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

JoeKrogan, 1 year ago

Unless its NixOS or something like silver blue or QubesOS they’re all basically the same. If you want to mess about try some different ones in a VM or on a live CD or USB. That way you still have your daily driver working when you need it

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble, 1 year ago

Pros: you might find something you like more.

Cons: You’ve spent a bunch of time installing OSes you might not like, and you have to set everything back up again. Also if you didn’t back up your data you’re probably going to delete it.

Do you value time fucking around with your computer, or are you happy with how it works currently?

Also distro hop in a VM first, you’re probably not going to like most other things, or it might not be worth the time to migrate all your shit over to it if you find something you like more.

Stillhart, 1 year ago

Linux can be a hobby, not just a tool. If you want to have fun with a new hobby, distro hopping will have plenty to keep you busy. But if you just want something to run your computer and your current distro does it for you just fine, then you’re not missing out on anything but a headache.

It’s funny, I’m in an opposite situation. I don’t want to distro hop, but my current one has some issues that I’m getting a little fed up with (issues that are a result of my hardware and use case) so I am working up to swapping distros to find something with fewer issues. For me, I just want my OS to be transparent. I don’t want a hobby. That’s why it took me so long to swap to linux in the first place.

Anyways, IMHO, unless you’re really into the idea of playing with your OS as a hobby, don’t let FOMO trick you into making the mistake of throwing out what works in the hopes of greener grass.

Shady_Shiroe, 1 year ago

When I started using Linux I distro hopped a few times before finding mint, now I have been stuck on mint for a few years, but I still dream of hopping again.

When I was hopping I was in high school, so I had time, now I got to work and hopping takes too much time and effort to set everything up again. If I had a second pc or a laptop I would do it.

dan, 1 year ago

now I got to work and hopping takes too much time and effort to set everything up again.

This is the same reason I haven’t switched to Linux again even though I want to. Limited free time.

I also switched to playing games on a console for the same reason. I don’t have to worry about system specs or driver issues or anything like that… I can just launch the game and play it.

heygooberman, 1 year ago

I used to be in a similar position as you. I ditched Windows about 1.5 years ago, and I hopped around several distros for a while before settling on Linux Mint. About 2 months ago, i decided that I wanted to try out something new, not because Linux Mint wasn’t working for me, but just to see if there was something else that would be fun to learn about Linux. Today, I use Arch, and my DE is basically the Linux Mint Cinnamon DE.

cmat273, 1 year ago

not really unless you’re trying something relatively unique like nixos or void etc. you can do most things on any distro

rodbiren, 1 year ago

Well if you are doing work on you computer you find rewarding and it functions I would quit while you are ahead. Getting into distro hopping and caring about Linux internals is a bit like being a car enthusiast. You can either have a car to drive it or have a car that you fart around all the time tweaking bits, replacing it, breaking it, developing strong opionons about things almost no one cares about.

So to you want to be a driver or an enthusiast? By using Linux at all you can essentially consider yourself part of the “car club”, but there is a whole heck of a lot else to learn.

maxprime, 1 year ago

Can somebody ELI5 what the difference between Linux distros is? I’m ashamed to admit I don’t truly understand, aside from different package managers and DEs but even then there are only a handful of those.

NateSwift, 1 year ago

As far as I’m aware the only real difference is what repositories are available and what the default settings/programs/etc are

superfes, 1 year ago

It’s mostly just package management, you can install as many DEs as you want on just about every distro.

You’re not stuck with whatever default DE any distro uses.

maxprime, 1 year ago

Yeah but don’t Debian and Ubuntu (for example) use the same package manager?

Dran_Arcana, 1 year ago (edited 8 months ago)

Yes but they use different repositories with different maintainers. Think of a package manager like steam, epic, etc, except instead of games it’s everything. Some package managers get different applications, some have different versions of the same applications. In the case of Debian/Ubuntu it’s more like steam in China vs steam in the rest of the world. Same steam, different games, different maintainers of who decides what games get to go in which steam.

maxprime, 1 year ago

Oh, so if you install software with apt, you might get a different version based on the different maintainer/distribution?

I always figured you’d just get the latest version of the software.

Are there instances of software packages available for one distro but not another?

Dran_Arcana, 1 year ago

Generally end-user applications like Firefox would be the latest/same version, but system libraries might be a few versions different. Generally security patches are written for a few major versions of libraries/daemons at the same time. So features might be different but it’s all the same security for the most part.

That’s the major draw between one distro to another, they will have different philosophies on what to include, and what major version to use. Debian for example is much more reluctant to upgrade something unless there’s a large demand for a new feature. The theory is it is more stable and consistent to use that way.

Ubuntu on the other hand features much more modern versions of libraries because they want to be more hip and modern, expecting users to learn new things more often because they think the new features are worth it and they want to support all the things.

dan, 1 year ago

Ubuntu on the other hand features much more modern versions of libraries because they want to be more hip and modern

You can use the “testing” release of Debian if you want newer stuff. It’s still more stable than rolling distros. Packages have to be in the “unstable” release for 10 days with no major bugs to get promoted to testing.

CrabAndBroom, 1 year ago

It can sort of depend on the distro, there are a lot of Debian-based ones such as Debian (obviously), Kali, Ubuntu, and then ones based on Ubuntu like Mint and Pop!OS, those all largely work the same under the hood, ie you’d use .deb files and something like sudo apt-get install to install something.

Then there are Arch-based ones like Arch and Manjaro, which are a bit more different, you’d use pacman or yay or paru to install things instead, and they have things like the AUR, which is a big user-maintained repository or software that has just about everything on it.

Then you have the Fedora based ones and SUSE based ones, which are different again in other ways. And some more unique and weirder ones like NixOS which is having a bit of a moment, whereby you sort of configure the entire system in one single config file and rebuild it each time (as I understand it, that might be a bit off 'cause I’m still learning.)

So yeah it sort of depends. And then you have desktop environments like GNOME and KDE which aren’t distros, but do affect how the whole system looks (and functions, to an extent.) And these are largely agnostic of the underlying distro, so you could have say a machine running Debian with GNOME next to a machine running NixOS with GNOME which would look very similar from the desktop but would be hugely different under the hood, and two machines running Arch, one with GNOME and one with KDE which would look totally different but be functionally the same.

I won’t even start on Display Managers lol.

pixelscript, 1 year ago (edited 8 months ago)

The way I understand it is like this:

The grand theory of classic package managers is the idea that lots of programs all need the same core libraries to function. An analogy would be like noticing most construction jobs need nails. So instead of making everyone bring their own copy of nails, resulting in dozens of redundant copies of it lying around, they have a single nails package that everyone can use.

But there are different versions of nails out there. Each version picks up unique new features, and drops legacy ones. Recent builds may incorporate and thus require the new features, making them incompatible with old versions of nails that don’t have them. On the other hand, some builds may still use and rely on legacy features of nails, and are thus incompatible with the new versions. You may run into a scenario where you want Software A that needs nails version 14+, but also Software B that can only run on nails v <13, and you just can’t, because they don’t overlap.

Additionally, there may just be a totally different competing package out there, screws, that does largely the same job as nails, but in a completely different way that is totally incompatible with projects that expect nails. So if you need Software C that relies on nails, but also Software D that relies on screws, you might cause problems by installing both.

What a distro is is essentially a group of devs declaring that they are putting together some specific list of libraries (like, say, nails v14), and then sculpting up a bundle of software around those specific libraries. Can’t cope with nails v14? That sucks. No package for you, then.

In that sense, distros are differentiated by what libraries and other low-level system softwares are available to the programs you wish to install on them. If you want your program to be available natively on every distro, it needs to be compatible with every competing set of libraries each distro has elected to use.

It is possible to just say “fuck it” to the distro’s built-in libraries, and instead bundling the specific version of nails or screws or whatever you project needs directly with it. Build your own with blackjack and hookers, as it were. That’s exactly what Flatpak does, among others. But it’s trading flexibility for redundancy. In the age of cheap and plentiful storage memory, many people think this trade is well worth it. But it makes many formalists cringe.

Fizz, 1 year ago

I switched from mint because I didn’t like cinnamon and wanted to try kde without going through the process of replacing a de. It was worth it because it like using my computer a lot more when I can make the de pretty

superfes, 1 year ago

I’ve been using Gentoo since 2004, every now and then I pop a distro DVD ISO into a VM to see what all the hubbub is about, but I doubt I’ll ever switch to another distro unless Gentoo dies.

My point is, sans diatribe, pop a distro ISO into a VM and see if it even seems like something you’d like.

You don’t have to do any more than that, keep using what makes you happy.

floofloof, 1 year ago (edited 8 months ago)

You’re not missing anything really. For some reason some people like to say that Mint is a good distro for beginners and imply that you should change away from it when you’re more “advanced”. This is really nonsense. Mint is a good distro. I switched to Tumbleweed because I found one or two things I couldn’t do so easily in Mint, but if you’re not having trouble there’s really no reason to switch. And with tools like Flatpak and Distrobox available these days there’s even less reason to distro hop.

Ramin_HAL9001, 1 year ago (edited 8 months ago)

You’re not missing out on anything. Mint lets you install various desktop environments, they are all very well-configured and stable by default. You can just install the appropriate desktop environment meta-package using Apt:

• apt install 'task-gnome-desktop’
• apt install 'kde-plasma-desktop’
• apt install 'cinnamon-desktop-environment’
• apt install ‘task-xfce-desktop’

Then you can “hop” from one GUI experience to another by just logging out and logging in with a different session. You might have to add some additional Ubuntu repositories to your Apt config to get all of these meta-packages though.

Besides the desktop environment, the only other big difference between distros is how you use their package managers, which all do the same thing anyways, just with different CLI commands.

Probably the most important thing to consider in a distro is which versions of the latest stable releases of the big Linux apps are available in their distros. Arch-based distros (Garuda, Manjaro, ArcoLinux, EndeavorOS) are the most bleeding-edge but these operating systems tend to break after a software update if you fail to update often enough. Ubuntu and Fedora are the most bleeding-edge non-rolling release distros that I know of, and in my experience they never break after a software update.

nixx, 1 year ago

I’ve been daily driving boring Debian since RedHat Linux 8 came out 20 years ago now. I tried switching to openSUSE and just didn’t see the point after a bit, so I switched back. The only time I’m not on Debian is when I’m playing with FreeBSD or NetBSD.

Same for DE, I’ve been using XFCE for so long that I don’t get the fuss about pretty environments.

Not hopping does not mean you’re missing out, boring can be good. Things are stable and stay out of the way of you doing actual work.

There is a quote out there somewhere about how customizing FVWM can become an obsession.

There is nothing wrong about hopping, as long as you are doing it for hobbyist reasons, at the end of day the only difference is the package manager and the DE.

Good luck

MangoKangaroo, 1 year ago

Honestly, if Mint has been working fine then I see no reason that you’d need to switch. If you’re curious about trying out other distros, it could be worth using a program like Boxes to try out some VM’s. Otherwise, I say you keep doing whatever works well for you.

southsamurai, 1 year ago

If you want to enjoy distro hopping, go find a cheap thinkpad as a secondary device, and have fun. Otherwise, you try out live discs/drives to see if you get full compatibility with your main device.

Truth is that you’ll have more difference in user experience DE hopping than distro hopping.

You only distro hop until you find what works right with an your hardware and preferred software, unless you’re doing it as a hobby. Now, the desktop environments? That’s where you’ll see the big difference.