What's wrong with other Linux distributions?

[Lanthus Clark]

Hi Everyone,
So I want to start with a little background. I have been using Linux for ages, I mean some of you used it probably way longer than me,
but I started playing with Suse Linux and Slackware about 1998, been using Suse Linux until probably 2008, I mean Suse Linux before OpenSuse became the thing and SLES.
Over the years, had a romance with Mandrake, Corel Linux, Turbo Linux, Redhat, Fedora etc.
...
Is it just Linux overload, all of those fancy distros are just not as interesting as they used to be, I do not even tried Lubuntu and other ...buntus as the support is not that long.
Do you guys find as well that distro hoping is not as enjoyable as it used to be, with all those VMs you can try 20 distros in a day...BORING!
Or I just got so old and grumpy?

Similar to you I started around '98 & I forget if it was Redhat or Mandrake... or something like that. Heady and exciting days indeed with new Linux OS's every other week to try out... but then I also eventually just ended up using Ubuntu for years without any desire to change because lets face it, it just works.
The last three years or so I have taken a different approach, I have an old iMac that I use just as a fun machine while I have another machine that I actually work on. Because of this it kinda set me free to explore, so about once a month I set aside a couple of days and just install any version of Linux I think might be interesting and check it out. This is not just for fun but also helps to keep the old skills alive and honed, just in case. Anyway, funny thing is... I just end up reinstalling Ubuntu at the end because, you know.So the point of this is, maybe keep a computer on the side just to play on and relive the old days, just for the hell of it.

[lammert-nijhof]

It is simple. I know Ubuntu since 2005 (5.04) and use Ubuntu since 2008 (8.04). Why change, if you are happy and know the system well, curiosity is no valid reason to change.

In 2009 I detected Virtualbox, so in March 2010 I started dual booting and installed and activated Windows XP in Virtualbox for work. Since that time I satisfied my curiosity using Virtualbox. I name a number of VM, that I admired so much, that I kept a VM copy; gOS 3.1 (2009); Open SUSE 12.1 (2011, all four; Gnome; KDE; LXDE and XFCE) and more recently Peppermint 7,9 and 10; Zorin Lite 15.3 and Fedora 33. I also have all Windows releases from 1.04 (1986) to 11 Pro (now) and all Ubuntu LTS release from 6.06 LTS to 24.04 LTS plus the first 4.10 and my first 5.04.

Currently I keep an eye on the latest versions of; Linux Mint; Zorin; Fedora; Manjaro; Debian Stable; Peppermint and OpenSUSE Leap.

My host OS is a minimal install of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and I moved all my Apps to VMs. The main VMs I use always; daily or weekly are:
- Xubuntu 24.04 LTS (Communication & Social Media Apps);
- Ubuntu 16.04 ESM (Banking). It is encrypted and used exclusively for banking. It uses the latest stable snaps for Firefox and LibreOffice;
- Ubuntu Budgie 24.04 LTS (Multi Media)
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Try Outs);
- Windows XP (Jukebox). The one from 14 years ago, it plays the wma copies of my CDs and LPs with WoW and TrueBass effects. It survived 2 VBox Owners; 3 Desktops and 4 CPUs;
- Windows 11 Pro in case I need it.

There is nothing wrong with other distros, but avoid loosing data by distro hopping in a VM.