Why I am not distro hopping anymore?

Date: 2021-03-09

This will be the year that I use Linux for the 15th year straight. No dual boot, only Linux, since October 2006. It's quite the journey I have to say, and while I was always a distrohopper myself, the last few years are pretty constant:

I use Arch based distros. Other than using Slackware, Devuan, tried Void and MX, I think - I mainly used Manjaro Linux for years, in fact the longest of any of the distros. And I now use Artix Linux. Both are based on Arch, but while Manjaro's main aim is too make Arch a little bit more friendlier, Artix is basically Arch without systemd.

Right now I feel that I have everything on this distro. Plenty of software from AUR, and I don't have to worry about systemd (which I dislike as a user, since I am not a developer). It feels pretty stable after using it for just more than a half year now, updating it once a week or so.

If I want to experiment, I can find anything on it. Right now I use dwm, and I haven't changed it much for many months, not even colors. Pretty boring, but after more than a decade of tinkering with my system, I have to say, it feels like home.

I use some of the stuff from AppImages, which gives me more speed somehow (like with Gimp, which has faster startup). I compile Emacs, because that's what I do for a long time, and I got used to it.

So far I have yet to break the system. Note, that I don't have any special hardware, I don't even use a printer. I have a normal graphics card (Nvidia GT1030), and basically just a pretty boring non-gaming computer.

I can recommend Artix for advanced users, or who would like to move away from Arch, or start to experimenting with something other than the Ubuntu/Linux Mint line.