun then you should. If not, then don't. Whatever way you Linux is the correct way for you.

Don't switch distros when you face a problem; if you're rocking Mint for some time, awesome! You are missing nothing, if you don't jump from one distro to another. I'm rocking Debian since 2003! 🫶😀🍺

Honestly, if Mint has been working fine then I see no reason that you'd need to switch. If you're curious about trying out other distros, it could be worth using a program like Boxes to try out some VM's. Otherwise, I say you keep doing whatever works well for you.

If you're happy you're not missing anything. If you're using your computer and the computer itself isn't the hobby, you're also not missing anything. If you're an enthusiast, or super curious, you're missing out.

I've been doing this nearly three decades at this point and have at least tried most things, often for years at a time. I use Mint today because I have other things to do now than play computer (rather I'm paid to play computer for someone else). Before that was Fedora, but the release cycle is too short for me and there was a risk of messing up my system in a big upgrade every six months (rare as it is). I like Cinnamon because it has sane defaults, just enough customization without being ridiculous, and very little distracting swooshy effects that look janky on older computers, and Cinnamon runs best on Mint imo.

Trying new things has been very beneficial in that I'm familiar with most things and can use anything, but if I worked in marketing or something that wouldn't matter much.

Like some have mentioned, if you want to try different distros setup a VM (I would recommend KVM for better performance, but virtualbox is easier for beginners in VMing) with the iso of the distro you want to test out.

Like this you can keep a functional system without the hassle of having to setup on baremetal just for testing and having to go back again if doesn't pay-out.

Also would suggest messing around with more tech-savy setups like debian and fedora (specially minimal ones) if you want to delve deeper into the Linux nerdiness.

No harm enjoying a distro and being stable.

I’m a fan of Arch and derivatives but I need better odds of shit just working. Been running Mankato on desktop for some time to get both stable ish packages and also AUR as/where needed.

For servers, it’s Debian all the way for me. Ubuntu does some things I don’t personally love - no offense to the distro, it’s well constructed - and the recent ish changes in the RPM world didn’t sit well with me - strictly personal opinion.

Anything in a container generally runs on whatever the image was built with. It’s only a minimal pain to port simple dockerfiles, but when you get into multiple linked containers, that risks edge case bugs down the road.

Honestly, between the lot of it, I use a pretty representative sample - I think alpine on desktop would be kind of pointless to say the least, doesn’t mean I’m going to forego any container built on it.

Use case is a huge factor here, as is ability to grok multiple distros concurrently. I find that easy, but plenty of people don’t. For them, maybe rebuilding that image makes more sense.

Linux is all about doing what works for you and your use case.

FWIW, pacman doesn’t resonate nearly as well as pamac does with me. Probably because I haven’t had to dive deep into it. All about what works for an individual. If that’s stability on an Ubuntu derivative, great - Linux is Linux, in that context.

Fire up a VM to scratch that itch or change up your desktop environment if you feel like it.

Unless you have a specific need that can't be met on your distro you're probably not missing much other than "ooh shiny" and some fun tinkering with something new.

It sounds like you need distrobox and KVM.

Nothing, unless you're not using nixos, then everything 😹

Hopping isn't a had thing. Find what fits ur needs. Dual boot other distros. Each offer something. Hopping only leads to having to learn other systems. If it fits, u have what u need. Everything else is noise.

Permanently Deleted

I used to think that I wanted to distro hop. Turns out that what I wanted was a bare bones OS that gave me the freedom to rice in strange and unnatural ways.

After 25(!) years of battling X11, dependency hells, and the early days of desktop compositing, I finally realized that what I wanted was Arch, and a few window managers to play with. SwayWM, and now Hyprland.

Unless you have some niche needs (real-time audio encoding) or want to play with more esoteric experiments (Nix, OSTree, etc), distro hopping is overkill.

But most distros have homogenized to the point to where all you need is knowledge about systemd to go from one to the other.

Just pick your favorite, non-snap distro and hack on it.

I switched from mint because I didn't like cinnamon and wanted to try kde without going through the process of replacing a de. It was worth it because it like using my computer a lot more when I can make the de pretty

There's Debian and Red Hat Enterprise, everything else is pointless. Enjoy.

Own story (skip to the "---" if not interested):

Don't worry yourself. If Mint works for you and you don't have a good reason to switch. Just stay.

I started out with Mint as well. Switched from Cinnamon to Mate early on because I wanted to run a fancy compositor called Compiznand stay on that for like 2 years.

I still had a lot of free time, so I got "bored" by everything being so low maintenance compared to Windows 8. I checked out Arch and ran it for a bit with KDE 4 I think.

At some point I got a proper PC (was a crappy Laptop before) and wanted to Continue running KDE, so I chose KUbuntu because of that. I ran into some issues and a brick when upgrading that I couldn't solve, so I went back to a rolling release distro to not need to worry about major updates again. I went with Manjaro as I thought it would be more stable than Arch (I didn't have a problem with Arch, just craved max stability in general then).

In the meantime I since learned that Manjaro and Arch are about equally as stable from problems I needed solve and me sometimes running Arch on my old laptop when out.

I have been on Manjaro for about 7 years now (never re-installed), love it, KDE and don't care about all the political stuff. I don't care that people hate on Manjaro, never encountered a problem I couldn't solve and will happily continue to use the distro until it breaks on me.

You can use whatever you like. Distro hopping can be fun, but is also a burdon and might prevent you from making your PC your home.

I wouldn't switch especially for political stuff. Just use what you like. If you don't wanna miss out, just watch some YT Videos of people testing out Distros/DEs or run some in virtual machienes. If you have a secondary device, you can also do hopping on that.

I hope this can help somewhat. Use whatever you like, don't fret about political stuff. I used to kinda distro hop (not really) and now couldn't care less about it.

You can easily check out other Distros using VMs, Docker Containers or even rented Servers for the most part.

If you have the time and are truely interested in Distro hopping (or just testing out a new DE) just go for it though. Just don't let others dictate what you run.

I think you should try out other stuff, you'll always be wondering if you are getting the best Linux experience for you. It's relatively easy to try out other distros with a VM (as someone's already mentioned) or dual-boot. I also started on Mint (I think it was Mint, it was awhile ago now) but I definitely caught the distro-hopper bug and now I've settled down. I still try out new distros from time-to-time, Nobara was the most recent. Also, you'll learn more about Linux by going through the processes involved and learning how other distros work. It could be fun and most distros have lovely communities.

I've only felt the need to change distros once, from Linux Mint to EndeavourOS, because I wanted Wayland support. I realize there were ways to get Wayland working on Mint in the past, but I've already made the switch and have already gotten used to my current setup. I personally don't feel like I'm missing out by sticking to one distro, tbh. If you're enjoying Mint, I'd suggest to stick with it, unless another distro fulfills a specific need you can't get on Mint.

Arch Linux, rolling Linux distribution, would give you the newest stable software, with probably new application features, but you can use distrobox, podman-toolbox, VirtualBox, KVM (QEMU) or a live Linux cd image to play with Arch Linux every now and then, without having to install it :)

Distro hoppers - most likely - try different desktops (wm, compositor, tools). You may already know that you can easily switch you desktop within a few seconds. One tipp though: Don't use your main user logging in on a new desktop (to keep your /home clean)!

I've reinstalled Windows so many times over the years I could get everything I needed setup in under an hour max.

I'm still pretty new to Linux so starting again from scratch kinda scares me, Tho I'll probably move from Endeavour to vanilla Arch sometime soon since my install has gotten pretty messy lately.

There's other distros I've been curious about and messed around with in virtual machines but putting it on my main PC to daily drive is another thing.

I guess this is to figure out what is also possible on Linux, and getting to know that not all problems or missing features apply to other distros.

Sometimes you can lwarn amazing stuff, like a KDE distro can be customized to your liking while a Gnome desktop is a nearly forced workflow and design but can be slightly changed with buggy extensions.

What I tend to do that scratches the distro-hopping itch is I keep an external drive with a bunch of virtual machines on it that I can spin up and tinker around with as needed, like little specimen jars lol. I think I have about 5-6 on the go at the moment. So like my actual computer runs Arch (btw), but I have VMs for NixOS, OpenSUSE, Mint and so on, as well as another one that's as close to my main system as possible so if I want to try a weird experiment I can try it on there first to see what breaks. Just today I tried upgrading it to Plasma 6 to see what broke and the answer was everything lol.

I used to keep ones for Mac and Windows on the go too, but they tend to eat up a lot of drive space.

I try different distros just out of curiosity. I've used several that look promising, but there always seems to be some little thing I end up not liking. I usually end up going back to Zorin, which to me feels a lot like Mint. If Mint works well for you, use it. While many Linux users tend to distro-hop quite a bit, if you just want a computer that works for what you need it to do, stick with what does that for you.

Mint is basically Debian on easy mode so figure out if you're ready to change the difficulty

Just install windows.