Apple IIc > Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows XP > Brief experiment with Ubuntu in the REALLY purple and brown era > OS X > Elementary > Fedora > Endeavour > Fedora > Silverblue > ublue > NixOS

(not counting numerous VMs with everything from Debian to Linux From Scratch)

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

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The hardware was really outdated at this point, so I got a new machine.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

• 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.

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Here’s my distrohopping journey (including non-Linux OS)

• Windows 7 →

• Windows 10 →

Mid 2021, I tried Fedora Linux in a VM and was unable to install it, but I liked it regardless.

So, a while later I decided to try this “Linux” thing on my computer.

• Linux Mint (late 2021) →

• Arco Linux (arch felt too intimidating) →

• Debian (stability = good?) →

• Debian Sid (stability = boring) →

• Artix Linux OpenRC (omg i hate systemd so much!1!!) →

• Void Linux →

• Artix Linux runit (it didn’t work) →

• Arch Linux (how do i use systemctl wtf) →

• Void Linux again (ah, ln -s /etc/sv/something /run/service/)→

• NixOS unstable (since January 2024)

Honestly, I’m just glad I found something I liked, as NixOS is perfect for tinkering.

During all that distrohopping, I “DE-hopped” even more. Currently I run SwayFX, but I’ve used Cinnamon, XFCE, Plasma, GNOME, AwesomeWM, i3, bspwm, dwm, swaywm and Hyprland.

edit 1: add Artix Linux runit

edit 2: remove NixOS stable from the list

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

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

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

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Arch Linux

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

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