Linux

I tried various linux distros like ubuntu as a kid, but because of gaming I didn't switch at that time, then around 2010 I got a home server and installed Arch on it. When Arch switched to systemd I switched to gentoo because I did not want systemd. In 2014 I switched to gentoo Linux on my desktop, but still had dual boot for gaming on windows. I tried various init systems on gentoo and then ended up using systemd anyways. Because I got sick of waiting for packages to compile I switched back to arch on my desktop. On my home server and laptop I used alpine linux for a while. I switched back to arch shortly after because I had too many issues with alpine on desktop. I still use alpine in VMs on the server, but others that I don't touch as much like the print server run rocky linux. I also tried GPU-passthrough to game in a windows VM, but I never managed to resolve all the issues. Since nowadays most games run on wine and proton I never bothered reinstalling/fixing windows when it stopped booting a few years ago, so now I use linux only.

I’ve distro-hopped across at least 20-30 varying distros between 1999, when I began my Linux journey, and now.

From Big Box Redhat 5 to Debian to Mandrake to Ubuntu to Fedora to Mandriva (what Mandrake and Conectiva became) to Arch to Cent to insert-flavor-here and a mix of many of those over the years.

I’ve settled on Garuda Arch for the time being, and may eventually give Nobara a try once GE has v40 out and has made more progress on umu.

The one distro I’ve never tried: Gentoo. I suppose I’m okay with binaries built by someone else.

Windows -> PopOS -> EndevourOS -> Fedora(for literally 2 days) -> NixOS 22.11 -> NetBSD -> NixOS Unstable

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu -> Arch -> KDE Neon -> Fedora -> Arch -> openSUSE Tumbleweed

Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 -> Fedora Workstation -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

Windows 2000

Windows Vista Windows 8

Trying every Linux distro under the sun for a little while in VirtualBox

Linux Mint + Windows 8 later 10 dual boot due to software required by school

Trying some Arch based systems in VirtualBox

My owm minimal Arch i3 setup + Windows 10 dual boot due to software required by school

Issues with my own setup, Manjaro + W10

Manjaro is weird, EndeavourOS + W10 (only for a short while)

Linux Mint just works (+W10, until I could fully use my own software, now it's just Mint for several years)

I'm tinkering around with NixOS in QEMU from time to time, not everything “just works” but it's okay

Windows 98 -> Slackware dual boot (with big ol' red grub screen) -> windows up to win 10 -> debian(laptop) win10 (pc)

Gonna try getting a new m.2 drive and dual booting soon to test playing the games I like on Linux. If all goes well, I'll be moving away from windows

MacOS (old one like around 2012 or so) -> Windows 8 -> Windows 10 -> Several Linux on VM(Kali, Ubuntu(s), Fedora…) -> WSL1(Kali, Ubuntu) -> MacOS (with a newer OS) -> NixOS -> Void Linux ->

Now I’m currently using Void Linux, Windows 11, MacOS Sonoma.

I’m planning to put ~~Fedora~~ Debian (because it’s well supported by linux-surface community) on my Surface Laptop 1st gen which I’m not using right now.

I don’t even remember all of them, let alone the correct sequence. I’ve also had multiple computers at one time (still do), and usually they have different distributions (still true).

First experiment: Mandrake

First serious use: Ubuntu edgy eft or something

Spiraling out of control: kubuntu, xubuntu, lubuntu, debian, kaos, mint, easypeasy, fedora, korora, rox, manjaro, openmediavault, rockstor, + many niche distributions

Current: arch and debian

Before you ask, no, I’m not a diagnosed psychopath.

DOS/Win 3.1 -> Win95 -> Win98 SE -> windowXP -> open?SuSe(1 week) -> Mandrake -> (a month) -> WindowsVista -> Debian(a couple years) ->Win8(a few months) -> Ubuntu/Kubuntu (a couple years) -> Pop_OS! (currently). I still have a windows vm installed but it rarely gets used.

That's kind of the highlights sort of how I remember it. It's been a long time . 15-20 years of gnu/linux usage. I've also been using a raspberry pi with raspbian/raspberry pi os since the first gen device was released, too.

at the time I installed Mandrake it was one of the only distros that had a graphical installer besides Red Hat. I remember that was a driving factor for my decision making back then.

Windows (XP to 10), Manjaro, Arch, Artix, Alpine (for like a week), NixOS (for like 2 weeks) and finally think I have settled on openSUSE mainly because of the curated rolling release and already setup snapshots. (I was swapping back and forth between Windows for all of these)

Distros I've tried but not really used: Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenBSD and FreeBSD (not really linux but you get the point).

NixOS was actually my favorite of the bunch, it was like linux on easy mode, just type in some config and the system manages the rest for you.

• Red Hat Linux 5.1 - 7.x
• Slackware 7.0 - 12.0
• Ubuntu 6.10 - 9.10
• Slackware 13.37 - 14.1
• Mint 16 - 17
• Arch

Mint->arch->nixos

Windows Vista → Debian (pre-systemD) → Devuan → Void Linux.

I don't like systemD.

I still have Windows installed as a dual boot setup for Adobe CC.

90s was Mandrake, early 2000s was all about Ubuntu.

Since then I've tried just about everything including BSDs. It's all pretty much the same thing, as long as you like the package manager and release schedule. I don't like snap or flatpak so avoid distros that use them a lot.

These days I mainly just use opensuse leap, although I love arch etc but it's just too much work for me now.

I only really need a terminal, firefox and emacs and I'm happy.

• MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows for Workgroups 3.11
• Red Hat Linux 5.2
• Slackware Linux 3.5
• FreeBSD 3.2 -> FreeBSD 6.0
• Kubuntu 6.06
• Linux Mint Darnya
• Arch Linux with KDEmod and oss4, later with awesome window manager
• Fedora Leonidas, Constantine
• Microsoft Windows 7
• Fedora Goddard, Lovelock (this time with KDE)
• OpenBSD 4.9 -> OpenBSD 7.0
• Debian stable (buster, then bullseye, now bookworm)

I left OpenBSD reluctantly when I found that it wasn't meeting my needs anymore. I needed an iPad Pro and an iPhone to fill in the missing functionality and they don't play nice with OpenBSD for things like transferring files, photos, etc.

I've since converted the family to Debian stable. Backports and flatpak make it incredibly reliable. We can do everything from here and its well documented for every use case. Video chats, zoom conference calls, file sync/sharing, bluetooth music through Spotify, etc. Started with buster when it was the stable distro; jumped early to bullseye during the freeze; and now holding onto bookworm.

I used to enjoy Arch when I was 16 maby

Ubuntu (2007) >> Arch (2009) >> Debian (2014) >> Fedora (2024)
Plus now and then installing OpenBSD for fun for a couple of months at a time.

Windows for until 8 => various Ubuntu Flavours for a while => Manjaro for a couple Weeks maybe => Arch for 5+ Yeats => fedora since maybe 2 months

kubuntu 2 years windows 10 2 years Ubuntu 1 month kubuntu 2 years fedora 2 years everything for about a month fedora for a year arch since february

Ubuntu VM (~2 years) -> Debian VM(1 week) -> Arch VM (1 month) -> Arch

• Started on a Windows Vista machine, but I dual-booted Mint on it when it started to run slow.
• The software broke or got corrupted, so I installed Lubuntu.
• Lubuntu started to freeze, so I installed Mint again.

The hardware was really outdated at this point, so I got a new machine. Windows 8.1.

Got a different new computer with Windows 10. Started trying out lots of distros of VMs.

• Switched out the drive and installed... OpenSUSE, I think?
• Catastrophic system error during an update, left the system corrupted. I installed Debian.
• Another system error (which may have been caused by me) led me to install FreeBSD.
• FreeBSD was usable, but not super usable. I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
• Catastrophic system error during an update, left the system corrupted. I installed Debian (again).

tldr: Windows Vista -> Mint -> Lubuntu -> Mint again -> Windows 8.1 (new computer) -> Windows 10 (new computer) -> OpenSUSE Leap -> Debian -> FreeBSD -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Debian again

• Windows (various versions on and off like 95, XP, 7,8,10)
• Fedora core 6
• Ubuntu 8.O4-10.04
• Fedora again I think beefy miracle
• Arch

Didn't really hop much, started with Windows, went on to OSX, got annoyed at it and ran Arch in a VM until I was comfortable with it, then went bare-metal with it.

Happy Arch user for some years now, though recently I'm using Fedora for work and I really like it. It's not a good fit for some machines I'm running which need a lot of customisations to run properly.

On my main computer: Ubuntu (@2005) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Arch (for maybe 6 months) -> Gentoo (for years) -> Debian (for years) -> Gentoo (until now)

CP/M, GCOS, DOS, Windows, BeOS, Debian a few years, Ubuntu (a lotttttt of years), Mint (~3 years), MX (6 years now).

I played/installed with a couple of distro like Mandrake, LFS, CentOS, Arch, etc and basically all distro in the 90s were a bunch of floppies for the kernel and gnu utils, a bunch for X, that we downloaded from university usenet.

LFS was nightmarish, so is Arch a little bit when you install everything from basically scratch, now I prefer something that is working fine, MX AHS is a really good distro.

I also always prefered simple window system, coming from mwm/twm. Cinnamon was pretty but in the end I hated it, Xfce is my DE of choice now.

Windows (many years) -> Dual boot w/ Ubuntu for a few years -> Windows + WSL (Ubuntu) for many years -> Arch Linux (laptop) + EndeavourOS (desktop) for a few months now

I think I will stick with Arch Linux for new installs, I didn't have any issue that wasn't solvable by reading the wiki

• Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7 spanning a decade and a half.
• Ubuntu 10.04 going up to the release where Unity became the default DE (11.04, I think). Came back to 10.04, as it was an LTS release.
• Linux Mint Maya because of Cinnamon, and it was terrible.
• Fedora 16 to 25 or 26.
• Linux Mint 19

Been with Linux Mint ever since. It just works. LM19 was also around the time when I stepped into Apple’s walled garden with iOS and macOS.

I used Ubuntu for a long time, because it was easy to use and I wasn't really a power user on linux (was just using it on a cheap laptop for classes a long time ago). When I built a server for myself recently, I didn't really explore distros and plopped Ubuntu on it.

More recently, I got a new laptop and ended up installing Fedora on it. So far, I like Fedora a lot. I know there's probably a better distro out there for me, but this one worked without fiddling and I'm liking it a lot more than Ubuntu. Ubuntu snaps kinda screwed my server for a year or so. I need to replace Ubuntu on that soon, I'm just not looking forward to dealing with that so it silently stays Ubuntu.

Despite my username, I ditched EndeavourOS a few days ago because an update broke it and installed fedora

Windows -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Ubuntu -> Debian GNU/Linux -> EndeavourOS

Currently using Debian and EndeavourOS in parallel as the distributions I have settled on.

Debian from woody until systemd, gentoo since.

DOS (probably) ➡️ Windows95/98 and MacOS 7/8/9 ➡️ mkLinux ➡️ Gentoo ➡️ Arch Linux ➡️ Gentoo

So yeah. Pretty early on I concluded that Gentoo is the best for me.

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Arch -> macOS -> Windows 10 -> Arch -> Xubuntu and Windows 10 and probably back to Arch some day.

Windows 98 -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 (long time)
Attempted Linux Mint for a day or two
Windows 10 (long time)
Windows 10 + Pop OS (June 2021)
Windows 10 + Tumbleweed (Switched after couple months of Pop OS)
Tumbleweed (Dropped Windows after not using Windows for 6+ months)

I started with an ancient redhat, moved to Linux From Scratches, landed in Gentoo 25+ years ago and never hopped anywere else since...

I have distrohoped a lot that I don't even remember the sequence of the distros I have used.

Was a Windows user up through Win 7.

I started to play with Raspberry Pis and mostly Raspbian on the side largely related to my amateur radio hobby.

My laptop died, I bought a new one. Windows 8.1. Figured I'd rather use that slow-ass single core Pi 1 running Debian Wheezy than this.

First I tried Ubuntu Unity. I thought "Okay this could work, let's keep shopping."

Next I tried Mint Cinnamon. "Here we go."

I've taken a look at Manjaro a couple times over the years. I have stopped this.

I briefly tried to run Pop!_OS when I first built my desktop, that lasted 3 weeks.

My desktop and laptop run Mint Cinnamon, I've got a tablet running Fedora Gnome. I kinda found my home fairly quickly and I'm not really interested in moving out.