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
- LibreWolf (privacy-focused Firefox fork)
- Some nice terminal emulator like Alacritty or Kitty
- A torrent client
- Emacs
- Strawberry (the music player)
CLI:
- fish shell
- bat
- neovim
- fd
- fzf
- zoxide
- Some other Rust alternatives for GNU coreutils
- GPG
- fun stuff like neofetch, lolcat, asciiquarium, cmatrix, etc.
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.
- fish
- tmux
- sshfs
- htop
- nmap
- distrobox (haven’t tried this yet but looks amazing)
- zfs (and any utilities that go with that)
- sanoid
- syncoid
- tailscale
- snapper (if using btrfs)
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
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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:
- hdparm - I use this to disable APM on my HDD which makes annoying sounds when it’s enabled. (Yes, my computer is old and still uses an HDD as the system drive.)
- KeePassXC - My preferred password manager.
- VeraCrypt - My external drives are encrypted with this.
- Joplin - I store my setup notes in here.
- Lutris/Steam/Wine - I’m a gamer.
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:
- Steam
- flatpak
- discord
- gimp
- vlc
- lutris
- protonupQ
- protontricks
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.
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Nvidia proprietary driver
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Docker Engine (Portainer, AdGuardHome, LibReddit, Nitter, Invidious)
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Install and tweak Firefox setup
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Steam Client
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Gnome extensions
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Gnome Shell Theme and Icon themes
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Nextcloud Client
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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?
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/[email protected] but time :(
- Firefox (often preinstalled)
- Thunderbird
- Code
- FreeTube & Stremio
- Apostrophe
- KeePass
- Nextcloud
- Syncthing
- yt-dlp
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?
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.
Strawberry, qBittorrent, neovim
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):
- Firefox
- Neofetch (obviously)
- A GUI file manager (doesn’t really matter which one)
- A usable Desktop Environment
B Tier (extremely useful but nonessential):
- LibreOffice
- Xournal++ (for taking notes, and editing PDFs)
- Baobab (for recording disk usage)
- Steam
- VLC (video player)
- Clementine (music player)
- htop (CLI system monitor)
- GUI “appstore”
C Tier (very useful, but quite niche):
- VSCode
- Vivaldi
- Retroarch
- Krita
- Kdenlive
- OBS Studio
- Wine
- GUI system monitor
- Standalone PDF viewer
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:
- MC (100% always the first this I ever install no matter what)
- HTOP (Not standard in all as many distros as i would think)
- Openssh
- Cifs-utils
- Starship
- Zsh
- Neofetch
- Tmux (Cant live without it)
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. 👍-----
