[VERY] LONG VERSION / BACKSTORY (optional reading):

In my time with Linux (5yrs since I started dabbling, 3yrs since it's been my daily driver), I've found that there are a lot of people who dislike "hoppers", people who keep switching from one distro to another. Everyone is entitled to their own views and opinions, but this one so fails to resonate with me that I even outright fail to really understand it. The Linuxverse is so vast and diverse and beautiful that why shouldn't one explore and savor it?

Anyway, all that's to say simply that I guess I'd consider myself a "modified hopper", or perhaps instead "hopper adjacent". I am not one who routinely installs a distro on my main machine, wipes it, then installs a new distro and then repeat repeat repeat. Up until VERY recently, both my main laptop, and my "big rig" gaming PC both used Ubuntu Studio, and this distro was also always present on at least one device back when I was in the "dabble phase" as well. And [details available upon request] it was actually not the plan to rid myself of it, but circumstances led that way. In truth, while I would have precious little bad and very much good to say about Ubuntu Studio, even still having a tee shirt and a laptop sticker for it, I'm ultimately glad to be rid of it for now for the simple reason that I feel it a "level up" moment as a Linux user to be finally untethered from "baby's first distro". Odds are relatively high that I'll come back to it in the future on another device someday. But in the meanwhile, the distro which replaced it on my laptop was KDE Neon, and the distro which replaced it on the big rig was Garuda KDE Dr460nized Gaming Edition.

So instead of install, wipe, install, wipe, install etc on main devices like a true [quote unquote] "hopper" does, I explore the Linuxverse by way of repurposing old tech in various rooms of the house with various distros, and explore that way. I have three old (and/or entry level) laptops that I've put distros on, an old Mac mini that I wiped mac off of and put Linux on (opting for Elementary OS 7 in order to keep as much of that "Mac magic" aesthetic on it as possible), and have even started buying cheap, refurbished office mini PCs off places like Amazon and eBay to do this with as well.

I'm not gonna keep buying PCs indefinitely, of course. Once I have one at every TV and computer desk in the house is when I'll stop. Should I feel a need to keep exploring from there, then I'll start buying USB drives and set them up with persistence.

And that's how I am exploring / will continue to explore the Linuxverse. Also, trying to involve distros that cover as broad a space as possible of the various pieces of the Linux tree as well as thin and fat, beautiful and basic, and so on.

Like most people, I got my start in Linux in the safe, cozy, comfy "village" of Ubuntu. And I have more good than bad to say about it. This is no screed on Ubuntu whatsoever. But at 3/5yrs in, I'm REALLY feeling the itch of wanderlust, to leave the comfy coziness of the village, and stake out on a journey to see and experience the wonders (and possibly horrors) of the wide, wild world beyond.

When I was in the dabble phase, in addition to a larger "main" partition that I just kept Ubuntu Studio installed on the whole time, I would have a smaller "hotel" partition that I'd rotate other distros through as a way to audition them, as well as two of the aforementioned backup laptops (though one of them was so limited we're better effectively treating it like just one). The only distros to spend more than a couple weeks installed on the "hotel" were Deepin and Zorin. But even then, I didn't stray that far from Ubuntu, as Deepin, based on non-Ubuntu Debian (which from here I'll simply call "Debian") is, I think, the furthest away I travelled.

These days, I find the Arch branch of Linux to be the most exciting, as if it is the vanguard for Linuxdom in general, and I have three active installs of Arch-based distros as we speak. KDE always has been, and still is my favorite DE, and I have four active distros with it. But I also want to start emphasizing non-KDE in my travels, as well as try to emphasize distros that are based on things other than Ubuntu or Arch. To this end, I've added two Red Hat-based distros (Fedora and openSUSE), a Debian-based one (MX Linux), and hope to soon add something Slackware based, and maybe Gentoo (or is Gentoo itself Slack-based? I can't remember). I don't think I'm ready for any "expert-level"....yet. But someday, I hope.

And then yeah, someday, maybe in another 5-10 years, I hope to have arrived at a point where I feel like I've found a "forever home", or maybe two or three of them, and begin reducing complexity again to just that / those. Maybe it'll be "back in the childhood village of Ubuntu", maybe it'll be Arch or some other place I've already dabbled. Or maybe it'll be some place I've never set foot on yet, or possibly even never yet heard of. But for now at least, it's all about exploration and tourism and tasting / touching / testing as much as I can from as broad as I can.

Anyway, that's where I am. What about you?

It's been a long time (about 15 years) since I've tried other distributions except when I had to use something for a project/debugging that had specific requirements. I found out that I really dislike building custom packages – something that I need from time to time – for Debian based distros while the same thing feels very easy for Arch based distros to me.

In my time with Linux (5yrs since I started dabbling, 3yrs since it's been my daily driver), I've found that there are a lot of people who dislike "hoppers", people who keep switching from one distro to another.

That's not something to which I can relate. I've never gotten that impression. Some people think that it's a waste of time – which it probably is – but there are so many things that people spend time on that seem silly to other people so it does not matter.

I'm a firm believer that there's no "one distro for all usages". That is to say, each Distro has their own areas where they shine and areas where they kind of suck too.

For example, I wouldn't try to run a web server with a SteamOS base!

For my own workstation/computer: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

This distro actually works really well[1] as a workstation and handles both my gaming and my work load well.

For actual work, it includes all I need, from virtualization tools through to development tools and more.

It also has snapper rollback which can perform a partial rollback if things break.

Finally, because it's a rolling release, I don't have to stop every so many months to re-install or upgrade the OS, just keep installing updates and I'm set, that's useful when you have a busy work life like me, where you may not get time to do big upgrades.

[1] Except for the fact it's currently sitting asking me to update 2,207 packages, even though I only updated yesterday

My laptop: Fedora 38 Kinoite

My laptop doesn't need to do quite anywhere near the work level of my workstation, nor the same level of gaming. It does however need to be a good machine to quickly get back online if something goes wrong and be able to perform some work tasks. It needs to be solid and reliable, while also up to date.

That's where Fedora Kinoite comes in, it's an immutable Linux, that's a perfect match for my laptop, as using rpm-ostree I am able to install the exact things I need, along with flatpak packages. It's unlikely to break, and even if it does break, it's a quick to reboot to a working version. Considering the laptop is only powered up for occasional maintenance, outings and/or emergencies, it's important to be able to install updates quickly without side-affects.

Steam Deck: Well, this runs SteamOS. I was going to try other distros on it, but I just never got around to doing that, I keep getting distracted by games.

Servers and other business computers: A mix of RHEL, CentOS, Rocky, Debian

I won't go into detail for each of them, but to summarise these systems need to do a specific task, in some cases be powered on 24-7 and "just do it". That's where these distros come in. On these systems rebooting every day for updates would be a royal PITA.

Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 8 Apr 2023 at 2:47 am UTC

I ran a few distros on my main PC at the same time back then, Arch Linux and Linux Mint specifically but there were others too. I later deleted all but Arch then switched to Garuda. I also had an Arch install on an external HDD but the HDD is reformatted. I'm glad I now run only a single distro.

I ran a few distros on my main PC at the same time back then, Arch Linux and Linux Mint specifically but there were others too. I later deleted all but Arch then switched to Garuda. I also had an Arch install on an external HDD but the HDD is reformatted. I'm glad I now run only a single distro.

Yeah, as I had alluded to in my big post, I do suspect that in time, complexity will begin reducing again, and I'll end up back on just one (or at most two or three) distros(s). Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to that day. When I was in my early 20's [I'm in my early 40's now], like most people that age, I loved to party. But even that early, in the back of my head, I still looked forward to living the quiet life of an older man, his partying days more or less behind him. However, that didn't mean that I didn't like the partying at the time, right? :-)

Perhaps not a perfect metaphor, but I think it works. I do look forward to simpler, more settled days ahead. Truly. But for now, I'm also enjoying all the fun I'm having "chasing the everything"!

My desktop and laptop both run Manjaro. It's my first Arch based distro and I've been using them for about a year. Previously, I've used OpenSuse Tumbleweed, and a variety of debian based distros.

My home server is running debian stable. It's the original install from 2007/8 (although every part of the server has been upgraded since).

My router runs IPFire, which I believe might be LFS based (not sure on that). It's actually running on the server's original hardware (minus a new hard drive)

I can't say anything bad about them. I have much less time to tinker then my younger days, so I generally prefer a distro that gets me doing what I want faster, gaming usually, and are pretty easy on the maintenance.

I run Fedora/Gnome, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint on various computers. I like to keep up to speed on various DEs and distros. I did dabble with Arch (Manjaro, really), but that was a hassle, so I'm not bothering anymore.

Garuda and Debian, usually flipping between KDE / Gnome randomly. Though generally prefer Gnome, because Kmail still kind of sucks.

Currently installing FreeBSD, I mean installation is done, but I need a kernel module that's GPL and because BSD can't ship GPL code in the kernel, I need to recompile. I tried with MidnightBSD but I dont recommend 0/10 poor bsd distro.

I feel like BSD is something I'll like to try at some point, but I'm not sure I'm there yet.

The very superficial grasp I have from the very limited reading I've done paints a picture of a system that is very similar to Linux (which makes perfect sense considering they're both UNIX-derived. What I read implies that your typical BSD does "general computing" much more quickly than Linux, and has a Linux compatability feature / layer (whatever the more appropriate term would be) so that you still have access to the Linux software library, but that it runs
those Linux apps much more slowly than actual Linux would. I also understand that most, or possibly even all Linux DEs will work with BSD as well, and in fact, I am unaware of any DEs that are BSD-specific.

It seems like it'll make a fun playground someday, and there's also a feeling, with it being so niche of being "more punk than punk" insofar as being a Linux user in a world of Mac and Windows is "punk", anyway. :-)

I am unaware of any DEs that are BSD-specific.

yes there is Lumina DE

Ah! Well there ya go! So, that means if/when I ever get around to trying BSD, for a more novel and unique experience, I'll have to remember to give Lumina a look. :-)

Which system I prefer depends very much on how often I will use the system and what the specific hardware is.

Easy and for AMD/Intel/Nvidia users: mageia, Nobara Project, Mint, ROSA Fresh, Neptune, openKylin, GhostBSD, siduction, ALT Sisyphus, EndeavourOS
Average and for AMD/Intel users: Devuan, Void Linux, OpenBSD, Clear Linux, Artix Linux, DragonFly BSD, Alpine Linux, FreeBSD
Average and for Nvidia users: Void Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux

I can work perfectly well with all the operating systems currently listed in DistroWatch's top 200, but for several reasons I always prefer one of the systems I list in the above list. I recently tested openSUSE Tumbleweed and what immediately struck me was that Firefox takes almost exactly twice as long to open as it does on Void Linux. A second thing I noticed was that Firefox on Tumbleweed had frequent hiccups where it became completely unresponsive for several seconds, and then became fully responsive again. I never saw this on Void Linux where Firefox was always perfectly responsive. It is also no secret that Btrfs is not yet working perfectly as it should. Red Hat has literally said recently that they do not want to continue with Btrfs and that it is actually not suitable for professional use. Only RAID 10 currently works reliably on Btrfs, all the other modes are unstable. More generally, you can say that only two really decent file systems currently exist, and they are ZFS and HAMMER2.

I use Arch for my gaming setup, because it's complete enough to have everything, and versatile enough to serve me. (I customize a lot of the system and it allows me to mostly do whatever I want. I really dig Arch's package building system)

I also have a custom from-scratch system, but I can only play native 64 bit games there. No steam, no wine, no lib32. I'm looking forward to the day that I don't need all that junk, when Wine's internal thunking will allow 32 bit games without needing a multilib system. I use that for work, research, even multimedia entertainment. I also have Qemu set up there for virtual machines.

That's what I've got on my rig.

Around 2016 I was contracting on a XBox/PS4 game and needed a PC to run the tools. The Mac at the time was loosing it's appeal as a nice Unix workstation as Apple was turning it into a big iPhone with a keyboard. So I bought an extra SSD and put Ubuntu 16 on it. It was great! I hadn't run Linux on the desktop since ~2002, and I played through the Feral ports of Tomb Raider (the Sibera one?), and Deus Ex Mankind Divided. A year or so later Windows Update borked itself (again... -_-), and wouldn't boot. I accidentally erased the Ubuntu drive when reinstalling as the drive setup in the Windows installer gives you almost no information about the drives. -__- On a lark, I installed this "Pop!O_S?!_&" thing I'd heard nice things about. It was also great, but I'm not sure I could really tell the difference between it and stock Ubuntu. Then I built a new PC and got a System76 laptop to replace my aging Macs. A few months ago I put Fedora on my work machine and rather liked the up-to-date Vanilla Gnome experience. Other than running "dnf" I barely notice the difference between that and Ubuntu-likes though. There are some minor software dev niceties on Fedora though. I moved my personal machine to Fedora when I upgraded the SSD because why not? My System76 laptop died, and I have an AMD Framework on order. I'll probably put Fedora on that too when it comes. I dunno, I'm not really a distro loyalist or hopper. Apparently I just get bored every 5 years or so. >_> Windows 10 has borked itself on my work PC sooo many times since 2016, and I've not had issues with Linux. So I stay!

I like new experiences so I have tried them all...

Debian unstable my primary system
Debian experimental when I feel unstable isn't quite unstable enough
Debian stable mostly on the laptop
Debian oldstable because inertia upgrading said laptop
Debian oldoldstable why upgrade a sleepy old VPS when it just works?

Have I left any distro out? Oh, Debian testing, have to get that one off the bucket list someday!

I like new experiences so I have tried them all...

Debian unstable my primary system
Debian experimental when I feel unstable isn't quite unstable enough
Debian stable mostly on the laptop
Debian oldstable because inertia upgrading said laptop
Debian oldoldstable why upgrade a sleepy old VPS when it just works?

Have I left any distro out? Oh, Debian testing, have to get that one off the bucket list someday!

Ha, sounds pretty close to me.
Server runs Debian Stable
Yoga laptop Debian Stable with Liqorix kernel.
Desktop Debian Unstable with random Experimental stuff (though now I'm not using nvidia less of that). Also Arch
Thinkpad P51, Debian Unstable + Whatever Distro project.
plus most of my other random stuff has Debian on it. I wish Asahi would be Debian based...

Debian testing (now stable i guess) on the desktop
Debian stable (with armbian kernel) on my small server.
Openwrt on my router, it is unfortunately too cheap to install debian on.

For now, I'll simply ask that if you're a user of multiple concurrent distros, and you feel safe / comfortable doing so, please tell us what all they are, as well as which is your "main", even if we can probably tell that already by the distro icon associated with your profile!

I learned a few operating systems and I usually see which one works best for the hardware and for the specific purpose.

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/fr/downloads/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

For Linux gaming: https://chimeraos.org/about/

The desktop systems I use as daily drivers are mainly FreeBSD and Alpine Linux.

My main gaming desktop is on Trisquel:

Intel i5-12600K | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 | Dasharo 1.1.1 | InWin 303 Black | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.8.4-gnu | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz | Corsair K70 Brown Switches | Vaxee Outset


My secondary gaming desktop for any games that don't run on that is on Manjaro:

AMD FX-9590 | EVGA CLC 240 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 24.0.2-manjaro1.1 | Samsung QVO 860 1TB | Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z | | InWin 303 Black | Mate 1.26.1 | Kernel 6.8.4-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz | Zowie FK2


My laptop is a Librebooted T400 on Trisquel:

Intel Core2 Extreme Q9300 | 8GB DDR3-1066 | Intel GMA 4500 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Crucial 250 GB SSD | Bleeding Libreboot 1.9 | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.8.4-gnu

If distrobox count:

- openSUSE
- Debian
- Fedora
- Ubuntu
- Arch Linux
- Rocky Linux

Last edited by Vortex_Acherontic on 6 Apr 2024 at 6:00 pm UTC

For now, I'll simply ask that if you're a user of multiple concurrent distros, and you feel safe / comfortable doing so, please tell us what all they are, as well as which is your "main", even if we can probably tell that already by the distro icon associated with your profile!

I learned a few operating systems and I usually see which one works best for the hardware and for the specific purpose.

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/fr/downloads/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

For Linux gaming: https://chimeraos.org/about/

The desktop systems I use as daily drivers are mainly FreeBSD and Alpine Linux.

Ha, I'm somehow reading this as "All those other distributions are way too mainstream for my tastes. The only one in there I'd consider to have a large user base would be OpenSUSE. I usually can get as far as installing it, using it until I have to run Yast, then I install something else :P

FreeBSD seems to like my old macbooks better than Linux does though (they're weird and contain two nvidia chips)