Hi, I just want to share / get some opinion.
I started using Linux 2 years back. I was dual booting back then and after a year switched to Linux completely.
I started out using Ubuntu, hated it, installed Manjaro after a week and when pacmac broke the thing within 2 months, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, read the arch wiki and installed arch. Things were going great except for some Nvidia issues (I am using an Optimus laptop) but utt was running smoothly. Then decided that I want to build a game engine and the nvidia issues were significant. So I read somewhere that Fedora has great nvidia support and I installed it and everything worked. I installed Fedora 39, and it worked. When Fedora 40 came, I upgraded no issues, Fedora 41 came, no issues.
But just a few days back when I had vacation, I decided my system was getting bloated and I didn't manually want to uninstall apps, I decided let's format it. But I thought... Arch might take up less space on my disk(1 have a 512gb nvme, and t 2tb hdd, but I like to put things like games and projects I am working on, on the nvme). So I installed arch and loving the experience. I installed Nvidia-open drm drivers and it just works.
TLDR: Is it normal to distro hop after being using a distro perfectly for so long?
PS: I used archinstall because I didn't want through the lengthy process again. And archinstall works great.
I've also hopped distros on a scale of several years at a time. Loved Arch before I was living on an awful internet connection; did Ubuntu until they messed with snaps; loved Tumbleweed for a few years, but the volume of updates was getting a bit much; nearly learnt Nix but a trial run of Home Manager went up in flames, then I realised multiple layered package versions wasn't worth the 'stability'; now Mint's been doing the job nicely, but I'm tempted to try KDE's new distro someday.
I hopped more for different desktop experiences than distro. now I've settled into arch for the last 12+ years
Distro hopping is fairly normal if you're still relatively new to Linux, I guess you do it less as time goes on, because you'll have a better idea of whether or not a specific distro is appealing to you or not. To be able to even judge that you have to try out some distros for yourself, of course, so you need to do some distro hopping in order to tell what "direction" of distro is best for you. Sure you can read about it or watch videos but it's never the same as actually running it for yourself.
Yes, normal. It is good for you and it is good for Linux.
Distros try different things, and it is good to be exposed to many of those. It helps to discover the most functional ideas and cross pollinate.
Wait until you try non-linux FOSS OSes...
Easier to distro hope if your data is safe elsewhere.
I had a three year bender with OpenBSD back in 2001-2003 or so. I even started building my own kernels and doing a tiny bit of hacking on the code. There's all kinds of interesting tools and systems out there if you start exploring.
Nice!
I am currently setting up a FreeBSD ZFS file server. Software installs are so fast I thought they failed. (OS installer needs quality of life improvemens.)
We had a similar issue back in 2004 or so. Downloading a browser (Mozilla) was a bout 40MB. Normally it took about 30 seconds to pull it down on our University Internet. Then one day we were setting up systems and every time we clicked the download button nothing seemed to happen.
Further inspection showed that it had many successful download in under 1 second each. Our IT network team got us linked up to Internet2. It was able to download so fast that the bottleneck was the IDE bus of about 40MB/s. The file was coming from Intel over I2 so we couldn't even see it download before it was done.
TLDR: Is it normal to distro hop after being using a distro perfectly for so long?
I have used the same distribution (Debian) for over 20 years when I decided to change distributions and switch to NixOS. Debian was - and still is - a very fine distribution. I just needed something radically different.
So, to answer your question: yes, it is perfectly normal. Two years isn't even long.
It’s normal if you feel like it, don’t care about others opinions too much ;)
My opinion : far too many distros are « pet distros », a few are actually usable for servers, for desktop as a daily driver and do actual stuff instead of figuring out how to make things work/look pretty.
The one thing I wish I would have learned in the beginning is that distro = opinionated changes to the base offering. Some are sensible, while some maintainers might add fluff that they like themselves.
Seems like the ones that do minimal changes but still offer something novel are the ones that tend to last, though there's obviously exceptions.
back when i started with Linux, i would distro hop in the beginning since i was trying out different ones, making mistakes, but taking that knowledge with me onto the next one. Then i discovered Manjaro, then EndeavourOS and have been on it for years now
Have thought about reinstalling EOS once i rebuild my computer, but see how that goes -
Every Linux user has to go through a period of compulsive distro hopping. Don't worry, eventually you'll grow tired of it and just settle on one workhorse distro.
I distro-hopped so many times I got so sick of change that I've stuck with Debian for 4 years, the longest ever. It's a peaceful life.
I think this is part of tge beauty of linux, you hop till you're happy 😀
Yeah, it's normal. There are so many flavours of Linux out there, why wouldn't you want to try some of them?
Oh yeh, totally normal. I switch distros roughly once a year and if I have more than one device on the go then I almost always have different distros on each of them. I think I was with Linux Mint the longest, but even then I switched DE at least 3 times.
So I read somewhere that Fedora has great nvidia support and I installed it and everything worked
OK maybe I'll try Fedora or Arch, cuz Mint is being weird about my video card.
