About: Currently interested in TypeScript, Vue, Kotlin and Python. Looking forward to learning DevOps, though.
I mean, how often do you want to wipe everything away and clean install?
Even in macOS, I clean installed every once in a while.
But for Ubuntu, new version came out, and I might want to clean install.
Hopefully, for Arch, there would be no real need to clean install again.
About once every 2 years. Not because it's necessary (it isn't) but just to get rid of all experiments I did along the way. I use Linux Mint.
Honestly, only when something goes wrong with my Linux and I have problems getting things back to normal. But I probably should run clean installs once a while.
Maybe, you haven't destroyed your Linux enough. You really should try Arch, and hop Display Manager, Desktop Environment...
I've been using EndeavourOS since March 2020, and its still up 'n running. Arch based distros don't need a reinstall every now and then - that was one of the reasons why I prefer them over point release distros.
I found out that Distro / DE hopping isn't a problem, as long as you backup ~/*; specifically, ~/.local, ~/.config, ~/.mozilla and ~/.*; but please ls -a to check first.
Also, now I need *.deb or *.rpm support, for closed source packages. debtap doesn't always work.
So, I am back to Ubuntu (+triple boot Arch, Windows). But dkpg / deb isn't as convenient as yay, or even pacman... (Still, Synaptic Package Manger is much more decent than tkPacman or pamac-aur.)
Another problem is, sometimes, maybe often, compiling takes a very long time; including ungoogled-chromium and linux-rt.
I haven't yet tried debtap. For ungoogled chromium, you can get a pre-built binary from chaotic aur repo aur.chaotic.cx/
Linux-rt is available in disastrous aur. These are third party repos so Arch devs take no responsibility. Chaotic AUR is popular, and comes with Garuda Linux too. But they can be a hassle. Ubuntu is better when it comes to binary packages support.
To search packages in unofficial repo, you can use this site : pkgs.org/
About distro hopping - I used to do that a lot until 2019. I had separate home partition so I did not lose any data or app configs. Now I have a single partition installation for simplicity's sake.
I first installed arch ~6 years ago, I never had to make a clean install, and I still use it as my main OS on my personal laptop (:
With Debian there is no need to do a clean install. You can do a apt dist-upgrade to upgrade to a new Debian version. I have done so a few times without issues. I have had a server running for 6+ years with multiple upgrades. I will upgrade it again very soon.
Void Linux has rolling releases, so the next time I'll start from scratch is when I get a new notebook.