I need to just pick a distro, install it on all my laptops, and become an expert on that one. Forget the rest!
I’ve got Void on my T420 (for writing), Mint on another T420 (hosting my music files) and an x380 yoga (with ubuntu studio controls for music production), NixOS on a T440p and a T430, and EndeavourOS on my T16. Previously I ran Arch and Debian on a couple machines, too.
Arch is really fun. I probably just enjoy giving in to my OCD tendancies, so that gets satisfied with my EndeavourOS install. That SHOULD be my final distro, the one that I use forever, eschewing all others.
But there are two problems:
- Too many updates. I fear leaving a laptop in the drawer for a few months and then it crashes when I update it.
- I’m getting nixpilled
Nix is obviously awesome. I love having that master config file. But the nix repos aren’t as robust, and there’s a learning curve to getting everything to work. So now I’m telling myself, “become an expert at nix and then you’ll finally find your home!”
But meanwhile Debian beckons. It’s so tempting to just go back to the safest, stablest distro with all the packages and all the documentation.
I know this is silly but it actually bugs me. Why can’t I just pick a distro?
Has anybody gone through this and then actually made the decisive move to stick to a distro? What compelled you to finally pick one?
I’ve updated Arch systems that were years behind, and everything went just fine. In fact, I’ve had many failed Debian/Ubuntu dist-upgrades, where I ended up giving and reinstalling. I’ve definitely ran into trouble with my Arch installs too, but they were easily fixed.
The thing with Arch is once you’re comfortable with it, it doesn’t really matter if it breaks. It’s as easy to fix as it is to break. Just make sure you don’t need said laptop for something critical right after an update so you have some time to deal with it. But realistically, you’ll be fine.
If you’re really worried, set up automatic snapshots so you can easily revert a borked update in a pinch.
For everything else, there’s containers: be it Podman, Docker or systemd-nspawn. Nowadays there’s also Flatpaks if you have an app that really doesn’t want to play nice with Arch.
10 years and counting on Arch. Desktop, laptop, servers, no issues. Never felt the need to distro-hop apart from trying out NixOS in a VM every now and then just to see if it clicks yet.
That said, being fluent with multiple distros is never a bad thing. If I have to set up an unattended set and forget box, I’ll still turn to Debian with auto updates enabled. It seems like at least you’re not constantly reinstalling all your machines, which is typically the problem with distro-hopping.