I feel like I'm missing out by not distro-hopping

I’ve been dailying the same Mint install since I gave up on Windows a few years ago. When I was choosing a distro, a lot of people were saying that I should start with Mint and “move on to something else” once I got comfortable with the OS.

I’m comfortable now, but I don’t really see any reason to move on. What would the benefits be of jumping to something else? Mint has great documentation and an active community that has answers to any questions I’ve ever had, and I’m reluctant to ditch that. On the other hand, when I scroll through forums, Distro Hopping seems to be such a big part of the “Linux experience.”

What am I missing?

therealjcdenton,

Don’t. Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Fedora are used in the exact same way. Pick one of them and then trf different desktop environments, if you want you can download the configurations for distro from their source code

therealjcdenton,

The only distro that is unique off the top of my head is NixOS since you use it and think about it backwards

Paragone,

If it works for you, stick with it.

Works is a feature, not a bug.

_ /\ _

ReakDuck,

I guess this is to figure out what is also possible on Linux, and getting to know that not all problems or missing features apply to other distros.

Sometimes you can lwarn amazing stuff, like a KDE distro can be customized to your liking while a Gnome desktop is a nearly forced workflow and design but can be slightly changed with buggy extensions.

ulu_mulu,

Distro Hopping seems to be such a big part of the “Linux experience.”

It’s not, it’s just a way to find the distro that suits you best.

If you’re already satisfied with what you have, there’s no reason to change and you’re not missing out on anything. If you’re ever curious about other distros, install Virtualbox and try them in a VM.

I stopped distro hopping years ago when I started using Linux MX (Debian based), I’m so happy with it that I have no intention to change ever again.

The only other distro I really like is LMDE (Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu), so I put that one on my laptop (MX on my gaming desktop).

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

There’s Debian and Red Hat Enterprise, everything else is pointless. Enjoy.

AVincentInSpace,

The time I spent “distro hopping” back in high school was because I didn’t have the balls to commit to a single distro. Even then the only time I actually switched was when I made a config change that blew up in my face so badly I needed to reinstall anyway.

If you’ve found a setup you’re happy with, by all means, stick with it. You’re not missing out on much by not voluntarily erasing your boot drive and installing an entirely new OS every week or so for no reason other than it looked cool.

(If you’re about to suggest dual booting multiple Linux distros, no. Just stop. I tried that once. You would not believe how many issues are caused by sharing a ~/.config between two systems with slightly different versions of the same software.)

kuneho, (edited )
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

What am I missing?

Nothing. If you are content with your current setup, you are missing absolutely nothing.

gian,

What would the benefits be of jumping to something else?

None if you want to do it just because

What am I missing?

Again, nothing if you are not needing some very specific feature that only other distro offer or something that is easier on another distro.

LoveSausage, (edited )

If you are happy with the way things are no need to change, want to Ty something out ? Live CD or VM. Dual boot if you want to keep 2 systems. Mint is pretty good. I like peppermint myself. A halfway stop between mint and arch. Shit works out of the box but runs on 1 GB ram. Worth checking out if you want to get some extra out of you computer

atzanteol,

Distro hopping is what you do when you don’t mind spending a week trying to get things “back the way they were”.

You’re not missing out.

ipsirc,
@ipsirc@lemmy.ml avatar

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/efe7969e-e264-4f63-97c8-69bfbea51e7f.jpeg

sag,

5

WeLoveCastingSpellz, (edited )

Distro hoping is done yo find a ditro that you are comfortsble with if mint already works well for you, you should probably just stay on mint

LibreFish,

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.

CrabAndBroom,

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.

xarexyouxmadx,

Honestly. I don’t think you’re missing much. It’s not like if you go to a different distro suddenly you’re going to have all these new applications you can’t get on mint or anything.

I started with mint and played around with other distros (mostly Debian/Ubuntu & Arch based ones) and I ended up settling on an Ubuntu based distro with kde desktop.

Using something like Arch might make sense if your PC is super new as they tend to have support for the newest hardware.

At most you might want to try a different desktop environment but if you have no reason to hop I would say don’t waste your time unless you’re bored and want to experiment just for the hell of it.

there’s a site that will let you play around with different distros/desktop environments over the Web (it’s going to be slow and you can’t use a VPN when connecting) but that might be a good choice before going through the trouble of downloading a distro, flashing to USB and possibly installing it on your PC/laptop just to find out you hate it.

xarexyouxmadx,

Btw I’d still use mint…I only switched away because I wasn’t a big fan of how much it looked like windows and how green everything was. Lol. But I was still a noob at the time and hadn’t fully comprehended how customizable Linux distros are. I could’ve changed a lot with the appearance if I knew what I was doing

Molten_Moron,

how green everything was

Lol, first thing I did was change my keyboard to the same green as the desktop.

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