I think it’s safe to say that most people here have used more than one Linux distribution, and their first distro wasn’t their last. I’m curious, what were the steps that took you from your first Linux distro to what you currently use? What were the reasons you switched away each time? Would you ever switch back to an old distro? Are you happy with your current one?

  • skyfaller
    5·
    4 years ago

    Red Hat -> SUSE -> Knoppix -> Ubuntu -> Manjaro -> Pop OS

    • Red Hat - My high school friend and his dad introduced me to Linux and helped me build a desktop to install it on. They installed Red Hat. I liked the aesthetic and it worked ok at first, but gradually bitrot and frustration with RPM dependency hell led me to reinstall with SUSE.
    • SUSE - I thought maybe commercial support would make a difference, so I actually purchased SUSE in a box instead of downloading it for free. I guess I hoped it would be Red Hat, but better? Bitrot and dependency hell eventually made this system unusable as well.
    • Knoppix - So I figured, hey, if I store the operating system on a CD and never modify it, it can’t bitrot, right? I just used my hard drive for storing documents etc., and ran Knoppix off of a CD. This worked fine, especially since this was right around when Gmail and similar web apps were being released, so I was able to get a lot done in the browser. Of course, not being able to install and update software eventually became too frustrating, and once you install Knoppix to the hard drive it can suffer bitrot too. The last straw was not being able to get any video editing software working after I bought a camcorder. I broke down and bought a Macbook Pro.
    • Ubuntu - I heard it was way more usable than previous Linux distros, so I started dual-booting my Mac. It was pretty good, but not good enough to make me switch from OS X full time. Eventually I bought a new Macbook Pro and never got around to dual-booting that one, and I stopped using Linux on the desktop for a while. I continued using Ubuntu on my Linode-hosted web server, though.
    • Manjaro - I bought a Pinebook Pro before it shipped with Manjaro, but the default Debian install was a fragile hack and I heard Manjaro was better, so I tried it and it was. It becoming the default solidified this decision.
    • Pop OS - After enjoying the Pinebook Pro, I decided that I wanted to support open hardware + software, so I bought a System76 Thelio and switched to Linux full-time. I gave the default Pop OS a try, and I really like some aspects like the tiling window manager. So I’m still using that, for now!