I’ve been dailying the same Mint install since I gave up on Windows a few years ago. When I was choosing a distro, a lot of people were saying that I should start with Mint and “move on to something else” once I got comfortable with the OS.
I’m comfortable now, but I don’t really see any reason to move on. What would the benefits be of jumping to something else? Mint has great documentation and an active community that has answers to any questions I’ve ever had, and I’m reluctant to ditch that. On the other hand, when I scroll through forums, Distro Hopping seems to be such a big part of the “Linux experience.”
What am I missing?
I was surviving with Ubuntu, I had my complaints but I figured ‘that’s just how it is’ on Linux, that it was the same everywhere. I didn’t even realise what I was missing until I switched.
I got a hardware upgrade at one point, so in order to get those new drivers ASAP I tried an Arch-based distro, with plans to switch back once drivers became available. I never moved back.
The two big reasons I stayed was ironically enough the lack of good Ubuntu documentation, and the PPA system. Ubuntu is used a lot, but there’s not really formal documentation anywhere, only random tutorials online (most likely out of date and never updated) and people on forums talking about their problems. By contrast the Arch wiki is the gold standard of Linux documentation, there’s just no comparison. Even on Ubuntu I found myself using it as a reference from time to time.
Regarding PPAs, the official Ubuntu package list is strangely small so if you’re like me and find yourself needing other software, even mainstream software like Docker, you’ll be faffing about with PPAs. So if you want to install Docker, instead of typing
sudo apt install dockerYou instead have to type:# Add Docker's official GPG key: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg # Add the repository to Apt sources: echo \ "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null sudo apt-get updateThese are the official install instructions, by the way. This is intended behaviour. The end user shouldn’t have to deal with all this. This feels right out of the 90’s to me.
Instead of PPAs, Arch has the Arch User Repository (AUR). Holy moly is the AUR way nicer to work with. Granted, we’re not quite comparing apples to apples here since the AUR (typically) builds packages from source, but bear with me. You install an AUR package manager like
yay(which comes preinstalled on my flavour of Arch, EndeavourOS).yaycan manage both your system and AUR packages. Installing a package (either official or AUR) looks likeyay packageNameHere. That’s it. A full system upgrade likesudo apt update; sudo apt upgradeis a single command:yay -Syu, a bit cryptic but much shorter. The AUR is fantastic not just for the ease of use, but for sheer breadth of packages. If you find some random project on github there’s probably an AUR package for it too. Because it builds from source an AUR package is essentially just a fancy build script based on the project’s own build instructions, so they’re super easy to make, which means there’s a lot of them.You might argue ‘but building from source might fail! Packages are more reliable!’, which is somewhat true. Sometimes AUR builds can fail (very rarely in my experience), but so can PPAs. Because PPAs are often made to share one random package they can become out of date easily if their maintainer forgets or simply stops updating it. By contrast AUR packages can be marked out of date by users to notify the maintainer, and/or the maintainer role can be moved to someone else if they go silent. If a PPA goes silent there’s nothing you can do. Also, since an AUR package is just a fancy build script you can edit the build script yourself and get it working until the package gets an update, too. PPAs by comparison are just a black box - it’s broken until it gets updated.
Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to just give something a go. Mint will always be waiting for you if you don’t like it.
Linux can be a hobby, not just a tool. If you want to have fun with a new hobby, distro hopping will have plenty to keep you busy. But if you just want something to run your computer and your current distro does it for you just fine, then you’re not missing out on anything but a headache.
It’s funny, I’m in an opposite situation. I don’t want to distro hop, but my current one has some issues that I’m getting a little fed up with (issues that are a result of my hardware and use case) so I am working up to swapping distros to find something with fewer issues. For me, I just want my OS to be transparent. I don’t want a hobby. That’s why it took me so long to swap to linux in the first place.
Anyways, IMHO, unless you’re really into the idea of playing with your OS as a hobby, don’t let FOMO trick you into making the mistake of throwing out what works in the hopes of greener grass.
I used to be in a similar position as you. I ditched Windows about 1.5 years ago, and I hopped around several distros for a while before settling on Linux Mint. About 2 months ago, i decided that I wanted to try out something new, not because Linux Mint wasn’t working for me, but just to see if there was something else that would be fun to learn about Linux. Today, I use Arch, and my DE is basically the Linux Mint Cinnamon DE.
Can somebody ELI5 what the difference between Linux distros is? I’m ashamed to admit I don’t truly understand, aside from different package managers and DEs but even then there are only a handful of those.
It can sort of depend on the distro, there are a lot of Debian-based ones such as Debian (obviously), Kali, Ubuntu, and then ones based on Ubuntu like Mint and Pop!OS, those all largely work the same under the hood, ie you’d use .deb files and something like
sudo apt-get installto install something.Then there are Arch-based ones like Arch and Manjaro, which are a bit more different, you’d use
pacmanoryayorparuto install things instead, and they have things like the AUR, which is a big user-maintained repository or software that has just about everything on it.Then you have the Fedora based ones and SUSE based ones, which are different again in other ways. And some more unique and weirder ones like NixOS which is having a bit of a moment, whereby you sort of configure the entire system in one single config file and rebuild it each time (as I understand it, that might be a bit off 'cause I’m still learning.)
So yeah it sort of depends. And then you have desktop environments like GNOME and KDE which aren’t distros, but do affect how the whole system looks (and functions, to an extent.) And these are largely agnostic of the underlying distro, so you could have say a machine running Debian with GNOME next to a machine running NixOS with GNOME which would look very similar from the desktop but would be hugely different under the hood, and two machines running Arch, one with GNOME and one with KDE which would look totally different but be functionally the same.
I won’t even start on Display Managers lol.
As far as I’m aware the only real difference is what repositories are available and what the default settings/programs/etc are
The way I understand it is like this:
The grand theory of classic package managers is the idea that lots of programs all need the same core libraries to function. An analogy would be like noticing most construction jobs need
nails. So instead of making everyone bring their own copy ofnails, resulting in dozens of redundant copies of it lying around, they have a singlenailspackage that everyone can use.But there are different versions of
nailsout there. Each version picks up unique new features, and drops legacy ones. Recent builds may incorporate and thus require the new features, making them incompatible with old versions ofnailsthat don’t have them. On the other hand, some builds may still use and rely on legacy features ofnails, and are thus incompatible with the new versions. You may run into a scenario where you want Software A that needsnailsversion 14+, but also Software B that can only run onnailsv <13, and you just can’t, because they don’t overlap.Additionally, there may just be a totally different competing package out there,
screws, that does largely the same job asnails, but in a completely different way that is totally incompatible with projects that expectnails. So if you need Software C that relies onnails, but also Software D that relies onscrews, you might cause problems by installing both.What a distro is is essentially a group of devs declaring that they are putting together some specific list of libraries (like, say,
nailsv14), and then sculpting up a bundle of software around those specific libraries. Can’t cope withnailsv14? That sucks. No package for you, then.In that sense, distros are differentiated by what libraries and other low-level system softwares are available to the programs you wish to install on them. If you want your program to be available natively on every distro, it needs to be compatible with every competing set of libraries each distro has elected to use.
It is possible to just say “fuck it” to the distro’s built-in libraries, and instead bundling the specific version of
nailsorscrewsor whatever you project needs directly with it. Build your own with blackjack and hookers, as it were. That’s exactly what Flatpak does, among others. But it’s trading flexibility for redundancy. In the age of cheap and plentiful storage memory, many people think this trade is well worth it. But it makes many formalists cringe.
It’s good to get familiar with a wide variety of softwares. Often, being exposed to the strengths and weaknesses of something new is a good way to broaden your experience level.
But that said, there’s not a lot of point in changing things just for the sake of change. I’ve been running Debian since around 1998. It’s fine. I like it and I’m happy with it. I tried a bunch of things over the years but haven’t found anything that suits me as well, so I keep running it. The only distro that really has caught my attention as something with enough of a new thing that might be checking out was NixOS. But, if you’re happy with what you’re doing I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with being happy with what you’re doing.
Well if you are doing work on you computer you find rewarding and it functions I would quit while you are ahead. Getting into distro hopping and caring about Linux internals is a bit like being a car enthusiast. You can either have a car to drive it or have a car that you fart around all the time tweaking bits, replacing it, breaking it, developing strong opionons about things almost no one cares about.
So to you want to be a driver or an enthusiast? By using Linux at all you can essentially consider yourself part of the “car club”, but there is a whole heck of a lot else to learn.
not really unless you’re trying something relatively unique like nixos or void etc. you can do most things on any distro
You’re not missing anything really. For some reason some people like to say that Mint is a good distro for beginners and imply that you should change away from it when you’re more “advanced”. This is really nonsense. Mint is a good distro. I switched to Tumbleweed because I found one or two things I couldn’t do so easily in Mint, but if you’re not having trouble there’s really no reason to switch. And with tools like Flatpak and Distrobox available these days there’s even less reason to distro hop.
If you don’t have any issue with mint, don’t bother changing distros. Distro hopping is not necessary to enjoy linux.
“move on to something else” once I got comfortable with the OS.
I would suggest moving on to another distro if you’re not comfortable with Mint. The whole purpose of distro hopping is to find which distro is comfortable for you.
You’re not missing out on anything. Mint lets you install various desktop environments, they are all very well-configured and stable by default. You can just install the appropriate desktop environment meta-package using Apt:
apt install 'task-gnome-desktop'apt install 'kde-plasma-desktop'apt install 'cinnamon-desktop-environment'apt install 'task-xfce-desktop'
Then you can “hop” from one GUI experience to another by just logging out and logging in with a different session. You might have to add some additional Ubuntu repositories to your Apt config to get all of these meta-packages though.
Besides the desktop environment, the only other big difference between distros is how you use their package managers, which all do the same thing anyways, just with different CLI commands.
Probably the most important thing to consider in a distro is which versions of the latest stable releases of the big Linux apps are available in their distros. Arch-based distros (Garuda, Manjaro, ArcoLinux, EndeavorOS) are the most bleeding-edge but these operating systems tend to break after a software update if you fail to update often enough. Ubuntu and Fedora are the most bleeding-edge non-rolling release distros that I know of, and in my experience they never break after a software update.
Just install windows.
Why?
Sarcasm.
Dinsdale?
Honestly, if Mint has been working fine then I see no reason that you’d need to switch. If you’re curious about trying out other distros, it could be worth using a program like Boxes to try out some VM’s. Otherwise, I say you keep doing whatever works well for you.
If you want to enjoy distro hopping, go find a cheap thinkpad as a secondary device, and have fun. Otherwise, you try out live discs/drives to see if you get full compatibility with your main device.
Truth is that you’ll have more difference in user experience DE hopping than distro hopping.
You only distro hop until you find what works right with an your hardware and preferred software, unless you’re doing it as a hobby. Now, the desktop environments? That’s where you’ll see the big difference.
If you’re comfortable with Mint and don’t see a reason to switch, I don’t see anything wrong with staying with Mint. If you do want to try new distros, just use a VM.
Your operating system is a tool. If the tool is doing what you need and well then you aren’t missing out on anything. If you want to try another distro, then have a project in mind that it’s is a better suited for. Otherwise, you’re just changing it up to change it up. Which is fine, but it’s better to be realistic/honest with yourself with what you’re doing. Otherwise you’ll just be chasing some nebulous concept.
