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.
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.
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 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 :)
Are you even a real Linux user when you don’t switch distros every day?
Personally I’m usually content for a long time. Although my ideal distro still doesn’t exist and probably never will with the way the meta is currently going.
But you do you. You know how hard/easy it is to reinstall so as long as you’re having fun just experiment away.
What would your ideal distro look like, and what’s missing currently?
At the moment I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed but it’s a little too conservative in my opinion. I can manage it but I miss Debian automatically enabling and restarting services on install/update and management of user groups and other little helpers.
I’d love to have a Debian based rolling release distro with the same quality control as Tumbleweed. Not Sid, that’s too much tied to Debian Testing’s release cycle and doesn’t get security updates in a timely manner.
That used to be my holy grail, too. At some point I realized I do pretty much the same tasks on my PC now that I did 5 years ago.
So if 5 years of software upgrades don’t change the utility of my PC fundamentally, then I can live with Debian Stable.I like flapjack* for the occasional programs I want the newest version.
*Sure, autocorrect, let’s call it that now.
So I read somewhere that Fedora has great nvidia support and I installed it and everything worked
OK maybe I’ll try Fedora or Arch, cuz Mint is being weird about my video card.
Oh yeh, totally normal. I switch distros roughly once a year and if I have more than one device on the go then I almost always have different distros on each of them. I think I was with Linux Mint the longest, but even then I switched DE at least 3 times.
I have 4 Linux devices on the go at the moment. My desktop is on OpenSuSE, my laptop I recently moved from windows to OpenSuSE, my HTPC is on Nobara and I have a Raspberry Pi on Raspbian.
I’ve also used Mint as my main before OpenSuSE and still use Mint in KVM on my desktop to run Virutal machines. My most used VM is for Servarr / torrent use - nice to run it in a contained sandbox with its own VPN.
Nah its normal, been hoping since 6 years. I keep an external hard drive with important info, so i can nuke my system without worry.
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.
I’d say it’s normal, but also normal to not distoe hop - everyone has their own preferences and Linux gives people the freedom to do what they want.
I have wiped my distro before just because I felt I’d let it bloat. I like tinkering and installing all sorts of random packages a long the way but am not good at cleaning up. I stayed with the same Distro - OpenSuSE.
But before OpenSuSE I used to use Mint. I liked Mint but I managed to break the updates in a minor but annoying way with a customisation I did on one version prior to an a major system update. When I decided to fix the problem I decided to distro hop.
I also have a HTPC and I just reinstalled my distro this week - I did this to wipe Win11 off the device which had been pre installed and I kept when I installed Linux “just in case”. I haven’t used it once and it was taking up half the hard drive. So I figured I’d back up my home folder, wipe the computer and reinstall Nobara and then restore my home folder. Worked like a charm, and I was back up and running in about 30mins.
It also gave me a new appreciation for User level Flatpaks, much of my software was already there, installed and ready to use. I did even consider distro hopping again but Nobara has worked well in my HTPC.
So yes, Distro hopping is normal, reinstalling on a whim is normal, and staying with a distro and just letting it update for years is also normal.
In the current landscape of the distro wars, admitting you just jumped sides is grounds to call forth the raiders from your old distro, they know the distro specific vulnerabilities and will unleash a fury of which you have never seen. The first sign will be a blinking hard drive light…
Every distro hopper eventually settles on either Arch or Debian.
Or both! Debian on my server, arch on my desktop, btw
I’ve settled on a minimal Debian installation with Flatpaks for all software.
A lot less config work than Arch, fewer bugs than Fedora Silverblue, and in my experience it just works.I’m so fucking over dealing with dependencies.
Well, I settled on a Ubuntu derivative so I guess it’s in the family. It could just as easily have been Fedora though.
It’s pretty normal as far as I am aware.
I have another friend who uses Linux and he also disro hops, same as me.
We’ll try out a distro and if it turns out we don’t like it, doesn’t suit our needs, doesn’t support something we want to do or it just breaks then we try another.
I started on Ubuntu many years ago and grew to dislike it. I stay away from Debian for the most part these days. Tried Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Mint etc.
I tried Manjaro and hated it. It stopped working when my monitors went to sleep, could not bring them back. Also had some PC freezes. Tried another installation of it and same thing.
I tried Garuda, did not like.
I tried Pop!_OS but I don’t recall much about it.
I’ve now settled on Fedora based distros. Fedora is quite nice but my main one is Nobara. I’m currently playing around with Bazzite.
I’d like to see what Steam OS is about when they do some releases for their current version. I think I played around with a very old version years ago.
Never tried Arch, I might do it just because or so I can say I did.
I’ve probably forgotten a few others between.
Who cares if it’s normal or not. You do you
Every Linux user has to go through a period of compulsive distro hopping. Don’t worry, eventually you’ll grow tired of it and just settle on one workhorse distro.
Yeah, it’s normal. There are so many flavours of Linux out there, why wouldn’t you want to try some of them?
