Who else messes up their computer just for the heck of it?

[gymophett]

Like right now. I am about to reinstall an ubuntu-minimal install, and reformat my Hard Drive. Maybe dual-boot.
Why you ask?
Because I feel like it.
Who else does things like this?

[LowSky]

I'm doing a new mythtv install tomorrow on my media center, then a windows 7 pro install on my desktop as soon as the new copy gets delivered (sometime next week), then maybe install arch, and maybe a new copy of windows.

Maybe I'll buy a new hard drive too... hmmm

[NightwishFan]

Sometimes I feel the urge to try out a different configuration or distribution. I generally engineer things so that I can reinstall seamlessly. That is to say I keep all of my personal data entirely separate from my system partition. (I link my folders into /home/username from my data partition). It is natural to want to tweak with your hardware or system if you are able to.

Lately I have just been focusing on keeping a system stable for use by everyone in my household. I might track Debian Stable or the next Ubuntu LTS with it. (I am considering Ubuntu because of it's desktop end user focus.)

[vrkalak]

That's on of the great things about Distro-Hopping.

"If it isn't broken ... I will 'tweak' it until it is"

"If it ain't broken ... I'm not trying hard enough"

I bet I download and install 4-5 different Distros every week.

But I always seem to have Xubuntu as my main OS. Makes a good back-up.

[gymophett]

That's on of the great things about Distro-Hopping.

"If it isn't broken ... I will 'tweak' it until it is"

"If it ain't broken ... I'm not trying hard enough"

I bet I download and install 4-5 different Distros every week.

But I always seem to have Xubuntu as my main OS. Makes a good back-up.

I seem to download many different distros in a week too. Testing most out in VirtualBox.
I always stick with Ubuntu.
Is it weird that I didn't find Arch overly impressive. It was a great distro, probably my second favorite. It just wasn't what all the hype made it up to be.

[Gallahhad]

I do stuff like that.
Usually I save it for a VM, but once in awhile I get a wild hair, and hose my install :)

[nmccrina]

Guilty as charged. :D

I love having a brand-new operating system installed. Whenever I actually get things set up so that I can use it for school or whatever, I feel like I've somehow polluted it. So I reinstall, usually with a different distro because the NEXT one is always the one that will be perfect!

[steveneddy]

I used to, but no time for playing anymore.

[gymophett]

Guilty as charged. :D

I love having a brand-new operating system installed. Whenever I actually get things set up so that I can use it for school or whatever, I feel like I've somehow polluted it. So I reinstall, usually with a different distro because the NEXT one is always the one that will be perfect!

That's how I feel. :O
I feel like I cluttered it up, or bloated it, and it feels fresh no more..
So I reinstall. AGAIN.

[The Real Dave]

I tend to keep another computer aside for messing with. That and Virtualbox. At the moment, my experimentation project is with Windows </shock>, trying to get a decent server running with W2K3 Server. Not sure exactly what I want it to do yet, but I love RDP :)

[The Toxic Mite]

I don't usually mess around with my computer, but I'd probably reinstall Linux every now and then.. ;)

[Kenny_Strawn]

I'm another type of person who likes to distro-hop. I hop around all over the place looking for the distro that does everything I need.

I am very picky about Linux distros. They must have Usplash or Xsplash (scrolling text I loathe), must be able to recognize my network adapter from the Live CD, must be able to have FGLRX installed on them via the package manager, and must have a repo consisting of more than 30 GB of packages. They also must be able to support wireless security (I ALWAYS use Wi-Fi) and must be able to support my Wi-Fi card on Live boot.

So far, Ubuntu, Mint, Crunchbang (to a slight degree), Google Chrome OS (as far as the Wi-FI goes, really like its Web-centric functionality [the only exception to the repo issue]) and the various Ubuntu versions such as UNR and Kubuntu fit the bill.

[gymophett]

I'm about to redo my computer, again. What window manager shall I try out?

[kostkon]

Not me (same installation for 3 years and counting).

[chucky chuckaluck]

i've installed and dumped kde twice today (running pacman -Scc after each dumping). does that count?

[gymophett]

i've installed and dumped kde twice today (running pacman -Scc after each dumping). does that count?

Somewhat, yes. :P

[NoaHall]

Yes, I do, but I never reinstall. I can fix problems :) Makes me better at computers. I've never had to reinstall from a problem. Not on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac, not on BSD.

[ratcheer]

Like right now. I am about to reinstall an ubuntu-minimal install, and reformat my Hard Drive. Maybe dual-boot.
Why you ask?
Because I feel like it.
Who else does things like this?

I do things like that, occasionally. In fact, I just did it about a week ago. I was tired of good installations of Lucid that I could not reboot, so I finally bit the bullet and reset my partition table and did a fresh install of Lucid with the disk drive all to itself.

It still wouldn't boot.

So, I had to do a fresh Karmic install and try to recover all my settings and software. It was a pain.

Tim