Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 -> Fedora Workstation -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

Windows -> RedHat -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> RHEL -> Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch

I am not sure that I can really call what I did distrohopping, but

Mint w/ Cinnamon (several years ago on an old junker laptop and never ended up using it as a daily driver) -> Manjaro w/ KDE Plasma (daily driver for ~1 year) -> Arch w/ KDE Plasma (~2 years and counting).

I have also used Debian with no DE on a file server I made out of an old thin client PC and I have used Rasbian on a raspberry pi.

Desktop: Macintosh (<X) -> Windows (XP-10) w/occasional Ubuntu dual-boot (various DEs) -> Debian + Gnome

Server: Ubuntu LTS -> Debian

I’ve also had a number of used thinkpads over the years where I mostly ran Xubuntu and crunchbang.

I still boot into Windows every month or so if I need to model something in Rhino (CAD). Couldn’t get it working in Wine and my 12 YO computer isn’t performant enough to run it in a VM. The last thread remaining and waiting to be cut…

I started with Corel Linux, moved to Mandrake and then began an 18 year distro-hopping journey. To keep it interesting, I rolled a d100 on distrowatch.com and installed whatever I landed on. About 6 years ago I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed and haven’t hopped since if you don’t count a brief dalliance with endeavour on my laptop.

Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian (stable) -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

I started with an openSUSE dual boot with KDE. I didn’t use Linux a lot at that point. Later, I switched to Ubuntu on a laptop for about a year and used that until I bought a MacBook. Eventually, I returned to Linux by running Pop!_OS on my desktop, but games were a bit choppy, and I really wanted to just run Wayland. I also started to use RHEL at work for our servers. So now I’m trying to switch to Fedora. I still have some issues with the Jagex Launcher, but aside from that, everything seems to work great now.

At home, I have also had an Ubuntu Server for many years, and I also run Ubuntu Server on my VPS.

DOS, to Windows XP, to Xubuntu, to Kubuntu, to Nix OS. In hindsight I should have probably tried Arch, but Nix was the first one to sell me on something else, and Arch just seems like a downgrade from Nix.

Mine was Windows XP -> Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Windows 10 -> Kubuntu -> KDE Neon -> back to Kubuntu -> Manjaro -> Endeavour OS -> Fedora -> Debian -> NixOS

I also have a separate Laptop for financial things running Alma Linux and a Gaming PC running bazzite

I tried one distro and now the other distros confuse and scare me.

Windows (~6 years) -> Mandriva (Mandrake? For I think 2-3 years) -> Ubuntu (1 day) -> Suse (2 days) -> Slackware (2-3 years) -> Gentoo unstable (2-3 years) -> Gentoo stable (2-3 years) -> Arch (9 years and counting)

The only span I’m sure about is the last one. When I started a job I decided I don’t have the time to compile the world anymore. But the values after Windows sum up to 21, should be 20, so it’s all more or less correct

98-02 Slackware

02-24 Gentoo

Im currently fixated on nixos and it’s likely to get gentoo’s spot when I need to replace this workstation

Ubuntu -> OpenSuse -> Arch -> OpenSuse

15 years Windows -> dualboot everything -> Ubuntu -> Fedora -> Ubuntu -> opensuse -> arch -> popOS -> arch -> fedora -> arch -> -> popOS -> arch -> nixos

I’m sure there’s a ton more hopping around in the middle that I can’t remember, but this is a good summary.

=> Windows (for an awful long time)
=> Ubuntu (a few months or so)
=> Windows (over a year and a half)
=> Fedora + Windows dual-boot (half a year)
=> Windows (a few months or so)
=> openSUSE TW + Windows dualboot (a year)
=> openSUSE TW without dualboot (over a half a year already).

It was a long run on trying to escape Windows, but I managed to do it. As of today, I’m still using openSUSE. I like it very much and I have no plans on distrohopping or returning back to Windows.