Distro hoppers, what's always on your install list when you've finished setup and logged in for the first time?
I wouldn't really call myself a distro hopper, but in the last few months I've had to do some fresh installs on a couple of machines and VMs for work
If these aren't included by default, I'll make sure to get em:
GUI:
- Firefox & Chromium
- Gimp & Krita
- VSCode/VSCodium
- Okular
- Libre office
CLI*:
- git
- wget&curl
- neovim
- zsh/ohmyzsh + plugins
- glow
- neofetch
- figlet/toilet
- zellij
- python
- nodejs/npm/nvm + nodemon globally
- ranger/rifle
Also, how do you go about migrating your old config and rc files? Start fresh or just copy em over and make adjustments where necessary?
Step 1: install Debian 12 today, Step 2: upgrade to Debian 13 when available, then Debian 14, Debian 15 and so on... that's the only hopping one should.
Gatekeeping Linux!? I certainly wasn't expecting that... I think the state of Linux is needlessly fragmented, but even I won't say a single distro will work best for every single person, business, school, government, or organization.
I always need
CLI:
Another fish and modern Unix user 🫶
PS. Try out lsd if you haven't already - a nice ls/eza/exa replacement.
I absolutely forgot about lsd, I used to use exa but recently I switched to lsd, it's fantastic.
As far as config files go, I haven’t gotten around to automating those so I usually search my nas for old ones and copy/paste what I need
Extreme Tux Racer, just can't live without it
First I install home-manager, then home-manager installs and configures everything else I've added to my config over time
Any issues with home manager?
I've not had any but I'm using NixOS, have yet to try it on other distros. (though it supports other distros)
Using it on Nixos, Debian (wsl) and was using it (in the transition to nixos) on arch. Works flawless!
Recently, I've been changing distros about once a year. These are the things I install every time:
As for the config files, I always start fresh.
What is APM? And that's a interesting list, ngl.
APM is Advanced Power Management. I'm having trouble finding an official explanation for it, but it basically allows the hard drive to park the head when the OS thinks it's idle. My hard drive makes a loud "click" every time that happens. APM is too aggressive, so my hard drive is constantly clicking unless I disable APM.
That's sound pretty useful, I actually have an HDD that's very noisy and this can come handy, thanks!
That's something Windows used to do a lot, right? I remember the old HDDs were always noisiest under Windows
Man, do yourself a favor and get an SSD. You can get a 512 GB for as cheap as $30 and a 1 TB for as cheap as $60 on Amazon. The speed difference is night and day. That's probably the single best upgrade you can do to an old machine.
Usually I install:
The rest I install once I need it. Plasma delivers also many of my programs.
ProtonUpQ hell yeah
Use Ansible for package installations and configuration, and a git repository & GNU stow for dotfiles.
Nothing. I just install what I need when I need it.
Meaning that your distro of choosing comes with most of the stuff bundled in…?
No, I'm just a fan of lazy initialization.
Lazy installation?
https://justgokus.medium.com/what-is-the-lazy-initialization-design-pattern-99fa0024ce5b
Yeah I understand that but surely you have a list of hours you know you need almost every time?
Why bother, when I can install the tools I need in a matter of seconds when I need them? It's not like the old days when I gotta pull out the crate of driver floppies.
I keep all of my important configs and dot files in a git repo. When setting up a new system I clone that repo and then symlink to them in the appropriate places
This Is The Way. My repo includes a setup.sh that uses ansible to setup the links. Clone the repo, run the script: home.
I have an init.sh file I run from my dotfiles. Pipe my sudo password to it and leave it alone for about an hour. Gets things 95% of the way to how I like them.
I should migrate to ansible like u/djehuti@programming.dev but time :(
Nvidia proprietary driver
Docker Engine (Portainer, AdGuardHome, LibReddit, Nitter, Invidious)
Install and tweak Firefox setup
Steam Client
Gnome extensions
Gnome Shell Theme and Icon themes
Nextcloud Client
Oh, this is a flipping great question. So much fun as I've just settled on one distro. M$ won't allow me to transfer my transferrable Windows license and I refuse o pay yetagain for Windows so Linux is my sole OS from now on. I have had so many weird issues or configuration woes with a ton of OSs ive been trying. So I tell ya, I sure have installed my fair share of them in the last month or so.
GUI:
Steam (Gotta get my game on)
ProtonPlus
Lutris
Heroic
Winetricks
Protontricks
VLC
Brave
Bitwarden(Probably the second most important software in my life)
Authy
Krusader (No idea why but Ill use this before the built in file manager sometimes)
Plex htpc
Kate - Notepadqq (havent decided which one i like best yet)
PolyMC
LibreOffice
Flatpack (I always prefer the native package but flatpack has almost anything the repositories lack)-
Appimagelauncher (Just for ease of use, appimages are a always third fiddle but are a great backup as flatpacks can be - limited in available software compared)
Gimp (Almost exclusively because the name makes me giggle)
OBS Studio
CLI:
Of course there are tons of other small things I add but those are the ones I will have installed likely before I go to reboot for the first time. The rest of what I interact with is generally running on my server so it's all web based stuff for the most part. I use VNC often to interact with virtual machines, do tech support for my son so i don't have to get up (disabled). I haven't really found a Linux VNC client i genuinely like. I used to use TightVNC with Windows and it's about the only thing I miss. I do have a Guacamole docker running on my network but unless you have a physical KB/M it's less than preferable to use. I'll find something I like eventually I'm sure. đź‘Ť-----
Strawberry, qBittorrent, neovim
ansible
I don't distro hop, but I keep my most commonly used programs as appimages in my home, as well as some locally compiled programs that I install in ~/.local/bin and ~/.local/lib.
Those include essentials like:
And for the programs, those include:
brave
ferdium
freetube
gimp
librewolf
libreoffice
That way I can drop my home onto any distro and everything will work at once. No need to manually install programs.
I also have wrapper scripts on my PATH that force applications that don't comply with the xdg base dir spec to use a fakehome in ~/.local, like steam and the web browsers.
I also don't consider myself a distrohopper (I've only installed Ubuntu based distros), but I did recently install Ubuntu and KDE Neon on separate computers.
It really depends on what I'm using the computer for, but I'll list my most commonly used applications by importance tiers:
A Tier (cannot live without these):
B Tier (extremely useful but nonessential):
C Tier (very useful, but quite niche):
Basically testing different Fedora Variants, so:
Some own CLI tools
Hardening the kernel:
yeah I basically distrohop between Fedora atomic images
Check my 64-lines-long checklist.txt document which I've obsessively prepared for months
Cli
GUI
Just a heads up, yt-dlp is a far more active fork with more features.
This is true, has mpv started working with it? The reason I have it in the first place is to stream Lofi /synthwave/jazz audio via mpv rather than specifically for downloading. Back when I’d last looked, mpv needed the old fork specifically, but if they’ve updated I’d be more than happy to switch
It should switch to it automatically now, but you can try the manual flag if it doesn't.
If neither works, symbolic linking yt-dlp and youtube-dl should.
Yay
Nano
Mullvad VPN
Mullvad browser
Keepassxc
Blue.sh
Rtorrent-ps
Steam
Freetube
Ranger
I have an auto installer for arch based distros that'll automate installation of yay then grab a text file with a list of presorted applications from github and auto install them as well as my sway, waybar and bashrc scripts.
Very clean and easily deployable with git then sudo bash ~/autoinstaller
What's blue.sh?
Auto correct :/ *ble.sh and it adds more functionality to bash
For CLI, I would like to add:
btop is awesome. RIP htop
It even shows gpu load in the recent version.
asdf is so good
cherrytree If I could only install one program it would be this,
Idk if it is distro hopping because I have been trying distros on my main system and usually for months at a time. It's messy but I have a separate filesystem for /home and hope my current rc files don't bork up whatever I'm running next. The transition from Cinnamon to Gnome went poorly for a while.
I should probably automate the must have packages.
Some applications are not packaged so I install ~/.local, e.g. Arduino, Eagle, Minecraft, etc.
Packages... Hm. Direnv is all I can think of. I just use the system until something is missing, curse briefly, and install it.
The things I tend to gravitate towards:
GUI:
CLI:
GUI: Firefox, nautilus, libre office, alacritty, mpv
CLI: git, helix, zellij, python, rust, wget & curl, neofetch
if you add fish to this it's literally me
Ive never tried fish, many people in this thread wrote that actually. Ill try
fish is a very good interactive shell. probably one down side is that it’s not posix compliant. but if you set shell for alacritty or zellij as fish and keep system shell as bash or other posix shells, you can use posix shell scripts while using fish as an interactive shell
Apart from what you mentioned:
I think that’s about it!
I understand disto hopping when you’re first getting into Linux. But are there really people who do it regularly? What’s the point?
I was using Ubuntu LTS for a while, then it dropped or of support, so I decided to upgrade. It totally shit that bed, and I wasn't really happy with Ubuntu at that point so I hopped.
I tried a rolling release (one extreme to another!) and found it problematic with Nvidia drivers. So eventually I hopped again.
Now I'm back in ol' reliable (Debian) and I've decided that the grass was never really greener anywhere else. If I need newer things I'll backport them, or use Flatpak or Distrobox or something like that.
I'm happy with Debian now, but we'll see what the situation is with Plasma 6 after its final release. If it's too much trouble to backport I might hop again.
Debian is always the answer, haha
I know some who do it as a spare time relaxation exercise, install something new (to them) configure, boot, reconfigure, explore. But they have a steady system they use daily.
@NegativeLookBehind @tourist @chris
There is absolutely an element of that.
There's something about using a fresh OS that fills me with a mild sense of excitement. Like a child getting a new toy.
Well, I’ve only changed distros a handful of times. But, I’ve broken my system more than a few times, as well. Back when I had more time I tinkered a lot more than I do now haha
nomacs
I prefer btop to htop.
fortune, cowsay
ne is my preferred CLI text editor... others would be: ranger, rtorrent, irssi, git, btop, and others that are not coming to mind right now..
Turn on night light and install syncthing to move over dotfiles
guix home reconfigure home-config.scm
I don't migrate any config file, always from scratch. My setup isn't that complicated. Fedora for a long time.
GUI (mostly Flatpaks):
CLI:
Does the cloud gaming work pretty well? I'm trying to consider how to move my main rig to Mint, but also not lose my three years of game pass. I think dual boot is likely but feels purpose defeating haha.
I have no technical problems. The only tricky part was setting up my controller (good old PS2), as I did have to mess with emulation and things like that. In the end, I just have to run a xboxdrv script before running the game. If you have an original Xbox controller it shouldn't be a problem.
Anyway, if you encounter any issue: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamepad
EDIT: If you were asking about the cloud gaming experience, it's pretty good I would say. The image will not be as good as a "physical" Xbox, and probably you will have to deal with queues depending on your location. But, overall, it's a pretty good deal.
git clone ssh://theseus@hive2.local/~/dotfiles.git
byobu
CLI:
GUI: