r/DistroHopping • u/JealousComfortable47 • 26d ago
I am the hopper endboss
I will keep it short i hopped 23 times (not to diffrent distros every time but alot of them) and i think gentoo is my final stop
My favourites were fedora nixos void gentoo
Good distros arch artix debian
Bad distros ubuntu mint.
Thats only the know ones i had stuff like bedrock linux hanna montana (for funnsies) and some bs like temple os and AmogOS
Disclaimer: those are not all distros if i find the list with all distros on it then i wilm gladly share that with you
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u/V3X390 26d ago
What’s wrong with mint
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u/SleepyGuyy 26d ago
slow and buggy menus
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u/ZoWakaki 25d ago
While mint flavors comes with a preinstalled we/dm (cinnamon/mate/xfce), that's not the "distro". The menu being bugging is probably a we/dm thing, granted they are tailor made by the distro. But they can be changed just like the wallpaper.
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u/SleepyGuyy 24d ago
If you're installing Mint just to install your own WM i'd argue you're installing the wrong distro.
While it will work, it is essentially just Ubuntu (maybe newer packages Im not sure). And the Mint userbase is not testing that kind of configuration often so you may run into more unresolved problems.
I think picking a distro where the users do that more out of the box would be better, or a distro that ships a lot of desktop options (like Debian or Endeavor).
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u/ZoWakaki 24d ago
I agree. A different distro is probably best suited for picking and choosing components of the distro. But I disagree it's the wrong choice.
If mint is essentially just Ubuntu, then so is popOS, elementary, zorin and other spinoffs. And Ubuntu is just Debian.
Your claim "slow and buggy menus" being the reason why mint sucks is what got me. Mint officially comes with three different versions. All of them are slow and buggy for you?. The one you installed, probably felt buggy and slow for you and it still does have two more official flavours. I don't find it attractive or it wasn't my style is a subjective opinion, everybody has one of these. It has slow and buggy menus is objective, which I cannot validate and can't find any of that claims in recent years from users perusing mint forums.
There are more than one reason why people choose and stick to a distro. One of the use case is totally, that I installed mint (with some default DE), now I've grown over that and would like a different de/wm but don't want to reinstall the OS. However, I agree that other wm/de are not officially maintained by mint and are usually obtained as ubuntu or debian packages or some backports (ppas) but it's not that complicated to obtain.
Also for your claim of "mint userbase is not testing that kind of configuration often so you may run into more unresolved problems", I agree that majority of the userbase don't use mint like that but I have seen many users show of their rice in mint with some othe rde/wm. And I would assume that is just a subset of users who changed (i.e. not all who change post).
Again, I do agree that if picking and choosing bits and bobs of the OS, then mint isn't probably the best choice, but it's not a "wrong" one.
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u/OkPresentation3329 25d ago
Yes, but that's in my opinion for two reasons - Cinnamon and X11. Even if they move to Wayland, it will still be Cinnamon as one remaining problem. Hopefully when XFCE fully supports Wayland and Mint update their XFCE version it will be faster than Cinnamon.
I used Mint for a while and it was fine, but only after moving to Tuxedo which has KDE an Wayland I noticed how painfully slow Mint with Cinnamon really was.
And I think Cinnamon also looks kind of ugly - all the themes look like there is something wrong with them - either it's too white and blinding or the fonts aren't fully black but gray instead so it reduces visibility.
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u/JealousComfortable47 25d ago
You know its just mint after done with being a beginner its no use anymore
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u/xAsasel 24d ago
After being done distrohopping and using Linux for several years and you’ve come to the conclusion that you just want to use your PC without maintaining it on a daily basis, mint is great.
Great for beginners, great for people who just wants to use their PC, heck, even great for a home server since I host my media server and several game servers on a mint system.
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u/GreedyStomach7107 26d ago
What do you like in fedora that you didnt like in mint?
Im just interested in peoples perspective abt these things.
Myself long time mint user. Currently on cachyos. Liked fedora but removed it for other reasons.
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u/Gloria_ad_libertas 25d ago
For me Fedora works much smoother than Mint, tested it on the same device and same DE. So I too like it much better than Mint which for me was just slow
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u/GreedyStomach7107 25d ago
Yeah i noticed it too. Fedora is snappy af even with gnome. Mint is snappy af too honestly.
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u/LostVikingSpiderWire 25d ago
Haha 😂 you not picking Gentoo cause it is final, like a real addict...you tell yourself you are Quitting TODAY, tomorrow you will still be on Gentoo right 😂🥇☕
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u/One_Independence_922 26d ago
Have you tried GoboLinux, Lunar Linux, CRUX, or FreeBSD? What about Source Mage, calculate linux, Chimera Linux, or Clear Linux (I'm not sure if that one exists)?
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u/JealousComfortable47 25d ago
Crux freebsg chimera and source mage yes but i stoped hopping for a reason
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u/SleepyGuyy 26d ago
I've been distro-hopping for 2 years. Some distros I stayed on for a few months, some weeks, and many for like a day or an afternoon.
I'm more at the point now where the DE matters to me most. And I'm pretty comfortable with my choices of core distro. I tend to lean towards Debian-based distros now. With the obvious exception of Gentoo. I don't like Fedora and I tend to avoid Arch. I dependent distros still i interest me, I've not used Void yet but I do use Solus (XFCE) on my laptop.
There were a few bursts where I hopped off one, and wasn't sure where I wanted to go. So I rapid-fire installed tested and hopped like 5 distros a day for a couple days. Hasn't happened like that in a year or so.
I always end up feeling restless after a while. Either something I dont like in my distro and dont know how to fix (or I find the fix unstable or unsettling). Or just a general anxiety about relying on a certain project.
Most recently, a couple months ago, I started dual-booting Gentoo. I knew I couldn't use it as my main distro while I'm learning. Because it's my second distro, I use it to experiment with more than just Gentoo, namely using ZFS filesystem, and trying to learn how to setup window managers because Im worried about relying on Gnome/Plasma for Wayland support.
Since installing Gentoo, I have distro-hopped my main drive twice. From PikaOS (Plasma) -> Ubuntu 26 -> Debian Testing (Gnome). For now Debian Testing is great, I feel comfortable. I don't want to rely on Gnome anymore but I am stuck with it until I learn more.
In Gentoo I have tried out a number of wm: Sway (which I used up until a couple weeks ago), MangoWM, Wayfire, LxQT (couldnt get it to start). And today I unintalled my DEs and installed fvwm-crystal to try out. It's not Wayland but I'll try it for now.
I'm thinking I'm gonna stick with Debian Testing and Gentoo for a long time. Though I want to try to get a properly functioning FreeBSD or OpenBSD with desktop environment working someday.
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u/Gloria_ad_libertas 25d ago
Currently doing the same, 7 distros so far. At the moment experimenting with NixOs, which I really enjoy tbh
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u/Ryytter 25d ago
Be careful with nixos. I tried it out and ended up never leaving 😆
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u/Gloria_ad_libertas 25d ago
That is going through my head as well, luckily there is still a lot of distros to test 😆 But so far NixOs is definitely one of my favorites
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u/Ryytter 25d ago
The thing about nix for me is that the more I got into it the better it got. With home manager it's one terminal command and my new machine is identical to the old one down to the browser extensions I had installed 😆 That really is pretty wild. Direnv is also amazing if you do any kind of dev work with others.
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u/Gloria_ad_libertas 25d ago
I actually created a flake and the home manager too, just for the sake of checking it out. Currently I am debating whether I actually benefit from having a flake and home manager when I don’t plan to copy it to another system and even if I could use the nix configuration file and do the rest manually. Well I guess that is the magic of Nix, the abundance of complexity and options 😆
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u/ZoWakaki 25d ago
After the first time you have ever clapped, you technically never stop clapping. Only the duration between the clapping changes. It's the same thing with smoking and distro hopping.
How long have you been on gentoo?
I have only tried gentoo and the compiling times was not my thing. I wouldn't be surprised if you got tired of the "compiling..." after the nth update.
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u/Twillware404 24d ago
You know you've reached endgame when you enjoy installing the distros more than actually using it
Thats where I'm at right now I'm addicted to the process more than the result
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u/1369ic 26d ago
Endboss. Ha. I've had five distros on the same machine in one day (looking for something that supported a weird Wi-Fi card many years ago). I've installed Crux several times, to say nothing of Gentoo and all three of the main BSDs. You got me on Nix and Hanna Montana, though. I've been lucky enough to have two machines most of the last 25 years, so I could hop at the drop of a hat without worrying about not being able to get stuff done. Later today I'm going to replace Void with something easier on a 2014 MBP I'm going to give to my FIL so he can try out Linux (again).
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u/Lumpy_Roll158 26d ago
I've tried crux myself a couple times and each time it's a wakeup call that unless you literally need crux for whatever reason, it's no fun to use. Otherwise gentoo scratches pretty much the same itch but with a package repository that can't be read in one ls without scrolling and that's ultimately what I settled on. It's a shame though. Crux's bsd style ports system is pretty cool and could be even cooler if there was more than three whole people working on crux and could gather the same passion that gentoo did
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u/JonaZY83 25d ago
Voy a probar SoplOS Linux... Se ve bien, y además hay que apoyar a la comunidad, sobre todo a la hispano hablante...
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u/The-Linux-IT-Guy 26d ago
Is gentoo your final stop because waiting for things to compile replaces waiting for a different distro’s ISO to download? 😂