I haven't been distro hopping for several years, however I am thinking of swapping Arch with something else on my laptop. Perhaps just plain Debian? Pop!_OS? Back to Manjaro?
I would like to go for something I can settle with again for a long time. Before Arch, I'd hop from distro to distro every week. I am not planning to do that again for sure! But I need a change.
3 months ago · 👍 userfxnet, bavarianbarbarian, klimperfix, ruby_witch
Thank you so much for all the input. I ended up going for what would provide the easiest possible, "work out of the box" experience and installed Mint Cinnamon. When I am not completely burned out, I like to create stuff (art, writing), and I needed something that would get along with my graphic tablet well with not much of a fuss. Arch didn't. Maybe I'll go back, maybe I'll try something else. So far though it's been a great experience. · 3 months ago
I would advise putting Ventoy on a USB and loading a bunch of live distros on there. Just try some out until you find one that really clicks for you.
That said, the one that clicks the best for me is Arch, so I'd be sticking with that in your position! :D · 3 months ago
Another one for Void! It might seem a bit unusual at first, but if you like keeping things simple, it all starts making sense. The chooice of packages might seem limited and you might never be able to build some software as it lacks systemd, but it covers all my needs. I originally tried it out on an old laptop — now I'm running it on 8 out of 9 of my computers, including non-Intel machines. · 3 months ago
For me, Linux Mint is always worth considering. In my opinion, Mint is by far the most stable and lowest-maintenance Linux system with the best user experience ootb. As an experienced Linux user, you can't change that much about the system itself (I mean something like replacing the desktop interface to some DE which is not supported by Linux Mint... Gnome + Linux Mint is a pain to configure!). For PopOS! I would wait until the new Cosmic desktop is shipped. But Debian Sid is great too! · 3 months ago
if linux, then bunsenlabs, works ootb for me · 3 months ago
Debian Stable + XFCE is a sweet spot for when you want the OS to get out of the way and not be a distraction.
If I do want a distraction it is more like Haiku running on RISCV or something :)
What is the goal? · 3 months ago
So to unleash my inner control freak I’ve installed Alpine edge on my PC which was my only computer in the past but now is dedicated solely for fun and hobby activities. And I’m liking Alpine a lot! This is truly simple system among Linux’es. But I don’t think I could have it on my work laptop. Sometimes I need to use some weird crap, sometimes even proprietary soft, for my work and I don’t think such apps would work with muslc, and I don’t want to have to fix them in panic…
I’ve checked Void and KISS too, but they didn’t worked for me.
3/3 · 3 months ago
Debian is great when you need stable platform for something. When I was on Arch I had multiple occurrences of something breaking or changing and disrupting my job’s workflow greatly. And now I have laptop dedicated solely for work, without access to Gemini and with long uBlock’s blockist. I noticed than nowadays older packages on Debian are not a problem. I only care about few applications which I want to have in latest versions so I installed some from Flatpak and compiled some and installed in /usr/local/ and the rest of OS is super stable and I feel that I can trust it. But Debian is sometimes installing surprising dependencies and feels quite bloated.
2/3 · 3 months ago
Well it depends on what you want. I’ve multiple machines: Debian server, Debian work laptop and PC with Alpine.
1/3 · 3 months ago
yeah it's been hard to move away from arch really. rolling distro, that I keep on minimizing, I don't really think about it much anymore. I'd love to movd to openBSD at one point. · 3 months ago
void is what i moved to after arch. very much alike but void aims to be a bit simpler and it scratched that itch of needing something new. · 3 months ago