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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I went Gentoo to Debian to Arch.
Gentoo took too much time to maintain. (Not just compile time. But also human time editing config files).
Debian was great, until I had new hardware that needed a recent kernel and Wayland. i tried testing but that wasn't stable enough and took too much of my time maintaining.
I'm using arch now. i would only switch if they do something egregious (push ads, malware or snap)
I've been running Slackware for a long time and have no intention of switching unless Pat steps down and Slackware goes down with him. As long as my base install receives updates, I'm good. I take care of the rest.
Been running Manjaro for years. Don't really know what would make me change.
I guess maybe if I suddenly started getting more and more dependency errors when upgrading packages from the AUR it would make me consider jumping to put Arch.
But right not that's not the case. So the benefit of switching is out weighed by the pain in the ass of having to say Everything up again.
Better compatibility with Intel Arc cards, for one. Actually that would be a really big one.
I'm on Ubuntu. I had my Intel card work pretty well in Blender 3D,except it couldn't do BVH calculations in cycles, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make it work, because the thing that is supposed to make it work breaks the render kernels for Blender.
Alright... But it still rendered faster than my GTX 1060.
But then I also realised I couldn't boot up any UE5 game because somehow it was convinced my card isn't DX12 compatible. Also major artefacting issues in Oblivion Remastered.
Right... So I decided to go from Ubuntu LTS to Ubuntu 25.04, because the cutting edge MESA drivers needs a newer kernel, and the newer kernel is supposedly more Intel card friendly, which might fix my BVH calculation issues with Blender as well.
UE5 games run now, except for Oblivion Remastered, which still has graphical artefacting. But Intel didn't have render kernels for Ubuntu 25.04 yet, so I couldn't render with cycles at all until they updated their repo.
They eventually updated their repo a week or two ago. But the render kernels don't load at all in Blender 3D, telling me "Oh this is meant for OneAPI compatible cards", yes, what the fuck do you think an Intel Arc A770 is!?!
So... Uh... Yeah, if there is a distro put there without all of this, that would be very great.
Modern desktop enviroment design, and seamless updates like in macOS
Snap getting installed, ads when starting a shell. Basically the reasons I ditched Kubuntu.
I feel this so much, if you want that experience you may as well be using Windows! What did you switch to?
If all the mirrors for pacman somehow got taken down, probably would switch to something corporate like Ubuntu.
Not sure... I really like Arch, except for one thing that is also a problem on most other distros : packages creating files everywhere and leaving a mess behind when uninstalled. I'd rather have them isolated like NixOS does, and being able to switch easily between several versions of the same package is neat. Declarative configs are also very cool... but I really don't want to use a weird language for making packages, I'm just stating to learn how that work and I like that Arch packages are very straightforward and easy to understand.
Nix becomes extremely easy once you get the hang of the language. Much more straightforward then some cryptic bash
I half the point of package managers was so you could easily uninstall them. Do package managers usually not fully uninstall?
From what I understand the package managers remove files they themselves created but not files created by the application itself like config files and other stuff
Nothing could get me to switch off gentoo at this point. It's so flexible that you can use package managers from other distros (if you're crazy and like to create problems for yourself). Creating your own packages is very easy with their ebuild system. In terms of the packages they offer the USE flags are an absolute killer feature that let you install only the parts of the program you want. They even have binary versions of larger programs like firefox or rust that you can install if you don't want to compile them.
Well technically with compilers like Rust, you need a Rust compiler to actually compile Rust for you. That's likely why they give binaries for such a thing.
Firefox though is a nice convenience.
Probably nothing. I'm currently in the process of starting to distrohop a lot. I want to try out lots of distros, for fun and in order to recommend distros to other people. I will probably eventually settle on arch or nixos though, the customization seams really awesome.
My first distro was debian and why I switched was that I wanted up to date packages.
I relatively recently (a year or so?) switched from Ubuntu to Debian.
I felt like Ubuntu was bloating up and that sadly those decisions were done through the enshitification process. I went then "back to basics" and I don't regret it at all.
I had the (wrong) preconception that Debian was "behind" or "slow" for "new" stuff but truth is, despite being "stable" most of what I care about is already in, even for things like gaming in VR. For the rest if I need something "edgy" then I can get the software via another mean than the package manager.
So... what made me change is a desire for more minimalism and the ability to test safely (files saved).
I usually try out a couple of new distros whenever I am either setting up a new computer, or something happens with my current machine that requires a fresh OS anyway.
I've been married to Pop!_OS for a couple of years now. however, for the past couple of months I've been booting exclusively into KDE Plasma on my desktop computer; almost everything works really well for me in that environment, except the built-in Pop!_OS stuff itself, such as the pop shop, does not work very well. so I might end up switching to a distribution that's built around KDE, such as KDE Neon.
I'm also pretty curious about the Nix package manager and the concept of immutable desktop systems, so I guess I might try NixOS at some point? I don't know much about it yet.
I'm on Bazzite, so I may be tempted to switch to SteamOS on at least one of my devices, but Bazzite covers pretty much all my bases currently, both for gaming and work. I have a laptop with EndeavourOS and I love it, been using it for about 2-3 years there, but I'm switching laptops soon to a framework so I'll also go with Bazzite there for consistency and due to the official support it has with framework laptops.
Honestly the experience I've had with these distros so far leaves me wishing for nothing more, and now with immutability and distro box I kinda don't see the point in changing to anything else unless Bazzite development dies out or they make a painfully stupid decision, which doesn't seem to be the case so far!
Having more time to spend learning a new distro
If gentoo stopped being maintained, I guess I'd find something else.
Previously? Some schmuck changing all the windows to be left-handed, immediately before a long-term-support feature freeze.
Zero percent surprised by many other comments throwing shade at Ubuntu.