r/DistroHopping

I am currently on a dualboot debian and windows for some games or software but I would like to change. Problem as a developer I don’t really know what to choose between the two. Would anyone advise me with real arguments?

i need a enterprise os but i cant get redhat

Which one has the best XFCE DE? Why do you prefer one over the other? What do you think are the Pros and Cons? What you think about zypper vs apt?

Mint feels great and easy, but openSUSE (tumbleweed) is rolling release (but stable!); I just want something for daiying driving, I don't have special usage or nvidia drivers. I know they both are great, so I was curious to see what the community here would think.

I noticed many distro hoppers or new linux users in general post about how much they like the new distro, but most of what they like about it is just the Desktop environment (kde, gnome etc). There isn't much visual difference between the distros but the DE instead. So if you're new to this and don't like how the distro look, just look for a better DE. (better be natively supported by the distro) I wanted to point things out for newcomers, because thats what I didn't know in the past.

What makes a distro feel comfortable to you to make you want to main line it for a while?

I did a soft switch from windows a few months ago by installing Linux on my desktop pc, while keeping my windows laptop as a backup. I was looking for a relatively smooth and stable experience with access to plenty of programs that can be installed and used in short order (which has not been an issue in any of the distros that I have tried). Here is a beginner's review of about the different distros that I have tried over the last few months ranked in reverse order.

7. Kubuntu

KDE based Ubuntu? I expected this to be a KDE version of Mint (plus snaps of course). For me, this distro was anything but rock-solid. Kept dropping wifi connectivity, programs would crash randomly, and it was by far the buggiest implementation of KDE that I tried. I uninstalled after a day. Kubuntu is exactly what I did not want in a distro, because not only did it not perform well out of the box, it felt like the kind of distro where it would be aggravating as a daily driver, even though it is supposed to be beginner-friendly. I expected a lower relative effort than Debian/Fedora/Tumbleweed and ended up having to tweak a lot of minor settings to get it working well, and then issues kept popping up as I settled into my daily workflow.

6. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

I had issues getting the wifi to connect during installation, which I ultimately solved. I wasted enough time setting up the wifi (research and implementing a fix) that I was knackered by the time I was ready to use the OS. It was very responsive, however, driver issues, menu glitches, and other fixable things all felt like they would take a little more effort than I was willing to give to get the OS running well. I'm sure it's a fine OS, it just didn't play well with my hardware and had enough glitches that I uninstalled fairly quickly.

5. GNOME - based distros

Plenty of them worked fine (Ubuntu, Debian Gnome, Fedora workstation) but I don't like the GNOME environment. The distros were fine otherwise.

4. Pop! OS

This distro probably should be lower because I think COSMIC still needs a little work. This felt like the OS that has the most potential because of the desktop. however, I had minor issues with tiling and certain applications crashing and they were enough to keep me away from Pop!OS as a daily driver. Maybe in the future when it's a bit more polished I'll look into it again.

I was very intrigued by the window tiling, and really want a highly-customizable or rules-based implementation (it may be included already but there were enough minor glitches that I didn't want to waste time throwing new wheels on a car that needed an oil change and a suspension refresh). I would love to be able to set per-desktop tiling rules with custom sizing and program placement (i.e. first three programs open in a specific configuration, and other tiles spill over to other desktops that I assign based on my pre-designed layout). Hopefully COSMIC gets better over time.

3. Debian

Overall, I liked this operating system and it performed well, installation was a little more involved than the higher-ranking systems, but once running, I didn't really have any issues. I think being a little behind in the release cycle, and somewhat sluggish performance is what turned me off of Debian in the long run

2b. Fedora KDE

I tried Fedora twice, the first time I didn't enable third party repositories, and it was more difficult to use. I'm not judging Fedora on that attempt.

Positives

1. Stable and fast (but doesn't launch apps as quickly as tuxedo for me)
2. tons of available apps and the newest version of KDE plasma, which was nice, but also a drawback when seeking to customize (because I accidentally downloaded themes that were no longer compatible)
3. For whatever reason, using terminal in Fedora makes more sense to me. I did not have to look things up as much.
4. The 'leading edge' advantage

Negatives

1. program launch speed is inconsistent.
2. I can't put my finger on it, but it always felt like Fedora was missing something that would make it easier to use compared to some other distros. If I did have an issue, the fixes were a little less intuitive than Mint or Tuxedo.
3. I had occasional boot issues after I partitioned my hard drive and installed another OS alongside Fedora.

2. Linux Mint

Positives

1. I love the layout of the cinnamon desktop the best. Especially the settings and applications menus
2. Almost everything just works out of the box
3. Mint does a great job of guiding the user through the experience and those tips are able to be toggled once you get the hang of things.
4. Burn my windows is sick and I miss it, so satisfying

Negatives

1. Not as many desktop apps available out of the box (mainly the proton desktop apps). This probably isn't an issue for most users, but I prefer desktop apps when I am doing a heavy workflow so that my browser tabs don't get jumbled. I used Vivaldi as a solution--web panels--but I had some minor issues with Vivaldi on Mint.
2. X11 is a bit annoying. My computer starts to chug a little if I turn the refresh rate up (barely noticeable but it's a review and I'm splitting hairs). Also, some windows/apps are blurry compared to KDE (looking at you vivaldi).
3. The file manager, Nemo, is not as nice as Dolphin.

1. Tuxedo OS

Everything works well, and this OS has been the fastest for me.

Positives

1. Ease of use - nearly perfect, a lot of available applications, launches applications faster than most other distros for my hardware.
2. Plasma desktop (see Mint review) is great for the most part. I wish I could combine Plasma and Cinnamon.
3. Tuxedo's Control Center is really nice, and seems like it would work particularly well on laptops. Of course, that's probably the point given Tuxedo's business model.

Negatives

1. The only negative that I can think of is that the settings menu and discover have crashed a few times--usually when customizing or downloading the system's appearance (icons, fonts, global themes, colors, etc.). Also, I don't like KDE's settings menu as much as cinnamon's, but it's not a big deal and I'm sure that I could customize it more. It's annoying but now that I have the desktop customized as I please, I don't really care.

Overall, I love Tuxedo OS. I downloaded it and ran a live ISO after some issues with Tumbleweed. Everything worked well. I got cold feet and went back to mint. I used mint for about fifteen minutes after reinstalling, stopped setting things up, and headed back to Tuxedo. Tuxedo (and at times Fedora) were the only two distros that made me consider permanently switching away from Mint.

Please send any suggestions for other OS's--if there are any--that do what TuxedoOS does for me, but better. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

i'm a bazzite user and i'd love to dual boot with Hannah Montana Linux to have a silly secondary os to manage frivolous files separately.

is it possibile? i heard hml doesn't work well on modern hardwares

If possible, what's the best way to do it? I know that with Bazzite it's not a good idea to put both on the same SSD, but I don't know anything else.

Thank you in advance!!

Hey guys I have been using arch as an daily driver for abt 5 months now my question is with all the aur drama should I stay on arch or move to fedora or nix

As the title says. Im lookong for some opinions on potentially swapling to Suse tw from fedora.

It will be for general use on a PC (multi-screen) including gaming.

Hi i am now running kubuntu but i dont kniw if its good or should i switch to fedora. I like gaming but i want my system to just works. So should i switch to fedora or try something else?

I just want to give you some context. I was doing some research today. I went around looking for a Lennox distro for my dull laptop. I first installed Fedora. Linux desktop edition with KDE Plasma, and as I was using it I realised that it wasn’t running or functioning very smoothly so I got Linux Mint, and it still dos not feel that smooth even though I have done some research and I still keep getting Linux mint as a recommendation for my laptop's hardware and software that’s in my computer and I personally and honestly don’t know what to do and I’ve decided to turn to you all, the experts the people that have more knowledge, more experience, more of a brother idea of what direction I should be heading into so I hope to see what you all have and hopefully there will be something that will work out for me

I am a cs student and I am willing to learn backend engineering and I am looking for the best linux distro for coding and studying I have some experience with arch so I was about to make a 64gb 300mb/s arch usb but many people told me arch is not the one I like to customize stuff to make them cool

Please give my reskinned budgie ubuntu a try because I put a lot into it. Weird theme system. wierd file explorers. https://mr-richardson.com/galactic-mandate-linux/

Just made it to distrowatch which I am very proud of. https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=galactic

Here is the official summary. "I built a custom Linux ISO called Galactic Mandate Linux v.99 and wanted to get feedback from people who actually like trying different distros.

It is built from Ubuntu Budgie, but redesigned as a sci-fi / space-FUI desktop based on my Galactic Mandate universe. The idea was to make a live Linux environment that feels like a fictional command system, while still being usable as a normal desktop.

Some of what it includes:

• Ubuntu Budgie base
• Custom sci-fi / FUI desktop styling
• Book-cover-inspired themes
• Live system telemetry
• Yellow alert and red alert modes
• Control Center for theme switching and alert controls
• eDEX-style cockpit / terminal workspace
• Space Explorer and File Map visual file tools
• Flatpak support
• Firefox, Discord, Steam, and ONLYOFFICE where available
• AI workspace launchers
• Some of my open-source AI / prompt / desktop tools preloaded

To be clear, I’m not presenting the whole ISO itself as open source. Some of the tools included are open source, but GMLinux is more of a custom live ISO / themed desktop experiment.

The main reason I’m posting here is because this seems like the right place to ask:

Would you actually distro-hop into something like this just to test it?

I’m especially curious about:

1. Do themed distros/remixes interest you, or do they usually feel gimmicky?
2. Would you rather see this as a live ISO only, or something installable?
3. What information would you want before trusting or testing a custom ISO?
4. Are preloaded local AI / prompt tools a useful bonus, or just clutter?
5. What screenshots or technical details would make the project look more legitimate?

Project page / ISO info:
https://mr-richardson.com/galactic-mandate-linux/

I’m looking for honest feedback. If this sounds cool, I’d like to know why. If it sounds like a bad distro idea, I’d also like to know why."

https://reddit.com/link/1uln5e9/video/9opaa9msawah1/player

As the title says, I'm hunting for the perfect work linux flavour on my Vivobook S14 M5406WA.

Finally got tired of the Windows bs and decided to switch to linux.

Have been considering moving for quite some time now, but some stuff made me stay on Win.

1. Do I need to worry about OLED pixel refresh/shift stuff MyAsus ships with?
2. Do I get good DCI-P3 coverage compatibility?
3. Do I get the same HDR compatibility?
4. Is modern standby an issue? It seems my laptop firmware doesn't support normal S3 sleep at all.
5. Will I have battery passthru charging? (It's a deal breaker for me if linux can't do it gracefully)
6. Will I miss out on some QoL feature or any feature at all?
7. Any quirks I should be aware of? (Any input AT ALL is appreciated lowkey)

And for the more important question: What flavour do I choose?

A quick search boiled down to either Fedora or CachyOS; am I on the right track?

(I do have my fair bit of experience with linux, I maintain a fleet of homeservers/VPSes, so headless linux I am aware with. Laptop OSes is a whole different rabbit hole apparently and I don't wanna start on the wrong foot)

Thanks :)

I daily drive cachyOS , can say I’m addicted. But I have other Linux distros on other laptops/desktops and they are fun . But Cachy is my go to . I do like how Fedora runs and MX for my legacy computer but I keep coming back to Cachy . Anyone else addicted?