What is/was your distrohopping journey?
For me it was:
Windows (for many years) -> Ubuntu (for a year) -> Arch Linux (for half a year) -> Void Linux (literally 2 days) -> Artix Linux with runit (a month) -> Gentoo Linux (another month) -> Debian (finally, I don't plan on changing it).
Also, when trying to switch from Gentoo to Debian, I fucked up all my data with no backup.
What was your journey?
EDIT: Added Windows
plain
o Windows 10
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o Linux Mint
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| o Manjaro KDE
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o Fedora KDE
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x | o Windows 11
| o Windows 11 + Arch Linux
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o Arch Linux
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| o Windows 11 + Debian KDE
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hopefully it renders well on your client :D
Man, a monospace fixed size array would be really nice for ASCII art eh? Kinda like a text image. I suppose you could take a screenshot, but then there's image hosting issues in the future.
Sorry, random idea.
Screenshot woulda been better just so everyone sees the same thing lol. I wasn't sure what it would look like because on browser it highlighted some things green, and on Voyager it seems to highlight 4+ space indented as gray. No clue what is going on there :D
vim with :set virtualedit=all gets pretty close being able to "paint" text anywhere... unfortunately i was on my phone and didn't think to use it
Looks great! ~ Jerboa 0.0.67 on LOS 20 (Android 13)
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).
tl;dr Use Arch as your first Linux distribution and you'll end up as an OpenBSD ports maintainer I guess
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.
Windows -> Ubuntu ->dual boot with Ubuntu-> Windows-> Ubuntu-> Fedora workstation
All of this over 20 years.
And now I really don’t plan on going back to Windows and I’m happy with Gnome and Fedora even if I’d want to try other distributions outside of a virtual machine sometimes.
And the f course there were some accidents with lost data over the years, but I always had a pretty recent backup on a drive before syncing with cloud backup became a thing.
Debian -> Slackware -> Guix
DOS -> slack ware Linux -> win 3 -> os/2 warp -> win 98 -> win XP -> osx (several years on Mac) -> win 10 -> Ubuntu 14, 16, 18, 20 -> fedora 34, 35, 36 ,37, 38 -> Debian 12 --> fedora silverblue 40.
Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian (stable) -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS
Window -> Mint -> Mint Debian -> Arch -> NixOS (not complete yet)
I am incredibly happy with NixOS, I love having my entire OS and software configuration in a GIT repo, commits and comments included.
Ubuntu (in VM, a few months) -> Linux Mint (1 year) -> Archlinux (2 years) -> Ubuntu (1 year) -> Fedora (2 years) -> Linux Mint Debian (3 years) -> Debian (5+ years for now)
I have had a desktop PC and a laptop for a few years now. The laptop had Mint (DE) for 2 years longer.
That should be more or less it, makes about 14 years on GNU/Linux now.
Windows -> Fedora
Been almost 10 years and no thoughts of changing. What can I say? I lucked out first time.
Windows -> Ubuntu -> Arch Linux
Samesies
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.
Windows (2015-2021) --> Manjaro (2 Weeks) --> Arch (2021-today)
What happened last year?
Nothing in particular, for the past few years I didn't like the direction Ubuntu was taking but I stayed because I was too lazy to switch and it didn't feel that bad.
So I'm not sure exactly what was the last straw, maybe part of it was me getting a Steam Deck, discovering flatpak and understanding how bad snap was compared to it.
The Shakahola Forest Incident, for one thing.
I just realized that I used Ubuntu for 20 years. I might be interested in switching to Fedora. How ist your experience so far?
It just works, just like Ubuntu before they started pushing snap down everyone's throat (which is what made me switch eventually.)
I had a bad image of RedHat/Fedora's package management from the time deb was much superior, but no they caught up and are on the same level (I know, it's probably been a while).
I also like how they mostly package upstream without too many changes. When Ubuntu started upstream was a bit lacking so making changes was necessary to get something that looks like a consistent OS rather than a patchwork of packages, but now it's no longer needed. Ubuntu is no longer the only distribution with that level of polish.
warning: some non-linux included below
I do spin up other distros in a VM from time to time to see what's what. Most recently NixOS since people won't STFU about it. :-)
Mint -> Arch
Desktop: Macintosh (<X) -> Windows (XP-10) w/occasional Ubuntu dual-boot (various DEs) -> Debian + Gnome
Server: Ubuntu LTS -> Debian
I’ve also had a number of used thinkpads over the years where I mostly ran Xubuntu and crunchbang.
I still boot into Windows every month or so if I need to model something in Rhino (CAD). Couldn’t get it working in Wine and my 12 YO computer isn’t performant enough to run it in a VM. The last thread remaining and waiting to be cut…
Windows -> RedHat -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> RHEL -> Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch
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
Windows (~6 years) -> Mandriva (Mandrake? For I think 2-3 years) -> Ubuntu (1 day) -> Suse (2 days) -> Slackware (2-3 years) -> Gentoo unstable (2-3 years) -> Gentoo stable (2-3 years) -> Arch (9 years and counting)
The only span I'm sure about is the last one. When I started a job I decided I don't have the time to compile the world anymore. But the values after Windows sum up to 21, should be 20, so it's all more or less correct
I’ve never had gentoo before, but what I’ve heard from other people might explain that part of your journey. You went from unstable to stable to Arch, which says something.
Gentoo unstable was a little bit tiring in the long run. The bleeding edge, but often I needed to downgrade because the rest of the libraries were not ready
Gentoo stable was really great. Back then pulseaudio was quite buggy. Having a system where I could tell all applications and libraries to not even link to it (so no need to have it installed at all) made avoiding its problems really easy
But when my hardware got older and compilation of libreoffice started to take 4h, I remembered how nice it was on Slackware where you just install package you broke and you're done
Arch looked like a nice middle-ground. Most of the things in packages, big focus on pure Linux configurability (pure /etc files, no Ubuntu(or SUSE?) "you need working X.org to open distro-specific graphics card settings") and AUR for things there are no official packages for. Turned out it was a match :)
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.
It all started with SuseLinux with KDE2. Then a long while it was Windows only. In 2021 I dabbled with Elementaryos, because it damn looks beautiful. In 2023 then I took the plunge. Started with Garuda Linux. Then KDE Neon then Fedora, then OpenSuse, Fedora Silverblue, then Nobara Linux, Fedora Kinoite, then back to Mint, Garuda and now've I settled on Nobara KDE.
Apple IIc > Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows XP > Brief experiment with Ubuntu in the REALLY purple and brown era > OS X > Elementary > Fedora > Endeavour > Fedora > Silverblue > ublue > NixOS
(not counting numerous VMs with everything from Debian to Linux From Scratch)
Windows 95 -> 98 -> SuSE ...9? -> XP -> Ubuntu 10 -> Windows 7 -> Windows 10 (alongside a bunch of Debian servers) -> MX Linux -> Debian
Also went Windows 10 -> Kubuntu -> VanillaOS -> Kinoite on my laptop for what it's worth.
Windows (for my entire life) -> Ubuntu (for half a year) -> Kali (for a year; yes, I was that kid) -> Manjaro (half a year) -> Windows (for a short while, my Manjaro broke and I had school) ->Arch (past 4 years) -> now trying out NixOS
My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.
(Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)
Did i mention that i use arch?
More importantly:
fucked up all my data with no backup.
One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.
Well, not completely gone. I've got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I'm pretty sure i can download my library. But I'm not sure i deserve to.
I am not sure that I can really call what I did distrohopping, but
Mint w/ Cinnamon (several years ago on an old junker laptop and never ended up using it as a daily driver) -> Manjaro w/ KDE Plasma (daily driver for 1 year) -> Arch w/ KDE Plasma (2 years and counting).
I have also used Debian with no DE on a file server I made out of an old thin client PC and I have used Rasbian on a raspberry pi.
Over about a decade: Win7 -> Mint -> Manjaro -> Mint -> Endeavour
Eyeing Nix atm, looks cute, might hop later
I tried one distro and now the other distros confuse and scare me.
I started with Corel Linux, moved to Mandrake and then began an 18 year distro-hopping journey. To keep it interesting, I rolled a d100 on distrowatch.com and installed whatever I landed on. About 6 years ago I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed and haven't hopped since if you don't count a brief dalliance with endeavour on my laptop.
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
For me it is like this: Window-->ubuntu(a month)-->kubuntu(a week)-->Opensuse tumbleweed
I also tried Nobara, zorinos, arch and bazzite but never actually use them
Windows (up until windows 8 came out) -> Ubuntu for about a year -> Manjaro for about 6 years -> Arch so far for 2 years.
Mine was not really long and stretched out over multiple devices. First Ubuntu Server, on my server, then a Kali dual boot on my main PC (which was actually useful), then PopOS. Then Ubuntu/Debian, after some time LFS and finally Arch on my old laptop. Then Arch on my PC too, and my new Laptops, and finally Arch on all devices.
I wouldn't count the last switch as distro hopping though. It was a calculated decision after months of deliberation and trying things out. And now that everything is set up, I am very certain that I'll never switch to another distro again, Nix is just too good.
MS-DOS up until about 1995 or 1996. Slackware until 1997. Debian until 1998. Slackware again until 2000. Debian again until 2005. Gentoo until 2012. Arch up to the present.
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.
Ubuntu -> OpenSuse -> Arch -> OpenSuse
I used ubuntu from when I got my first computer until like 2021 and then I realized I had no idea why I was using it because I didn't like it
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.
15 years Windows -> dualboot everything -> Ubuntu -> Fedora -> Ubuntu -> opensuse -> arch -> popOS -> arch -> fedora -> arch -> -> popOS -> arch -> nixos
I'm sure there's a ton more hopping around in the middle that I can't remember, but this is a good summary.
Mine was Windows XP -> Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Windows 10 -> Kubuntu -> KDE Neon -> back to Kubuntu -> Manjaro -> Endeavour OS -> Fedora -> Debian -> NixOS
I also have a separate Laptop for financial things running Alma Linux and a Gaming PC running bazzite
Risc_os>win95-xp>Ubuntu>mint>Ubuntu>win8.1-10>manjaro>mint>popOs>fedora>fedora silverblue>bazzite/aurora
Ubuntu (university) -> MX Linux -> Opensuse TW
Desktop: Windows Vista Home -> Windows 7 Home -> CentOS 7 -> Debian 8 -> Arch Linux -> OpenSUSE Leap 15 -> Debian 10 -> Slackware
Slackware is probably where i'll be for the rest of my time on Linux, as unlike other distros, I have no major complaints.
I've always hosted stuff at home, even as a kid, so for my homeserver:
Server: Windows XP Pro -> Windows 7 Pro -> CentOS 7 -> CentOS 8 -> Artix Linux -> NetBSD -> OpenBSD -> SmartOS
I don't miss the days of using WAMP on windows lol
I started with an openSUSE dual boot with KDE. I didn't use Linux a lot at that point. Later, I switched to Ubuntu on a laptop for about a year and used that until I bought a MacBook. Eventually, I returned to Linux by running Pop!_OS on my desktop, but games were a bit choppy, and I really wanted to just run Wayland. I also started to use RHEL at work for our servers. So now I'm trying to switch to Fedora. I still have some issues with the Jagex Launcher, but aside from that, everything seems to work great now.
At home, I have also had an Ubuntu Server for many years, and I also run Ubuntu Server on my VPS.
Vic20 😆 -> C64 -> AmigaOS -> MacOS -> Slackware (much frustration!) -> MacOS -> Ubuntu -> EndeavourOS
Here's my distrohopping journey (including non-Linux OS)
Mid 2021, I tried Fedora Linux in a VM and was unable to install it, but I liked it regardless.
So, a while later I decided to try this "Linux" thing on my computer.
boring) →ln -s /etc/sv/something /run/service/)→Honestly, I'm just glad I found something I liked, as NixOS is perfect for tinkering.
During all that distrohopping, I "DE-hopped" even more. Currently I run SwayFX, but I've used Cinnamon, XFCE, Plasma, GNOME, AwesomeWM, i3, bspwm, dwm, swaywm and Hyprland.
edit 1: add Artix Linux runit
edit 2: remove NixOS stable from the list
98-02 Slackware
02-24 Gentoo
Im currently fixated on nixos and it's likely to get gentoo's spot when I need to replace this workstation
Now happy part of the Fedora Community, rpm-ostree is just so good and makes Linux usable for me.
Also experimenting with GNOME, COSMIC, Kinoite-prerelease and CentOS-Stream in VMs or external drives. Also experimenting with minimal, bloat-free KDE Plasma, as it is actually really light and simply the best supported modular desktop environment.
Starting with Ubuntu I've tried a lot of distro, here the ones I used the more: Mageia -> Chakra -> Manjaro -> Void -> Arch
I've used Windows since I can remember... at least since Windows 95, then probably early 2000's, added OSX into the mix. I currently use an old Mac Mini as my Plex machine, and the computer provided by my employer runs Windows.
My "journey" began around 2015 on an old Dell laptop that I set up to dual boot Windows and Linux. I tried 2 or 3 distros, one of which was probably Ubuntu, before settling on Mint. I remember having enough minor issues with Mint that I kept booting back to Windows, and eventually stopped booting to Mint at all.
Then one day, I have no clue what I was trying to do, but I was confident that I knew what I was doing, so I just went for it without pulling up the instructions. Welp, I ended up deleting my bootloader, or something like that, and now couldn't boot to any OS. I tried using my parents' Mac to create a bootable USB, but that wasn't working. I wound up buying and returning a random open box laptop from Best Buy just so I could create a functional bootable USB. I also found help from a very kind internet stranger who walked me through the process to fix my bootloader. They happened to only use Arch btw, so that's what we used to get my laptop fixed.
That whole drama really scared me away from fiddling with it for a while, then I just got busy and had no motivation. That laptop is collecting dust and still dual boots Windows (7?) and headless Arch. I'm thinking of fiddling around with Linux again, but most definitely need something more noobie friendly than Arch without a DE.
Ubuntu, Manjaro, Endeavour, Arch, Arch/Debian
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.
For some reason I memory holed the first distro I used. There's only vague recollection. I think it was SUSE or something. When Ubuntu came around I tried Linux again. That's when I started to get the hang of things.
Windows xp > windows 7 > windows 10 > manjaro (broke it with the aur) > arch (broke again) > kbuntu > fedora > fedora silverblue > Nixos > Gentoo
Now i compile with 14 core xeon 2697 v3 48gb of ram and vega 64. Peak machine and distro
Windows -> PopOS -> EndevourOS -> Fedora(for literally 2 days) -> NixOS 22.11 -> NetBSD -> NixOS Unstable
Windows -> Manjaro.
Never looked back. Debian works on a laptop, amazing too!
For my personal devices:
I've worked with work systems that used RedHat and Ubuntu back in the late 2000's, plus decades of work computers with Windows. But I'm no longer in a technical career field so I haven't kept on top of the latest and greatest.
Over the last three decades...
Windows -> MacOS -> Windows -> Ubuntu (2012) -> Arch (2013) -> Gentoo (2016)
Gentoo cured my distrohopping
Gentoo cured my distrohopping
Kinda the same with me, I've been using Gentoo the most of my life.
Windows -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu -> Arch -> KDE Neon -> Fedora -> Arch -> openSUSE Tumbleweed
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)
Windows 2000
Windows Vista Windows 8
Trying every Linux distro under the sun for a little while in VirtualBox
Linux Mint + Windows 8 later 10 dual boot due to software required by school
Trying some Arch based systems in VirtualBox
My owm minimal Arch i3 setup + Windows 10 dual boot due to software required by school
Issues with my own setup, Manjaro + W10
Manjaro is weird, EndeavourOS + W10 (only for a short while)
Linux Mint just works (+W10, until I could fully use my own software, now it's just Mint for several years)
I'm tinkering around with NixOS in QEMU from time to time, not everything “just works” but it's okay
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.
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.
My journey was very uneven:
Windows (for many years) -> Ubuntu (for 2 months, dual-boot) -> Windows (for about 6 years, because of some very specific software + pre-Proton gaming) -> Linux Mint (for about a month) -> popOS (for almost a year) -> endeavourOS (now, but always on the look-out for new stuff)
But in between the "main" journey, there was always some stuff trying out, like Void (on an old PC), Arch (inside a VM, now use that VM as a lightweight environment for testing some stuff out)
Windows 95 OSR2.1 (with USB support!) -> RedHat 5.1 (from a CD included in a book at the local Barnes and Noble) -> Debian 2.1 (or so? apt was a fucking revelation. RH5.1 was pre-Yum) -> experimented with Gentoo in college for a couple months (doesn’t everyone?) -> Debian -> Ubuntu (maybe around 8.04?) -> (a bunch of cycles between Debian, Elementary and Ubuntu) -> back on Debian now and it feels like home :) (but I have Elementary, Haiku and Ubuntu on some old laptops I play with sometimes)
My journey went Ubuntu (2012) -> Kubuntu (2018) -> Manjaro (2020) -> Fedora KDE (2022)
Most computers I had were used and low-end so Linux was always my preferred OS, but I always dualbooted with the version of Windows or MacOS the machine came with when I could.
My current computers have been Linux only for a couple years now, thanks to Windows being a headache and MacOS being inflexible.
I played around with Mandrake and Debian around the turn of the century. A bit of a break, but then I started dual-booting Ubuntu in the Windows Vista/X86 OSX era. I jumped to Xubuntu and started running Linux by itself on several machines around 2012.
I largely shifted to Arch around the time that snaps came out because they weren't playing nice with some of my low-end machines. Nowadays, mainly Arch. Exceptions: Fedora on my M1, Debian Bookworm on an old x86 tablet and any time I set up WSL on a Windows machine.
I first tried a linux distro in 2020. At that time, I honestly just wanted the customizations I've seen in unixporn and mindlessly tried arch because of the memes. I followed some youtube tutorial to manually install it and of course fucked up my boot partition that also had my windows boot stuff. After installing arch, I tried booting windows to move things to an external drive but windows would not boot up. I paniced and searched for hours on the web trying to fix it before giving up and just wiping the drive entirely. I was pretty much a noob and didn't know anything at all about linux at that time. Then I tried installing arch again tomorrow, this time I got everything right and I didn't need to deal with dual booting as windows was no more on my drive. The system was pretty stable for a few weeks before I guess I tried customizing KDE or something and completely broke my system. Of course the dumbass me again just wiped off the whole drive all my files gone. After that I installed windows again and no longer try to install any linux distro again until last year where I instead read the arch wiki and I had more knowledge in general about these things, so in 2023 I wanted to try installing a linux distro yet again. This time I went with ubuntu. It looked nice and stable but it honestly just sucked. Snaps indeed were problematic and I never got myself to like them, even today. So I tried pop. This one was nice and I actually used it for a few months. GNOME wasn't the best DE for me but it just worked. I wanted to go a little deeper into linux at some point and I, you guessed it, tried installing arch. Everything went smoothly and I also installed it manually without any yt videos but just the arch wiki. I had some problems understanding some stuff in it but I eventually got it to work. And until today, everything still works fine for me in arch. I can fix some issues I encounter without the help of the internet. So I've been using arch for a year now. Windows is also no longer installed. I migrated everything to arch. I don't really use any professional tools at least like adobe so I have no problem with using arch. All of the games I played on windows function either better or the same on linux thanks to proton. Some games also have native versions so yeah.
I’m tired, boss. Paragraph breaks please, can’t climb wall of text.
Mine was/is/will be:
Windows -> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Pop -> Manjaro -> Garuda -> Debian -> Zorin -> Endeavor -> feren -> opensuse tumbleweed -> opensuse leap -> KDE neon -> blendOS -> MX -> Debian + peppermint (on old laptop) -> Mint cinnamon + Mint XFCE -> Fedora atomic -> Fedora
Additionally: rasbian on pi, alpine for VM, puppy for usb, steamos on steam deck
Windows ->
Fedora Kinoite: A relatively mature atomic/immutable distro combined with excellent security standards and that resembles Windows' workflow. Unfortunately, it broke almost immediately. Though, to be fair, it was a known issue with the ISO back then. As a newb, however, I couldn't be bothered with it. ->
Fedora Silverblue: Well..., I didn't have much of a choice 😜. Or I had to forego Fedora Atomic altogether. However, I actually really enjoyed GNOME's workflow. I used this as my main system for about year. Until I found a related project... ->
Arch: The memes got me 😅. In all honesty, though, it was mostly curiosity. Still, I didn't intend to throw away my working Silverblue installation for the sake of quenching my thirst for experiencing Arch. So, as dual boot, I tried to install it. This was pre archinstall, so it took a couple of tries before I booted into GNOME. However, I guess I did mess up something as I don't recall ever booting back into that system 😅. So, what if I want Arch, but don't want to spend more time with the installation... ->
EndeavourOS: Yup. I actually enjoyed it. I also took the opportunity to install another DE; KDE. Tried out the hardened kernel. Was able to make Davinci Resolve work, which just caused a lot of trouble on Silverblue. Access to AUR. It was cool, really. And, for some time, I was actually pondering to dismiss Silverblue altogether in favor of EndeavourOS. But, I started to miss the 'stability' that I was used to from Silverblue. Though, I don't exactly recall if it was the fault of being based on Arch, or rather linked/attributed to KDE instead. Regardless, I noticed that (over time) I spend more and more time on Silverblue. At some point, booting into EndeavourOS didn't work any more. It had broken. I did engage in some troubleshooting efforts, but to no avail... ->
Zorin OS lite: On backup laptop; the poor thing couldn't run Windows but (even today) it's still kicking on Linux ->
Nobara: So, I guess I did miss some of the functionality provided by EndeavourOS; running Davinci Resolve being the primary one. But, I didn't want to pass out of the opportunity to try something else. Back then, Nobara was released relatively recently and was received very positively by the community. And had even a special guide/tutorial to make Davinci Resolve work on AMD devices. Nobara was cool. But, it didn't feel very special. I actually enjoyed EndeavourOS a lot more. It was mostly utilized for Davinci Resolve and for gaming if Silverblue wasn't fit for the job (for whatever reason). Unfortunately, even this one broke at some point 😅. I could still boot into it. But, the system just didn't do what it's supposed to do. I tried troubleshooting. But, once again, to no avail. ->
uBlue; Silverblue image: Through all that was previously mentioned, I had stability in Fedora Silverblue. It was reliable. I could trust it. Well..., most of the time 😅. Decisions related to mesa or video acceleration in browsers definitely felt more like misses rather than hits. I can't blame Fedora as they're legally restricted. But, shouldn't we be able to do better? Enter uBlue. It seemed like some black magic shenanigans. The earlier issues would have never occurred (nor did they occur) on uBlue. This 'managed' aspect of uBlue was clearly, at least for me, the reason to consider it over regular Silverblue. And so, I parted with regular Silverblue and started using the Silverblue image provided by uBlue. Not long after, I even had my own (hardened) custom image. But, eventually (to be more precise; about half a year after switching to uBlue), keeping up with hardening took up too much effort for me to bear. But, thankfully, I had already found the perfect solution... ->
secureblue (based on the Silverblue image): This was Silverblue hardened by someone that actually knows their shit. And, thankfully, I didn't have to maintain this myself. I used this for a couple of months until the next best thing... ->
secureblue (based on the Bluefin image): Currently on this for I think half a year now. It has just been a lovely experience through and through. Everything I could have asked is provided.
I think mine went something like this: Windows (for a long time) -> Zorin Os -> Linux Mint -> Ubuntu -> Fedora (I don't remember how long I used any of them) -> Manjaro.
Here I got myself into a hole, distrohopping aimlessly, like, I kept switching from distro to distro literally every day. I was checking my emails, and discovered that I have 156 confirmation emails from the ecosia search engine, so I guess that represents the many times I distrohopped during this time (about 5 or 6 months).
I never really understood what happened there, maybe it was anxiety.
And then I finally stopped at linux mint, I've been here for about a month (more time, i made many clean installs, but always returning to mint), I don't intend to change.
Maybe I've beaten distrohopping? well, I hope so.
Exactly the same thing had happened to me. I have used Debian for about a month now and I don't think I will change it.
Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 -> Fedora Workstation -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS
Windows->Mac->Ubuntu->Fedora->Arch->openSUSE->and finally Debian when bookworm released and I’ve been very happy with it, plan on staying for the foreseeable future.
Still dual boot windows (with no Microsoft account connected) for gaming. But I don’t game nearly as much as I used to and when I do I don’t want to worry about anything working, I just want to ply with friends. Though from what I hear gaming on Linux is getting better all the time.
My full journey was Ubuntu, Manjaro, Debian, Arch. I would still consider myself a noob but know I don't break stuff as often.
Classic Mac OS 7.5.3 -> 8.5 -> 9.2 -> Windows 2000 -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8.1 -> 10 -> Pop!_OS (for a few years but eventually wanted a KDE based distro) -> Garuda Linux (for a few years but wanted to try out nobara for gaming) -> Nobara (for now, great for gaming, frustrating for programming because of package differences) and other unknown reasons)
DOS, ProDOS, Windows 3.1, Windows '98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Puppy, Mint, Bodhi, Trisquel & Debian.
Ubuntu Server (for school) -> Fedora (daily driver for a month) -> Arch (same as fedora) -> NixOS (it's almost a year and I think that I'll stay with NixOS)
Win XP > vista > win7 > win 10 then
Linux Mint xfce > KDE neon > aurora
Tried many distros in between like ubuntu, mint cinnamon, mint mate, debian, and a few others I only vaguely recall
Ubuntu, Pop!_os, KDE... Currently on fedora. It's been solid. I honestly think I like pop the most but I was having weird gpu issues which haven't showed up over on fedora.
macOS, then Linux Mint, then Arch Linux, then EndeavourOS, then Artix Linux, and now Parabola GNU/Linux-libre.
Back when I was a kid, I was using Ubuntu. Ubtunu 14 and 16.
At some point I got really into Elementary OS and Pantheon
Then I rejected clone distros and embraced the mother distro, Debian.
In college, I experimented a bit, like most people. I tried various DEs and WMs on Debian. I tried Arch. I tried PopOS. I tried Gentoo. Man, Gentoo is the WORST. Compiling stuff takes WAY too long and even after using it for 6 months it never got better. Worst distro on the planet. No one should ever use it. Eventually I settled on Arch.
I stayed an Arch i3 guy for 3.5 years, but eventually I got fed up with it.
I then finally gave Fedora a try, and I thought it was great. It was up to date like Arch but unbreakable. At the time I was also looking into BTRFS and immutability and making my own distro, and Fedora is great for that bc of CoreOS and Kinoite and all that stuff.
While on Fedora I did a lot of weird things in search of my goals. Like I figured out how to install Pacman and get AUR applications working on Fedora, notably archiso which I was using to build my own immutable, declarative OS that would be AppImage-based and utilizing an AppImage package manager and store front I wrote myself.
But then, about a year in, I discovered NixOS. It's the best thing ever. It solves all the problems I had with other distros that I thought I'd solve on Fedora or Arch with programming. It's everything I could want in a distro and then some. I've now been on it longer than I was on Fedora, and there's no sign of switching to anything else.
Parallel to all this is various tool hopping. For instance, trying GNOME/KDE/Xfce/i3/Sway/Hyprland/etc at various times with various setups as well. Or bash vs zsh. Etc
Currently, I'm on NixOS with Hyprland, and it's great. I've also used it with i3 and with GNOME + Pop Shell 2 for tiling which are both solid as well.
Now, that's my daily driver and gaming machine. I use other OSs on other computers.
I have a computer for music production that got Fedoraized when I was a Fedora fanboy for a year. I don't change it bc it doesn't need to change. It just needs to run Ardour, yabridge, etc and maintain my system audio configurations that I don't remember how to set up now. If it ever gets messed up, I'll switch to a fork of my NixOS configuration and refigure out my audio settings and put them in a configuration.
I have a home nextcloud server as well. It also was once Fedoraized, but I gave up on that and went to Ubuntu bc that's the only thing that should ever run a Nextcloud server. It just does not work correctly if it's not on Ubuntu, at least that's my experience. I've tried hosting on Arch, Fedora, Debian, PopOS and more, but only Ubuntu works well for Nextcloud, so Ubuntu it stays.
Windows -> RedHat -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> RHEL -> Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch
ZorinOS > Ubuntu > Debian and then Arch. I even tried Alpine linux recently but got "filtered" by the lack of gpu packages. Looks like I need to get my "googling" improved a bit.
kubuntu 2 years windows 10 2 years Ubuntu 1 month kubuntu 2 years fedora 2 years everything for about a month fedora for a year arch since february
CP/M, GCOS, DOS, Windows, BeOS, Debian a few years, Ubuntu (a lotttttt of years), Mint (~3 years), MX (6 years now).
I played/installed with a couple of distro like Mandrake, LFS, CentOS, Arch, etc and basically all distro in the 90s were a bunch of floppies for the kernel and gnu utils, a bunch for X, that we downloaded from university usenet.
LFS was nightmarish, so is Arch a little bit when you install everything from basically scratch, now I prefer something that is working fine, MX AHS is a really good distro.
I also always prefered simple window system, coming from mwm/twm. Cinnamon was pretty but in the end I hated it, Xfce is my DE of choice now.
Windows -> Ubuntu 10.04 ... 11.10, -> Kubuntu 12.04 -> Debian 7 (stable)... 8 (testing... stable) ... 12
Mint->arch->nixos
Ubuntu VM (~2 years) -> Debian VM(1 week) -> Arch VM (1 month) -> Arch
Windows -> Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Arch -> macOS -> Windows 10 -> Arch -> Xubuntu and Windows 10 and probably back to Arch some day.
Windows 98 -> Slackware dual boot (with big ol' red grub screen) -> windows up to win 10 -> debian(laptop) win10 (pc)
Gonna try getting a new m.2 drive and dual booting soon to test playing the games I like on Linux. If all goes well, I'll be moving away from windows
Debian from woody until systemd, gentoo since.
Despite my username, I ditched EndeavourOS a few days ago because an update broke it and installed fedora
Windows for a long time before I knew what OSes were. I never liked how locked down MacOS is so I've never used that. Then I tried Ubuntu in college, mostly to play with. Then tried Arch, fucked up my system a couple times and reinstalled, then tried Manjaro because I'd heard it was more stable and less fuss. And now I'm back on Arch. I think I've finally mostly figured it out over the last decade lol, I haven't had a problem with my install in years.
On my main computer: Ubuntu (@2005) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Arch (for maybe 6 months) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Debian (for years) -> Gentoo (until now)
Windows for until 8 => various Ubuntu Flavours for a while => Manjaro for a couple Weeks maybe => Arch for 5+ Yeats => fedora since maybe 2 months
Win7 > Mint XFCE > win10 > Fedora > Endeavouros > Tumbleweed
I have distrohoped a lot that I don't even remember the sequence of the distros I have used.
Windows Vista → Debian (pre-systemD) → Devuan → Void Linux.
I don't like systemD.
I still have Windows installed as a dual boot setup for Adobe CC.
90s was Mandrake, early 2000s was all about Ubuntu.
Since then I've tried just about everything including BSDs. It's all pretty much the same thing, as long as you like the package manager and release schedule. I don't like snap or flatpak so avoid distros that use them a lot.
These days I mainly just use opensuse leap, although I love arch etc but it's just too much work for me now.
I only really need a terminal, firefox and emacs and I'm happy.
I don’t even remember all of them, let alone the correct sequence. I’ve also had multiple computers at one time (still do), and usually they have different distributions (still true).
First experiment: Mandrake
First serious use: Ubuntu edgy eft or something
Spiraling out of control: kubuntu, xubuntu, lubuntu, debian, kaos, mint, easypeasy, fedora, korora, rox, manjaro, openmediavault, rockstor, + many niche distributions
Current: arch and debian
Before you ask, no, I’m not a diagnosed psychopath.
MacOS (old one like around 2012 or so) -> Windows 8 -> Windows 10 -> Several Linux on VM(Kali, Ubuntu(s), Fedora…) -> WSL1(Kali, Ubuntu) -> MacOS (with a newer OS) -> NixOS -> Void Linux ->
Now I’m currently using Void Linux, Windows 11, MacOS Sonoma.
I’m planning to put Fedora Debian (because it’s well supported by linux-surface community) on my Surface Laptop 1st gen which I’m not using right now.
Ubuntu (2007) >> Arch (2009) >> Debian (2014) >> Fedora (2024)
Plus now and then installing OpenBSD for fun for a couple of months at a time.
Windows -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Ubuntu -> Debian GNU/Linux -> EndeavourOS
Currently using Debian and EndeavourOS in parallel as the distributions I have settled on.
I played with linux a bunch between 2014-2019 but I was not ready for the commitment of learning a new operating system. In 2020, I started to get annoyed at how bad windows 10 was getting, and at some point I saw the insider previews of windows 11 and put my foot down.
I fully switched to linux in 2021, I started with a brief spell of manjaro. I hated it.
2022 I had alot going on in my life and didnt use a computer very much at all because I did not have internet access.
Towards the very end of 2022 I moved and got a laptop which I put Fedora on. I used this daily until the first half of 2023
Sometime mid 2023 I switched to opensuse and I used that for a few months before finally switching over to Debian which I still use now.
I've come to the conclusion that I prefer LTS distros. I very rarely need new software besides for maybe WINE, but I can get that from the winehq website easily enough so its not a big deal. If I could get drivers to play nice out of the box, I would unironically put alma linux on my laptop and run it the full 10yrs.
I started with an ancient redhat, moved to Linux From Scratches, landed in Gentoo 25+ years ago and never hopped anywere else since...
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.
Windows 95 - Windows Vista - Windows 7 - Ubuntu - Fedora - back to Ubuntu Think that's it, can't recall the years exactly The switch to Ubuntu was like in 2014 or something
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.
Yessss my brother of the Gentooo EMERGE MY BROTHER!
✊
Windows 98 -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 (long time)
Attempted Linux Mint for a day or two
Windows 10 (long time)
Windows 10 + Pop OS (June 2021)
Windows 10 + Tumbleweed (Switched after couple months of Pop OS)
Tumbleweed (Dropped Windows after not using Windows for 6+ months)
Windows XP -> Windows 7 -> Windows 10 -> Linux Mint -> Manjaro -> ArcoLinux -> Arch -> Arco -> Arch -> Arco -> NixOS -> Arch -> Ubuntu (beginning of 2023) -> NixOS -> Arch -> NixOS (summer 2023) -> Debian (for a month when beginning University), -> NixOS -> Arch -> NixOS -> Fedora (in Jan/Feb 2024, seems like it could be the one) -> Void (wanted to love it but I hated my few days in it) -> Arch (temporarily, waiting for the COPR repos on Fedora to update its packages for F40) -> Fedora 40 (where I still am)
Going from Windows XP to Linux Mint took over a decade. Going from Mint to Fedora 40 took about 2 years.
Can I ask what do you dislike about both NixOS and Arch, since you've been switching between them? I thinking about trying out nixos but I'm afraid it:s too much of a hassle
NixOS is immutable, so I can't compile from source (I needed a specific Assembly Editor for university and it only supported full system installation, I could not get it working on NixOS). I desired a static release, so I was switching to NixOS, but then there'd be something I can't be bothered to figure out or weird issues, so I'd switch back to Arch. But then my desire for a stable static release would return.
So on and so forth until I figured out Fedora is perfect. It lacks the 1337 Haxor feel of an advanced distro, and dnf is super slow (First thing I do on a new Fedora install now is get dnf5), AND my SDDM theme broke on Fedora but worked everywhere else (something to do with qt5-qtgraphicaleffects), but I rewrote the theme, aliased dnf to dnf5, and I still get the 1337 haxor feel by using my own scripts, including a bemenu logout script, which makes me feel like a boss when I use it, for some reason, probably because I wrote it myself.
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
Windows 7 -> Windows 10 -> Mint -> Kubuntu -> Arch -> Fedora -> Mint -> Fedora.
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.
Windows 8.1 (~10 years) -> Xubuntu (a few months) -> Arch linux (present).
DOS -> Windows (3.1 through to XP) -> Slackware -> Red Hat -> Fedora -> OpenSUSE -> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Ubuntu -> Arch
It’s been quite the journey.
Windows 95 -> Windows 98 -> Windows XP -> Windows Vista -> Windows 7 -> Dual Boot Ubuntu -> Windows 7 -> Dual Boot Ubuntu -> Windows 7 -> Windows 10 -> Ubuntu (VM) -> Pop_OS! -> Windows 10 -> Manjaro -> Fedora -> Manjaro -> Open Suse -> Linux Mint -> Linux Mint DE -> Fedora -> Debain -> Linux Mint
I'm not the biggest distrohopper but I have tried a few, both on my laptop and desktop. I still keep windows around on a dual-boot but I'm basically only using it for the odd game or two and also onenote (obsidian + excalidraw comes close but nothing really has a seamless transition between pen and typing text like OneNote)
Early 2018 and before:
Windows only
2018-19:
2019-2022:
2022-2023:
2024:
Future?
Maybe if I can get my NixOS config to a point where I'm happy with it I'll switch my desktop setup to that as well, in theory it should be pretty painless since i'm already using a flake setup split across multiple modules. I do really like that I can experiment with my setup without the risk of actually breaking anything since NixOS is semi-immutable.
If I don't stick with NixOS I've also been thinking about trying fedora, opensuse, or an immutable distro, or otherwise just moving my laptop back to either Arch or EndeavourOS since that's what I'm familiar with.
Windows 95 -> 98 -> XP -> 7 -> 8 -> OSX -> Arch (1 month) -> Gentoo (1 year) -> VOID (3 years) -> NixOS (4 years) (transitioning to Guix System now)
For reference, this was my editor hopping journey which started during my OSX days since I learned to program during this time: Sublimetext -> vim -> neovim -> emacs
Windows -> Ubuntu and Arch on some other computers -> Windows -> Arch -> Nixos
Didn't really hop much, started with Windows, went on to OSX, got annoyed at it and ran Arch in a VM until I was comfortable with it, then went bare-metal with it.
Happy Arch user for some years now, though recently I'm using Fedora for work and I really like it. It's not a good fit for some machines I'm running which need a lot of customisations to run properly.
Windows into I went to college for development and decided to check out this Linux thing. At the time, I wanted something as different from Windows as possible, so I went with Ubuntu with Gnome 3 (I know) for about a year. Tried out Fedora, couldn't get my sound to work and accidentally uninstalled the desktop environment trying to fix it, slunk back to Ubuntu, tried out a Debian briefly, and eventually ended up on Linux Mint with Cinnamon and KDE.
At one time I really wanted to try a bunch of stuff and probably would've hopped a lot more if Fedora didn't shatter my confidence, but nowadays I want as little disruption between machines as possible. I have to use Windows for work, so I keep my Linux setup pretty vanilla so I don't miss features between the two very much. I'll probably still play with other distros every now and then on old laptops, but I've fallen into a "if it ain't broke" mindset with my daily machines.
I used to enjoy Arch when I was 16 maby
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.
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.
Been with Linux Mint ever since. It just works. LM19 was also around the time when I stepped into Apple’s walled garden with iOS and macOS.
The hardware was really outdated at this point, so I got a new machine. Windows 8.1.
Got a different new computer with Windows 10. Started trying out lots of distros of VMs.
tldr: Windows Vista -> Mint -> Lubuntu -> Mint again -> Windows 8.1 (new computer) -> Windows 10 (new computer) -> OpenSUSE Leap -> Debian -> FreeBSD -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Debian again
I left OpenBSD reluctantly when I found that it wasn't meeting my needs anymore. I needed an iPad Pro and an iPhone to fill in the missing functionality and they don't play nice with OpenBSD for things like transferring files, photos, etc.
I've since converted the family to Debian stable. Backports and flatpak make it incredibly reliable. We can do everything from here and its well documented for every use case. Video chats, zoom conference calls, file sync/sharing, bluetooth music through Spotify, etc. Started with buster when it was the stable distro; jumped early to bullseye during the freeze; and now holding onto bookworm.
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!
You'll always end up on debian. You just dont know it yet
Can confirm. I've used Dos, Windows, Dilinux over Windows, Redhat, more Windows, MacOS, Windows again, Ubuntu, and now I'm on Debian.
Once people become familar with the basics of linux, they realize that almost anything that these niche distros offer can be accomplished in debian
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.
Does a debian version upgrade require an OS reinstall?
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)
Agree to disagree. I keep trying Debian and Debian based distros, same with Arch based (looking at you, Endeavor), and always end up back on Fedora or one of it's spins.
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.
Holy fuck dude, I come here 11 months later to agree with you. After going trough so many, Debian is really the best one.