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No. Because, I don't want to hear the complaints if someone's favorite program doesn't run on a distro and they have to find an alternative. I also don't want to be someone's tech support if anything goes wrong.
From my many distro-hoppings and distro-surfings, I thought I knew some great options for my uncle... Scientific Linux, top among them. ... Had spoke of dozens of others. Had not imagined he'd pick Puppy. XD Well over a decade now with Puppy as his daily-driver.
I spent a couple years DD'ing Puppy from a flash drive after a critical failure in the boot sector of my main drive that I couldn't repair, reformat, or partition around.
Used puppy to transfer some files I could still get to on the drive and then just... Stayed. Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution!
Scientific linux was my first distro!
I'm of the opinion that one should recommend distros that you're familiar with, and ideally use yourself. Because they will have questions and particularly, if you actively use it yourself, you'll also be able to test whether stuff normally works, which is broken on their machine.
Spun up a VM, yup, hopped, no.
That was the original plan, but I also wanted to install virtualbox and get a better feel of the UX top to bottom
If I have anyone interested in trying linux I show them my Debian (no innuendo intended!), and then boot them onto Mint or Ubuntu via my USB drive so that they can play about with it at their leisure.
How do you handle the inevitable "Why do I use this one and you use that one". Other than sit down noob. You'll earn it one day.
I just describe it as different flavors of the same thing. Most people are just basic functional computer users. browser documents etc.
No that sounds like a huge pain in the ass and I've never met someone that wanted to switch to Linux and wait a few days or more for a recommendation
That's a good point. I'm asking because I'm visiting my sister next week. I'll be installing and demoing it myself, and she's a windows power user, so I have flexibility. All that given, I wanted to set her up on something she'd "enjoy using". Hence the distrohopping.
Just bring a USB and try a few distros that have a live environment; I think they pretty much all do.
I just pulled out a spare laptop to try some new distros to help advise someone about their options. I installed a few and gauged how easy/simple it would be for each one in regards to their needs.
It wasn't distro hopping in that I wasn't really using them beyond testing, but it was checking out options, settings, and tools. In the end, they'll have to decide on what works best for them.
Yea that's basically what I did. I wouldn't call it Distro Hopping with a capital D H.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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