Hello, so im gonna preface with I know my thought process is odd but just hear me out. So in MY head i see my journey to daily driving linux in steps, first i used WSL on windows, then I moved on to running a linux server or 2 in my homelab, next I dual booted a linux distro like Ubuntu or Fedora, after that I fully utilized Fedora KDE which later I setup to run more like a tiling window manager, and now I am fully daily driving cachyOS with hyprland. SO all that to ask for some ideas of what is a logical next progression?
If your current setup meets your needs, why progress to a new OS or DE? If Cachy/Hyprland works for you, just try to learn to use it better or optimize it.
You seem to have enough experience to know how each distro/DE works for YOUR workflow.
If you want to tinker, add AI agents to ā fixā your problems or something. Maybe try that on a separate PC in case you do important work on your PC and donāt want to have it busted from experimenting. Or run a server / homelab. Find a need you need to meet. De-google yourself, self-hostā¦.
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I found myself in a similar spot to you hanging taken a very similar progression. Iām not aware of a logical next step, although Iām sure thereās plenty you can expand your knowledge and use of.
As Lurker pointed out, there may be more you can get out of your homelab server setup. Iāve found that thereās a lot of rich value on that side of home computing.
Also, something absent from your progression that was in mine is changing the firmware on your phone. The custom OSes out there are really nice to prevent the tracking and spying thatās baked into the retail software. Once I made the switch, the low-level anxiety that my spyware phone imposed upon me disappeared. Iāve been nothing but happy with the switch.
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Maybe have a vist to the good neighbors at OpenBSD?
After so much Linux a OS with some new things might be what you are looking for.
If you know Linux youāll manage fine on BSD.
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I like it, any self hosted services you personally like to de-google? (if you have gone down that path yourself)
Ive actually been thinking about switching back to android and away from iphone so i will definitely have to look into some fun phone OSes
At some point along the progression curve programming in the *nix environment becomes important.
You donāt necessarily have to do it for the rest of your life, but knowing it makes you much more able to understand tradeoffs, discussions, how things work, why they might be slow, or why they might not work. I think all serious *nix users would get a good return on investment on working through K&R, which isnāt too much work. APUE is worth a browse, see the shape of how to do various things. Of course networking is a big part of our lives, see Beejās work.
You can read about things like sys calls, libc, how programs allocate memory (and how Linux overallocates), how seccomp, IPC or whatever work. But I find it doesnāt stick very well for me unless I try to use it in code.
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Another thought:
If you want to progress further down a path, it may pay to surround yourself when possible with those who are already further down the path.
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An alternative idea: Instead of āprogressingā in switching between Linux distros/DEs, how about actually getting involved with a project as a volunteer? If you like CachyOS, find out what the opportunities to contribute there are. It could be anything from improving documentation to testing, to helping new users, etc.
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FreeBSD?
You could start with GhostBSD, as that gives you FreeBSD with a GUI already installed, which makes it easier to explore. Find out what works for you, and what doesnāt, then progress to āpureā FreeBSD with probably your own idea of a DE.
And if that bores you after a while, thereās OpenBSD and NetBSD, both more opinionated and less compatible than FreeBSD, but some people are happy with what these systems offer.
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I donāt think there is a natural next step. I am interested in security and privacy, so for me the next step was Qubes OS.
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