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.

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.

• 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

First I install home-manager, then home-manager installs and configures everything else I've added to my config over time

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.

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.

• Nvidia proprietary driver

• Docker Engine (Portainer, AdGuardHome, LibReddit, Nitter, Invidious)

• Install and tweak Firefox setup

• Steam Client

• Gnome extensions

• Gnome Shell Theme and Icon themes

• Nextcloud Client

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

Use Ansible for package installations and configuration, and a git repository & GNU stow for dotfiles.

Nothing. I just install what I need when I need it.

Strawberry, qBittorrent, neovim

• Firefox (often preinstalled)
• Thunderbird
• Code
• FreeTube & Stremio
• Apostrophe
• KeePass
• Nextcloud
• Syncthing
• yt-dlp

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. 👍-----

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

I don't distro hop, but I keep my most commonly used programs as appimages in my home, as well as some locally compiled programs that I install in ~/.local/bin and ~/.local/lib.

Those include essentials like:

• i3wm
• polybar
• rofi
• handlr (regex one)

And for the programs, those include:

• brave
• ferdium
• freetube
• gimp
• librewolf
• libreoffice

That way I can drop my home onto any distro and everything will work at once. No need to manually install programs.

I also have wrapper scripts on my PATH that force applications that don't comply with the xdg base dir spec to use a fakehome in ~/.local, like steam and the web browsers.

ansible

Basically testing different Fedora Variants, so:

• fish
• bat, eza
• waydroid, distrobox, qemu-kvm, virt-manager
• flatpak

Some own CLI tools

• copr-command
• kde sysinfo cli
• braveinstall

Hardening the kernel:

 rpm-ostree kargs --append="init_on_alloc=1" --append="init_on_free=1" --append="slab_nomerge" --append="page_alloc.shuffle=1" --append="randomize_kstack_offset=on" --append="vsyscall=none" --append="debugfs=off" --append="lockdown=confidentiality" --append="random.trust_cpu=off" --append="random.trust_bootloader=off" --append="intel_iommu=on" --append="amd_iommu=on" --append="iommu.passthrough=0" --append="iommu.strict=1" --append="mitigations=auto,nosmt"
--append="module.sig_enforce=1"

yeah I basically distrohop between Fedora atomic images

• Yay
• Nano
• Mullvad VPN
• Mullvad browser
• Keepassxc
• Blue.sh
• Rtorrent-ps
• Steam
• Freetube
• Ranger

I have an auto installer for arch based distros that'll automate installation of yay then grab a text file with a list of presorted applications from github and auto install them as well as my sway, waybar and bashrc scripts.

Very clean and easily deployable with git then sudo bash ~/autoinstaller

• GNOME Tweaks
• Firefox
• VLC
• Blender
• FreeCAD
• Godot
• VSCodium
• PrusaSlicer
• Steam, Lutris, Proton
• KDE Connect

GUI:

• GnuCash
• Firefox

CLI:

• aptitude

The things I tend to gravitate towards:

• Flatpak
• Firefox of some kind (lately been loving Floorp)
• Keeper Password Manager extension on Firefox
• try to install some form of backup
• git (if not already available)
• nvm (Node version manager, usually I install the latest LTS)
• Go (sometimes I write Go programs)
• Steam (if I plan to play games)
• Sometimes I'll install Zsh, sometimes Fish, then oh-my-zsh / oh-my-zsh
• Fastfetch (Neofetch is so slow?)

cherrytree If I could only install one program it would be this,

Idk if it is distro hopping because I have been trying distros on my main system and usually for months at a time. It's messy but I have a separate filesystem for /home and hope my current rc files don't bork up whatever I'm running next. The transition from Cinnamon to Gnome went poorly for a while.

I should probably automate the must have packages.

Some applications are not packaged so I install ~/.local, e.g. Arduino, Eagle, Minecraft, etc.

Packages... Hm. Direnv is all I can think of. I just use the system until something is missing, curse briefly, and install it.

Check my 64-lines-long checklist.txt document which I've obsessively prepared for months

Cli

• helix
• ranger
• mpv
• YouTube-dl
• epy
• fanficfare
• aria2
• zellij
• gotop

GUI

• qutebrowser
• zathura

GUI: Firefox, nautilus, libre office, alacritty, mpv

CLI: git, helix, zellij, python, rust, wget & curl, neofetch

For CLI, I would like to add:

• tmux
• mosh
• btop
• asdf
• direnv

Apart from what you mentioned:

• Steam
• Darktable
• cmatrix (very important)
• pfetch
• vim
• Hugo
• clipboard manager

I think that’s about it!

Keepass