I will come out and say it: I do not enjoy distro hopping. Yet I keep ending up in the middle of it. I am not someone who asks a lot from my system. I have been using Linux privately for many years, and while I am not a complete beginner, I am also not the kind of person who compiles their own kernel just for the challenge. For a long time my setup was simple and stable. Xubuntu was my comfort zone. It was lightweight, reliable, and mostly invisible. Over time, though, the Ubuntu ecosystem started to feel increasingly heavy. More layers, more defaults, more decisions made on my behalf, and many of them solving problems I did not have. At some point I realized that I was not learning much anymore. I wanted more transparency, more control, and a deeper understanding of what was happening on my machine.
That desire led me to EndeavourOS. It offered a good compromise. I gained access to the Arch ecosystem without the full multi-day process of building everything manually. I appreciated the idea of having complete control, but I also needed a practical balance. EndeavourOS delivered exactly that. Enough freedom to stay flexible and enough structure to stay productive.
Life changed, though. I have kids now, and long evenings spent adjusting configuration files are no longer realistic. I still enjoy tuning my system, but I want to do it intentionally, not endlessly. I want to spend time on decisions that matter, not on choosing between terminal emulators.
As a software engineer, I learned early that complexity grows when you refuse to let go. In one of my first projects, I created the initial codebase and carried it all the way into production. Over time, holding on too tightly made the architecture rigid. Features accumulated, shortcuts accumulated, and eventually the entire system became heavy. The moment I understood that simplicity is not a downgrade but a professional skill was the moment I finally started to grow. Removing unnecessary code, cleaning up design decisions, and simplifying architecture made the software not only better, but also more enjoyable to maintain.
Perhaps that mindset pushed me into my next experiment. I switched from EndeavourOS to Linux Mint because I wanted a distribution with lower ongoing maintenance, even if it meant more preinstalled packages. I wrote a Bash script to remove what I did not need. It worked, but the system still felt misaligned. No matter how much I cleaned up, something else surfaced. Mint targets a broad audience, and at some point I realized that I simply am not part of that audience.
This brought me back to a basic truth about myself: I prefer systems that stay simple. I do not need much. My workflow consists mainly of Obsidian for thinking, Visual Studio Code for coding, and Chrome for browsing. That is essentially everything. The older I get, the clearer it becomes that I want to focus on tools that genuinely add value, not on tools that merely exist.
One insight became obvious. It is easier to build a system aligned with your priorities from the start than to continuously reshape one that was never designed for them. Switching systems, even when inconvenient, can be useful. It forces you out of your comfort zone and makes you re-evaluate what matters. Every switch makes me rediscover tools and approaches that motivate me again.
Returning to a simpler setup had an unexpected effect. It made me curious again. With fewer distractions and less default noise, I started experimenting because I wanted to, not because I had to. Exploring, adjusting, and learning suddenly felt effortless again. The system stopped competing for my attention, and that created space for genuine curiosity.
This shift goes beyond the choice of distribution. It influences how I choose tools in general. I am gradually moving from VS Code to Neovim because it is faster, leaner, and more focused. Another good example is Rust, which I recently started learning and whose built-in tooling aligns perfectly with this mindset. Cargo provides a complete toolchain without the need for external frameworks. Tests live next to the implementation. Clippy improves code quality. Fmt ensures consistency. Even with my browser, I often look for something that does not carry around an entire ecosystem I never interact with.
The software world is constantly expanding. New abstractions, new frameworks, new tools appear every day, often solving problems that did not need solving. Devcontainers everywhere. Layers on top of layers. CI pipelines that resemble small companies even for personal projects. At some point I realized that I was recreating the same complexity in my own environment that I was trying to avoid. It felt heavy. It felt unnecessary.
What I want in software and in my personal setup is straightforward. A build script that is enough. An editor that opens instantly. A browser that loads websites without additional overhead. A system that stays invisible until I need it. A setup that respects my attention.
And that is how I eventually returned to Arch. Not because I want to configure everything in detail. I returned because Arch is built around a simple principle. You choose what matters. It does not impose defaults, it does not push an ecosystem on you, and it remains unobtrusive. When I want to configure something, I can do so without resistance. This type of control feels natural. It is not about endless customization. It is about intentional customization.
In the end, I realized that distro hopping is not the real issue. It is a signal. I am not looking for the perfect distribution. I am looking for a system that supports the way I think and work. A system that enables focus instead of distracting from it. For me, simplicity is not a limitation. It is a deliberate choice.
Maybe that is why I keep switching even though I say I do not like it. Not out of frustration, but because each iteration sharpens my understanding of what I actually need. Less noise. More clarity. A system that quietly does its job so I can do mine.
Simplicity above everything.