Over my nearly 25 years exploring and using various Linux distros, “distro hopping” was the norm. You know, find that distro that just works for you and test out others on the regular. I did that for many years. Jumping from Debian to Ubuntu to Mint to Fedora to Solus to openSUSE to Arch. Sometimes I’d double back to one of those to see what’s improved.
The past 8 years or so, Arch (or Arch-based distros) was where I felt the most comfortable. Started my Arch journey with the big daddy, Arch itself. Moved to Antergos, Manjaro, and a couple other Arch-based distros over that time.
Fast forward to January 2024. I was using Arch, and while I did feel at home, I still felt a need to move on. But I still wanted an Arch base. Enter EdeavourOS. Not long after New Years Day, I installed EOS. I instantly felt at home. Since that time I checked out a couple other distros again via my laptop or VM, but it just didn’t feel quite right.
So for the past 7 months, EndeavourOS KDE Plasma has been my daily driver on my late 2014 MacMini. My Samsung Galaxy Book Pro laptop runs EndeavourOS Cinnamon. The only distro I intend to “hop” to is Pop! OS. And that’s only because I have a keen interest in the Cosmic Desktop Environment progress.
Bottom line: EndeavourOS doesn’t just feel like home, it IS home. I really don’t feel the need to look elsewhere. And why would I, when I’ve already found my home.
Hah, I started out with Linux (no distro) so to speak, from NetNews. Then I think I went Slackware (for some years), then Debian (many years), probably used Ubuntu a couple of times. I tried Manjaro for a bit, Solus, Arch btw, and pretty much landed here.
I like it here (arch ecosystem). And there’s those things SWH mentioned.
@UncleSpellbinder
Same here! On Linux since 2000 and been distro hopping like crazy since 2021. Distro hopping is really fun to learn a lot.
As you said EndeavourOS IS home. No matter where I distro hop I came back home. It has been almost 3 years now and never enjoyesd a distro or community as here at home.
Well, I am still distro hopping but using Ventoy. And still enjoying the distro hopping because it makes me feel more and more that I already got the best home anybody can get.
There are lots of differences between a motel or whatever hotel room and home where I have everything.
Now I need to ask how long period of time between the distro switch does it take to be considered distrohopping…
Since during my 2-year Linux adventure I’ve only installed 3 distros on my bare metal - Mint, MX and EOS. Each of them was kept on the hard drive for more than half a year (OK, Endeavour for only two months as for now but you get my point).
Distro hopping probably has various degrees. Two years, three distros… yeah, that’s still distro hopping IMHO. But to a lower degree. I’ve known people who’ve hopped three distros in the span of a couple months. Nowadays, if I feel the need to check on another distro, I give it a shot in a VM. But like I said, I’ve found a home here and have no intention of leaving. I’m just keeping an eye on the Cosmic DE development in anticipation of sometime down the line of having it available as an EOS flavor.
Heck, I’ve seen people that stay 1 to 3 days before ‘hopping’
I usually try to have space to have another couple of distros installed, but one is ‘home’.
As to Cosmic, at present, you can build easily enough from their GITS (in Aur) and I’ve been running it for months on EOS happily.
Though yes, I’m sure I want to see what they do with it on the August 8th early release and the final (whenever that is).
Once the official alpha of Pop! OS Cosmic is released, I’ll have it installed via Gnome Boxes VM. Not because I want to use another Ubuntu-based distro. But to see if the Cosmic DE is something I’d like to use. For the past few years, my DE’s of choice are KDE for desktop and Cinnamon for laptop. So technically not distro-hopping… more DE-hopping.
this has been home for over a year. Everyone needs a home. A home computing environment that they can count on. I have it.
But, @UncleSpellbinder, that does not mean I won’t bare metal the occasional distro I find fascinating. It would take too long to make it a Home I could trust and I’m not interested in that–already got one.
----but it’s fun to kick the tires on occasion, It’s a very creative community with no doubt. I will always be restless in a hobby way but not a replacement way. If that makes any sense.
I spent my early Linux time distro hopping between 1998 and 2005 and tried countless distros, most of the time spent with RedHat, OpenLinux, and Mepis. 2005 to 2006 I ran Mandriva and then finally settled on Ubuntu from 2006 to 2017. Since then, I bounce between Debian and Arch, usually spend a year to two on one then switching back to the other.
Oh, I agree. I actually did that not all that long ago with both Mint and Fedora. But lately, at least for me, it REALLY needs to seem fascinating for me to install on bare metal. Otherwise, I’m quite happy getting any distro-hopping fix via VM.
EDIT: I’m already ridiculously familiar with Debian/Ubuntu (and their derivatives), Fedora, openSUSE, and Arch. So I know where I feel at home already. As I said earlier… for me it’s more of a DE-hopping thing.
I can’t stand ‘apt’ :0