Is distro hopping ultimately pointless?

[rick gen]

It's not pointless if you haven't found what you're looking for.
There are more than 100 to choose from, probably more.
Seems the moment some basement dweller learns how to assemble a distro, it's added to the already unmanageable list.
Nowadays I need to know who is behind it, whether one or two persons can keep up with fixing security issues, bugs, drivers issues, you name it.
All these need full-time employees, not just some folks who do it for free.

[samriggs]

It's not pointless if you haven't found what you're looking for.
There are more than 100 to choose from, probably more.
Seems the moment some basement dweller learns how to assemble a distro, it's added to the already unmanageable list.
Nowadays I need to know who is behind it, whether one or two persons can keep up with fixing security issues, bugs, drivers issues, you name it.
All these need full-time employees, not just some folks who do it for free.

I look at distro hopping like trying out a bunch of cars until you find the one you love for free and keep it as long as you want.
If it wasn't for distro hopping I wouldn't of found mint for my family and manjaro for myself.
I would of still been stuck with ubuntu and had to deal with unity.

As far as full-time employees, well it's usually community driven, ubuntu gnome was started by one dude (he create a ubuntu gnome iso as a download) then it grew from there, now ubuntu is making it it's base after all these years. So some things might start small and can grow from there, if they use (let's say ubuntu) as a base then the security upgrades come from ubuntu anyhow.
I say ubuntu for mints sake since this is mint's forum, I like arch base myself but for the family, it's mint.

So I agree with distro hopping very much, choice is always good, and where else can try out a ton of operating systems for free until you find the one you like the most and benefits you the most?
It's the beauty of gnu/linux.

[BG405]

Ultimately pointless? Maybe, once you've found the best distro(s) for you and your machines but those with a desire to experiment won't find it so. I think that may account for a good proportion of Linux desktop users.

I use VMs for testing distros & therefore haven't done much distro-hopping; not since settling on the appropriate OS & DE for each machine. I do have one or two machines for these experiments though. Since I started my Linux journey with Mint, I've been more than happy to stick with it for the most part. Have Puppy on one machine & various OSs in VMs including Arch etc..

As for Mint dropping official KDE support, this will continue to be an option by installing KDE so we aren't really being forced to look elsewhere for our KDE needs. I've pretty much decided to keep the Dell 1525 minty & adding KDE to it, although my main netbook is likely to have KDE Neon installed at some point, or maybe Manjaro + KDE. Possibly even Arch as I doubt borkage will increase much anyway, this time I'd borked VirtualBox, last time VirtualBox had borked the entire GUI .. time before I'd forgotten to make a startup script executable (=non-functional desktop) .. you get the picture

BTW: Above issues were relatively easily dealt with, unlike MS OSs!

[mr_raider]

I have two hobbies. Collecting watches and trying out distros. Linux is not the one sending me to the poor house

[NChewie]

Distro hopping was A LOT(!) of fun for several years. But then real life kicked in. From my adventures I had come to realize that one could actually use Linux for serious work. Then I found that I needed the dreaded Killer of Distro Hopping---rock-solid stability. So my final destination became Mint (and MX, depending on the machine). There are other rock-solid distros, but these have been my go-to's for years. So life's good with or without distro-hopping, as long as Linux is a major part of that life!

Absolutely agree.

Fun while it lasted, then I had to go and get hitched.
No more long evenings destroying and rebuilding PCs, or burning ISOs onto DVDs and trying them out.
Funny enough, I now have fibre broadband and USB3, so it would all be so much quicker...

[Faust]

....
I use VMs for testing distros & therefore haven't done much distro-hopping ...

Ahhh !
That one won't work with me .... it's like saying " I only do it at weekends , so I'm not really one of them " -

As a former hopper ( now in recovery ) I used mostly VMs to indulge my habit , with a few live USBs on the side

... just joking here ..... I don't want to incite any of the " loose cannons " who might be reading

[BG405]

Ahhh !
That one won't work with me ....

I should have posted "I use VMs for testing distros & therefore haven't done much distro-hopping on actual hardware;" would that count?

[Lysander666]

Distro hopping was A LOT(!) of fun for several years. But then real life kicked in. From my adventures I had come to realize that one could actually use Linux for serious work. Then I found that I needed the dreaded Killer of Distro Hopping---rock-solid stability. So my final destination became Mint (and MX, depending on the machine). There are other rock-solid distros, but these have been my go-to's for years. So life's good with or without distro-hopping, as long as Linux is a major part of that life!

Nice post. Same is true for me, and a lot of us. My situation is slightly different insamuch as I knew that I would have to drop my distro-hopping after seven months for academic reasons, but specifically, I was looking for a distro to stick with and which I could rely on for productivity. I hopped through ~20 distros via a mixture of installations, VMs and Live USBs, before settling on Debian.