Linux @lemmy.world whoareu @lemmy.ca 6d ago

I distrohop every week

Hello,

I try out new distro every week since I have a lot of free time and want to learn more about Linux. I was thinking that it would be interesting to make a Lemmy post every week talking about my experience with the distro and what I did with it. right now I have alpine linux installed and thinking about using it till next sunday.

feel free to suggest next distro that I should try out. (I have tried out a lot of distros but never wrote anything about the experience but now on I will be making post about it here on Lemmy :) )

27 comments

If your goal is to learn about Linux, a single manual arch install will teach you more than going through a 100 near identical wizards. And that's before going into actually useful resources like those that prepare you for Linux cert exams.

If your goal is to compare distros, a week is not nearly enough time.
- I second this. Not wanting to shoot down your idea, quite a big deciding factor for me is the release cycle and update process and you won't experience that in a week. Might be a good idea to list what you've already tried though.
  
  how much time should I spend with a distro to actually get the gist of the distro? a month maybe?
- Yeah, I mainly do it because I want to learn more about Linux and see what different distros offers. but yeah you are probably correct that I should just learn single distro properly.
  
  A distro is essentially the package manager, defaults, and release schedule. Sure, some have new ideas (like the immutable ones), but that's the only difference for most of them.
  
  You need to learn Linux properly, then it won't matter what distro you're using.
Gentoo...
- Why not Linux From Scratch?
- or even LFS
- yeah, I have tried Gentoo and it was fun installing it, however I user binary kernel since I didn't have much experience in configuring the Kernel.
Void Linux.

It uses runit, you can also use musl if you like.

It's a simple and efficient distribution that is "its own thing".
kudos and when you stop would love a final post giving your opinion across the board. im lazy and use zorin but honestly may be a bit boring for someone willing to hop every week.
Distros can all be classified into a few different categories

Debian based

RHEL/Fedora based

Arch based

ostree based

obscure distro doing its own thing

Almost all distros use exactly the same software under the hood such as systemd, network manager, Linux and others

I would install virtual manager and run a bunch of stuff. Just make sure you install spice-vdagent and qemu-guest-agent
You could install any distribution and use distrobox to get the hang of all distros. At the end of the day a distro is just a starting point of a configuration. Once you learn to customize it to your liking other than what Repo and package management you use. Every distro is the same and the community around the distro is more important. At that point distro hopping is not a tech thing at all. But most people distro hop because they thing if I just find the better distro then everything will work but there is no better distro. They can all be configured the same.

27 comments