All of the distros run the same applications and do the same things.

Mint is behind on getting wayland support, if you’re a gamer who uses a high resolution/high refresh display, something a bit more cutting edge might be in order, but only in that case.

my only issue with mint is that full version upgrades are still a hassle. if that’s something that bothers you, you could switch to something else. otherwise, just keep on keeping on.

It’s a “newbie” distro in that it’s interface is very friendly. As far as it’s capability, it’s as good as any other distro. If you have no issues then you’re already living the dream, stay there.

As you use your first distro, you may begin to realize that you need something else. Maybe you end up programming more than you thought. Maybe you prefer to have a newer version on Python. Try Fedora.

Maybe you end up gaming all the time and you don’t use your computer for much else. Maybe there are some strange issues you can’t be bothered to investigate and fix. Consider Bazzite.

Maybe all you do is watch a few videos and browse the net once a week. Maybe you’re tired of the frequent updates Ubuntu gives you every time you open your computer. How about Debian?

Maybe you’re really curious about your system. The more you know, the more you realize that the one you currently have is filled with stuff you don’t really need. You hopped to Debian bare bones edition and built your own system from the ground up. It has just the packages you need, but nothing else. Maybe you realized that having newer versions of everything solves some obscure problems you’ve encountered, so you built one on Sid. Maybe you love the idea of a rolling release distribution. Maybe you like to say BTW…

Maybe a friend gave you a 48 port network switch and a stack of old Dell laptops from 2010s. What would it feel like to operate a small cluster?

In any case, you don’t need to distrohop unless you have a reason. If there is one, go ahead If not, keep the distro you already have.

If it ain’t broke

I’ve been using Linux at home since 2007. In the early-mid days, I tried a lot of different distros. For the last 10 years or so, I’m pretty much only running Linux Mint (Debian edition) on my PCs.

Switching distributions should not be done just to follow a trend, but for real reasons. For example, if you have issues with the kernel or drivers, or if there is some reason you absolutely must use a rolling release, then it might be worth considering Arch. And this is on the condition that you do not want to or cannot solve the problem on your current distribution.

Personally, I switched from Ubuntu to Arch when Ubuntu first introduced snap and my old computers, which I use as servers, started to lag terribly. So, usually, a reason like that is needed. If it weren’t for that, I would still be using Ubuntu.

Short answer, no. Don’t worry about the long answer and keep doing what you’re doing.

I’ve used Mint for about five years now and I see absolutely no reason to switch. It does what an is OS is supposed to do, run my computer with minimal hassle.

Man let me tell you that when you try to use a software and search for the docs, then you are like “the feature I need is in a newer version, which got implemented in 2022 but mint uses the version of 1993… damn that’s unlucky”. and that happens to me 3 whole times. So I still haven’t switched but only because I am to lazy to backup my files right now.

I’ve been using Mint for ten years because I like the features that make it a newbie distro - the Cinnamon desktop has all the important things in the same places Windows does and it integrates new features six months after they’re released, to give them time for testing and bugfixing before use.

Nothing wrong with it. Its ok to go hopping if you want. But also ok to just…stick with it.

Could be a many reasons:

• You want to learn how things work under the hood. In that case Arch or Gentoo are a great learning experience.
• You want the bleeding edge versions of all your software, so you switch to something with a rolling release.
• You decide there’s another DE you like better than Cinnamon. You could switch to a distro built around said DE.
• You want the absolute best gaming performance, so you switch to CachyOS. (I don’t really expect a very noticable difference with Mint with a newer kernel and the appropriate GPU driver, though.)
• You want to reproduce your exact installation on as many computers as you like based on a single config file. You also want to easily roll back if an upgrade goes wrong. You switch to NixOS or Guix.
• Etc…

I have only skimmed the comments so someone might have already mentioned it, but distrowatch.com is an excellent site to get your head around the differences between distros. For instance, they have a direct comparison page that will list all the package and kernel versions side by side. Here is Mint and Arch - as you can see, Mint is at a 6.14 kernel (fine for most apps and hardware) but Arch has the very recent 7.2.11, which if you have very new hardware, could matter to you.

I run Debian, which has even older packages and kernel, and everything works great. Very recently though, I switched my firefox to the flatpak version, because the Debian package version didn’t have the fairly recent Split View feature, where you can put two sites side by side in your browser window - this has been desperately needed for as long as we’ve had wide screens. So that’s one example of a more recent package being more desirable.

And speaking of Flatpak, that’s yet another reason not to sweat your distro, cause you are not just limited to your apt packages, you can use snaps, you can use flatpak, You can use Nix. There’s endless ways now of getting the latest version of anything, on any version of Linux.

Don’t sweat it.

if it aint broke it dont need fixin