im not a distro hopper per se but i’ll tell you what is my process. i install a new distro and begin to try it out, doing my own stuff and try out its features. usually it works great right out of the box and im happy with it. as time passes and i begin to try different usecases, there are bound to be stuff i find annoying or irritating to do, no distro is perfect at everything. alongside that there’s some sort of “cruft” that progressively grows in every installation as you use it, unused dependencies apps or configs causing weird behaviour, the general bloat creeping in, just trash accumulating. right about then i’ll think about doing a new clean install, and instead of installing the same distro i install a new one out of curiosity.

that’s basically it. if you’re happy with your distro there is literally no point in distro hopping. if something is irritating you, you’re curious and you need to do a new install anyway, then why not change your distro? it’s kind of fun setting up stuff for the first time and you’ll learn stuff about software too.