What is/was your distrohopping journey?

You'll always end up on debian. You just dont know it yet

o Windows 10
|
o Linux Mint
|
|\__
|   \
|    o Manjaro KDE
|    |
o Fedora KDE
|    |\__
|    |   \
x    |    o Windows 11
     |    o Windows 11 + Arch Linux
     |    |
     o Arch Linux
     |    |
     |    |
     |    o Windows 11 + Debian KDE
     |    |

hopefully it renders well on your client :D

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

Windows from 1999 until December 2023. Debian since then!

Debian -> Slackware -> Guix

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.

Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian (stable) -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

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 -> Ubuntu -> Arch Linux

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.

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)

Over about a decade: Win7 -> Mint -> Manjaro -> Mint -> Endeavour

Eyeing Nix atm, looks cute, might hop later

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…

Mint -> Arch

warning: some non-linux included below

• minix
• slackware
• early Debian
• FreeBSD (ftp installs instead of 20 floppies! OMG!)
• Debian
• Crunchbang <-- loved that original project
• Solaris (friend gave me a Sparc 5)
• DSL, Puppy linux (had a tiny netbook)
• **Debian on workstations and servers since ~2014 **
• various debian-based distros on RPI

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. :-)

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

• In the 90's: Slackware, then RedHat, then Debian, then Progeny (Debian based), then shortly Mandrake (RedHat based)

• Early 2000's: RedHat Japanese edition, TurboLinux (because I was in Japan and Japanese IME was almost impossible to get working on non-Japanese distributions)

• Then I had fun with Gentoo looking at my terminal compiling stuff everyday and fixing broken package because I followed advices to activate crazy compilation flags

• 2004: Ubuntu, that I used for nearly 20 years

• Last year: switched to Fedora

I tried one distro and now the other distros confuse and scare me.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Here's my distrohopping journey (including non-Linux OS)

• Windows 7 →

• Windows 10 →

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.

• Linux Mint (late 2021) →

• Arco Linux (arch felt too intimidating) →

• Debian (stability = good?) →

• Debian Sid (stability = boring) →

• Artix Linux OpenRC (omg i hate systemd so much!1!!) →

• Void Linux →

• Artix Linux runit (it didn't work) →

• Arch Linux (how do i use systemctl wtf) →

• Void Linux again (ah, ln -s /etc/sv/something /run/service/)→

• NixOS unstable (since January 2024)

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

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.

1. (Some years, Childhood), Windows XP laptop with games on it, Windows 7 on some Minecraft PC lol. (3 years) Windows 10 on a Thinkpad T430, really nice laptop, but the OS was boring and kinda bad
2. (3 days) Linux Mint, secondary drive. Had random blackout crashes that were not hardware related (still use that SSD today). Also wasnt impressed by the UI, but a very interesting experience of "the Linux"
3. (Few weeks) Manjaro, awesome KDE experience and theme, really really nice. But had a bad reputation, so went looking for other KDE Distros
4. (Few months) MX Linux, damn Distrowatch rankings. Got an error and my University IT people told me my Nextcloud client was too old, but the conky manager was awesome.
5. (Half a year) Kubuntu, with Backports, then switched to KDE Neon. Began nice, then went more and more unstable and broke
6. (Few weeks) Fedora KDE, finally dared the move to a "less known OS", but it broke too. I guess that Plasma 5.2x phase was just messy
7. (Over a year) Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, secureblue, Aurora. Tried the Kinoite prerelease for Plasma 6 and now for 6.1, finding some bugs.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Risc_os>win95-xp>Ubuntu>mint>Ubuntu>win8.1-10>manjaro>mint>popOs>fedora>fedora silverblue>bazzite/aurora

Vic20 😆 -> C64 -> AmigaOS -> MacOS -> Slackware (much frustration!) -> MacOS -> Ubuntu -> EndeavourOS

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.

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.

Windows (up until windows 8 came out) -> Ubuntu for about a year -> Manjaro for about 6 years -> Arch so far for 2 years.

• Windows (family PC)
• a BUNCH of Ubuntu-based distros (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio (which was awesome btw), Mint,... ) on my first own PC
• Arch for years and years and years
• NixOS

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.

Ubuntu (university) -> MX Linux -> Opensuse TW

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)

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.

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

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.

For me it was:

Windows (for many years) -> Dual Boot with Arch Linux KDE (for a year) -> Arch Linux KDE

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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.

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.

macOS, then Linux Mint, then Arch Linux, then EndeavourOS, then Artix Linux, and now Parabola GNU/Linux-libre.

Windows -> PopOS -> EndevourOS -> Fedora(for literally 2 days) -> NixOS 22.11 -> NetBSD -> NixOS Unstable

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu -> Arch -> KDE Neon -> Fedora -> Arch -> openSUSE Tumbleweed

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

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 Pop_OS!. 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, Pop_OS! and more, but only Ubuntu works well for Nextcloud, so Ubuntu it stays.

Windows -> RedHat -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> RHEL -> Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch

Windows -> Manjaro.

Never looked back. Debian works on a laptop, amazing too!

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.

Ubuntu, Manjaro, Endeavour, Arch, Arch/Debian

Windows -> MacOS -> Windows -> Ubuntu (2012) -> Arch (2013) -> Gentoo (2016)

Gentoo cured my distrohopping

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)

Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 -> Fedora Workstation -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

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)

DOS, to Windows XP, to Xubuntu, to Kubuntu, to Nix OS. In hindsight I should have probably tried Arch, but Nix was the first one to sell me on something else, and Arch just seems like a downgrade from Nix.

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)

Starting with Ubuntu I've tried a lot of distro, here the ones I used the more: Mageia -> Chakra -> Manjaro -> Void -> Arch

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.

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

My full journey was Ubuntu, Manjaro, Debian, Arch. I would still consider myself a noob but know I don't break stuff as often.

For my personal devices:

• Microsoft products from MS DOS 6.x or so through Windows Vista
• Ubuntu 6.06 through maybe 9.04 or so
• Arch Linux from 2009 through 2015
• MacOS from 2011 through current
• Arch Linux from 2022 through current

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...

• DOS/Win (Games)
• ... Various Windows ... (Games)
• RedHat 6 for learning about this Linux thing
• LFS for shits 'n' giggles
• Ubuntu (for drivers that just worked)
• Debian (for minimalism)
• Ubuntu (for comfort)
• Fedora/Ubuntu

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)

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.

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'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.

DOS, ProDOS, Windows 3.1, Windows '98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Puppy, Mint, Bodhi, Trisquel & Debian.

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

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

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.

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.

Windows -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Ubuntu -> Debian GNU/Linux -> EndeavourOS

Currently using Debian and EndeavourOS in parallel as the distributions I have settled on.

Despite my username, I ditched EndeavourOS a few days ago because an update broke it and installed fedora

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.

• MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows for Workgroups 3.11
• Red Hat Linux 5.2
• Slackware Linux 3.5
• FreeBSD 3.2 -> FreeBSD 6.0
• Kubuntu 6.06
• Linux Mint Darnya
• Arch Linux with KDEmod and oss4, later with awesome window manager
• Fedora Leonidas, Constantine
• Microsoft Windows 7
• Fedora Goddard, Lovelock (this time with KDE)
• OpenBSD 4.9 -> OpenBSD 7.0
• Debian stable (buster, then bullseye, now bookworm)

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.

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.

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.

Windows -> Ubuntu 10.04 ... 11.10, -> Kubuntu 12.04 -> Debian 7 (stable)... 8 (testing... stable) ... 12

Ubuntu (2007) >> Arch (2009) >> Debian (2014) >> Fedora (2024)
Plus now and then installing OpenBSD for fun for a couple of months at a time.

Mint->arch->nixos

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.

• Started on a Windows Vista machine, but I dual-booted Mint on it when it started to run slow.
• The software broke or got corrupted, so I installed Lubuntu.
• Lubuntu started to freeze, so I installed Mint again.

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.

• Switched out the drive and installed... OpenSUSE, I think?
• Catastrophic system error during an update, left the system corrupted. I installed Debian.
• Another system error (which may have been caused by me) led me to install FreeBSD.
• FreeBSD was usable, but not super usable. I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
• Catastrophic system error during an update, left the system corrupted. I installed Debian (again).

tldr: Windows Vista -> Mint -> Lubuntu -> Mint again -> Windows 8.1 (new computer) -> Windows 10 (new computer) -> OpenSUSE Leap -> Debian -> FreeBSD -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Debian again

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.

Ubuntu VM (~2 years) -> Debian VM(1 week) -> Arch VM (1 month) -> Arch

On my main computer: Ubuntu (@2005) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Arch (for maybe 6 months) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Debian (for years) -> Gentoo (until now)

Mine was/is/will be:

• Windows

• Some ancient version of Corel Linux that came on a CD that was free with a magazine that I could never get to work properly

• Some version of SUSE that I bought from a computer store impulsively, that also never worked properly

• Ubuntu 6.something that finally worked!

• Several more years of Ubuntu, gradually drifting over to Kubuntu/KDE Neon as I realised I liked KDE more than GNOME/Unity

• Manjaro as an awkward transitional phase to becoming an Arch person

• A split between full Arch (btw) for my laptop which is the tinkering machine that I'm allowed to break, and Pop!OS on the desktop, which is the one other people use that has to actually work all the time

• The distant call of NixOS, which I'm currently fiddling with in a VM and is trying to tempt me into nuking my laptop once again.

I have distrohoped a lot that I don't even remember the sequence of the distros I have used.

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

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Arch -> macOS -> Windows 10 -> Arch -> Xubuntu and Windows 10 and probably back to Arch some day.

Debian from woody until systemd, gentoo since.

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.

I started with an ancient redhat, moved to Linux From Scratches, landed in Gentoo 25+ years ago and never hopped anywere else since...

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.

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

• Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7 spanning a decade and a half.
• Ubuntu 10.04 going up to the release where Unity became the default DE (11.04, I think). Came back to 10.04, as it was an LTS release.
• Linux Mint Maya because of Cinnamon, and it was terrible.
• Fedora 16 to 25 or 26.
• Linux Mint 19

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.

its pretty much ubuntu since i started using linux, with some peppering of other distros i tried out over the years for a few months at a time.

i'm on this perpetual state of kind of wanting to hop because of the usual canonical shenanigans, but like, its working.

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)

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 -> 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.

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

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.

Windows 8.1 (~10 years) -> Xubuntu (a few months) -> Arch linux (present).

Windows 7 -> Windows 10 -> Mint -> Kubuntu -> Arch -> Fedora -> Mint -> Fedora.

DOS -> Windows (3.1 through to XP) -> Slackware -> Red Hat -> Fedora -> OpenSUSE -> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Ubuntu -> Arch

It’s been quite the journey.

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

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.

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

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:

• Ubuntu 18.04 (desktop),
• Ubuntu 18.04/18.10/19.04 (laptop)

2019-2022:

• Manjaro w/ KDE (desktop),
• Arch Linux w/ GNOME (laptop)

2022-2023:

• NixOS (laptop, for literally a day because it didn't have a package I needed to make my laptop work correctly)
• EndeavourOS (kde on laptop, qtile on desktop)

2024:

• No changes to the desktop setup,
• NixOS w/ KDE and also a half-functioning hyprland setup on the laptop now that the package got added.

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 -> 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

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 (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.