I distro hopped last year. Proud user of Debian for 15+ years, switched for Void.
Amazing little distro, simple just how I like it.
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Variety is the spice of life. I've used Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, Nix, been on Debian the last few years. Been looking at setting up my own UBlue image. I really like the immutable thing. Do whatever makes you happy..
I'm interested, What exactly is UBlue? Can you clarify on the immutable thing?
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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.
In the current landscape of the distro wars, admitting you just jumped sides is grounds to call forth the raiders from your old distro, they know the distro specific vulnerabilities and will unleash a fury of which you have never seen. The first sign will be a blinking hard drive light...
distro hopping to me is a feature even though I do not do it a lot. Im looking into appimage for my most important things to make it easier in future though. I move very slowly though.
I like having my stable daily driver (currently PopOS) and a separate drive or partition for a rotating distro that may pose more of a learning curve (NixOS right now). So it doesn't really feel like hopping, more like a stable and a sandbox.
I hopped more for different desktop experiences than distro. now I've settled into arch for the last 12+ years
I think it's pretty normal. I personally distrohopped every month until I finally settled on Void Linux. I know a lot of people have stopped distrohopping after using Void, but it may not be your cup of tea.
It's perfectly normal, especially if you found something you couldn't do or needed better support for.
I did something very similar, spent about a year on fedora ... 33? then discovered "my preferred distro" and never looked back.
Thing is that everyone finds their place with a distro and settles for as long as it suits their needs. Then, you might move on, you might not. Its just an OS, a means to an end. Use what you need, then use something else, no need to go to the doctor for hopping headaches :)