Fire up a VM to scratch that itch or change up your desktop environment if you feel like it.
Unless you have a specific need that can’t be met on your distro you’re probably not missing much other than “ooh shiny” and some fun tinkering with something new.
If it’s KDE that’s causing issues you should just be able to install a second desktop environment and try that out.
Otherwise, Debian stable is good. Can also testing or unstable if you want newer packages. Debian “just works” if you’re not on day 1 hardware, don’t have Nvidia graphics, and can troubleshoot the occasional issue that any Linux distro will bring.
What I tend to do that scratches the distro-hopping itch is I keep an external drive with a bunch of virtual machines on it that I can spin up and tinker around with as needed, like little specimen jars lol. I think I have about 5-6 on the go at the moment. So like my actual computer runs Arch (btw), but I have VMs for NixOS, OpenSUSE, Mint and so on, as well as another one that’s as close to my main system as possible so if I want to try a weird experiment I can try it on there first to see what breaks. Just today I tried upgrading it to Plasma 6 to see what broke and the answer was everything lol.
I used to keep ones for Mac and Windows on the go too, but they tend to eat up a lot of drive space.
It is mentioning gpu in the errors, so it would be the first thing I would try, to see if the errors change, because I have no idea what’s going on here
If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you’ll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.
Or use the LTS but use Snaps for those applications that you want to have the latest versions of. Snaps are getting better and I think eventually you won’t notice the difference between them and native apps, except for the space they just up. But that goes for Flatpak too.
Personally I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I’m not happy with the way Canonical is going. In most cases the “old” apps are fine for me, but if I felt need the newest version I’ll use a Flatpak.
Another rolling option is OpenSuse Tumbleweed however, being a Mac which uses proprietary WiFi drivers, your WiFi will break with kernel updates, which can be irritating, unless you have ethernet.
If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you’ll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.
This is just wrong. You can update the LTS release to the next non-LTS release. You only have to unchecked “LTS only”. You can also wait for the next LTS release.
You never need a full install. I haven’t done such a thing for a decade.
Well, from non-LTS, you can always go to +1, the next release. If this happens to be an LTS, sure, you will automatically be on LTS. (Then you can change your settings to say on LTS or keep tracking non-LTS release).
I can’t stand using Gnome, but it is the only one that’s vaguely touch friendly. If you pile enough extensions in there, it becomes usable. Plasma has always been a disaster for me on tablets. Maybe 6 will be better, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m a fan of Arch and derivatives but I need better odds of shit just working. Been running Mankato on desktop for some time to get both stable ish packages and also AUR as/where needed.
For servers, it’s Debian all the way for me. Ubuntu does some things I don’t personally love - no offense to the distro, it’s well constructed - and the recent ish changes in the RPM world didn’t sit well with me - strictly personal opinion.
Anything in a container generally runs on whatever the image was built with. It’s only a minimal pain to port simple dockerfiles, but when you get into multiple linked containers, that risks edge case bugs down the road.
Honestly, between the lot of it, I use a pretty representative sample - I think alpine on desktop would be kind of pointless to say the least, doesn’t mean I’m going to forego any container built on it.
Use case is a huge factor here, as is ability to grok multiple distros concurrently. I find that easy, but plenty of people don’t. For them, maybe rebuilding that image makes more sense.
Linux is all about doing what works for you and your use case.
FWIW, pacman doesn’t resonate nearly as well as pamac does with me. Probably because I haven’t had to dive deep into it. All about what works for an individual. If that’s stability on an Ubuntu derivative, great - Linux is Linux, in that context.
If you’re comfortable with Mint and don’t see a reason to switch, I don’t see anything wrong with staying with Mint. If you do want to try new distros, just use a VM.
You’re missing out on watching a lot of progress bars while you reinstall all the time. If you like what you have, keep using it. All you get from switching is a different package manager, a few slightly different package names, maybe faster updates and a new default desktop background. You’ll still be using all the same apps, probably similar versions, probably systemd. It’s a bigger difference logging into a new desktop environment than a new distro.
Like some have mentioned, if you want to try different distros setup a VM (I would recommend KVM for better performance, but virtualbox is easier for beginners in VMing) with the iso of the distro you want to test out.
Like this you can keep a functional system without the hassle of having to setup on baremetal just for testing and having to go back again if doesn’t pay-out.
Also would suggest messing around with more tech-savy setups like debian and fedora (specially minimal ones) if you want to delve deeper into the Linux nerdiness.
My personal recommendation is Fedora, but the community recommendation will likely be Linux Mint, which is also a perfectly good recommendation. Either of them are “just works” distros. I prefer the update cycle of Fedora, and would certainly want to distance myself from Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives (even Mint), and Debian’s update cycle is painfully slow. Fedora manages what is seemingly a perfect balance of quick and stable updates.
Fedora comes with Gnome by default, but it has spins for other DEs like KDE Plasma if that’s more of your thing (I’ll be switching to Plasma when Fedora 40 releases with Plasma 6).
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