Alt text: A line plot with 2 axis (confidence vs competence) referencing the Dunning-Kruger effect with various distro logos placed at different points on the line. Starts with mint/ubuntu near (0,0) and progressing through multiple distros to end up with opensuse/fedora at what it calls “the plateau of sustainability”
I think for me the wave has more peaks and valleys.
I get to the last stage of good knowledge and decent confidence but then something new comes and I feel I’m ready for punishment again.
My first Valley of despair was Gentoo. 6 months of constantly compiling stuff and rarely using the computer for anything else. But a bit before that it was Fedora. In those early days, updates would continuously break my system.
In that first round I finally settled for Mint for years. After years of stable Linux Mint, I found my self with time and curious for Arch. And yes, that became the new l valley of despair. But eventually my stable instance.
But new things come and Wayland and new sound systems replaced what I had in my installation. Arch was again the valley of despair. And moved to Fedora, which is as stable as stable can be. I was traveling for the last two years so, no time to mess around.
Now back to arch trying to figure out the Wayland/Niri ecosystem. Let’s see where I land.
However, in my dual boots I always have a working installation I’m happy with and another which I mess up with.